I was curious as to how some of you manage your local government legislature records. It seems that in the database I am currently working they all have been entered various ways, so I want to try and clean this up and come up with a consistent way to enter goverment records. We deal with representatives from different districts in the area. Do you create a org record for each district and have the rep as a relationship, then when their term is up do you add the new rep and put an end date on the previous rep relationship?? Also do you have separate records for the reps and then link them to the district records through relationships? In current database some are in as individual records under the rep. My only concern is that if their term ends and we begin having a relationship with a new rep then if there isn't a base record this history could get lost in the old reps records. Can anyone offer any guidance on how to manage Legislative/Government records.

I would think that you would need to have each District set up as an separate Organization Record. You could link the rep as a relationship and use the end date to indicate who the current point of contact is. If the representative gives on a personal level then they should have their own individual record and gifts should be posted there accordingly. I would also strongly suggested establishing a standard data entry policy on how the names go in so that you can know every time you look up a record, it will be found easily. We have had to do that with our "fraternl organizations" to avoid duplicate & triplicate donor records from being set up. Hope this helps!