The Source field on every person record answers one question: where did this person originally come from? It's a lightweight attribution tag — not required, but powerful when used consistently.
What it's for
Source lets you answer questions like:
- "How many people came in from our last event vs. our website?"
- "Did the Facebook ad we ran last month actually grow our list?"
- "Which referrers are sending us the most donors?"
If everyone uses the same value for the same channel (e.g. website not web, Web, and website-form), the People list's Source filter becomes a real reporting tool.
How it gets filled in
Most of the time, Studio sets it for you — admins rarely need to type anything. The auto-set values are:
manual— you clicked Add Person and typed their infodonate— they gave through a public donation formevent_registration— they signed up for a public eventcsv_import— created via the Contacts CSV importergift_import— created during a Gift History CSV importstudio— applied for a public job postingdemo:<name>— created by one of the demo seeders (only on test workspaces)
You'll see whatever was set on the Edit Person modal's Source field. You can change it any time.
Why the Source field is now a dropdown
Studio used to let you type anything in the Source field, which meant the same channel ended up spelled five different ways across a workspace (FB, Facebook, facebook, fb-ad). Reporting was useless. Now it's a search-dropdown that:
- Suggests every source already used in this workspace
- Includes a few stock defaults (
manual,referral,website,event,social_media) so a brand-new workspace has reasonable choices - Still lets you type a brand-new source — it just gets added to the list for everyone next time
Tips for staying consistent
- Pick from the dropdown whenever a match exists — don't retype.
- Use lowercase, single words or hyphenated phrases:
referral,summer-camp,conference-2026. - Be specific enough to filter on, but not so specific that it only describes one person.
capital-campaigngood.capital-campaign-week-3-bulletintoo narrow — track that in tags or notes instead. - Don't use Source for status or stage (
active,cold lead) — that's what tags and member status are for.
Filtering and reporting
On the People list (and the Contacts, Members, Donors lists), the Source dropdown filter shows everyone with a matching source. Combine it with the search and tabs (All / Contacts / Members / Donors) to slice your data — e.g. "show me every Donor who came from referral".
Bulk-changing source
If you ran a one-off campaign and want to tag everyone who came in during that window, the cleanest path today is:
- Filter the People list by date or another criterion.
- Open each person's Edit modal and pick the campaign source.
A bulk source-update action is on the roadmap — for now, contact support@usestudio.app if you need a large batch updated at once.