What is in a Contact Record?

What is in a Contact Record?

Contact records store core information for each contact in your database. To open a contact's record, double-click the contact in the Contacts list. You'll notice there are several tabs across the top of the contact record for storing different kinds of information. The exact list of tabs varies from one database to another. For example, The Funder tab comes with the Fund Requests module. If you do not have that module in your installation of Sumac, the Funder tab will not appear. You can also add custom tabs to your Sumac Contact records. The History tab, and all tabs to the left of it, are standard and defined by Sumac. Tabs to the right of the History tab are customized and include additional information. 



Your Sumac Administrator can hide tabs that are not needed.

The Summary tab displays basic information like the contact's name, phone number, email, street address, contact types, and some recent communications you've had with them.



The Basic tab stores demographic information in detail: name, gender, and letter salutations.

  1. The letter salutation is what goes after “Dear” in a letter when you do a mail merge. Sumac supplies a default, so often you do not have to enter anything into this field, but you can edit the default.
  2. Under Donations, you can note whether to receipt annually, if the donor should not be receipted, and what should be used for recognition. For example, you could enter Anonymous in the Recognition field for donors who wish to be anonymous.
  3. Use the Alert field to record something special or unusual about this contact. An alert makes a contact red in the contacts list and pops up first when you open a contact record.
  4. The Basic tab is where you specify contact type (why the contact is in your database) and communication preferences.
  5. If you have Sumac’s volunteers module, you can also indicate what type of volunteer your contact is.


The Relations tab lets you relate any contact with any other contact in your database. For example, perhaps you have an organization contact in your database, as well as some individuals who work at that organization. Recording a relationship between the organization and the contacts who work there helps you track which of your contacts work for the same organization.  

  1. Click New to create a new relationship between those contacts.  
  2. Choose the type of relationship you want to create.
  3. Click the Contact icon to choose the related contact.
  4. Click OK, to return to the contact record.


The Residence Address tab stores the contact's home address.  Sumac understands and automatically formats several countries' postal codes. It also automatically formats phone numbers for you. You can use this address when mailing to a contact's home address.


The Business Address tab is for this contact's work address. It has fields for Title, Department and Organization at the top, as well as fields for an assistant at the bottom.  There's also a checkbox that tells Sumac to use this address for mailings, so that if a contact has both a home and a work address, Sumac knows which address to use for paper mailings.


The Vacation Address tab lets you store a contact's vacation address and effectivity dates. If you know that a contact spend the winter at a different residence, you can still keep in touch with them while they're away.

The Facts tab allows you to store a variety of facts about your contact.  Click New to create a new Fact, and choose what kind of Fact you want to create.  


Facts allow you to record information about this contact's personal history, like education, employment, and giving history with other organizations.  Recording this information in your Facts tab makes the information searchable, so you can easily find contacts with Facts of a particular type.

Note that a Giving History fact does not describe gifts to your own organization. They are recorded in donation records.

The Picture tab allows you to include a small photo of a contact within their record.

The History tab lets you view an entire history of interactions with this contact. Donation information, including Household totals, average gift, total giving and giving by year, appear in the top pane.

Communications appear in the bottom pane. If you want to view the contents of any of these records, double-click the record to open it.


Don't forget to click OK to save any changes you've made to a contact's record.



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