Canadian AddressFinder (NCOA)

You can purchase Canadian AddressFinder (NCOA) services to ensure that information about your constituents is up to date. AddressFinder (NCOA) services are included in all Essentials and Pro packages. When you keep addresses updated, you save money on mailings and may also quality for postal discounts. For information about the number of Canadian AddressFinder (NCOA) runs remaining for your organization, contact your Blackbaud Sales associate.

Warning: If you track multiple constituents with a single account, the joint account may not be updated by this process. If an account uses a nickname that differs from the constituent's name in the NCOA database, the address is not updated. Non-Canadian addresses are not updated by this process. Only users with admin rights can run the Canadian AddressFinder (NCOA) service.

Canadian eTapestry clients should follow these procedures to update constituent addresses.

  1. Create a custom Canadian AddressFinder (NCOA) report. For details, refer to Create a custom Canadian AddressFinder™ (NCOA®) report.

  2. Run the custom Canadian AddressFinder (NCOA) report to export constituent information. For details, refer to Export constituents with Canadian addresses.

  3. Follow the procedures in this Knowledgebase solution. After Target Analytics analyzes and updates the addresses, you receive results you can import into your database.

    Note: In addition to your import file, you may also receive a CSV file that contains addresses which were rejected from the Canadian AddressFinder (NCOA) process. You do not need to import addresses that are rejected. These addresses were not analyzed. These addresses may be international addresses. If you have other methods of contacting these constituents, we recommend you do so to verify these addresses manually.

  4. Set up user-defined fields associated with the Canadian AddressFinder (NCOA) import process. For details, refer to Create user-defined fields to import Canadian addresses.

  5. Import updated constituent addresses. For details, refer to Import updated Canadian addresses.

  6. Create queries to identify constituents whose addresses were updated. For details, refer to Create Queries for Updated Canadian Addresses.

  7. Run a mass update to update the mailing status for constituents whose addresses were corrected by the Canadian AddressFinder (NCOA) service. For details, refer to Clear "Bad Address" user-defined fields.

  8. Run a mass update to update the mailing status for constituents whose addresses could not be corrected by the Canadian AddressFinder (NCOA) service. For details, refer to Mark "Bad Address" user-defined fields.

Do not send mail to deceased accounts, accounts with bad addresses, or to accounts that have requested to not receive mail or solicitations. We recommend you create a "Do Not Mail" query to identify accounts that should not receive mail. Then, create a "Clean Mailing List" compound query that includes accounts that should receive mail, but excludes the accounts that should not receive it. You can then use this "Clean Mailing List" query to send mail. You can also use it as the starting criteria for other queries to further define mailing lists. For more information, refer to Create a "Do Not Mail" query and Compound Queries.