Matching Criteria

When website users submit payments for special events on your web forms, Altru associates the transactions with constituent records. To determine whether website users match existing constituents in your database, Altru uses matching criteria to compare data on web forms to the corresponding data on constituent records. If Altru finds a match, it associates the record with the transaction and updates it with any new data on the payment form. Otherwise, it creates a record and associates the transaction with that new record.

Note: When Altru creates a constituent, address, phone, or email address record based on a web form, it selects “Web Forms” in the Information source field and does not allow you to edit the selection. In queries, you can use the Origin and Origin information fields to include the information source in query results or to filter queries based on whether records were created manually by program users or automatically based on web forms.

To determine whether a matching record exists, Altru compares the following fields on the payment form with the corresponding fields on constituent records.

• Title

• First Name

• Last Name

• Address

• City

• Country

• State

• Zip

• Email Address

• Phone

For a website user to be considered a match for an existing constituent, these fields must all match exactly according to the following matching criteria.

• Altru only compares website users to individual constituent records. It does not consider organizations or groups. It also does not compare website users to constituents who are inactive or deceased.

• Matching criteria is not case-sensitive, so Altru treats “Smith” and “SMITH” as an exact match.

• Because the Title, First Name, and Phone fields are not always required fields, Altru treats them as matching fields when data exists in one location but not the other. If the fields contain data on both the payment form and the constituent record, then an exact match is required.

• Altru compares first names on payment forms to the First Name, Nickname, and Alias fields on constituent records. If an exact match exists to any of these fields, Altru treats it as a match.

• Altru does not consider types such as Home or Business when it compares addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses. If an address, phone number, or email address on a payment form matches any address, phone number, or email address of any type on a record, Altru treats it as a match.

• For Zip Codes, Altru only compares the first five digits.

• For addresses, Altru treats the primary street names and standard abbreviations in the U.S. Postal Service’s list of street suffix abbreviations as exact matches. So if a user enters a Postal Service abbreviation but an address record includes the full name, Altru treats this an exact match. For example, if a website user enters “123 Main St” but an address record uses “123 Main Street,” Altru treats these fields as a match. For the list of Postal Service abbreviations, go to http://pe.usps.gov/text/pub28/pub28apc_002.htm.

If the fields on a payment form and constituent record match exactly according to these matching criteria, Altru associates the online transaction with the constituent record and updates the record with any new data from the payment form.

If the fields are not exact matches, Altru creates a constituent record for the website user and associates the transaction with that new record.

Note: Altru can only match a website user to a single record. If your database includes duplicate records and the website user matches multiple constituents, Altru disregards the matches and creates a new record for the website user.