Constituent Corner: Address Sharing

Among the Care Bears, it is Share Bear who promotes the virtues of sharing. In The Raiser's Edge, you can embrace the concept of sharing by sharing addresses between constituent and relationship records.

Address sharing simplifies data entry by letting you make a change on one record that will be reflected on all records who share the address. For example, Buffy, Dawn, and Joyce Summers are all constituents in the Sunnydale High School database and have a shared address. One day, Giles notices that their address is listed as 163 Réville Road instead of 1630 Revello Drive. Because their addresses are shared, Giles only needs to open one record, make the change, and save it to update all three records.

Two records may have the same address, but that doesn't mean they are shared. As another example, Nick and Nora Charles have the same address, but it isn't shared. That means a change to Nick's address won't be reflected on Nora's record and vice-versa. To share their home address, you would open Nora's record, select the Addresses tab, open the home address, select Address, Copy/Share Address from Constituent... from the menu bar, and browse for Nick's record in the search screen. In the window that lists Nick's addresses, mark the Add? checkbox on the home address, then mark the Share this address checkbox to link the address, click OK, then save the address and the constituent record.

Now any changes that are made to Nick's address will be reflected on Nora's record and vice-versa. This information is also in Knowledgebase solution BB27964.