Hello all,
I'm wondering if anyone would be willing to share their process for marking patrons as deceased, and how you find it easiest to pull these patrons to recognize them for annual giving or an in memoriam.
Our current practice has included marking constituents as inactive in addition to deceased, but I find that makes the process for pulling giving harder, since they won't be pulled in lists. Even going through the extra step of running an extraction, I'm still finding locating these people difficult. In one instance, a patron who is marked with deceased status and with deceased as her reason for being inactive still didn't pull even though others did.
Any help is appreciated!
Hey Ashley,
If you or someone on your staff has SQL experience, you can write a manual script that will include inactive accounts and pull exactly what you are looking for in your list. Another option is to use Extraction manager to pull your list. Lists inherently exclude inactive accounts and extractions inherently include inactive accounts. Here is a screen shot for List Manager showing the query and the code tat controls inactive/active accounts. 1 = active accounts. I believe 0 = inactive accounts.
To get to the query interface, click "show query" next to "graphical edit".
- Chris
Hi Ashley - we have an "Estate" Constituency Type, and will change the patron's account type from individual/household accordingly. Then we usually change the name of the deceased patron to "Estate of ...". This constituency type can be used as a suppression in Extraction Manager for mailings, but the account is still active and will be pulled on a contribution list/report. As far as recognition, we add an asterisk next to their name in the "Program Names" radio button under the "Names" tab, and at the bottom of our overall list, there is a note: " *Posthumously ". Hope that can provide a few ideas! Thank you - Tele
Hi Ashley,
We do the same as Tele almost to the letter. To keep from having multitudes of active patrons who have been deceased for years and no longer need to be recognized, I created a list that pulls deceased patrons with no giving or ticket history in the past few years. We refresh this list every few months as part of our data clean up and inactivate anyone we definitely don't need to recognize any longer.
Hey Tele,
I really like this approach. One question...how do you handle a deceased primary member of a household?
Thank you, Chris!
We follow a similar process if the HH is separating for another reason. Thanks again, and let me know if there's anything I can clarify! - Tele
Hi all, thanks for your suggestions!
Chris, I don't have SQL experience, but I'm hoping to learn soon, so maybe I will be able to implement that in the future!
Tele, thanks! I talked with my team about this, and it seems like a good solution!
Thanks Juliane! I think that is a great way to make sure everyone stays on top of the list.
Hi Ashley, I pull all of our Annual Giving lists with reports and deceased patrons do pull that way. When we mark a patron deceased and inactive, we also update their Sort Name to something like "Frey/Mark (Deceased)". This makes them easy to identify and still sort appropriately. Also, my SQL skills are very beginner, but when you have a list open, click the "Show Query" button, the last line of the code is usually "WHERE a.inactive = 1". If you remove that line, inactive constituents will show up in your list.
Mark, you made my day! Taking that line of code away has helped me pull a complete list of Planned Giving people when someone is deceased.
Thank you so much!
Hey Micheal! That bit of code editing was a gem that I learned at TLCC a few years ago! I now use it all the time when doing Top Donors, Lifetime giving, and Milestone reports. It was nice to meet you in Chicago! Cheers, Mark