We use an assigned solicitor type of "primary" to indicate link our account manager the constituents that they are working with and to track credit. This works fine when there is only one constituent but in many cases that one constituent might have related constituents such as a spouse, a family foundation and a company that all need to be assigned to the same account manager since gifts and other activity may be happening in all these records. This leads to a proliferation of records for the account manager to deal with---a staff person with 200 assigned records now might have 300-400. Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks in advance, Frank Frank Dean Senior Development Associate The Children's Hospital Foundation

Dont' know if this helps, but, I can tell you what our organization does, for reference: We use the Re: Search module. When there are foundations and family members and businesses all associated with one donor (or one ask, as we call it, as in one solicitation), we decide that one of the associated records for the solicitation will be the Primary one; that record gets a Proposal. We assign our solicitor to that person's record as well as that person's Proposal record. So, for example, if Mr. Prospect makes a donation, and his company makes one too, then his wife and then his family foundation, it all gets linked to Mr. Prospect's Proposal. That way you can easily track credit to solicitor. And the number of Proposals with the Solicitor assigned to them is an accurate reflection of the number of assignments a solicitor has. And with spouse records who have full constituent records as well, we ensure that the one with the Proposal in their record is marked as Head-of-Household. I don't know if that helps your situation, but I hope it atleast gives you some ideas... Cheers! Robbie L Raiser's Edge Guru-In-Training

What is the specific end user problem? By that I mean what problems does this create for your staff person. Do they have trouble identifying the related constituents to get a global picture? Do they lack information on the constituent when they sollicit him/her?

To find the best way to organise your data to sove this problem, you will first need to identify the needs of your staff, then what needs are currently fuffiled and which are not. Knowing what your staff needs will help you figure out how to give it to them.

The idea of using proposal is a verry good one. It will consolidate your sollicitor's efforts to give you a picture of the constituent and all related gifts.

You will also want to make sure that all related constituents have a relationship to the primary constituent. If not all of your constituent's relationships are for a "related gift", you may want to identify the "related gift" relationships with an attribute. This can then be queried uppon to get only the primary constituents, or to include all their related constituent's as well.

Lastly, if your relationships are entered, make sure your staff has acces to them. Weather it is on screen or on the printed profile they take with them. The more info they have, the better they can sollicit. William da Silva
President, eSimpleIT
Technology and organisation simplified
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