I'm curious if anyone has any advice for how to handle maintaining a record of Program Names that may change from year to year? This is especially awkward during the interim period between EOY and the production of a donor wall.
For instance, a donor may give annually in at the beginning of February. In 2021, they asked to be recognized by their name, but with their 2022 gift they included a memoriam tribute. We generate the list of Program Names for our donor wall in February, and I don't want the Memoriam to appear on the wall honoring our 2021 donors.
There's no way to inactivate a Program Name, only delete. That seems like a shame, since it erases the record of how they wished to be recognized in past years.
I'm just wondering if anyone else has dealt with this at their own org, and any workarounds you might have found success with!
TIA!
Allegra
Hi Allegra,
At a previous organization I worked, when donors at a certain level had a program name change, in addition to updating the name in the program name in Tessitura, a CSI was added to the account with a specific Activity of Program Change and Origin of Name Change. The CSIs helped with program books that were printed between a full pull from Tessitura of all donors. The CSI allows for an explanation of the change if needed. As backup the Constituent Audit report was also be used. Found under Data Management, this report can be run to get an overview of changes made to the TX_Cust_Program table. You can run this report on a list and with a date range. This shows inserted program names, if it was updated, inserted or deleted, and what the name was before and after the change. The one thing to note is that it shows the program number, not the name, so you would need to know what id number is for each program listing you have in the system. Or perhaps you could get your IT staff to modify the report to show the name.
HTH
T.C.
Pittsburgh Cultural Trust
Hey T.C.,
Thanks! It wouldn't have occurred to me to use CSIs in this way.