Constituencies

One other thought to add:  we’ve found Constituencies extremely useful on the Search screen.    We created a service interceptor that takes advantage of the new single line search in v11.    We can enter any constituency code (such as a Board) and instantly get all the constituents returned in the search screen.    We’re happy to share that interceptor if anyone is interested.

From: Tessitura Development Forum [mailto:forums-development@tessituranetwork.com] On Behalf Of Matthew Echert
Sent: Thursday, April 11, 2013 2:03 PM
To: Levine, Alan
Subject: Re: [Tessitura Development Forum] Constituencies

Hi Sara,

I definitely second what Heather says, although I don't think we're updating our constituencies quite that frequently. (Though I could be wrong.)

Institutionally, we have manually updated constituencies for key groups like the board, staff, dancers, students, etc. It's handy to be able to see those people immediately in the headers, or to pull them into (or keep them out of) a list. On the development side we have different constituencies tied to each of our different membership categories, and one for our young patrons group. We are experimenting with using constituencies to flag high capacity donor prospects, but the main reason for doing that is so that we can use NScan monitoring to know when they enter the house.

We are making extensive use of solicitations this year for the first time, and I would highly recommend going that route. We've definitely invested a lot of time in making solicitations work in a way that makes sense for our development officers, but I'd say it's definitely worth it. You can plan with so much more detail using solicitations than with constituencies--plan for asks in multiple years, multiple campaigns, multiple designations, for example, and use tasks. You can track how much you're asking for and run reports on it. My goal is to get everybody doing everything in Tessitura instead of on spreadsheets. (We're not quite there yet, but a guy can dream...!) Plus, solicitations are getting a makeover in v12, so there's also that to look forward to.

If you have questions about moving to solicitations, I'm happy to share my experiences so far.

We are in the process of trying to clean up our records, including attributes and constituencies. In doing this, we've realized our constituencies tend to be repetitive with information found in other places in a Tess record. Out of curiosity --

What do you have constituencies for and why?

Does it seem like better practice to track your prospects for foundation, gov, individual, etc. in a solicitation rather than a constituency?

Thanks!

This message was sent automatically to you by www.tessituranetwork.com because you subscribed to the Tessitura Development Forum. You may reply to this message to post to the Development forum or visit the site to search, read and post to the forums. In the interest of keeping the forum posts from becoming cluttered, we encourage you to delete previous message text from your reply before sending. Thank you!

One other thought to add:  we’ve found Constituencies extremely useful on the Search screen.    We created a service interceptor that takes advantage of the new single line search in v11.    We can enter any constituency code (such as a Board) and instantly get all the constituents returned in the search screen.    We’re happy to share that interceptor if anyone is interested.

From: Tessitura Development Forum [mailto:forums-development@tessituranetwork.com] On Behalf Of Matthew Echert
Sent: Thursday, April 11, 2013 2:03 PM
To: Levine, Alan
Subject: Re: [Tessitura Development Forum] Constituencies

Hi Sara,

I definitely second what Heather says, although I don't think we're updating our constituencies quite that frequently. (Though I could be wrong.)

Institutionally, we have manually updated constituencies for key groups like the board, staff, dancers, students, etc. It's handy to be able to see those people immediately in the headers, or to pull them into (or keep them out of) a list. On the development side we have different constituencies tied to each of our different membership categories, and one for our young patrons group. We are experimenting with using constituencies to flag high capacity donor prospects, but the main reason for doing that is so that we can use NScan monitoring to know when they enter the house.

We are making extensive use of solicitations this year for the first time, and I would highly recommend going that route. We've definitely invested a lot of time in making solicitations work in a way that makes sense for our development officers, but I'd say it's definitely worth it. You can plan with so much more detail using solicitations than with constituencies--plan for asks in multiple years, multiple campaigns, multiple designations, for example, and use tasks. You can track how much you're asking for and run reports on it. My goal is to get everybody doing everything in Tessitura instead of on spreadsheets. (We're not quite there yet, but a guy can dream...!) Plus, solicitations are getting a makeover in v12, so there's also that to look forward to.

If you have questions about moving to solicitations, I'm happy to share my experiences so far.

We are in the process of trying to clean up our records, including attributes and constituencies. In doing this, we've realized our constituencies tend to be repetitive with information found in other places in a Tess record. Out of curiosity --

What do you have constituencies for and why?

Does it seem like better practice to track your prospects for foundation, gov, individual, etc. in a solicitation rather than a constituency?

Thanks!

This message was sent automatically to you by www.tessituranetwork.com because you subscribed to the Tessitura Development Forum. You may reply to this message to post to the Development forum or visit the site to search, read and post to the forums. In the interest of keeping the forum posts from becoming cluttered, we encourage you to delete previous message text from your reply before sending. Thank you!