Fall Cleaning of Donor Records

Leon, you will find a lot of varying opinions on a 'best practice'.  To me, part of the answer depends on the records.  Do you know they are at that address - do you update addresses for entire database?  Do you know they are alive?-do you update this fact using outside info?  Do they have gifts on the records? 


If the records are not updated and they have not given/had interaction for 10 years I see no problem with marking them as inactive.  If 'inactive' had more details it would be even better as you could document why they are marked so, but it doesn't.  If the records have no gifts either, there are some of us that would delete them from the database entirely if there was not historical info that needed to be kept (past board, alumni...). 


Seems like some fundraising orgs will keep every name and address forever.  For us as a community org, fundraising is based on relationship.  Ten years or more - not much relationship at this point.

Never.


Inactive needs to be defined by your org but my strong suggestion is that it should have NOTHING to do with the length of time someone has lapsed. It should be something that is not already able to be captured through some other way.


My suggestions for records that should be marked "inactive"


Orgs/business that are now closed/do not exist. (equivalent to deceased in an individual)

Individuals who have strongly requested Never to be contacted again by your organization for any reason whatsoever. (Remove me from your database - requests) I use this as my DO NOT CONTACT EVER


I also suggest having an attribute of "inactive reason" that has these as the two options and another "other" where comments describe the inactive reason.


My 2 cents.


PS - I worked at an org that always, always only solicited/mailed for 5 years and then would drop you from mailings if you did not give in that time. I was considering inactivating anyone beyond 5 years. Then one day due to some major legislative action we wanted to contact everyone back 10 years to invite them to a March on Washington. Had I mingled my "lapsed" with my "inactives" I would have never been able to send that mailing. I then went on to another org that had an "Interim VP of Dev" ask the gift processor to inactivate everyone who had not given in 2 years. Yes TWO years. When I came in I pretty much had to ignore the "inactive" check box and eventually unchecked everyone and waited to get new requests for inactives.