Maintaining an accurate and well-organized contact database is essential for effective communication, donor engagement, and streamlined operations. Over time, unhandled duplicate contacts can accumulate, leading to inefficiencies, misdirected communications, and reporting errors. This guide walks you through identifying, reviewing, and merging duplicate records in Raise More.
Besides duplicate data management, you will also learn how to filter and categorize contacts efficiently, allowing you to create targeted lists for specific outreach efforts. Whether you're managing donor relations, customer interactions, or campaigns, these tools help you maintain a clean and actionable database.
The steps below provide a detailed yet accessible approach to optimize your contact management process, ensuring that your organization operates clearly and efficiently.
Merge Duplicate Page
Duplicate contact records can create confusion, inefficient communication, and misdirected marketing efforts. Critical issues that may arise include:
Data Inconsistency & Reporting Error. Conflicting details between duplicate data can make it difficult to determine the most accurate information, leading to inaccurate and unreliable insights.
Customer Satisfaction Issues. Repeated outreach to the same contact within a very short time window due to duplicates can lead to a negative perception of your organization and contacts’ dissatisfaction.
Operational Inefficiencies. Managing multiple versions of the same contact increases resource allocation to maintain operational activities.
Investing a moment to review and clean your organization’s contact data proactively prevents errors and creates a seamless experience for both your organization and your audience. This guide explains how to merge duplicate contacts in Raise More manually, why you might need to do so, and what to thoroughly consider during the process.
How to access the Merge Duplicates feature
Duplicate contact detection in Raise More is not fully automated by design. While the system can identify potential duplicates, final review, and merging must be done manually. This approach is an intentional strategy for control and risk management. By requiring human verification, organizations can ensure data accuracy, prevent incorrect merges, and maintain the integrity of customer information.
To start reviewing and merging potential duplicate data, you may follow the below steps :
Navigate to Contacts
From your Dashboard, locate the navigation bar on the left side of your screen and select Contacts.Select Merge Duplicates
Once in Contacts, choose the Merge Duplicates option among the three available choices. You will be directed to a page with the title Merge Potential Duplicates.
Understanding the Merge Potential Duplicates page
On this page you will find several options designed to help you review and resolve potential duplications :
Filter Resolved / Potential. Located inside the black box, this menu allows you to filter the data based on resolved or potential duplicates.
Display Filter Only display matches attributed to: that limits the display to only specific types of potential matches.
Search by name. If you’re looking for a specific contact, simply type in the name to find related entries.
Contacts data information. By default, you will see the contact details that have been flagged as potential duplicates.
Date Identified. The date when the potential duplicated was identified or flagged by the system.
Person 1 Name. The name of the first contact.
Person 1 State. The state location of first contact.
Person 2 Name. The name of the second contact.
Person 2 State. The state location of the second contact.
Which Rule Was Triggered. Show what duplication indicators that are identified.
View Merge Options with the button to Review. An option to check complete data information and perform further review.
Reviewing and merging duplicates
To start reviewing :
Click the Dropdown Menu where you can perform multiple selections of attributes or potential duplications.
You can use the below details for references :
Same full name and state. Multiple contacts who use identical Full Name and State.
Fuzzy name match. Contacts with potentially similar names but not identical.
Same phone number. Multiple contacts with identical Phone Number.
Same address. Multiple contacts with identical Addresses.
Same phone number and last name. Multiple contacts with identical Phone Number and Last Name.
Same email. Multiple contacts with identical Email.
Select potential duplicate records that you want to review. In this illustration, the selection was made based on the following indicators :
Same phone number and last name.
Same phone number.
The system will display filtered data as illustrated above. Select the record you want to review further and click Review button.
You will be redirected to a page where you can review the details of selected records.
There will be two possible actions depending on the details of the data being reviewed :
Overwrite Data: Some values will be overwritten. A label Your Choice Will Overwrite Other Value in yellow shade will appear when selecting which data to retain as illustrated above inside the red box.
Combine Data: Some records will be merged by combining all values instead of overwriting. Label All Values Will Be Kept & Combined in green shade will appear as illustrated inside the blue box.
Below is the breakdown of which data fields fall under the actions category:
Field Name | Action |
Title, First Name, Nick Name, Middle Name, Last Name, Suffix, Date Created, Bio, Donor Research, Employer, Occupation | Overwrite other value |
Email, Phone, Tags, Address, City, State, Zip | Combine and retain |
Finalizing the merge process
Once you’ve reviewed the duplicate records and are ready to take action, you have the following options that will be displayed at the bottom-right corner of the review page :
Close. This option allows you to return to the data display page without making any changes.
Mark As Not Duplicate. Select this if the records do not belong to the same person.
What happens next?
After selecting this option, a confirmation pop-up will appear at the top right of your screen stating: Marked potential pair as ‘not duplicates’ as shown below.
If you want to review all records that have been marked as "Not Duplicates," simply click the Resolved button. This will filter out the records that have been tagged as non-duplicates.
Need to make a correction?
If you later decide that a record should be merged, click the Review button on the Resolved list and follow the steps to merge and update the status. This will be illustrated in Step (c)
Merge + Next. If the records are confirmed as duplicates, click this button. Please note that :
The merging process is permanent and cannot be undone.
Before the system finalizes the merge, you will receive a confirmation pop-up asking you to proceed.
After a successful merge, you will see a green confirmation pop-up at the top right of your screen stating: "Merge Successful."
The merged records will be automatically removed from the Potential Duplicates list.
If a record was previously marked as "Not Duplicate" but later changed back to "Duplicate" and merged, it will no longer appear in both the Resolved and Potential lists.