Coming Soon: Deceased Finder Quarterly Uploads

Beginning in September 2018, the Records team will be increasing their previous once a year Deceased Finder upload to quarterly. The first quarterly upload will occur this September, followed by additional runs in December 2018, March 2019, and June 2019.

Never heard of Deceased Finder before?

Blackbaud’s Deceased Finder process works by looking at living and active constituents in GAIL and analyzing various sources for leads on potentially deceased constituents. The Records team then manually reviews the provided deceased file looking for proof (obituaries, death announcements, etc.) that the constituents are in fact deceased. Once the list is cleaned up and every deceased constituent has been verified, Records uploads the batch and updates the constituent’s GAIL profiles.

Why are we moving to quarterly Deceased Finder searches?

By moving to quarterly deceased searches, the Records team is given several smaller batch file uploads throughout the year instead of one large list for review. This means Records can verify and upload the information much quicker than before. We also have the added benefit of identifying deceased individuals sooner.

So are we only ever marking constituents as deceased a few times a year?

The Records team marks recently deceased constituents every day! By looking through online obituaries, Records can identify alumni and donors who have become deceased. However, they are only able to make this connection if the obituary mentions “UGA” or “University of Georgia.” If you know of a constituent who is deceased, please email Records at records@uga.edu. You can also flag a constituent as deceased by going to the personal info tab and clicking mark deceased.