we are trying to streamline our coding process and part of that is trying to change the constituent code for all donors to something specific such as "individual", "organization", "foundation" and so on. It is the case that most of our constituents have the code of "donor" so we can't simply take everyone with the code of 'donor' and change them all to 'individual'.  Also, I know constituents can have more than one code, so it is not absolutely important to get rid of the 'donor' code, we just will not use it anymore.  Has anyone had any success with this at all? Ideas on how to tackle this?

First thing  I would do is to run a query on how many constituents have donor as their primary constituent code.  Then run another query to find out how many donors that are an organization type of record.  So say we start with 10,000 total donors and 2,000 are an organization type of record, so that means 8,000 are donors with an individual type of record.  You can create a query of these people and save it and then do a global change from donor to individual.  The other 2000 records need to be looked at to determine if this is an organization, business or foundation.  Jones Construction Company would be a corportation, but the Jones Construction Company Workers would be an organization.  You could create a query to see how many constituents have the word Foundation in them to give you an idea of number of Foundations. 

We had our Fundmaster system converted to RE and we had people coded as Donors and Prospects and I deleted both of those codes so I have done this in the past.

You are also going to look at the gift records to see what constituency that you have in this field.  You will need to change this field also.  You can make a Business Rule that when you open a record and if it the Primary Constituent Code is not one of Individual, Corporation or Foundation or whatever, a box pops up letting the user know this.  This will be extremely helpful in the future when you are adding new Constituents. 

You can Globally Change the records by using a query.  You create a query of your individual type of record and the last name begins with the Letter A.  Verify that all the records should be changed to Individual and then save this query.  Then use this query to Global change from Donor to Individual.  Before you do this make sure that you have a backup of your system and the backup does indeed work.  When you do your changes:  select Admin, Globally Change Records, Constituent, then click on the Include button and find your query, then scroll down on the left until you find Constituent Codes and select on Code, then in the box you will want Replace and then select the Replace and the With, then click OK, then click Change Now, and Good Luck.

 This whole project is still a work in process, so I have not tried your suggestion yet. I did, however, just take a class on importing and now I am wondering if it would be easier for me to export everyone, make the changes to their constituent codes, and then import the changes? I have not done any global changes or imports in my work here so I need an idea of which one is easier to work with.

Hi Emily,

I have used the global add feature in Raiser's Edge.  I had to change records from our old constituent code of Individual Prospects to Individual.  It is pretty simple, and useful.  I did create a query and gathered all who I wanted to change (Individual Prospect) and then globally added individual. However, I ran into a little glitch.  In my case, I wanted to get rid of the Individual Prospects on the donor's record and just have the code individual.  I wasn't able to find and replace for this type of code.  So when I did add the code, I had to manually remove the prospect code.

But it looks like in your case, if you don't mind keeping your "donor" code, then you will do nicely with this feature.  I still appreciate this mechanism.  I have also used the global add feature for adding generic Appeals and Actions when we send out a mailing.  Just for tracking purposes.

Hi Elizabeth,

For your example, if I'm understanding you correctly, there's a much easier way of achieving the result you wanted. If you simply want to replace one Constituent Code with another on ALL records that have that code, and you don't wish to keep the previous code, go to Config, select Tables, select Constituent Codes and simply edit the table entry you wish to replace. The table clean-up feature can be very useful too.

 Nicki