Roles of Database Managers?

Michelle Harper

I work as a gift accountant and database manager in the finance office at my organization. My boss and I are looking to restructure our department and I am looking for some feedback as to how other places have theirs structured to help us make our decision. Currently I handle all entry into and out of RE (All gifts, all updates, all imports, all exports, all reports), as well as the configuration, security, and data table maintenance.. This is on top of me also managing the FE database and my accounting duties.

Obviously too much for one person, if you want that person to do any of the jobs well, so we are going to be splitting it off.

We are wanting to move all of the data entry, querying, exporting, and report running to the development office. I will be keeping the gift entry. The question remains as to who will be doing the imports, global changes, security, and configuration.

At BBCON this year Bill Connors recommended keeping the database management separate from the day to day entry and lists. What duties do you have assigned to your database manager? Is it all tasks or just the higher level tasks?

Ryan Hyde

I'm glad you were at Bill's session because I was about to see if I could find his slides and attach them here! I'm the Database Manager at my org, and I have a data entry specialist who works in my department as well. She does most of the gift entry, though I still do some types of gifts and I help out during high volume periods like year-end giving, and she runs mail. Those are the only two RE operations she does. Everything else (all imports, exports, global changes, global deletes (to the extent there are any), reports, merges, etc., on top of all security and management tasks) are in my domain. 


Querying is a bit different. I train my team to query on their own and I encourage them to give it a try when they need something simple. More complex queries go directly to me. I like to empower people to pull their own queries for a couple of reasons though:


1.) I don't get bogged down with as many quick-and-dirty query requests

2.) It keeps my team thinking about the data structure of our records and reminds them of the importance of clean data


Hope that helps.

Michelle Harper

Thank you; that does help. We have been working on getting people to pull their own queries and our development office does their own letters. The problem with our organization is that it has been extremely difficult to get people to do the training. We are paying for it, but nobody (except for me) has really gone above the fundamentals. It was a serious undertaking just to get them to do the fundamentals. We are going to hire a new person who already has SQL database experience and hopefully RE experience.

Katherine Manniion

At my last org, I was set up the same as Ryan describes. 


In the way you're describing your org structure, it sounds like you should want the development office to have a "super-user" who manages all the responsibilities you describe.  I've never seen the RE database managed by the finance office.  An added benefit may also be, if Development owns the database and all of its functions, they may require more of their team to train!

Michelle Harper

Very good point about the training! Before I was in this position I had never seen a finance office doing it either; I have always thought it was strange. I am hopeful that we will be able to hire a person that has enough experience and lift this off of me so I can focus on other things. 

Dariel Dixon 2

I think the answer depends on how large your department is and the volume of the work.  I've seen offices where all that was done by one person, and organizations that have departments that just handle gift entry.


Ideally, you would have someone entering gifts and someone else handling the administrative functions of the database.  And I agree with Ryan Hyde‍ that teaching users how to query themselves is the best route.  I think the gift entry person should absolutely not being doing the gift accounting on the finance side.  There definitely needs to be a separation of duties there.


From how you describe your organization, it sounds like there is no dedicated advancement services team.  I would imagine that it should live in development and not finance.  Are your development team completely comprised of front-line fundraisers?


As far as training goes, I'm a big fan of not paying for things that aren't being used.  However, since you are looking at hiring new staff, it might be better to keep it until you get them trained up.

Michelle Harper

Dariel Dixon‍- Can you tell me more about the conflict between gift entry and gift accounting? This isn't something we have considered. Here is our current gift process:

Our other accountant deposits the gifts and sends me the documentation for entry

I enter the gifts into RE and send the batch information to the development office so they can double check the information and create thank you letters

After they have marked the gifts acknowledged I post them to the GL in RE

The VP of finance posts them to the GL in FE

I reconcile at the end of the month


To answer your question about the development team: We have a VP, a director, and an administrative assistant. The president of the organization, VP in development and director in development are the only fundraisers for our organization. I have done training with our development staff on running queries, exports, and reports; we are working toward getting them to run them on their own. We just aren't quite there.

Dariel Dixon 2

Michelle Harper‍ What I wanted to make sure is that there is a different person performing the actual deposit versus opening the mail and entering the gift.  It's just not a good idea to have one point of failure for the entire process.  It just makes things easier if you have other individuals involved in the process.  The fact that you aren't also performing the deposit is good.  And obviously, you're not posting to FE, which again means that the entire process doesn't sit with one person.


Training on queries can be a tough thing for people to understand.  The biggest thing to learn about query is how things are structured and laid out.  Most people who aren't in the database regularly won't know this information, so learning how to be effective with query can be frustrating for them.  Keep at it.  But you only learn with practice.  


Since your organization is quite small, I am not certain if you will have enough volume to have your database manager just handling administrative tasks.  From how you are describing things, it sounds to me like someone in the development side needs to handle both the administrative tasks (ie. import/export, config, security, etc.) and probably the reporting and some other tasks.  I think Katherine Mannion‍'s suggestion of a "super-user" is good, but from what it sounds like, maybe you should be the super-user and the new person should be the administrator.  That would free up a lot of your workday to your other finance based tasks.

Karen Hartt

I'm in the same camp as Ryan. I handle all the nitty gritty of the database work, all table management, letter management, security, address and deceased finder, and research/manage duplicates. At this point I also do the large list requests (annual report and newsletters). I do gift entry for unusual gifts (securities, insurance vehicles and tangible property). I also manage the ResearchPoint database and maintain the security.


My assistant does the day to day gift entry, reports as needed, stewards our new funds and fund amendments through the process for board approval, and makes address/contact changes relating to our almost 2000 funds.


All staff have the ability to create their own queries, do constituent entry, change addresses and run reports.


My "department" is housed under the Finance umbrella, we moved from the development/philanthropy umbrella a couple years ago.