Can anyone tell me if they have renamed their "relationship" fields for individual relationships? We are experiencing (and I have experienced it in other organizations as well) challenges when it comes to the relationship/reciprocal relationship being reversed (i.e. "mother"-"son" rather than "son"-"mother").

Does renaming the fields make for more accurate data entry? Any suggestions?

 Thanks!

Becky Vodrey

Jacksonville University

Becky,

I've experienced the same issues, and it was one of my cleanup tasks when I started this job.  I haven't renamed the fields since I don't want to confuse the gift officers, who only have view privileges.  Here's what I tell the gift entry staff to help them remember:

Open Mary Smith's record.  When looking at the Individual Relationship for Mary Smith tab, look at the name in the Name field, then enter how that person is related to Mary Smith in Relationship.  For example, when you have Mary Smith's account open and you're looking at the name John Smith in the Individual Relationship for Mary Smith tab, the relationship is husband and the reciprocal is wife.  In other words, you're looking at HIS name and "husband" is how HE is related to the constituent.  And "wife" would be the reciprocal.

This is confusing, I spot checked new constituents for a month or so, and sent out reminders, but everyone here now seems clear on how relationships work.  I hope this helps.  Maybe Blackbaud will come up with a way to make this easier in a future upgrade

Leslie.

I have only renamed a few fields where the relationship and the reciprocal would be the same.  For instance, instead of husband and wife, I use spouse whilch works for both fields.  Other than a few like, this you just have to remember to use the existing record individual relationship to assign gender and familial relationships.

Judy Devlin

LYDIA Home Association

We renamed a few:  we have spouse for either husband or wife -- we use parent and child, grandparent and grandchild  -- no sons or daughters, mothers or dads. I try to make any relationship as generic as possible.  If the relationship need more clarification we add a note to the record.

Just a quick tip - if you are in a relationship screen and cannot remember what to put in reciprocal or relationship, hit F1 and you will get the explanation.