A few things to know about Contact Records

Every person that you wish to keep track of should have a contact record in the system.  The contact record keeps track of:

  • Address Information
  • Phone Information
  • Email Information
  • Demographic Information

Also the contact record keeps track of additional information for contacts that have a log-in / profile assigned to them.

  • Volunteer Information used to manage their volunteer sign-ups  (interests, communication preferences, total hours of service, restrictions, etc.)
  • Skilled Volunteer profile information.

Every Contact must have an organization it is associated with.

Every Contact must have an organization it is associated with and the organization must have a record already in your database.

Contacts are sometimes associated with their employer   (this is typically done for your nonprofit partner organization's contacts)- but in HandsOn Connect, most contacts are associated with a special organization.  What organization they are associated with depends on the Account Model of your instance in Salesforce.

Individual (Bucket) Account Model:

Volunteers who register on the public site in older instances of HandsOn Connect are usually associated with the Organization "Individual".  Individual is a sort of phantom organization that means we either don't know who their employer is, or might not yet have that employer created as an Organization Record. So all newly created contacts are automatically associated with "Individual".   After they are created - they can have their organization changed if their employer is actually known.

Household Account Model:.

Newer HOC customers, or those who have converted to the household model for the Non Profit Success Pack have the organization of each contact associated with "(Last Name) Household" -- an account that is automatically created for each new contact.   This 'account' keeps track of donation information across multiple members of the same 'household".  A household account can be associated with multiple contacts (who all live in the same household).

When you administratively create a contact in Salesforce - if you leave the organization name field blank, a Household Account is automatically created for the contact.

How to create a relationship between a contact and additional organiations:

The recommended way to keep track of an organization's employer, and any other organizations they have a relationship to (Board Member, Former Employer, etc.). is by using the related list "Related Organizations".   Click on 'Add Relationship" and then define a relationship between your contact and any of the organizations you have in your database.

Your system admin can add additional roles so that you can define any number of possible relationships between an organization and an existing contact.

Users of the Non Profit Starter Pack use the related object "Affiliations" to define the relationships between Contacts and Organizations.  This related object has additional functionality that only applies to users of the NPSP.

Whenever a Salesforce user accesses the CMS for the first time from Salesforce, a contact record with their name and Salesforce username will be created if such a contact does not already exist.

Do not delete or merge this contact as its required to exist in your data in order to be able to access the CMS.

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