When we went live with Tessitura in 2018, we imported a lot of data that had not been maintained over the years. I spent a lot of time in 2020 going through records of people who are actively on our mailing list to look for deceased (some had been gone 10+years!) or evidence that the address we had for them was no longer valid. But there are a lot of other records that are just sitting there because they aren't on the mailing list and they haven't purchased a ticket or made a contribution since we went live. As we come across these kinds of records we have been inactivating them with a reason of "No Activity." But I'm just curious if other organizations have policies surrounding when to deactivate records. And does it matter if they are active if we aren't pulling them into lists? We run our mailing lists through NCOA via our mail house (and I update changes), but we aren't currently using one of the integrations for NCOA. On the one hand, they are just sitting there and not being pulled in, but I hate the idea of a bunch of inaccurate and unused records just sitting there. Interested to hear how others handle things.
Anne Robichaux (she/her)CRM AdministratorThe Historic New Orleans Collection
About 10 years ago now I had the box office staff inactivate a list of constituents that did not have recent history with "no activity" and I regret it. We are now getting those people returning and I am reactivating their records and merging with the new records they have created. My recommendation is to just let them sit. They aren't hurting anything being there. Unless of course they are deceased.