The title of this article, “Data Hygiene: How to Keep Your Donor Database Clean.”

Data Hygiene: How to Keep Your Donor Database Clean

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Imagine that a monthly donor contributes an additional donation to your organization’s latest campaign. When they signed up for your monthly giving program, they listed their address as “123 Smith Street.” However, when they gave their additional contribution, they listed their address as “123 Smith St.”

While both addresses are technically correct, your constituent relationship management platform (CRM) may register them as different and create a new profile. Since your system will treat these entries as two separate people, you could forget to thank the supporter or accidentally solicit another donation at an inappropriate time, potentially harming your relationship with that donor.

Avoid these situations by keeping your donor database clean and organized. That way, you ensure you’re reaching out to the right people at the right time to build stronger relationships. Follow the tips in this guide to develop a comprehensive data hygiene routine.

Maintain the information you collect regularly.

Create a schedule to regularly maintain the information you collect and save in your donor database. That way, you’ll have dedicated time each day or week to make changes and ensure your data is as accurate as possible. Some of these regular maintenance activities include:

  • Entering new data. Record new information from donor interactions, meeting notes, survey data, and other engagement metrics in your CRM as soon as possible. Bloomerang recommends using a CRM that compiles this information in robust donor profiles and interprets this data into actionable engagement and generosity scores for best results.
  • Updating existing data. Data decays at a rate of about 30% per year, partly due to changes in donors’ lives. For example, if a donor moves and gets a new phone number, you’ll want to update this information in your CRM to power text communications and text-to-give campaigns. Survey your donors regularly to obtain their most recent contact information. Integrating your CRM and payment processor can also help you pull updated information from donation transactions and incorporate it into your donor profiles.
  • Backing up your database. To avoid losing important supporter information, back up your database as frequently as possible. Some donor database software automatically updates your organization’s data to the cloud or a hard drive, allowing you to focus on other areas of data hygiene.

Prevent donor data entry errors or inconsistencies by creating rules that get your team on the same page. For instance, you may solely use address abbreviations like “St.” and “Rd.” and inform team members to edit entries that don’t use abbreviations to streamline your database.

Perform larger-scale maintenance and analysis activities monthly.

In addition to the previous maintenance activities, you should handle a few more complex tasks monthly to keep your database clean and equip team members with the latest information about your organization and its campaigns. These include:

  • Identifying and merging duplicate records. Identify duplicate records and determine whether you’d like your team to merge these records or simply delete the extraneous entries. That way, you ensure all supporter information is in a single location, allowing you to reach out to them and build relationships based on the most accurate data.
  • Running reports to update your team members. Clean data is actionable data. Once you’ve organized the information in your database, pull reports on relevant metrics and share them with your team to update them on your organization’s current state. For example, you may report on how many new donors you obtain each month to evaluate your donor acquisition efforts month-to-month. This exercise can also help you prepare for your annual report since you’ll regularly summarize and analyze key data points.
  • Reviewing fundraising campaign activity. In addition to more general reports, review your fundraising activity and inform your staff members about your progress. Whether you’re hosting a capital campaign, push for major gifts, peer-to-peer fundraising campaign, or a one-time event, this data will motivate and drive them to reach their fundraising goals.

Consider assigning a data steward to preside over these activities each month. Alternatively, you may appoint a team member in each department to clean and report on their own data.

Cleanse your data.

With the help of external providers or resources, you can run more extensive data cleanses that rid your database of unuseful or outdated information. Take the time to cleanse your data by:

  • Running an NCOA update. On average, 12.6% of Americans move each year. Use the National Change of Address database to be sure you have the latest address information for your supporters. That way, you can contact donors with fundraising and marketing materials via direct mail and segment them based on location. Better yet, leverage a CRM that includes automatic nightly NCOA scans to take one more task off your plate
  • Leveraging suppression services. Purging your donor list of those who can’t or don’t want to engage with your cause ensures you preserve resources for those eager to lend their support. For example, removing deceased individuals from your mailing list prevents you from contacting their surviving spouses or household members with appeals. Additionally, you may suppress supporters on the “Do Not Mail” list so you don’t send them direct marketing messages.

You should also audit your entire database annually to pinpoint the most glaring problem areas and resolve them.

Append missing information.

Cleaning your database may reveal that you’re missing vital information about your supporters. In this case, conduct a data append to fill in any gaps and round out your database.

The main types of data your organization can append include:

  • Demographic data, such as age and gender
  • Contact information, such as phone numbers and email addresses
  • Geographic data to target supporters based on location
  • Financial information, such as income and net worth
  • Lifestyle data, such as other causes your donors contribute to

Let’s say you’re running an email marketing campaign but find that you only have email addresses for 40% of your supporters. To rectify this issue, you can work with a data provider to source supporter email addresses and add them to your database.

Look for a provider with comprehensive security measures to protect sensitive donor data. Inquire about your provider’s own data hygiene strategy as well to ensure they provide accurate, updated information.

Data is only valuable for your nonprofit if it’s clean and tidy. Use these best practices to be sure your organization effectively sorts, organizes, and updates supporter information. Then, you can leverage it for segmentation, personalization, and stewardship to build stronger donor relationships.