We are trying to determine the criteria for marking a constituent as Lost and after searching the forums (only back to 1/2008) I didn't find much on this, so I was hoping to tap into the collective wisdom to learn how you decide when to mark a constituent as Lost and when you mark them as Invalid.  Your thoughts are much appreciated. Thanks for your help!  Anne

Anne Herbert

Northern Kentucky University

herberta1@nku.edu

I think it would depend upon the reason. Are you getting mail returned? If that is the case - I would check the no valid address box. 

I personally don't mark accounts invalid if they have any giving history - I just update the record with the reason we are not mailing them anymore (No valid address, Do Not Solicit request, etc.)

Making accounts invalid can happen for a number of reasons depending on your organizations mission, however I would remind you to make sure you always include invalid records in your financial reporting as this can be an easy mistake to make. I'd be careful when doing this because we tend to have Alumni that move a round a lot that we may not hear from for 5-10 years and then they pop back onto our radar again due to a reunion or conference.

You can change the constituency code on invalid or 'lost' accounts if it helps you when doing historical comparisons- this may actually help you determine which constituents you can actually renew versus basing renewal on 100% of last year(less deceased)

Hope this helped a little

Attached are my policies for inactive records.

Attached are my policies for has no valid address.

Thanks a ton! 

Melissa,

Both of your documents referred to a Deceased Policy and I am curious how that is written. I have "some" of these policies in place, but it is not quite as detailed as yours, so curious how different your Deceased policy would be from what I have.

Thanks for your sharing of information. I am pretty much a one-person shop, but sure need to get these things documented correctly, so it is much better to see what others have than continually reinventing the wheel.

Kathy

here is my deceased records policy