Customizing the Constituent, Gift, and other menus

In this article:

Most menu options are customizable in Little Green Light. The exception is default system categories, which have specific meanings and behaviors. (Communication Tags of  "Do not email" and "Do not mail" and Acknowledgment Preference are examples of default system categories.) 

You can customize menu items by navigating to Settings > Menu Items and finding the menu item you want to customize among Constituent menu items, Constituent relationships, Gift menu items, Contact information menu items, and Other menu items:

You can currently customize the following types of values:

Constituent menu items

  • Contact types: For managing household data, e.g., only one Primary constituent per household (Read more about managing households in LGL.)
  • All constituent categories: Groups, Capacity, Interest, Communication Tags, and any custom categories you have defined

NOTE: It is possible to manage which constituent menu items appear in your account by selecting the Customize order and display button.  For more information on managing the order and display of these menu items, please read Customizing the order and display of constituent menu items.

Membership levels

If you've enable the membership settings in Settings > Subscription settings > General tab, you'll be able to manage membership levels here.

Class-year affiliations

If you've enabled the school settings option in Settings > Subscription settings > General tab, you'll be able to manage class-year affiliation types here.

Constituent relationships

  • Relationship Type: Assigning possible relationship values and their reciprocal relationship value (i.e., brother/sister, husband/wife, and so on)

Additional constituent menu items

  • Marital status: Ability to manage all marital status options

Gift items

  • Gift categories: Useful for identifying the kind of gift, pledge, in-kind donation, or goal
  • Gift payment types: The available payment types for a gift
  • Custom gift fields: Additional menus that you can add to gift records
  • Goal status: The status values for a goal (for major gift and grant work)
  • Gift tiers: For reporting on different giving levels for constituents

Contact Info menu items

  • Email address types: Useful for differentiating varied email addresses (i.e., work, home, spouse, etc.)
  • Phone number types: Useful for differentiating varied phone numbers (i.e., home, work, fax, mobile, etc.)
  • Mailing address types: Useful for differentiating varied mailing addresses (i.e., home, work, shipping, etc.)
  • Website types: Useful for differentiating varied URLs, including websites and social media links (i.e., Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn)

Volunteering menu items

  • Volunteering categories: To classify volunteer hours

Other menu items

  • Mailing types: To allow for classifying of different types of mailings
  • Appeal statuses: To classify various statuses of appeal requests
  • Appeal types: To allow for classifying different appeal types 
  • Event types: To allow for classifying different event types
  • List types: To classify different types of lists
  • Document categories: To allow for classifying different types of documents
  • Task types: To classify tasks and contact reports
  • Note types: To classify notes
  • School types: To classify different educational institutions or schools

Adding menu items

You can add new menu items for any menu by clicking on the Add values button:

Custom gift fields

Custom gift fields are additional menus that you can add to gift records. You can create either a single- or multi-select custom gift field by going to Settings > Menu items > Gift menu items, and clicking the Add custom field button.

NOTES: 

1 Any custom gift field that you add to your account becomes a field that you can map to either using the Flex Importer or within LGL Forms.

2. Custom gift field values are inherited by any related gifts that they are a parent of.

Editing and deleting menu items

You can edit any value by clicking on the Edit icon next to each value. Then just change the value and click the Save button or cancel to leave the value unchanged.

To delete a value from a menu, click on the Deactivate icon. This will deactivate the value. (You can reactivate it at a later date by clicking on the Reactivate icon.)

You can delete all inactive values for a menu by clicking the Delete inactive button:

NOTE: Some menu items may not be edited or deleted because they are required by the system to be in place. In these cases, there will be no option to edit and/or delete the item.

Re-ordering menu items

All menus can be re-ordered by clicking on the Reorder values button:

After clicking that button, you can drag values up and down the list, placing them in the desired location.

When you are finished sorting, click the Finish sorting button.

Merging values within a category

To merge duplicate values within a category, click on the Merge button next to the value that you want to retain.

A new "Merge this menu item" menu will appear. Choose the field that you want to merge by clicking on the Select item to merge drop-down menu. Once you've selected the field, click Save.

Adding custom categories

For constituents, you can also add custom categories to help further segment your constituents. This is advisable if you have particular sets of values you want to track, such as which Mailing List a constituent should appear on, etc.

Custom categories can be multi-select (constituents can have more than one value assigned) or single-select (only one value for each constituent).

You can also choose which custom categories to display within the constituent filters by selecting (or de-selecting for removal) the Is a filter? check box.

Video Tutorial: Adding a custom constituent category

Deleting custom categories

To fully remove a custom category that contains values, all of the values will first need to be deactivated and then deleted. Once you have removed all of the values and the category is empty, you can then delete the entire menu, to remove it from your account, by clicking on the Delete menu button.

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