Donor Duplicate Detection
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Donor Duplicate Detection
Use Donor Duplicate Detection when you need to clean up donor records that may represent the same person or organization. The Duplicates tab helps you scan one donor form at a time, review suggested duplicate groups, choose the record to keep, merge duplicate records, and undo eligible merge batches from merge history.
Open Donors from the sidebar, then select Duplicates.
The Duplicates tab shows scan controls, the active donor form, and grouped duplicate results.
Choose the Donor Form to Clean Up
Start by choosing the donor form that contains the records you want to review. Duplicate scans and merge history are scoped to the selected form.
Open Donors.
Select the Duplicates tab.
Use Form to choose the donor profile/form you want to scan.
If no donor form is available, duplicate detection cannot run from this page. Your role also needs duplicate-detection management access or donor-management access to see and use this tab.
Run a Duplicate Scan
Use a scan when you want Gratona to refresh the suggested duplicate groups for the selected donor form.
Select Scan for duplicates to start a scan. This single scan control runs the enhanced scan, which uses the saved detection rules for the selected form, including field weights, comparators, similarity threshold, fuzzy matching, normalization, excluded fields, and incremental processing settings. The scan requires saved detection rules for the form before it can run.
After you start a scan, Gratona shows scan progress with processed donors and duplicate groups found. When the scan finishes, results refresh on the page and the user who started the scan receives an email notification.
Running a scan refreshes the duplicate suggestions for the selected form. Review the results before merging because a suggestion still needs human confirmation.
Review Suggested Duplicate Groups
Each group in Scanned Duplicates contains donor records that may represent the same person or organization. Select Review to compare the records and the match details.
The expanded review shows donor identity details, profile creation and first-gift dates, lifetime giving, profile completeness, and available warnings about active commitments, saved payment methods, or integration links. Match comparisons show the field values behind the suggestion, including matching, conflicting, and missing information.
Use Search duplicates to find a possible match by donor identity details.
Use Filters to narrow the suggested groups by system fields, custom donor-form fields, blank values, or contribution amounts. Filters narrow the groups shown; review every donor in a matching group before merging.
Choose the Record to Keep
Before you merge, open the duplicate group and choose the donor record that should remain active.
In a duplicate group, select Review. The control changes to Hide review when the group is expanded.
Review the records in the expanded group.
Select the radio button for the donor that should be kept as the primary record. Each group selects one primary donor.
The selected donor becomes the primary record. Gratona keeps that donor active and merges eligible secondary records into it. Saved payment methods stay with the primary record; they are not combined from secondary donors. Review payment and integration warnings before continuing. A secondary donor with an automatic card or bank commitment, or a donor with unfinished bank verification, may need those dependencies resolved before a merge can proceed.
Merge Duplicate Donors
Use Merge Selected only after you have confirmed the records represent the same donor and have selected the primary record. Review the confirmation dialog, then confirm the merge. If a new scan or stronger match evidence is required, resolve that warning before merging.
When a merge runs, Gratona:
keeps the selected donor as the primary record
fills blank primary donor fields from secondary records when values are available
fills blank custom donor fields from secondary records when values are available
moves donations, commitments, sponsorship links, and activity logs from secondary donors to the primary donor
soft-deletes the secondary donor records
recalculates the primary donor's giving totals and refreshes donor cache data
Merge processing runs as a tracked batch. A progress bar shows how many merge operations have processed, succeeded, or failed.
Mark a Pair as Not the Same Donor
Use Not the same donor when a suggested pair is not actually the same donor.
In the duplicate group, select Not the same donor.
Confirm that only this pair will be dismissed.
Gratona suppresses only that donor pair within the selected form, and the dismissal survives later scans. The group may remain if other suggested pairs still connect its records. Other suggestions involving either donor remain available for review.
Merge institution profiles from DAF and IRA
DAF sponsors and IRA custodians merge only through manual review; a name match never merges institutions automatically. Go to Donors > DAF and IRA, work in Your organizations, and select the institution profiles you can manage. With at least two selected, select Review merge.
The review asks you to Keep this organization profile and shows each profile's organization and contact details, institution role, directory reference, default location, and locations, plus counts of owned gifts and custodian references. Distinct branch offices can belong under one institution: merging moves locations to the kept profile without combining branches. The kept profile's existing default stays; if it has none, the first selected secondary profile with a default supplies it.
Distinct legal entities are not duplicates merely because their names resemble. Confirm identity by checking I confirm these profiles are the same organization, not legally distinct affiliates., and enter how you verified it under How did you verify this? with at least 10 characters. The merge submits only when the review is current and no blockers remain, such as an institution role that conflicts with recorded DAF or QCD references.
When the merge runs, gifts, soft credits, and DAF/QCD gift references move to the kept profile, giving totals are recalculated, and saved gift location snapshots stay unchanged. Merge History tracks the batch with the statuses Pending, Processing, Completed, Failed, and Undone. Pending and Processing mean the merge is still running, not complete, and a batch can show Completed while recording an error, so check the batch details. Undo and Restore appear only when the batch is eligible; if related donor data has changed since the merge, Gratona rejects the action and applies no changes.
A merge changes Gratona records only. It does not merge or delete constituents in connected systems such as Bloomerang, and payment identities in external providers are unchanged.
Review and Undo Merge History
Use Merge History when you need to review merge batches, check their status, or undo a completed merge batch that is still eligible for undo.
Merge History shows batch status, merge counts, progress, date, merged donor, and available undo or restore actions.
The history table shows:
Batch ID
Status
Merges
Progress
Date
Merged Donor
available actions
Select Undo when a completed batch needs to be reversed. Undo restores the soft-deleted donor records and moves donations, commitments, sponsorship links, and activity logs back to their original donors when the original assignment data is available.
If a batch has already been undone, Restore can re-apply an eligible merge and move linked records back to the primary donor. Gratona checks that the recorded merge history is complete and that the donor details and linked records still match the state needed to restore it. Older batches may not contain the history required for restoration. If these checks fail, the restore is rejected and no changes are applied.
Adjust Detection Rules
Use Detection Rules when the enhanced scan is finding too many weak matches or missing likely duplicates for a specific donor form.
Detection Rules controls how the enhanced scan compares donor fields for the selected form.
You can adjust:
Enabled: turns the saved rule set on or off for the selected form.
Similarity Threshold: sets how strong the overall match needs to be. Higher values require a stronger match.
Field Configuration: controls each field's weight and comparator.
Comparators: include exact, normalized, fuzzy, and phonetic matching.
Fuzzy Matching Settings: controls minimum fuzzy similarity and fuzzy matching options.
Normalization Settings: controls case sensitivity, whitespace trimming, punctuation removal, and phone normalization.
Incremental Processing: scans donors created or updated since a recent successful scan, plus donors already in duplicate groups.
Excluded Fields: removes fields from enhanced duplicate matching.
Select Save Rules after changing the rule set. Run an enhanced scan again to apply the updated rules to duplicate suggestions.
Permissions
Your role controls whether you can open the Duplicates tab, run scans, change detection rules, merge donors, mark records as not duplicate, or undo merge batches. If the tab or an action is missing, your role may not include duplicate-detection management or donor-management access.