Archive for the Tag 'Databases'

Do You Need New Donor Management Software?

Idealware just published an article by Keith Heller called Do You Need New Donor Management Software?

Keith urges nonprofits to look before they leap into new software, cautioning that “new software may not make anything better — in fact, it could make things worse.” He then addresses what new software could do for your organization, [...]

Filed in Databases, Donor Databases, Fundraising, TechSoup Comments Off

Nonprofit Technology Resolutions for 2009

In early January, Convio asked a group of nonprofit technology bloggers to suggest New Year’s resolutions for nonprofits (TechSoup Blog was one of the participants). In addition, they asked people to post resolutions on Convio’s Connection Café blog. Subsequently, they reviewed the resolutions, identified the main topic areas, and created a Resolutions Guide. The guide [...]

Filed in Databases, IT Management, Online Fundraising, Social Media, TechSoup, Web 2.0 No Responses yet

New Year’s Resolution: Be Good To Your Data

My friend and fellow consultant John Kenyon is fond of saying that, after people, data is an organization’s most important asset. An organization’s databases store its history: contact records; people served; donors, funders, and prospects; VIPs, volunteers, and vendors; event attendees, and more. Yet many organizations don’t pay enough attention to the care and feeding [...]

Filed in Databases, IT Management, Security No Responses yet

Best Practices for Managing a Database

“After people, data is your most important asset.” — John Kenyon

Left unattended, databases will turn into piles of mush. Therefore, develop data entry policies and procedures, and train everyone who enters data.
Excel is not a database, and is one of the leading causes of dirty data. It is difficult to enforce data entry [...]

Filed in Advancement Services, Databases 4 Comments so far

Convio Releases “Common Ground” Donor Database

In June I mentioned that Convio had announced the beta release of a donor database it was calling Aikido, built on the SalesForce platform. This is not a new template for SalesForce, but a product built from the ground up. At the time, they said it would be a separate product from their online [...]

Filed in Databases, Donor Databases, Software No Responses yet

Duplicates in your Database?

There’s been a series of discussions on the FUNDSVCS and PRSPCT-L lists about dealing with duplicates in a database, and preventing new dupes from being created. Melissa Graves from The Village for Families and Children suggested the following routine steps:

A) Search for a matching record before creating any new record. Some databases will pop up [...]

Filed in Advancement Services, Databases No Responses yet