It would be great to have some feedback on the use of gender in association links between individual constituents. If you're familiar with the way associations work now, you may know that there is fairly elaborate code there to try to figure out the gender of both sides of the association and map the association types appropriately.
Is this necessary, really? Wouldn't Parent/Child or Sibling/Sibling work as well as Mother/Daughter, Father/Daughter, Mother/Son, Mother/Daughter and Sister/Brother, Sister/Sister, Brother/Sister, Brother/Brother? Yes it gets a little tricky when you get into Uncles and Aunts, but maybe you just call that something like AuntUncle/NieceNephew. Interestingly Facebook has worked hard to keep all their relationship modeling gender neutral.
Thoughts are always welcome!
Chuck,
I did a quick survey around the building. And no one really cared about the Gender of the relationships.
--Tom
From: Tessitura Next Generation Forum [mailto:forums-nextgeneration@tessituranetwork.com] On Behalf Of Chuck Reif Sent: Tuesday, April 27, 2010 4:25 PM To: Thomas Brown Subject: [Tessitura Next Generation Forum] Associations and Gender
You were sent this message automatically by www.tessituranetwork.com because you subscribed to the Tessitura Next Generation forum email notifications. You may reply to this message or visit the site to reply to the post above. If replying via email, please consider deleting the previous message text before sending to help with readability on the site. Thank you!
Seattle Rep is closed on Mondays
twitter.com/seattlerep | facebook.com/seattlerep | blog.seattlerep.org
Please consider the environment before printing this e-mail
From: Tessitura Next Generation Forum [mailto:forums-nextgeneration@tessituranetwork.com] On Behalf Of Chuck ReifSent: Tuesday, April 27, 2010 4:25 PMTo: Thomas BrownSubject: [Tessitura Next Generation Forum] Associations and Gender
Downunder a few of the sites have changed the relationship to the generic Parent, Sibling, Child as they considered the gender focus a bit old fashioned. I can’t see a problem with the combo suggested for AuntUncle/NieceNephew.
However, it might be worth asking the ESC just in case some sites we aren’t aware of find the gender stuff invaluable.
S.
From: Tessitura Next Generation Forum [mailto:forums-nextgeneration@tessituranetwork.com] On Behalf Of Chuck Reif Sent: Wednesday, 28 April 2010 6:25 AM To: Sandra Ashby Subject: [Tessitura Next Generation Forum] Associations and Gender
I don't know if anyone actually does this - but I always thought it would be a good way to discover prospects for a Women's Guild or Lady's Lunceon type fundraiser. Build a list of your top donors and then using associations find all the women associated to them. You could raise funds for a manish event or production in a similar manner.
Ok so call me old-fashioned but we do use the specific type in the “Family” section of our Bio reports. I think there is still a case for it in the “Family” Category, although in all other Categories it’s clearly pointless.
peter nelson business analyst
information systems
pnelson@sydneyoperahouse.com
T+61 2 9250 7180 F+61 2 9251 7821
SYDNEY OPERA HOUSE BENNELONG POINT
GPO BOX 4274, SYDNEY NSW 2001, AUSTRALIA
SYDNEYOPERAHOUSE.COM
From: Tessitura Next Generation Forum [mailto:forums-nextgeneration@tessituranetwork.com] On Behalf Of Sandra Ashby Sent: Wednesday, 28 April 2010 08:40 To: Peter Nelson Subject: RE: [Tessitura Next Generation Forum] Associations and Gender
Please consider the environment before printing this email.=====This message is intended for the addressee(s) named and may contain confidential information.If you are not the intended recipient, please delete it and notify the sender.Views expressed in this email are those of the individual sender and are not necessarily the views of the Sydney Opera House Trust=====
We've gone with the non-gender-specific relationship descriptions - except it seems we have specified for brother- sister- mother- and father-in-laws. To be honest I'm not sure what our rationale would have been in that as I'm sure noone uses them, so it's something for me to check back on!
I think the generic is fine, although it's valuable to have the gender field available in the association. Especially when we have names where it's difficult to determine for sure.
Cheers
Amalia
I agree with the consensus. While association information is very important to Development we can certainly be more gender neutral especially since it is often confusing to explain how to enter associations especially to gift officers.
Since there is still gender information on the general tab as well as the prefixes to turn to that would clear up any questions with a name that it difficult to determine whether its male or female.
Marta
From: Tessitura Next Generation Forum [mailto:forums-nextgeneration@tessituranetwork.com] On Behalf Of Amalia Hordern Sent: Wednesday, April 28, 2010 1:00 AM To: marta@smm.org Subject: Re: [Tessitura Next Generation Forum] Associations and Gender
From: Chuck Reif <bounce-chuckreif3941@tessituranetwork.com> Sent: 4/27/2010 3:22:18 PM
Spam Not spam Forget previous vote
When we moved to Tessitura in '08 we converted old "relationship" records from a system that didn't track gender at all, so at the time we created several Parent/Sibling-type, gender-neutral xref types expressly for conversion. Like other posters, I don't believe we've gone on to use the association genders much now that they are available, either.
100% support the gender neutral Associations. Nick - I understand your concept, but we used Ms./Miss/Mrs. as the way to promote a estate planning seminar for women, so that can still be achieved.
Our Planned Giving Director has often asked for gender information when pulling lists and doing analysis. Our researcher also enters this info. I think it can be useful, but the info is so spottily entered it often is useless, in my opinion.
Although I agree that the association type would not need to be gender specific, I do believe there needs still to be a way to specify the gender of the associated individual. For us, that means being able to specify the gender of the children/cousins in a reportable method, as well. Using the structure of the current associations that would mean having a field at the association level to signify the gender. However, I realize there may be another place to hold the gender of children within a newly conceptualiized contituent module that could take care of the same need.
I agree that while it is important to be able to somehow identify the gender of an associated individual, the generic association types would work fine.
We feel that it is useful to know the gender because this information is not always obvious from the constituent name…..for example, “Pat.” There is definitely an issue with names that are gender neutral or traditionally associated with the opposite gender. There needs to be a way to quickly know what the gender is in these cases. (It would be horrible if a development officer printed out the association information on a prospect and asked about their son only to find out it was a daughter.) Also, if you create an association that is not linked to another record, you have no systematic way of knowing the gender of the second person. This is especially important to our researcher.
Having said that, we are for the gender neutral approach to association types (parent/child), but prefer that there is still a way to indicate gender; for instance, a male/female check box.
Amber Albert
Orange County Performing Arts Center
_______________________________________________________________________
Generally here we feel that Gender is important. The non-gender specific name coupled with a missing title, or even non-gender specific title (Professor/Doctor), can cause embarrassment. But this detail is not necessary in the relationship or association section. Tick box is good, after all there are only two alternatives.
Debbie