Using Tags

Tags are attached to organizations, households, people and couples. You define a list of tags using the Codes tab of the Admin tab. You can attach any number of tags to each person, couple, household or organization.

Tags can serve many purposes, such as indicating how people are affiliated with you (clients, advocates, parents, alumni, board and committee members, etc.), what kind of external affiliations people might have (media, government connections, foundation boards, club members), which mailings people should receive (newsletters, appeals, annual reports), what events they should be invited to (golf tournaments, annual dinners, workshops).

If you use the Volunteer Manager, you can also assign tags to individual volunteers to indicate their interests, skills, and jobs they would like to do, and where they are located. You can then use these tags to match volunteers with jobs, projects and tasks. There is also a special tag for volunteer awards.

Tags are especially useful since you can attach as many of them as you need to each household, organization, person or couple. For example, a person might be a parent of a current student, an alumna, on the annual dinner committee, a past board member, and a member of the media. She and her husband receive the alumni newsletter, the annual report, the parent newsletter, and invitations to the annual gala and the tennis tournament.

Tags are grouped into several categories, as follows:

Category	Applies to
Household/Organization	Households and organizations
Person/Couple	Names (Individual people and couples)
Mailing	Households,organizations, and names
Volunteer Interest	Individual volunteer
Volunteer Skill	Individual volunteer
Volunteer Job	Individual volunteer
Volunteer Location	Individual volunteer
Volunteer Award	Individual volunteer

Volunteer Tags are described in more detail in the Using Volunteer Tags topic.

Household and Organization Tags

Household and organization tags apply to a complete household or organization. For organizations, your primary level of classification should be the Type code that is attached to each organization (and household). Use the Type code to mark each organization as a corporation, church, club, media, school, foundation, and so forth. The tags can then be used for finer distinctions. For example, you can tag foundations to indicate their areas of interest. You can tag corporations that are prospects for event sponsorships. You can tag clubs that are interested in having volunteer events for their members.

Some examples of Household tags are students' households, parishioners, client families, households interested in certain workshops or other events, major gift prospects, and families with young children. You can create tags for giving capacity levels or special interests.

Name Tags

Name tags are attached to individual person records and to couples. Examples of tags you might attach to individuals are board member, alumnus, advisory committee member, staff, prior staff, parent, student, attorney, and client. You can define any number of these tags and attach as many as you need to each name.

For couples you might have tags to mark those who are interested in certain programs or events, honorary host committee members, and parents.

The same list of Name tags are available for both individuals and couples. For example, the parent tag might apply to a single parent or to a couple. In some cases a couple might be interested in an event, like a golf tournament, and in other cases the interest is at the individual level.

Mailing Tags

Mailing tags can be applied to households, organizations, and names (individual persons and couples). You create a single list of Mailing tags, and these are available to assign to any of the levels. Mailing tags are meant to be used for both traditional mail, email, and any other way you communicate with your constituents.

Mailing tags indicate several things: who should receive each type of mailing, what address to use in special circumstances, and what, if any, alternative name and/or salutation to use. They are also used in the Journal to show the history of mailings received. They are available as a field to append to a gift, to indicate that a gift was the result of a particular mailing. Finally, they can be appended to activities.

You can create Mailing tags at a high level, such as "Newsletter", or you can create tags with a finer distinction, such as "Spring Newsletter", "Fall Newsletter", and so forth. You can create a general "Invitation" mailing tag or create a tag for each type of invitation you expect to send. The decision for how complex to make these tags depends on such factors as what kind of detail you wish to see on your donor history, whether you have many different kinds of mailings and expect to use alternate names and salutations, and what kind of mailing options you offer your constituents.

When to use each type of tag

It might seem confusing to decide when to create and apply Household tags and when to use Name tags. You might also think about whether a mailing tag should be applied to a household or to a couple or individual.

If your organization is smaller and the structure of your households is fairly simple - for example, almost all of your households consist of a couple or single person - then it is easier to use mostly Household tags. Use Name tags only to tag individuals, like board members and alumni. On the other hand, if your organization is complex and includes a number of households with more than one or two people, you might want to use tags at both the household and the name level.

Mailing tags are generally applied at the household or organization level. When a household or organization is tagged for a particular mailing, the mailing is actually addressed to the primary person in the household or organization. When you run a mailing, you can also specify that you want every name (couple or individual) within the tagged household or organization to receive the mailing.

Some types of mailings might be intended for a specific person within a household. For example, the volunteer newsletter might only go to the actual volunteer, not to the couple or household as a whole. In this case you would tag the individual with the mailing tag.

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