To update a Contact's last name, we recommend you use the Add/Edit Family Tool and update the Contact's Last Name as well as the Household Name, when appropriate. It is important to note that changing the Household Name in the Add/Edit Family Tool does not change the Last Name fields of any Contacts in the Household. You must update these fields individually.

If both the parents and the grandparents attend your church, you could have the child in their parent's Household, but have the grandparent's Household in the child's Other Households Sub-Page of their Contact record. If the parents have never attended the church and do not have a Household in your system, then you could have the child in the grandparent's Household.

There is a very good chance that someone accidentally edited your Default Contact record to be someone's actual record. You need to return the record to Default Contact ASAP, as the system relies on this record for many functions. To make the changes manually, follow and "reverse engineer" the details you see in the Audit Log. You must manually restore the settings in the Contact, Household, Participant, Donor and User records, as well as those records' Sub-Page data. To ensure this problem doesn't occur in the future, make sure your Users know to never edit Default Contact, and train them to Assign Participants and Assign Donors when they see Default Contact.

The Contact Status does not automatically update unless you created a custom routine that assesses and updates their field (same with Participant Status) or subscribed to cloud services and enabled Contact Status Management. To change this field, open the Contact record, click Edit, change the Contact Status, and click Save. To inactivate, we strongly recommend you use the Inactivate Tool.

You can reach out to them through a call list. For example, create a view of active records without emails, and run the Selected Call List report. Then, have a volunteer or staff call and add any gathered information into the Platform, and send them an email with a link to the Portal thanking them for providing their email.

Or you could reach out to them through a postcard or letter. For example, create a view of active records without emails, run the Selected Labels report, and email a postcard or letter to them asking for them to provide their email. Then, have a volunteer or staff call and add any gathered information into the Platform, and send an email with a link to the Portal thanking them for providing their email.

Start on the Contacts page. Select the fake record and your Contact record. Change your selection to Current/Unsaved Selection to ensure that you only selected your record and the fake record. Then launch the Combine Contacts Tool. Ensure that you select to keep your record and merge the fake record. Click Merge.

It is best practice for all staff to use their work email address on their Contact record. This ensures that any messages they send out through MinistryPlatform send from their work email addresses.

Make a selection on the Contacts page. Click Reports and click the Selected Labels report. That creates one label per person selected. If there are multiple members of a Household selected and you want to print only one label per Household, use the Selected Labels - 1 Per Family report.