FundSvcs Community

Hey there neighbor! When we discussed several years ago at UNC Chapel Hill what we should track regarding gender, we decided the most import thing was to address our constituents as they wish to be addressed. We are not an organization that specifically serves the LGBTQ community, so we don't need to track all the potential variety of gender identities. We receive a value for Gender in several of our feeds. We only receive female, male, non-binary, or unknown, which is sufficient for our purposes. We added a customization to our BBCRM where we can store pronouns, and we changed our data standards to allow for constituents to have a title of Mx., but only if they specifically request it, or no title at all. This has been in place since 2018, and it is working well for us.

It's an interesting topic, and one that we haven't dug into as much as we will want to-at least in my corner of our organization.  The Office of Digital Transformation may be further along in discussions, and no doubt Data Governance will want to take a look.

I think that it's good to foreground practical impact, contextualized by complexity of maintaining and using information. 

The case is harder, I think, for tracking gender identity, since, as with ethnicity or a number of other personal aspects, the compelling business case may be to identify people interested in the topic, not people of the subject characteristics.  (And, of course, other organizations may have a use case.)

Tracking prefixes-especially as constituents request the use of their appropriate prefixes-seems like a stronger business case, one that we might ignore at our peril.

Pronouns is an especially interesting case.  We may commonly discuss constituents in any number of contexts, from whether we have their correct address to whether their membership was recorded properly.  If we don't know their pronouns, we do what?  Forego pronouns (not all that easy)?  Use default pronouns ("they/their"? legacy pronouns based on what gender we traditionally associate their name?)?  One might say that the constituent may well never hear the pronouns that we use in our internal day-to-day discussion, and there is some truth to that, but I'm not sure that it's an entirely compelling argument.  And, of course, there are times when we refer to constituents in more public contexts, like at events, in constituent meetings, etc.  It seems like allowing constituents the opportunity to express how they would like to be referenced and attempting to follow that guidance would be more respectful.  And considering how we refer to constituents in the absence of specific information is probably also worth some reflection.

My US$0.02 worth; the usual disclaimers apply.

Good luck!

Alan

Alan S. Hejnal (he/him)

Data Quality Manager

Hi Christina,

Thanks for asking this question and generating a lot of good feedback. What strikes me as interesting about your question is that you are considering not storing gender identity whereas I have most commonly heard questions about the value of maintaining personal pronoun preferences. This is because these distinctions seem most relevant when referring to someone in third person (i.e. he/him she/her they/them) – something it may feel like we don't do often in fundraising.

However, third person is standard when logging contact reports and since one benefit of having good practices around contact reports is for continuity when fundraisers change or prospect portfolios shift, maintaining and using correct pronouns is very important.

Best regards,

John Smilde

Director of Gifts and Records Administration

Advancement and Alumni Relations

George Mason University

4400 University Drive, MSN 1A3

Fairfax, VA 22030

703.993.8680

jsmilde@gmu.edu

This electronic message contains confidential information which is, in whole or in part,

subject to exclusion from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act pursuant to

§2.2-3705.4.7. of the Code of Virginia.

I've been thinking more about this as more responses have come in and wanted to add a few more thoughts. I would be curious to know how detailed the values are in the gender identity field Christina mentions in the original post, as well as the source of the information in the source database. Are we talking self-reported identities from the constituent, or are we talking legal gender? If self-reported, I think that is much more useful and accurate in regard to how someone wants to be addressed. Legal gender, on the other hand, is less likely to represent how every person identifies or wishes to be addressed. However, if the value is indeed self-reported, I would caution against making assumptions about how someone wishes to be addressed, and you may want to consider proactively and diplomatically asking the constituent directly how they wish to be addressed.

I agree there can be useful segmentation of data based on these values, so that is definitely a point to consider when determining if your organization needs the information or finds it useful.

I've mentioned this in other threads, but we also established a couple of practices around this. We only add pronouns to a constituent record if we get that information directly from the constituent or from a DO who had a specific conversation with the constituent. For the most part, pronouns come from a specific group of folks with a Carolina Pride affinity who have received a survey that asks about pronouns and titles, as opposed to coming from our entire constituency. The same goes for using the Mx. title on a constituent – it is only added if the constituent specifically requests it. We do not add gender, gendered title, Mx., or pronouns based on assumptions that can be made from first name or even from constituent relationships in the database. If we do not have a gender value or gendered title provided from a feed or from the constituent when making a gift, we do not add a gender value or gendered title to the record at all. Our driving factor with all of this is to simply not make assumptions about the constituent and how they identify.

Regarding internal communication where pronouns are used, I don't think this is as much of a concern as it is to address the constituent as they wish to be addressed. I am part of the LGBTQ community myself, and while some of my people may disagree, I think it is most useful to use the pronouns that you know for internal conversations and simply be respectful. I don't think it is necessary to use "they" on literally everyone, but if you know someone uses they/them pronouns, get used to using them internally, so you will also use them with the constituent. If you simply don't know, err on the side of respect. 😊

This is definitely an ongoing conversation with no hard and fast rules, especially when it comes to data and database limitations. Lots to think about.