One of the big tasks ahead in the Next Generation project is redefining all the ways in which a constituent relates to other constituents. Today we call this Associations and we know that it doesn’t begin to cover all the bases. So just as we have in the past, we need you to help us out with your thoughts on any or all of the following questions:
1. What are the ways that constituents relate to one another, particularly ways that aren't so easy to track in Tessitura today? 2. What are some scenarios that describe ways that your business needs to communicate with different segments of related constituents? (A simple example: “Sometimes I need to send a mailing out with only one piece per household. But if I’m doing the same promotion in an email I need to send it to all the members of the household.”)3. One of the things we struggled with in designing Tessitura the first time was the whole name1/name2 construct. Is there a reason to treat spousal relationships differently than any other type of family/household relationship? 4. What other questions need to be asked about this topic?
Erin,
You have gotten me thing about an interesting point.
One Memberships can cover a range of associated constituents. In our organization we have some memberships that cover just a single individual. In other cases we have a membership that covers a set of spouses / partners and offspring. The constituent association model has to be able to have a variety of relationships and the membership model needs to use these associations correctly to document different kinds of memberships. Finally we have to make it very easy to setup and use for our internal users of our system and web site users of the system. Hmmmm…. A big challenge.
which BOTH the husband/wife will tell you. Each spouse will take full credit for the entire amount - either on the phone, or in person.
I know that we aren't in a design phase here, but when you "split the value" - will Tessitura reflect that "value" as the husband is $500 and the wife is $500?? I can see a number of pitfalls with this approach that we should be aware of moving forward. The last thing any of us want is to navigate ourselves into a field of landmines as we use our sparkling new CRM system... telling a donor once by mistake that "the system reflects half" (or whatever) of what they think that they gave will not be pretty. Especially if it is one person's money.
Maybe I am missing something, but I don't get this part, or maybe I'm not buying =) Thanks for any enlightenment out there -
Erin