Creating standards helps prevent or at least circumvent, the problem of entering duplicate donor master records.  A master record identifies a unique donor and is linked to their gifts.  When more than one master record exists finding information like total donations for a given donor, becomes impossible.

Developing a standard for entering organization names helps to address what type of information is required.  A donation allocated to a group simply called Knights of Columbus begs us to ask … which K of C group is being credited.

Rules of entry become rules of “what to ask” or “when to source more complete information” when an organization interacts with a charity and where their identity is inconclusive.

Service clubs, churches and church groups come immediately to mind when you think of naming convention issues.  Less obvious are the names of businesses where situations like the addition of the word “The” to the name of a business or not, can create duplicate entries.

Suggestions that we offer are based on a great deal of searching using the web as a resource.

To begin, we can address service clubs.  Most service clubs will have a branch number associated with their name.  In most cases service clubs have also standardized their naming strategy.  Here's an example of how Rotary International identified correct names for groups in Edmonton Alberta Canada.  The club name showed as Rotary Club of Edmonton followed by the group’s name, not the name of the group followed by Rotary Club.

Royal Canadian Legions have a unique number for each group; the Ladies Auxiliary shares the same number.  When receiving a donation from either group, the number should be included as part of the name to prevent confusion or the inability to credit the donation correctly.

Churches can be difficult particularly when dealing with multiple communities as church names could very well be identical.  The use of Parish is another area to be explored.  Is the parish the same as the Church?  Decisions need to be made and documented.

We have recommended the use of the EaseKMS to record decisions that affect data integrity like naming strategies.  Whatever the decision is, it needs to be part of the basic training for existing and new staff members.

The use of a Resources folder that contains listings of group websites is beneficial when more information is required.

Addressing for all service clubs and church groups can be a further area of discussion.  How often is the current address that of the current president.  We recommend that all service clubs have a Board Change quality so that new information can be updated on an annual basis.  Where possible, the groups PO Box or main church address be used rather than personal information.  Phone and email become valuable when contacting individuals and a conscious effort to collect this information needs to be included as a policy and procedure.

@EASE provides the use of Other Addresses for all corporate master records. An 'Other Address' could be a branch office or simply different building housing staff in the same city or possibly another city.  The ability to group a company and its participation with a charity around one master record rather than multiple records enables staff to keep information current, up to date and accurate.

There are some instances, where grouping a series of branches under one corporate master record would not suffice.  In the case of bank branches, we recommend that each branch be handled as a unique corporate record, linked by an @EASE membership to show the bank's full participation.

Managing data of any kind is not easy. When dealing with people and companies, information requires thought and standards to ensure the charity has the best information possible.  Periodic monitoring is advantageous to ensure standards are being adhered to.

To start any job, you need the right work environment.  For this project, cleansing the address information in the database was a focal point that would set the stage for all future work. We followed the address clean up with a search for duplicate records and there were lots!

The Task:

There were two levels of cleaning related to the address records. First was the format used by @EASE .  Removing unwanted punctuation, ensuring address data displayed in the proper field and correcting typing errors put the database in a form where it could be sent to an address cleansing business for a postal code and change of address check up. The corrections were returned and imported along with a code for each record describing the results.

Correct address information is essential if a charity wishes to contact their donors. @EASE uses a method unique to most fundraising software program for its address handling.  The @EASE method uses separate fields for all major address components.  The program assembles the components to create a mailing address compliant with Canada Post requirements when an export is requested.  This strategy makes addressing easy to manage and very easy to find and correct invalid entries that do not follow standards.

It’s not commonly known that address features are determined by each municipality. For example, adding the ordinal suffix ‘th’ for 4 Street in Calgary Alberta Canada is incorrect while adding ‘th’ to 11^th Ave W in Vancouver is correct. Keeping addresses in good form takes time and effort; a job no computer can do as well as the person charged with data entry.

With address cleansing completed, the next step was to look for duplication.  There were situations where organizations and individuals had been entered several times.  Naming strategies contributed to the problem.  There were several examples where improper or no lookup prior to entering a donor record exacerbated the problem.

Four main issues arose when identifying duplicate records:

1.      Establishing a procedure to ensure data entry staff perform an adequate lookup to see if a donor already exists prior to adding a new record

·         Using a wild card search particularly for company names

·         Checking by postal code for names like Smith, Brown

2.      Ensuring that complete names are sources when a correct name is not given.  The knowledge that a few extra seconds at the point of entry makes a big difference later. Knowing who your donors are helps to ensure better quality data entry.

3.      Defined naming standards for groups like business, banks, service clubs, churches, & unions.

4.      Providing a resource area in the KMS to record web-sites and other resources to lookup complete names for groups like service clubs, and banks.

5.      Employing methods on all input forms whether printed or electronic to get better information including whether a donor has given before or not helps with address changes.

6.      Accurate keying and a quick check before moving on will improve data quality.

The task of clean up was extensive.  Many years with a great deal of staff turn created the burden of finding all those donors who were in fact the same organization.  Once identified these records were updated with a standardized naming conventions.

Examples like telco companies with multiple offices were brought down to one organization not several.  Service clubs like Rotary used the naming standard shown on the Rotary website.

This work continued for several weeks and involved staff and volunteers to clean up as many duplicates as possible.  Was the task complete?  The answer to that was no, but we were in a good position to identify and clean any areas missed or new situations that may arise.

Order is valued in a working environment as it empowers those who work there.  Lack of order creates chaos and wastes resources.  The resources we speak of are human, financial and time.

There is a cost to the lack of order.  Things which are difficult to find, jobs that should be easy but take vast amounts of time erode morale and add a financial burden.

