What does your organization chart look like?

Chris Wright 2

We are a medium sized non-profit that is experiencing growth in the need for data!  I've been tasked with recommending what the organization chart should look like for our more technical and analytical employees and I have a few questions for anyone willing to share about their organization:

1) Do you have an IT department or do the technical resources report to Development, or some other department in your organization?

2) Who do the people who actually enter gifts report to?...Development, operations, IT?

3) What about the people responsible for executing your mass email campaigns?  Are they Communication professionals, who also have to figure out how to query the database to build a distribution list, or do the "writers" hand off content to technical resources who actually build and send the emails?  Where do the technical resources reside in your org chart.

4) Our Development team probably uses Raiser's Edge the most, but we have several different program areas that either provide input for Raiser's Edge or also depend on RE for data about constituents.  Do you have a central pool of technical resources who complete data requests for people, or do you have people capable of basic reports/lists/queries in different areas of your organization that provide the data that that area needs?

5) Who does your database administrator report to?


Would appreciate any insight you can provide.  Right now 75% of our technical resources report to the Development team, but we are constantly getting requests from all over the organization and no one wants to help us prioritize competing requests.  We also have a few resources in the Operations area of the organization and our Luminate expert sits there, but again so many areas need his help and it is unclear where the priorities are.  I'm just trying to figure out what might be a better way.  Thanks!

 

Austen Brown

Hi Chris Wright‍ -  I work for an organization with 40-45 full-time employees.  I work as apart of the Development team, as the Database Manager.  I manage data in the Raiser's Edge database and Luminate Online/TeamRaiser.  


1) Our IT Department reports to the Chief Financial Officer and provides technical support/resources to the entire organization.


2) Our Database Specialist enters gifts into RE and reports to me.  During high traffic times (i.e. December), myself and another staff member who previously worked in the Database Specialist position are able to help out with gift entry. 


3) Our Marketing Department is responsible for putting together messaging, creating the email layouts, and entering content into the emails. When the emails are ready to be sent, I create/import the email queries into OLX and schedule the messages to be sent. (The only exception to this is when emails are sent out of Luminate Online/TeamRaiser instead of OLX - In that case I am responsible for everything except generating content and graphics.)


4) I primarily pull data/analytical/reporting/mailing list requests from the team.  However, we do have a few users that are capable of pulling their own basic reports and queries; we ask that these users share their findings with me for confirmation, prior to sharing numbers amongst the rest of the team or externally. 


5) I report to the Chief Development Officer. 


If you have any follow-up questions to my answers, let me know. I hope this helps!

 

Petra Hall

Hello! We're a medium-sized organization, and could use a few more DBAs. Right now, while we do have a DBA dedicated to RE, our overall Database Supervisor/troubleshooter also acts as the DBA for FE, On, and a few other databases. We couldn't get away with this if we didn't have long-established procedures in FE and a very competent finance team.


1) Our IT department reports to senior management. The “technical resource” (the overall Database Supervisor) belongs to IT, and oversees RE, FE, and On. They work directly with Development as needed (including Academic, Finance, Marketing and senior management). Development also has an RE DBA.

2) Finance has the gift entry person, who receives direction on how gifts should be directed and allocated by the Development RE DBA, but is responsible for recording gift information in an audit-friendly and finance-report-friendly manner.

3) Mass email is something we’re trying to centralize. Currently each department that sends mass-mailings maintains their own lists/databases. Eventually Marketing will be responsible for hitting send on all mass mailings. In theory, departments will request a mailing, Marketing will edit a mailing, the department will give feedback/approval of the final version and specify who should receive it, Marketing will consult with RE about the appropriate lists, Marketing will run the mailing, and all the mailings (and relevant feedback) will be recorded in RE.

4) We have a DBA who sets up and maintains queries in RE for the different Development positions, and pulls data for Marketing and Development when requested.

5) Our RE DBA reports to the head of Development, but there are policies and procedures in place around changing key records (such as funds) which would affect reporting to other departments (such as Finance). Our RE DBA also works with the Database Supervisor who is responsible for maintaining RE, FE, and “On”, as well as other database integrations.