data management practices

Earlier this week, I wrote a blog post suggesting tax appeals are a bit tardy this year. This may or may not be right. It is simply my opinion as a donor to more than 200 Australian charities.

Assuming some charitable organisations are behind with their tax appeal, perhaps the reason is data hygiene. One of the single most important steps prior to the tax appeal drop is the need to complete data cleansing.

Some nonprofit organisations take the important step to cleanse their data, while others do not. Data cleansing includes, but is not limited to, high level activities such as:

• National Change of Address (NCOA).
• De-duplication of constituent records.
• Data enrichment, including:
  • Deceasing of records
  • Do not mail flag.
  • Do not call flag.
• Other important mass data management practices.

As suggested in prior FundraisingForce blog posts, dirty data gets you nowhere…except broke. Proper data cleaning prior to dropping the all-important tax and Christmas appeals is not optional. Do you put this in the “too hard” basket? Hire an expert like FundraisingForce who will guide you through the process, management of suppliers, and develop a process for you to follow for years to come.