How I clean up a donor database I inherited
Hi Reader, You start a new job, open the database, and it's twenty years of somebody else's decisions. Four records for the same person. Addresses from 2009. A note field that just says "call him." I get it. The instinct is to fix all of it, which is exactly why it never gets fixed. Here's the order I'd actually work in. 1. Ignore everyone who hasn't given in three years. Not deleted! Just ignored, for now. You're heading into year-end and those records are not what stands between you and a gift. Draw the line at three years and work only inside it. 2. Find the duplicates in that group first. Sort by last name and read. It's tedious and it takes about twenty minutes. Duplicates are the errors that actually cost you money, because they split giving history and hide your best donors in plain sight. 3. Hand-fix your top fifty. Every donor above whatever your major gift threshold is. Correct name, correct spouse, correct address, correct giving total. These are the records you'll pull for every meeting between now and December. Everything below the top fifty can stay messy a while longer. I promise. 4. Write the rules down before you enter anything new. How you format names. Where soft credits go. What belongs in a note. One page is plenty. The reason you inherited a mess is that nobody did this, and skipping it just builds the next person's mess. 5. Then stop. The key here is that clean data isn't the job. Raising money is. Get the last three years usable, protect the top fifty, set the rules, and get back to fundraising. Do this in August and you'll spend September through December pulling lists you trust instead of apologizing for them. And if you don't have a CRM or are building up your lists as you go, you can always use the Donor Tracking System in my shop. Reminder: use code SUBSCRIBER for 25% off at checkout! Three years, then the top fifty. That's the whole project, and you can absolutely knock it out in an afternoon. Cheers,
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