Database Audit/ Cleanse

Maruska Moore

Hello,



What is the best practice to update and clease your database? What procedures have worked best for your organization?

1. For Constituents who are not donors or have not given in over 5-7 years.- Do you change their profile to inactive, delete them, create a " We miss you campaign"?



2. For inative constituency codes, attributes and Fund IDs- For obsolete IDs,  codes and attributes do you completely remove them from each account, do a mass delete. How do you update this type of information in your database?



3. Queries and letters- How often do you delete queries and letters? We hae letters from long ago that we no longer use and are not saved in each person's profile. How do you clean this up?

JoAnn Strommen

Maruska,

Lots of things to consider in your questions.  Can you clarify what you consider inactive/obsolete constituency codes, attributes, Fund IDs?  If they are on records how are they inactive or obsolete if they are in use? 



Queries - if it hasn't been run in several years I delete (generally I'm the one who created them to start with).  If it's easier to re-create than change/update all the criteria, I delete.



Letters - if it's specific to a fund more than a year old and not in use anymore I delete.  I know others would keep but I really like to keep my list short enough to be viewed on one screen.  Found I was never using them so cleaned them out.



Constituents - there have been a number of posts on marking records as inactive and deleting old records.  You may want to do a search for those.  It varies a lot from org to org.  Do you keep their records updated as far as address / contact info / relationships? Do you have access to a way to update?  What was source of record?  Is it of value for a 'we miss you campaign?' 



Just a few thoughts on what could be an essay.

Maruska Moore

Hi Joanne,



Actually that helps alot. Our organization has had a few people in this role some experienced some not but there are no steady Policy and procedures. that is the goal now to have concrete policy and procedures for everyone to get acclimated to.

Regarding the Inactive/ Obsolete- any code, ID etc. I am referring to anything that we no longer use, i.e. the program has ended or is no longer a part of the org. There were a few shortcut Fund IDs for some reason that we no longer use. Shortcodes that no one has a written description for or was not saved previously. Codes that are on records but no one has any idea what they are in reference to.



We need a database cleanse essentially and are strating relatively from scratch.

MM

JoAnn Strommen:

Maruska,

Lots of things to consider in your questions.  Can you clarify what you consider inactive/obsolete constituency codes, attributes, Fund IDs?  If they are on records how are they inactive or obsolete if they are in use? 



Queries - if it hasn't been run in several years I delete (generally I'm the one who created them to start with).  If it's easier to re-create than change/update all the criteria, I delete.



Letters - if it's specific to a fund more than a year old and not in use anymore I delete.  I know others would keep but I really like to keep my list short enough to be viewed on one screen.  Found I was never using them so cleaned them out.



Constituents - there have been a number of posts on marking records as inactive and deleting old records.  You may want to do a search for those.  It varies a lot from org to org.  Do you keep their records updated as far as address / contact info / relationships? Do you have access to a way to update?  What was source of record?  Is it of value for a 'we miss you campaign?' 



Just a few thoughts on what could be an essay.

 

Matt Page

Hi Maruska,



We're in a not entirely dissimilar state of flux, thogh as an org we've been using RE for 20 years. IN answer to your questions I would say...



1 - I would keep them, unless you have a lot of people on there who have never given anything or "done" anything for you - if someone added a load of low grade prospect for example.



2 - I'm still looking at this. I think I want to ditch a load, but need to investigate this more.



3 - I have a folder for "Temporary" queries which I'm planning to clear stuff out of once it'b nbeen there for 13 months (or obviously can go straight away, or is otherwise obviously deletable). The other queries are in folders but are mainly for recurring uses. If you wanted to clean up letters you could keep an example of each type of letter in a folder somewhere else and just keep the name of the letter that you sent them.



Hope that helps,



Matt

Christine Cooke 2

I will agree with JoAnne as far as things to consider.  I will also add that you need to take into consideration if deleting will erase any sort of history/storytelling.  I have worked in databases that are 20+ years old and I have never outright deleted Funds or Attributes that are no longer in use.   I just change their code to have a "z" as the first character of the code and if the configuration allows, click the Inactive box.  They will then not show on drop downs and if they do show in a list or report somewhere, then they are sorted to the bottom or easily identifiable as no longer in use.



I find that the Inactive checkbox on records is really useless because no one really defines it and you can exclude records so many ways that the Inactive tag has no value really. 



Depending on what sort of organization you are, even if a record does not seem to have any activity - giving, volunteering, event attendance, etc. - you still need to keep them for historical and/or statistical purposes (for example schools or educationally related orgs, can never delete anyone who was enrolled at some point, I have inherited this sort of thing and had to spend crazy months rebuilding from old paper records and files.).



Just saying, be mindful of Delete, it is a scary button in regards to records.  Queries and reports do lose their use after awhile and need to go.