Intro to Managing Duplicate Constituents

Duplicate constituent data can be a problem. Data entry errors and missing data can cause duplicate records in your database. Duplicate constituent data can be costly and it can skew statistics and projections. Duplicates can also have a direct impact on expenses related to constituent appeals, such as mailings and fundraising.

Maintaining a "clean" constituent database requires an ongoing process of prevention and cleanup. Altru provides tools that help you to identify and prevent duplicate constituents during data entry, as well as locate and consolidate any duplicate constituents saved in your database. This section provides an overview of the typical steps involved.

Manage duplicates workflow

Managing duplicate constituents in your database requires using tools in multiple areas of the program. This is an overview of the end-to-end duplicates management process. Each step in the workflow is discussed in its own section of this help file.

1. Prevent Duplicate Constituents: Use tools to identify potential duplicate constituent records during data entry. Once configured, many duplicate prevention tasks are automated and handled for you at the time of data entry. For more information, see Prevent Duplicate Constituents.

2. Find Duplicate Constituents: Use search processes to find duplicate constituents saved in your database. You can run searches on the entire database or on a subset of records. For more information, see Find Duplicate Constituents.

3. Merge Duplicate Constituents: After you find duplicate constituents saved in your database, you can remove duplicates by consolidating information on matched records through merge processes. You can configure how merge processes handle conflicting data on duplicates. For more information, see Merge Duplicate Constituents.