How Pledgix matches people and avoids duplicates

A donor usually shows up in more than one place: on last year's spreadsheet, in a contact list you imported, and again when they donate online. The Profile Center's job is to recognize that these are all the same person and show you one profile — not three.

The two identifiers that matter

Pledgix matches people on email and phone:

• Emails are matched regardless of capitalization or stray spaces.
• Phone numbers are matched on their digits, so "(212) 555-0100", "212-555-0100", and "+1 212 555 0100" are all treated as the same number.

If any two records share an email or share a phone, they merge into one profile. The merge is transitive: if record A shares an email with B, and B shares a phone with C, all three become one person.

A profile isn't limited to one of each, either: a second email and a second phone from your sheets are kept on the merged profile, and you can add or edit phone numbers on a profile directly.

What each source contributes

A merged profile combines everything known about the person:

• From sheets — giving amounts by year, used for trends and suggested asks.
• Imported — names, contact details, optional amounts and notes from your uploads.
• Live donor — actual donations to this campaign, plus location from checkout.

Small chips on each profile show which sources it came from, and the profile's detail view lists every sheet appearance, imported record, and live donation behind it.

People without an email or phone

Rows with only a name still become profiles — you can tag them, write notes, and record asks and pledges. But with no identifier to match on, they mostly stay standalone: they won't automatically link to donations or call history, and a name alone is never enough to merge two records. (The one rescue: records with no email or phone — from sheets or imports alike — can still link when they share a matching name plus street address.) If you later learn a person's email or phone, adding them again with just that identifier won't connect the records — it creates a second, fuller profile alongside the name-only one. The best defense is to include an email or phone the first time whenever you possibly can.

Duplicates inside one file

When you import a spreadsheet, rows within the file that carry the same email and phone are combined before anything is created, and empty rows are dropped. The import summary tells you how many rows were skipped.

Rebuilds keep things honest

The directory isn't edited row by row — it's rebuilt from all sources whenever data changes: after an import, after new history is added, or when you click Refresh. Rebuilds are safe:

• Your manual work — tags, notes, recorded asks, pledges, stage choices, custom ask amounts — is keyed to the person's best identifier (their email when they have one, otherwise their phone, otherwise the imported record itself), so it survives every rebuild and re-attaches to the merged profile.
• Nothing you uploaded is thrown away. If a merge ever looks wrong, the original records are still there behind the profile.

If you see two profiles for one person

It almost always means the two records share neither an email nor a phone — for example, one has only a home email and the other only a work phone. Add the missing identifier to one of them (the Add Person button works well for this), then click Refresh. The profiles merge on the next rebuild.

Tip: Before importing a big list, spend a minute filling in the email or phone column from whatever you know. Every identifier you add is a future duplicate you'll never have to untangle.