Somtimes you find your self in the situation where an individual needs to no longer be in the original contact record you put them in, in the database. Maybe it's because Jane moved from VP of the Unicorn Construction Company to CEO of Kumquats R US. Or, maybe your contact at a business has finally decided to make a donation of their own. Either way, you need to move an individual from one contact to another. Let's get into how you can make that happen!
Moving From Contact to Existing Contact
When you have an individual that is like Jane in our example above, who is moving from one contact in the database to another contact in the database, the process is really pretty simple. The first thing you're going to do is go to Jane's current contact record. Once there, you want to first make sure there is at least one other individual in the contact record (every contact MUST have at least 1 individual- if there isn't one, you'll want to add one- see Moving from Contact to New Contact below for more instructions). After you have made sure there are 2 individuals on the contact record you're ready to get started moving your individual. Start by selecting the edit icon beside their name. If the Individual is not the primary or secondary individual, you'll need to select them from the dropdown list of individuals in the record, then click the edit icon.
Once you've clicked the Edit icon, you'll see at the top of the screen the parent contact. Select the edit icon to the right of the parent contact
Now, you can type in the name of the contact you want to move this individual to in your database. Then select Update parent.
Once you've selected Update Parent, the new contact record will open on your screen and your individual will now be in their new home!
Moving from Contact to a New Contact
Sometimes, you need to move an individual from an existing contact record to a brand new contact record- like in the case where your individual has been working at a business that gives to your organization and they have decided to also start giving personally. This individual now needs to have their own household record.
The process for moving an individual is this case is going to be the exact same as the process above, with one exception. You are going to need to create the new contact record BEFORE you can move the individual to it- makes sense right? Can't move someone to something that doesn't exist yet! (If you need help creating a new contact, check out this article). Since all contact records require an individual, if you don't have any other individuals to add to that record, you will need to have a place holder individual that you can delete after you have moved the correct individual into the record. All you need to create this placeholder individual is a first and last name. We typically recommend all placeholder individuals have the first name "Friend" and last name "Of [Your Organization Name]." This way, if you forget to remove the individual or you choose to leave them there, you're sending a message to "Friend" instead of something like "Default."
Now What?
Now you're ready to move individuals from one contact to another. You may also find these articles helpful:
How Do I Create an Individual?
Understanding Contacts and Individuals in Virtuous