If you have a lot of records that you suspect are duplicates or invalid, there are several things you can do to evaluate whether you wish to keep the record or merge or delete it. You will also want to implement some strategies to reduce the possibility of duplicates or invalid records going forward.

Evaluation

Some things to consider when evaluating whether you want to keep a constituent record are:

1. Does the constituent have any transactions, documents, interactions, or relationships? On the Constituents grid, you can use the fields Has Gifts, Has Documents, Has Interactions, and Has Relationships to determine if the constituents have any of this information.

2. Does the constituent have any time tracking records? On the Constituents grid, you can use the Time Cumulative field to see if the constituent has any time tracking records which may indicate they are a volunteer, client, or someone who received education credits.

3. Is the constituent assigned to a constituent category so that you know why they were added to your database? On the Constituents grid, you can create a list of constituents with no category using the Quick Queries > Excludes> and selecting all the categories you have in your database. This will show a list of constituents who are not currently assigned to any categories.

4. When and how was this constituent added to your database? On the Constituents grid you can see the Date Created and Created By fields. If Created By is blank, it indicates the constituent was created with data entered from a page, like a new constituent signing up for a membership, creating a portal account, or purchasing event tickets. If the Created By says Import, it was a record that imported when you converted your data to DonorView.

5. Is the constituent actively opening emails? On the Constituents grid you can use the Last Email Opened column to determine if they have ever opened an email campaign you sent and when the last time they viewed an email was.

6. Has the constituent attended any events? Assuming you are using the Event Attendance grid and checking in your guests at events, on the Constituents grid, you can use the columns Cumulative Event Attendance Count and Last Event Attended to see if they have attended any events.

7. Do you have contact information for the constituent such as an email, phone number or mailing address? You can add filters on the Constituents grid for "Is Empty" in the Email, Default Phone, and Address 1 fields to see if you have any contact information for the constituent. Those where this field is empty are missing contact information.

If the answer to all of the above questions is NO, the constituent is probably a good candidate for deletion since they do not appear to be interacting with your organization and you have no contact information for them. Your organization should create your own criteria for when a constituent is considered valid and how you determine if they should be deleted.

Creating Duplicate Reports and Custom Views

An easy first pass at your data is running duplicate reports. This way you can determine if there are constituent records that can be merged together. For more information on duplicate reports and merging records, see these articles:

• How do I look up duplicate constituents?
• Can I merge two constituent records together?

You can create views on your Constituents grid using the criteria explained above in the Evaluation section. You can combine several of the criteria in one report if desired. For more information about creating views, see these articles:

• How to create a new View directly on a Grid
• Creating a View with the View Builder

Once you have a list of potential records to delete, you can evaluate them on a case by case basis by viewing the record and determining if they meet your criteria to keep them or not. You can learn how to delete a constituent in this article "How can I delete a constituent?" 

There is no batch delete feature currently available, so each record is deleted one at a time. If you have many records to be deleted, you can reach out to the support team support@donorview.com for a quote to perform the batch delete on your behalf. The team does not identify the records for deletion however, you must do that and create and save the view with the records you would like deleted.

Strategies for Maintaining Your Database

1. Limit who has access to add or edit data your CRM module. You can restrict which users can add or edit data by assigning Read Only access to the CRM module. You can learn more about security settings in this article "User Rights Overview and Access Levels"

2. Train those who do enter data to ensure they are always entering it correctly. 

• You can create a checklist to help new users understand what steps they must take and what fields are required when entering a new constituent. 
• Some good steps include:
  • Not skipping the duplicate record search when entering new constituents. See this article for more "How do I add new constituent?"
  • Always assigning a new constituent to at least once constituent category so that you know why they are in your database. "How do I add a constituent to a category?"
  • Ensuring contact information like email, phone, and address are included whenever possible. Also, each constituent should have a unique email address since this is the primary way the software identifies existing constituents.
  • Adding relationships where appropriate so that you know which constituents are connected, like Employer-Employee relationships.

3. Ensuring your donation, event, survey, and membership pages are auto-assigning constituents to a category. Each of these pages has an opportunity to automatically assign a constituent to a category like "Event Attendee" or "Donor" so that you have a more complete picture of how this constituent interacts with your organization.

4. Routinely run your duplicate record checks. This is especially important after a large event where duplicates may get created through the event registration page. To understand how duplicate records are created and how to minimize them, see this article "Duplicate Record Search Criteria, Prevention & Identification."

5. Maintain your email lists. Ensure you are removing constituents with hard bounce and unsubscribe statuses that have no other transactions, interactions, or other connections in your database.

6. Make database hygiene an important part of your routine. You can get more suggestions for maintaining the overall health of your data in this article "Database Hygiene."