Keeping Inactive Data

Jessica Achziger

We've recently had some change in our department, which has also given us the opportunity to clean-up our data and restructure some policies and procedures, anyway....



Can you tell me why you would keep inactive phone numbers, addresses and email addresses in your database? It looks like we have lots and lots of inactive information and I am wondering why we would keep this after new information has been added

Ryan Hyde

The ability to mark numbers as either "active" or "inactive" is a relatively new feature, introduced in 7.94. Unfortunately, 7.94 released a monster into databases, causing lots of weird phone numbers and email address to migrate onto constituent records when they shouldn't have (that's obviously a very simplified telling of the story).



BB released a tool later that allowed users to mark these errant records "inactive" in bulk, or to delete them in bulk. It also allowed to handle them one at a time, but this is a non starter if you have thousands of affected records.



So what many organizations, mine included, did was mark these weird numbers and email addresses as "inactive" in bulk. We decided not to delete them right away as it may become clear at some point in the near future that some of them have value. So right now, they're tucked away as "inactive" until we finally muster up the courage to just get rid of them.



If you have a lot of inactive contact info, then your organaztion likely went through a similar scenario. If you're certain the inactive information is truly garbage, then there's no reason not to get rid of it. But if you don't know if it's garbage or not, maybe sit on it a while and see if there's a better way to handle it. 

JoAnn Strommen

If you have lots of them I can see wanting to clean them out.  We keep former #s so that info is there when someone says/enters it as current #/email. 



If you have a valid #/email I can see where it might make sense to delete if another user isn't going to re-enter as valid because that's the #/email they've 'used for years'.

Daniel Noga 2

In my observation, different organizations have different priorities when it comes to retention of old/inactive data. To some organizations, having any inactive data stored at all is considered inefficient and wasteful. Others keep just about everything, just in case. Many stand somewhere in the middle.



I guess it all depends; how much time do you actually have to get rid of the old stuff? In my several jobs as "The Raiser's Edge Guy" at different organizations, there is the perennial gap between one's ideal vision of the database, and the time one can spare on making that vision a reality. Day-to-day tasks pile up, people need lists, then there's a cluster of events; you think you'll have Friday free for cleanup and then someone drops a big project in your lap.



Are you hosted locally? Is there plenty of space on your server? Sometimes, since it's more work to clean out old data, we end up keeping it just because it's expedient and it isn't really...really...hurting anything. But if your tables are so cluttered you find it difficult to get into a good workflow, well, it might be time to clean up a bit.



I will say from experience that keeping old contact info can help you identify people and match current gifts to older records rather than creating a duplicate record because you're just not sure whether or not it's the same person and you want to play it safe. And again, if it's not actually hurting anything either, then it might as well stay, no?



Just a few consideration that come to mind.

Jen Claudy

For Addresses always, and for emails mostly (not too much for phone numbers), we keep the old data.  It's happened to me more than once where someone moves, the address gets updated in RE, and then we go to send a letter out about say a golf outing we used to hold, but haven't for the past several years.  A list is given to me of people to invite to participate, who participated in the past, but at that time, the RE Event module wasn't in use or just no one put the data into the database.  So I have to look up this list in RE, and it has addresses included, but they're from several years ago.  If the Previous Address is no longer in RE, I have no way of knowing, short of doing a lot of internet lookups, that the name on the list and the record in RE are for the same person (at least no way to know for sure).



With emails, I'm keeping them because we use Online Express, and I want to track who has unsubscribed or bounced back because we sometimes send an email of information with a mailed letter to those fitting the criteria for the mailing but who don't have an email in the system.  If they've unsubscribed, the email will remain in the system, but we can't easily tell that it's unsubscribed, so they might very well end up not getting either the email or the postal mailing.



However, if someone changes jobs, when you uncheck that Primary Business box, the Business address disappears from the Addresses tab (unless it's the Preferred Address).  We're using 7.94 so phones are no longer on the address records, so I will sometimes delete a work email address if they change jobs and I'm confident on the validity of my information.



Hope this helps...general industry practice is to never delete an address...not sure where phones and emails fall yet, but this is what we do.

Chelsea Jasper

The only reason we might keep inactive numbers is in the case where we are looking for new numbers from sources like LexisNexis or Whitepages and we can then look at the record and see if the suggested number is one that we've already inactivated because it's no good.

Laura Caswell

We keep old addresses and phones for many of the reasons listed. The other reason no one mentioned is committees. I work at a university and many times a committee member will declare emphatically that the address we have on file for someone else is completely bogus. If we don't have a record of previous addresses we can spend a lot of time bouncing between what the USPS told us is the correct address with returned mail and what the committee members says is the correct address. Staff members are supposed to create a Note stating where they got the new address from when they update addresses. And even with a note in Madge Smith's record stating she gave us her new address in Arizona, Susie Knowitall will tell a staff member that Madge would never live in Arizona and the staff member will change the address back to Madge's childhood address in town. And then the fun begins when Madge doesn't get her mail.



Just my 2 cents.

laura

 

Jeffrey Montgomery

Back AWAY from the delete button!   



Although this data may seem useless, I promise you it has value, ranging from matching up incoming transactions to in-depth analysis that your team might be able to utilize in the future. Here is one of my favorite non-profit data blog posts ever (by Kevin at CoolData Blog) that explains why we shouldn't delete data just because it's old. It's really worth a read!



Jeff



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Christine Cooke 2

I know in a school environment, we keep the old addresses because it is a way to track lots alums and their parents and grandparents, other family when we contract out to find lost folks.  The old addresses help confirm that you have the correct "Bob Smith".



As for other data, you have to assess it's historical/archival value to the organization.  And maybe it looks like clutter because it has been located in the wrong place, there may be somewhere more appropriate, like Actions Tab vs. the Constit Attribute where it is sitting, etc.  If that is the case, then you can make it one of your housekeeping projects to move the data to it's proper place and then remove it from other.



Often, with data that is not relevant currently, but must be kept for historical/archival purposes, I will go into Config and change the code/attribute and add a "z" in front of the code.  That way, when you look at the screen/tab it will automatically sort those items to the bottom and leave your current/active items at the top.