I'm not sure if this was always the case but it seems that when adding a relationship from a record after searching (and I see what this is a requirement so if the constituent record already exists the relationship should be connected to it) one is offered the option to create a new nonconstituent record.

When doing this though the UI does not make it clear that the new record is a nonconstituent. I think web view has been historically lackluster when working with relationship records and previously has forced users to make constituents when they just wanted to make nonconstituents.

Combined with the ambiguous UX people might be thinking they cannot make nonconstituents at all with some methods in web view

I'm not sure if this was always the case but it seems that when adding a relationship from a record after searching (and I see what this is a requirement so if the constituent record already exists the relationship should be connected to it) one is offered the option to create a new nonconstituent record.

When doing this though the UI does not make it clear that the new record is a nonconstituent. I think web view has been historically lackluster when working with relationship records and previously has forced users to make constituents when they just wanted to make nonconstituents.

Combined with the ambiguous UX people might be thinking they cannot make nonconstituents at all with some methods in web view.

@davidspringer what I am looking for is the ability to add a relationship to a constituent from a non-constituent. Example: we so we have parents and grandparents as constituents in our database. Students are not constituents until . I would like to be able to look at a student who is not a constituent and see who their grandparents are. Currently, I can look at the and see who the grandchildren are, but it is much more helpful to do that the other way around.

My mistake, it appears that I can add new and does not seem to require that it is a constituent - apologies

Hello David, what I am interested in the ability to add a non-constituent relationship to a constituent record. I have supervisor rights to RE and unless I search for an existing record the relationship fields are greyed out, and I cannot enter anything. See attached file. If this is a bug it has existed for several years in web view. Please see attached screen shot. thanks, Melody

@David Springer - I'm mostly interested in your item #1 outlined in your comment, which sounds like will be fixed once the bug is addressed.

Hi all, thanks for the comments! I've removed the spam comments - thanks for calling those out.

I'm trying to understand - it feels like there are a couple related ideas here, and relationships are tricky to talk about because they're bidirectional. The ideas I think are represented here and in comments:

1. Users should have the ability to add a relationship from a constituent that connects to a non-constituent.

   1. This is possible today in both database view and web view, but web view requires the user to have "constituent add" permissions to do so. This discrepancy is a bug, so I'll have our engineers investigate and ensure web view behaves the same as database view.

2. Users should be able to add a relationship coming FROM a non-constituent, TO a non-constituent.

   1. This is an intentional limitation of the system, with two distinct exclusions. You can add education information for non-constituent individuals in both views. You can add business information in database view, but not web view.

I'm curious which of these ideas most folks here are more interested in?

Also, please remove 'guest comments' capability from this website. It's insulting to be presented with the guest comment nonsense below. It's quite possible this sort of thing could get worse.

I've just noticed that the capability to add a non-constituent as a relationship is no longer possible in DB view either. This is just wrong, and seems to be a money grab. Melody's explanation is spot on.

Not every record needs to be constituent!!!? this is quite wasteful, especially considering we are charged for number of constituents in our database! When adding contacts to organization record in RE we DO NOT add them as constituents unless they have another relationship with us. Staff at organizations come and go, sometimes frequently - this makes for many useless constituent records with zero relationships to our institutions! Will Blackbaud be changing this???

Only just noticed users need access to add constituent records in order to add non-constituent relationships. Baffled by that restriction as we restrict who can create new records but absolutely do not want to restrict staff from adding simple relationships. This being an issue since 2019 is very concerning. This is a bug, not a feature.

Not every record needs to be a constituent. If we want to track our prospects' company history, or spouse, but the company or spouse will never be a donor, it doesn't make sense to add them as constituents. (Especially when Blackbaud charges as our constituent base grows!)
Web view is "easier" for student workers, but I am training them in database view, because I don't want them adding a new record for every relationship.

We don't usually create a separate Cn record for spouses unless each spouse needs to be coded differently. So the inability to add a non-constituent relationship is a source of frustration for our frontline fundraisers who want to be able to update constituent information. They can add and update contact info, which is great, but unless they are also comfortable with the database view they have to ask the development services team to add spouse name.