The project’s goal is to eliminate time wasters and let the client find what they need, when they need it by implementing a system that supports order.

The 15 second rule is something we have introduced into the client’s office.  If you can’t find what you are looking for in 15 seconds, someone didn’t take the time to save it properly.  This mindset enables staff members to make adjustments to improve a situation. Aha! Continuous improvement, a concept that has lost favour amongst all the new management theories, has raised its head.

One of the key methods to establishment order is creating a set of organizational folders. The main folder is referred to as the KMS folder with all related folders set up as its subfolders.  (KMS stands for Knowledge Management System.)

There are few reasons for creating a directory or folder structure on an organization’s server that requires a maze of folders and sub folders.  We will have two areas that required further subfolders. For all other areas of concern, we will be purists creating one level of folders enabling access to all essential tools for the charity.  The tools are electronic and include forms, merge documents, instruction sets, presentations and more. These are tools created by the charity to help perform their work.

The folder structure we provide for all our clients with some new additions include:

a. Forms: Used to store any electronic form used for the business of the charity. 

b. Instructions: Used to store ‘How To’ documents that describe how specific tasks are completed.

c. Procedures: Used to store how jobs are done. A procedure can cross reference several Instructions.

d. Presentations: Used to store presentations used to engage donors and advocates

e. Decisions: Used to record decisions made regarding all aspects of the fund raising program

f.  DonorCommunications: This folder is a folder of subfolders for donors of greater interest.

g. GrantProposals: This folder is a folder of subfolders as it contains a folder for each granting organization solicited.

h. Resources: This folder will point to websites and other resources that are useful sources of information.

Each of these folders has a Key document that identifies its contents and shows the file names used to access the desired electronic file.

The benefits to the KMS are many.  Its use must be mandated from the top. Adherence to the principle that this is the one and only source for business building tools is a fundamental to maintaining order. No longer will stashes of electronic files be allowed when they should be found in the KMS.

What are the benefits?  Here are a few:

1.    Control and continuity: Processes and tools acceptable to the charity are available to all staff.

2.    Cost:  Once created an electronic tool can be used and reused many times over.  The initial cost of development is spread across the number of times it is used. 

3.    Time: If staff can find what they need (the 15 second rule) without an endless search the cost of staff time in locating what they require is insignificant.  The outcome is more time to do what impacts the bottom-line.

4.    Morale: There is nothing more demoralizing than working in disorganized chaos.

5:    Capture Knowledge:  How staff perform jobs or improve them can be recorded to the benefit of all others in the department.  As a starting place for new employees, you have defined how the charity works along with the expectations of senior staff and management.

6.    Shareable: A shareable resource and asset is being built with multiple contributions giving employees the credit for the value and often time saving suggestions they make.

7.    Brand or Image:  What goes out for public consumption brands a charity. Communications of all types are a reflection of the organization.  The page formats, fonts and messages need to be managed.  With only one copy of a document available for multiple users, the charity prevents creative intervention by well meaning staff.

8.    Training: A training environment is created for new staff.  It’s not longer “do the job as you wish”, rather this is how we work at our charity.  They have all the KMS resources at their finger tips to ensure continuity and consistency.  New staff members are quickly raised to a level of performance valuable to the charity.

9.    Conformance:  New staff unwilling or unable to follow the system can be identified for further training.  If training does not address the problem, other actions can be taken.

The Bottom Line

Order and business rules of engagement go a long way to making a working environment efficient and staff time effective.  This is not the end of what we might need it establishes a start as other requirements will turn up later in the project.

The KMS will be the focal point of many things the charity will want to retain.  Evaluating the use of the KMS and its content will be a job that is addressed periodically by management and staff.

Nothing seems more mundane than discussing a donor database.  It’s not one of those topics that creates excitement or builds suspense.  It is, however, a discussion that more and more clients have been having as they realize the value of quality data in their search for funding.

Really, what is the purpose of a donor database?  Simple, you might say.  It lets you keep track of your donors and what they have donated. It provides a spot for notes and relationships; and it records receipts and gifts designated to specific areas. Okay, this all sounds good but is just being good, good enough or is good really complete.  These are the questions we helped answered for a client who wanted to take their donor database to the next level.

The client, as we will refer to them, is a progressive charity that supports a vulnerable sector within our city.  They have recently expanded their services.  Their funding comes from private individuals, companies, service clubs, associations and foundations.  Government does not fund them.

The renewed interest in the management of their donor data was two fold.  First, the issue of acquiring more dollars to support their programs; and the second issue dealt with better use of staff time as some tasks seemed to take far more time than one would deem reasonable. This, of course, takes time away from more productive activities and can impact on morale and some other periphery issues that they wanted to alleviate.

A key factor that motivated this renewal was their management team.  They had the perfect storm but in a positive way.  Ideally, they had a group of managers that were all on the same page, keen to make improvements and willing to put in the required effort to make things happen.

This type of situation is a consultant’s dream. No deadwood, speed bumps or road blocks to deal with, just a group of individuals open, interested and ready to commit to working smarter not harder in the pursuit of their common goals.

This may not seem like a visionary activity, but in our experience, it is.  More and more, we see clients who come forward to make a strategic change in how they view and manage the use of their donor database.  Why is this visionary you might ask?  Because, it takes data from a keyboarding input task to a fund development level.  At a fund development level there are many more things that can be done at the point of entry of any piece of information that makes it useful now and valuable in the future. Data is no longer one dimensional but multi-dimensional relative to its use as an entrepreneurial resource and a source of intelligence.