Maintaining Business Addresses in GAIL
When sending postal mail correspondences through GAIL, one of our most important tasks is making sure that our communication is reaching our constituents. Sometimes this may mean contacting constituents at their place of business instead of at their residence. When a business address is added to the contact tab of a constituent’s profile, we can choose to communicate via this address when processing a marketing effort or event communication in GAIL. While this method may prove useful to certain departments, there are several key points to keep in mind:
The Constituent Management team does keep well-maintained data on where our constituents are employed.
Constituent employment information is gathered from multiple sources and is updated in GAIL frequently.
- UGA’s Human Resources department provides updated employment information about UGA faculty/staff 3 times a year.
- LinkedIn provides updated employment information about our donors and alumni 4 times a year.
- UGA’s Career Center provides updated employment information based on a new grad survey once a year.
The Constituent Management team does not currently have a database or process that can auto-maintain constituent business addresses.
This means if your team wants to keep track of your constituents’ business address via their contact tab, you will need to continue to manage this through your team. If an end-date is set to a constituent’s employment, it will not end-date the business address on the contact tab. Also, if the address of the business is updated on the organization’s constituent page, it will not change the business address on the employees’ contact tab.
The Prospect Research team may also find and add employment information about prospects in GAIL
When research is requested on a constituent (or performed as part of a proactive prospect discovery process), the prospect research team will attempt to find current contact information for that constituent. The research team may come across multiple addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses, during their research process, but may have varying degrees of confidence as to the validity of this information.
- If contact information is confirmed (through an interaction with a development officer or we are fairly certain, based on research performed), it will be added to the constituent’s profile.
- If research is performed on this prospect, we will include it in the profile or prequalification AND it will be added if it is confirmed or highly likely.
- If a development officer asks solely for contact information, we will add a note under documentation and interactions and include all “potential contact information.” If a development officer or whoever requests this information has success reaching the donor through one of the potential avenues, then they should add it to the contact tab, let research know to update it, or email Records.
Other places that business addresses can come from
550+ campus-wide GAIL users also aid in updating constituent employment via…
- Bulldog 100 and 40 under 40 Alumni Association entrants
- Alumni Association Chapter events
- Advocacy programs at major corporations
- Alumni Directory book
- Student call center
- Social media marketing campaigns