Care and Feeding of Your Database – People and Organizations
If you work in the fundraising department of any NPO, that department most likely has a database with which to keep track of its donors and prospects. Many NPOs use The Raiser's Edge, a Blackbaud product; others use eTapestry, Microsoft Access, and other, similar programs. The Chronicle of Philanthropy has a list of different companies and their software programs.
Databases like Raiser's Edge (RE) are extremely powerful, but they require "care and feeding". It isn't enough to create a record and drop your donor's information into the document with no regard to consistency. If you're starting up an NPO, you're lucky: you can design "best practices" now, and while you'll need to make sure your volunteers or employees stick to it, you'll be making a clean start.
If you're part of an established organization, your job is a little more difficult: not only do you need to develop best practices; you should change your pre-existing and active records to the new system, and you'll need to convince your fellow employees to follow the system. This post will cover tips for your database records involving people and organizations; funding requests will be another post!
What do I mean by consistency and best practices?
- Make sure that records are classified appropriately. Your corporate donors should be marked as "Corporate"; your trustees should have their own tag (and if you have a large organization, you may want to decide who can edit a Trustee record - but that's another post).
- For individuals and people attached to corporate or foundation records, categorize addresses, contact information, contact types, etc., systematically. For example, all daytime numbers should be labeled "Daytime", not "Daytime-3" or "Day" or "Phone #2". All business numbers should be labeled "Business", not "Listserv"!
- Keep the number of available choices in a given record as low as possible while still allowing you to enter all needed information. You don't need ten different "e-mail" options - would you contact the same donor using two or three of her e-mail addresses? For your major or corporate donors you may need a secretary or an assistant; attach them as a RELATIONSHIP, rather than trying to squish their information into the primary person's record. Add a note to the record stating that Mr. Smith's secretary should be contacted, if need be.
- Do you mail a lot of things out using your database? Entering titles (Mr./Ms. etc), salutations ("Dear Mr. Smith...") and addressees (Mr. John Smith) will save you time and frustration in the long run. Who wants to export a 500-name mailing list for a mail merge, only to find that the title "Mr." needs to be entered manually to 200 of those names?
These efforts, among others, will pay off in the long run - and will reduce the wailing and gnashing of teeth when it's time to send out your yearly gala invitations!