What is the best practice for identifying in RE the organization Head (or main) office?

Anna Melnychuk · July 8

Hi ! I'm looking for advice on how to best identify a "Head/Main/National office" record when we have multiple related organization records in RE NXT Our development team would like a simple and visible way to identify the Head Office or Main Office record when there are multiple organizational records for the same company. For example, if we have ten records for different locations of the same organization, they want to be able to quickly spot the main (Head Office) record for communications.
Their suggestion is to manually add the letter "M" at the beginning of the Constituent ID for the Head Office record (e.g., “M12345”) as a visual cue.
I want to ensure that this will not create or complicate our RE reporting or anything else in any way. Do you think that adding a prefix to the Constituent ID causes any issues with system functionality, reporting, or integrations? From your experience, would that be ok to do, and if not, what other way is there to record this information (Attributes or Alerts or Note Summary option in RE NXT?
Thank you very much for your help!

Christine Robertson · July 9

@Anna Melnychuk I would use an Attribute. Adding an M to the Constituent ID is not self-explanatory to anyone else joining your organization and changing the Constituent ID after the record has already been in existence can cause issues with any integrations, etc. that you have setup.

Anna Melnychuk · July 9

@Christine Robertson Thank you so much, Christine, for your insight, it's very helpful. You make a good point about the risks of modifying the Constituent ID in the existing record. I also agree that adding an "M" could lead to confusion in the future and cause issues. Using an Attribute sounds like a much safer and more sustainable solution. Regards, Anna

Crystal Bruce · July 9

@Anna Melnychuk discussion moved to Raiser's Edge NXT. Thanks!

Dariel Dixon · July 9

@Anna Melnychuk Why not use the Parent Corp field? This field is pretty visible in NXT as it is in the Constituent Summary tile. Granted, there is nothing when looking at a group of records that will really help as this nor an attribute can be seen without exporting/outputting those fields. Either way, you're looking at a slight tweak to the way these records are pulled?

Lucy Ruiz · July 9

@Anna Melnychuk Generally we have used a constituent code. This is the primary constituent code in the hierarchy. Additionally, we will mark all the "automatically soft credit this organization for gifts in the relationship record. This ensures that Acme HQ is always soft credit for donations from Acme division org records. This also facilitates any reporting both within RE and Power BI.

Susan Fioribello · July 10

@Anna Melnychuk
I was working on this yesterday and this is what we have decided do.

1. Add an Alias to the Parent Corp record using the format Corp Name Main Record (Corp Name being the same as entered on the name field). The Alias is visible when searching in both web view and database. This allows us to easily search for the company company's main record without having the notation appear in Donor lists.

2. We use the Parent Corp link so we can easily see on the record if we are looking at a branch or the parent corp.

3. Link the records as Organization Relationships with Relationship Parent Corp and Branch/Subsidiary

4. Automatically soft-credit the Parent Corp for all gifts from all Branch/Subsidiaries. This works because the majority of our donor reports gives soft credit to the soft credit recipient.

This process allows us to easily see the full support from a company but also to steward identify relationships with the branches and note which are our biggest supporters.

Anna Melnychuk · July 10

@Susan Fioribello Hi Susan, Thank you so much for sharing your suggestions and business rules for identifying the head office/main corp record in RE. I really like your approach. It's clear, practical, and very thoughtfully structured. I appreciate you taking the time to outline it! Best regards, Anna

Anna Melnychuk · July 10

@Lucy Ruiz Hi Lucy, Thank you for your response and advice. I like the idea of using a constituent code and approach to soft crediting is important, especially from a reporting perspective in both RE and Power BI. Thank you! Anna

What is the best practice for identifying in RE the organization Head (or main) office?

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