We are in the process of putting more of our board information into Tessitura. Currently we have our board members affiliated to the organization, and use board types for Addresses and Emails. We are planning to use the Activities for Board meetings and Attributes for a few codes, but wondered how other organizations were using Tessitura to track board information. Does anyone use Tess in a unique way that is out of the box? And what about reporting? For organizations that have board information on the individual record but transactions on the household, has anyone tweaked the Constituent Profile report to show the Board record with Household transactions?
T.C.
We denote our board members using a constituency that lives on their individual record, though you can see the constituency on the household record in parentheses. We track attendence at board and committee meetings using Activities - these activities also live on the individual board members records. Former board members are tracked using an attribute.
For reporting, since all of our transactions remain on the Household level, we use a list of board member households to look at contributions and ticket information.
Jess Levy
San Francisco Opera
We have the following in Tessitura:
· a board constituency created by an active affiliation of “FGO BOD Member” between a board member and the board of directors account
· a board credit constituency that gets created by an active affiliation of “FGO BOD Gift Credit” between a board member and a company
· a board emeritus constituency that gets created by an active affiliation of “FGO BOD Emeritus/a” between an emeritus board member and the board of directors account
· activities for board meetings
· a special control-grouped note type to hold special information that can’t be easily summarized using standard Tessitura data grabs (and an archived note type to hold out-of date notes)
We have a report that tallies up four years of contributions, four years of season program book advertising, two years of the value of ticket purchases and in kind gifts, current subscription, the number of meetings attended last season and this season, the board member’s title on the board, if any, and the contents of the special control-grouped note. The board member, his or her household account, if it exists, and the board gift credit account are all grouped and added together to give a picture of the board member’s involvement.
We try to keep a separate affiliation for each board term, or each board member’s change of title within a term, so that we can preserve history.
Lucie
_____________________________Lucie SpielerIT Development and Training Manager
Editor, Season Program BookFLORIDA GRAND opera
I have also attached the Board constituency to the individual member of the household's account. We are not using constituency dates for term limits. We identify former board and Board of Counselors with its own constituency code as well. We also have program names levels for each group to readily identify them, as well.
The trick sometimes, is to get the information to update the database when someone comes on or leaves one of these groups.
We also have a custom report for looking at four year giving and ticket history, but use a list to determine who or which group to look at.
However, just today, I tried to create both a list and and an extraction (when the list did not work) of certain giving levels that did not include board members. It did not suppress the households of those individuals.
Is there a way to exclude the households short of adding the constituency at the household level?There are times when the board constituency at the individual household member level works beautifully, but not when I also want to exclude the household.
Michelle
In your suppression segment, use your Board constituency criteria, which will find the individual board members. Then in the Advanced Relationship Options use the Add Groups tab to add in their households. The suppression segment will now include all the individual board members and their affliated household records.
The key with suppressions is that suppressing one member of a household does not automatically suppress any affiliated records. If you want a record to be suppressed you need to explicitly add that record to a suppression segment. Also keep in mind that you can’t count an individual’s data toward a household. In other words you can’t use a Board constituency on an individual to filter out an affiliated household using DOES NOT HAVE. If you want to use an individual’s data to find or filter out a household you need to first create a list of the households you don’t want (so in this example find all board members and swap with their households) then reference that suppressing list with DOES NOT HAVE in your final list.
Kevin Sheehan
Senior Technical Writer & Consultant
Tessitura Network
+1 888 643 5778 x 329
ksheehan@tessituranetwork.com
We've almost completed the process of moving all of our Board membership data, back to the founding in 1963, into Tessitura, including (where possible) committee membership.
We're using a custom tab on the constituent record, tracking start and end dates, status, officership title, term end dt, etc., etc., and will definitely be (re)customizing various board reports to reflect this, since, as you describe, the Board membership lives on an Individual record while the contribution data tends to live on a Household.
The project is still in progress, but feel free to e-mail me offline for more details.