Cross posting this to the Raiser's Edge Forum

 I would appreciate if any user of Raiser's Edge can assist me with this. 

How do you define government contacts or government departments within RE?     For example:   Would you give the Mayor of Newark a constituent code of Individual or Government?      Additionally, if you were to code him as Individual, would you than further segment him with an attribute of Government Type? 

 We at the Newark Museum are trying to clean up our government constituents and we are running into some dead ends.    Right now all governement contacts (ie mayors,superintendants , council members etc,) are listed under a Constituent Code of Government and/or Individual.   Then they are further segmeneted with an attribute that defines that person as part of government at the city, county state and federal level.     The government departments (ie NJ Cabinet, NJ State Assembly, Newark Public Schools) are only listed as a Government constituent code and then further segmented under the same attribute as an individual.

 Any assistance on this would be very helpful.   

 

I would say it depends - and I know that is hard to answer

I have one organization record for State of Connecticut with a cons code of government agency and I have as relationships the Governor, LT. Governor, Former Governor, etc.  Some of those relationships have individual records with a cons code of individual.  In some cases we have old records where I can not tell why an individual record was created but typically it is created if the individual is a donor or prospect for a personal gift.  Also if we want to add a home address for the constituent to send mail (such as newsletters) to them at home they would get an individual record.

I would say defining why and when records even get created needs to be done first.  If you are creating the records because you are trying to get the individuals to give (personally) then I would say they need individual records.  If you are simply keeping track of who is in certain government seats as contacts for basic government visibility, newsletters, press releases - then I would keep them on organization records.

 

I just tackled this today and I've got my fingers crossed. We are moving to making everyone a constituent, rather than having contacts. I met with other users in the office and they agreed that we should add more specific constit codes for major groups that we work with, so I had Hospitals and today I added Hospital Contacts because we have so many. I also had Government office/official lumped together and I broke them out. We don't have a general "Individual." All of our codes are a bit more specific. I tried to think about what I would be mailing each and that's where it gets sticky. I haven't completely processed it in my head, but I'm thinking I can code all the offices Do Not much of everything, because the individuals will be getting our info.

 

We put all our state and federal contacts in as individuals, linked to the State of Ohio  or congress etc.  They have a special constituent code of Legislative Official.  We wanted to be able to keep track of what was mailed to them when, esp. as we are going after stimulis money. They are coded , Do not solicit, do not phone etc so they are never treated in "Bulk" unless specifically added. As we often only have official addresses we make them no vaild address if they loose their elections. 

Lauren -

  Here's an option: every government official (who is important enought to us to have on our database) who has an individual record must have a primary business relationship.  Within that relationship we define the governmental entity as the Employer with a Reciprocal of either Elected Official (if they hold the position as the result of a minicipal/state election) OR Employee of Governmental Entity.  

  Organizational records for the city, state legislature, state house, particular government office/agencies, etc. have a constituent code of Governmental entity, and an attribute code that breaks those down into city, county, state and federal. 

   We have a staff person who has the responsibility of obtaining up-to-date lists of all changes in elective office after elections and then updating RE to reflect those hwo have left office and those who have become new elected officials.  The position and title can describe city council member, mayor, senator, etc..  The relationship with the legislature or city hall can begin on election or inauguration day and we pput in an end date when the person leaves office or otherwise ceases to be an elected or employed official.

Something else to consider is ratcheting down of security rights on these records to ensure that the data is maintained properly on these government records. 

 AND another question -- how do people handle US senators and representatives who have multiple addresses including the Washington DC one?  I ended up creating org relationships to entities called "Congresswoman Carol Shea-Porter/Nashua Office" with these regional addresses so that I could record the address and phone numbers of these other offices.  BUT these addresses are not visible on the address tab of the congresswoman. 

 Any better ideas out there?

 

I probably would not have done that.  I would create an individual record for her and put the local address on it (and possiby also her home address).  I would then simply link her from the business button to a record called US House of Representatives which should load the basic address for all US congresspeople. I then add the appropriate room number, phone number and/or other changes (I then unlink the address when asked if I should make these changes back to the US HoR record.)  Now you should have both addresses on her individual record.  You can now select which one you want to be her primary address.

So Melissa - where would you put the information on the other regional office addresses?

 

That was what I mentioned first.  I would enter that as an additional address (type=business) on their individual record.