Adding New Parents as Constituents or Non-Constituents

Kathy Steinbrueck · October 24

We have been told that we should not add both parents as constituents unless they are already in the system as an alumni. I know that adding both parents as a Constituent in RE Connect is listed as recommended.

What are the pros and cons of making everyone a constituent?

JoAnn Strommen · October 24

We only add any parent record if they donate or need a record due to position/volunteer service.

Pro - you have a record to use easily for communication but this can be done thru other means.

Con IMO - some things to consider:
Record count increases - can increase RE cost
Are you distinguishing current student parent? alumnus' parent? former (dropped/transferred) student parent? If correctly stewarding/communicating, you need to know type of parent.
Keeping up-to-date relationship info (divorce/death/remarriage)
Keeping more records updated - phones/emails
Work required to ensure parent record is linked to each child who is a student.
and more records to sort thru to correctly match which David Johnson, which Ann Smith.

Dan Snyder · October 24

@Kathy Steinbrueck A big, but good question and I'll share my thoughts and look forward to hearing from others as well.

Pros - Easier to send email to each parent, can record event attendance for the specific individual, possibly if you are not duplicating say action entry, you could determine which parent is more engaged which could be important when you try to develop a relationship.

Cons - Record count is tied to your contract level, you need to update two records if an address changes, etc., not as easy to treat as a household if there are two records.

I am sure I am forgetting some things, but we follow the do not add both parents, with the following exceptions: One parent is an alum, event attendance of the non-constituent spouse. We do this because it keeps our record count down, we have a workaround to be able to email the non-con spouse, and oftentimes there is no engagement with the College (gifts or event attendance) so there is no reason to create a separate record.

Overall, my advice here and with any DB question is to set specific rules and then be consistent.

Lena Payne · October 27

We add parents as constituents if they register for an event or donate. We keep the connection through Relationship tab

Madeleine Holdsworth · October 27

@Dan Snyder Would you care to share your workaroud for emailing the non-con spouses? Also, I agree with your pros and cons on this issue, and your advice to pick your lane and be consistent!

Dan Snyder · October 28

@Madeleine Holdsworth I should mention that we send emails through Emma and I export the information and have a Power Query template set up that has both the primary constituent and the spouse subrecord on a single line. The Power Query will determine if the spouse has their own record (own constituent id) and if the spouse subrecord has a different primary email that the primary constituent. If so, that row is flagged and I manually add the spouse information to the bottom of the document before importing it into Emma.

If you are not using a 3rd party platform for your email marketing but using Blackbaud's, I do know of others who record the spouse email as a specific email type on the primary constituent's record and do two sends of the same email. The first send goes to the primary constituents email, the second send they would select the spouse email type so it goes to that additional email. A bit of extra work to send two emails, but if your emails are set up that way to my mind it is a very good solution.

Steve Townsend · October 31

We have always had one record for each household (unless the spouse is also an alum or faculty/staff member) but with the transition to NXT, it seems that if we want to use Constant Contact to send emails, we will have to separate our parent records so that each spouse is a constituent, because CC can only send to one email address for each record, and we always email both spouses.

Adding New Parents as Constituents or Non-Constituents

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