Samantha, Our experience is that while the host is consistently matched, the second attendee, i.e. guest, is NEVER matched and is 9 times out of 10 the spouse. It does not check spouse records - I mean I totally get that if the spouse only is present in a Relationship Record, then it probably would not find it, but many times spouses have their own constituent record. So we constantly have to find the guest, edit the guest, copy and "paste" the guest name in the same exact event registration, and allow NXT to "find" the constituent - which it does.

So, that simple process on our end, does work and we don't have to delete a guest and add the spouse as a guest in those instances. But if there's no constituent, then yes we do have to delete the constituent record because we DON"T want to create more constituents just for a guest-of name registration, as our billing cutoff over 75,000 records is nearing the edge.

If we do have an email address for a non-constituent guest, then we do capture them and leave them as such, but more often the registrant just uses their own email address (oddly).

This creates so much extra work for us, and makes our database less healthy. Please give the ability to us to decide if a registrant should be made a new constituent or not. We have to manually go through each event and we simply don't have the manpower for that. Makes for a muddied up database.

When a person registers for an even, they either come in with their own record, it creates a new record for them, or it puts them in as a non-constituent. Sometimes we have spouses that will register - one will be on their correct record, the other one will be as a new constituent or as a non-constituent. It is some work to stay on top of the new registrants, especially when you have more than one event going on at a time. Put them all in as non-constituents and let us match them up like OLX does as the suggestions says.... Or bring up suggested names for the constituent to say "ya, this is me".

We have started using the event module more in the last few months. So for now we are changing participants after the event is over. This causes our DBA to go one-by-one to determine if there is a match and merge the records. Since the act of online registration creates an automatic constituent record when there isn't a match, I am not sure what else we can do other than this approach. Having the ability to add them as a non-constituent first would at least prevent the merging step. If they are truly new constituents we should be able to change them to one with "make a constituent" button after a review. The rest get database updates of new contact info and/or names.

Hello voters of this idea! I'm doing some research on this Idea, and in working with the OLX team here at Blackbaud, we are not finding the magic you all seem to be doing to have OLX write only non-constituent records for participants. In my own testing, the host (person filling out the form) always is matched to an existing constituent record, or has a constituent record whether they paid a fee or selected a $0 price. The guests of that host are not made into constituents without some additional steps and are created as non-constituents.

I would love to hear more about how you're accomplishing this so we can more adequately evaluate a solution for the NXT event form. Is it through the existing plugin? Are you changing the participants after they show up on the actual event record in database view?

Please add a comment back to this Idea or email me directly at samantha.mcguin@blackbaud.com. Thank you!

Samantha McGuin
Principal Product Manager

We make them guests of our organization.