Question:  If two foundations (that are constituents) are merging with a new name, what is the best way to merge their records?  Should I merge both records, using new name and placing old names as alias?  When gifts are merged, will I be able to see the history of who gave through which original foundation?  Or, should I keep the original records and create a new one for the merged foundation, linking them as relationships?  Thanks for any help you can give.

If it is important to you to see which original foundaton gave which gift then I would not merge them because you will lose that history.  I would create the new foundation, inacivate the old foundations, link the old foundations to the new foundation via relationships.  It would be up to you to decide if you want to go back through old gifts and soft credit the new foundation so all combined giving history shows (in soft credit form) on the new foundation.

oh and still put the names of the old foundations in the alias on the new foundation in case someone searches by the old name.

 That and the gift history as some people gave through each foundation.  I am not sure if that information is still captured if a merge the two records.

 Thanks Melissa,  that is alot of help.  As I have been thinking this through, my thought pattern was the same.

Vickie:

 I believe that the merge feature would work well in this case, especially if you want to make sure the most current name and contact information is used on future correspondence. You can retain the data, and I would definitely use the alias for the old names, but you can merge as many fields as you want or all of them. That way, you have an accurate picture of the new entity as well as its history.

Julie Stogsdill

Make sure you included soft credits in the merge if you have soft credited individuals that pay through the foundations

I do not beleive that the merge function retains which original foundation the original gift was on.  All you know is the aliases of the two foundations before the merge but not which gifts belong to which.  I would not call that retaining the data - I would call that a loss of data.

You could go through the trouble of adding an attribute or note to all of the gifts before you merge so you can retain this information.  I would not merge however because of the potential loss of history even if I noted all of the gifts.  Who looks that deep on a gift to attributes/notes?

I might use merge to copy and bring over the biographical info and relationships if contacts are the same but would not merge gift history, actions, appeals, proposals, etc.

sorry - my reply didn't make it clear - I was trying to answer this specifically - If you merge records: 'That and the gift history as some people gave through each foundation.  I am not sure if that information is still captured if a merge the two records'.

I agree with Melissa  I would keep the two old organizations separate - create a new record for the new merged org - put aliases of the old organizations on the new org. Copy over any relevent info to the new record and I would annotate the old records to make sure that  data entry personnel do not accidnetally continue putting gifts on the old record - and to let view only folks know that a new org has been created.