The key to effectively tracking deceased Individual in Virtuous CRM+ is to remember that Individuals are people; Contacts are not. So, while Individuals may pass away, Contacts do not. This article covers how to mark an Individual as deceased and a few best practices to maintain in your CRM for these Individuals.
How To Mark An Individual As Deceased
If an Individual does pass away, you can navigate to their Contact record, select that Individual by selecting their name from the dropdown menu, and then click on the Edit icon to edit the information for that Individual.
In the Deceased? field, select Yes If applicable, enter the Deceased Date. Select Save.
You will then see a red Deceased indicator next to that Individual's name.
Contact Name Best Practice
If the deceased Individual is Primary Individual on a Contact record that includes other Individuals, you may want to edit the Contact information. For example, if the Primary Individual within a household passes away, the surviving spouse may want to have their deceased loved one's name removed from future mailings. In these cases, the Contact Name and Informal Name will need to be edited.
If the deceased Individual is the Secondary Individual (or another Individual,) the Contact Name will automatically update to remove the Individual's name.
Some widows or widowers may wish to keep their deceased spouse listed, for purposes of recognition in annual reports. As with most things, it's best to communicate with your donors and respect their preferences.
Archive Best Practice
If all Individuals within a particular household are deceased, then it's best to Archive the Contact. Archived Contacts will not be returned in Contact Queries or visible on the Contacts page, so this will prevent these Contacts from being included in future mailings.
Marketing Best Practice
Deceased Individuals are not automatically removed from Email Lists or Individual-type Queries. This means deceased Individuals may unintentionally get added to Email or SMS sends if they qualify for the Query criteria. For this reason, we recommend including the Query criteria Deceased > is false to any of your Individual Queries that power marketing. Click here to learn more about building Queries.