In a recent meeting, someone said, “I’ve never met a nonprofit employee who likes their database.” While this statement will be disheartening to any readers who develop databases, many readers may find themselves nodding vigorously.
Databases can be challenging. Nonprofit organizations have to balance functionality, staff and volunteer usability, and price when evaluating what database is best for them. Many nonprofit employees may not have the institutional memory of why a particular database is being used. “It’s what we were using when I got here” is a familiar refrain.
While your database will never be perfect, you can take small steps to improve it over time. Below are a few tips to improve your functionality.
Set up an improvement schedule
Sit down with your core team that uses your database and brainstorm the four critical issues that you would collectively like to fix or adjust. These can be significant challenges or minor inconveniences. After determining the four items, you want to fix – schedule one for each quarter in the year and assign someone to lead each project. The idea of quickly changing everything can be overwhelming. By setting a realistic timeline of one significant improvement per quarter, you’ll have a better chance of succeeding.
How do you want to segment your email?
Determining how you want to segment your future email messages can help drive improvement in your database. It provides you the opportunity to prioritize fields and track the most relevant information. For example, if you plan on sending different email content to your audience group based on their profession, work with your database users to ensure they’re prioritizing title or profession as a data capture point.
Determine what you need your database to sync with
Most small and mid-sized nonprofits do not have a database that syncs with all of their different programs. If you want to connect your database to your online donation system, email platform, or direct mail program, you should decide which of these is most important. If online donations are critical to your work, invest in a database and online donation platform that connect. If your organization focuses on advocacy-related actions than you should focus energy on your email provider.
Prioritize contact information
We know that quality contact information is critical to retaining constituents and donors. It is necessary that any database has more than one method of communication included. If you only have an individual’s work email address and phone number and they leave their organization, you’ll lose the ability to reach that volunteer. Any method to capture both work and personal email, phone, or address should be utilized and captured in your database.
Maintain an open door and forgive mistakes
One of the primary reasons that databases fail is that employees and volunteers don’t use them enough. This is often due to time constraints, human error, or lack of knowledge. Staff and volunteers that struggle with a database will often abandon it or try to find workarounds that hurt data quality. It is critical that nonprofit leaders cultivate an internal culture that allows staff and volunteers to ask questions – even the most basic and silly ones. Database users who are scared to ask for help will cause short-term and long-term issues.
Photo by Justyn Warner on Unsplash
Justin (he, him) is a Principal and Co-Founder of Social Change Consulting. He has over fifteen years of nonprofit experience, with expertise in online fundraising, digital communications, and data management. Justin helps organizations connect their communication strategy to their income development needs. When he’s not on the clock, Justin is exploring Berlin, running, listening to too many podcasts, and drinking too much coffee.