5 Data Hygiene Tips for Annual Fundraising Report Accuracy

Imagine this scenario: You’re compiling your nonprofit’s annual report, but no matter how many times you process the data, the resulting statistics look off. Your average donation doesn’t line up with your total revenue. And you’re seeing two separate profiles for the donors you had planned to highlight in the report. More likely than not, you have a case of dirty data.

While dirty data can come in many forms, we usually see it in:

• Duplicate data
• Inaccurate data
• Outdated data
• Ambiguous data
• Incomplete data

In nearly all cases, dirty data have the same result for your organization: slowing down processes and acting on misleading information. When you’re preparing your annual report, your organization and program data (such as volunteer hours served or donor retention rate) can help shape the narrative your organization presents to its donors and community. Including the right statistics, such as the average gift size and gifts secured by type, makes for a compelling, attention-grabbing report. 

But dirty data can end up painting the wrong picture and harming your organization. In the United States, poor data hygiene practices result in up to 12% in lost revenue. For many nonprofits, that can be the difference between a program’s success and its cancellation. 

Luckily, there are a number of ways to remediate dirty data. In this guide, we’ll study the five data hygiene practices essential to developing an accurate annual fundraising report. Before you compile that report, your organization should:

1. Conduct an audit of your systems. 
2. Remove unnecessary information from your system.
3. Standardize data formats. 
4. Outline a process for future dirty data prevention. 
5. Update data frequently. 

Ultimately, the resulting clean data will lead you to more effective outreach and fewer missed fundraising opportunities — especially when it comes to leveraging your key organizational documents.

1. Conduct an audit of your systems.

Before making any changes to your data analysis or collection processes — or beating up your computer in data-driven-despair — you’ll want to conduct an audit of your current systems.

Even if you’re sure about the state of your data (good or bad) an audit will help you determine exactly how much of your data is considered dirty and what you need to do to fix it (and in good news, an audit will also help you identify the processes you’re doing right!)

Examine the data saved in your systems and consider what is the most useful for your organization. As you review your database, you’ll want to ask four questions to pinpoint areas for remediation:

• • What is the significance of each data point? Some data points, like names and email addresses, are self-explanatory. Others may need additional articulation. If you can’t identify a point’s significance/use, it may be a sign that it’s no longer valuable to your organization.
  • Which data points are necessary? Consider your intended outcomes. For example, if your nonprofit uses predictive analytics to anticipate fundraising outlooks for the upcoming year, it may be helpful to think about what data points go into developing these models.
  • Which data points aren’t necessary? Look closely at these points and suppress/remove any that interfere with your operations. This will help keep your database organized, preventing additional and useless data from taking away from the more important metrics. 
  • What database areas need the most help? Are there certain data points (e.g. birthdates for analyzing donor demographics) that tend to be missing or inaccurately entered? Note these as places to further examine the reason for the dirty data and come up with a lasting solution.

These days, organizations are bombarded with data — on anything and everything. All that information can quickly turn overwhelming. Answering these questions will help you identify the areas in your database that need to be reevaluated. Also, keep in mind that database marketing companies are available to assist you with these daunting tasks.

2. Remove unnecessary information from your system. 

Once you’ve identified the data that’s clogging up your system’s pores, remove/update the information that won’t help achieve your nonprofit’s goals. For example, if your nonprofit used to collect data about supporters’ favorite ice cream flavors, but has since discontinued your ice cream social event, you may decide this data no longer provides value to your organization. 

In addition to correcting inaccurate and duplicate information, you’ll also want to suppress data that is unhelpful or harmful to your donor stewardship plans. If supporters have, for instance, indicated that they do not want to receive mail or phone calls from your organization, you should honor their wishes. The data points to consider might include:

• Do Not Mail Lists
• Do Not Call Lists
• Minors
• Incarcerated Individuals
• Deceased Individuals

Data marketing companies can assist with these types of suppressions. 

Consider if your organization sends out a physical postcard summary of your annual report every year. Printing and postage can get expensive! Instead of sending it out to all of your supporters, your organization can leverage clean, up-to-date contact data to send to only those who will read and appreciate the report . Plus, sending mail to someone who already explained that they don’t want mail from you can damage relationships with that person. 

Take your time with this step. Rushing through it will create more problems than it solves. Just in case, plan to save a backup of your data before making any changes.

As you comb through your data, make sure the contact information for your supporters is complete and accurate. You’ll want to leverage your annual report as a marketing and fundraising tool to grow support from your existing donors. If your report is online, send supporters an email that includes a link to your annual report plus key steps to get involved with for your organization. Keep your supporters involved and informed in your nonprofit’s successes and plans.

3. Standardize data formats. 

Although noting the difference between 123 Elm Street and 123 Elm St. may seem like nitpicking, it can make a huge difference as your data is saved to various profiles in your system. Standardizing the formats of your data will help prevent duplicate and lost content. Standardize data points like:

• Dates, abbreviations, and numbers. Standardize common abbreviations, numbers, and dates. Will you spell out numbers or use numerals? Will you mark the first day of each year as 01/01 or January 1? As your database fills up, and donors and volunteers return year after year, these inconsistencies could turn into duplicate entries.
• Mailing addresses. NPOInfo’s report on data hygiene notes that approximately 35% of people who move fail to update their addresses through the National Change of Address service (NCOA). If your report includes demographic information, this could end up leading to big errors. Major donors will often request that you send your reports via mail. Making sure you have their correct addresses will ensure these don’t get lost.
• Email addresses. These days, donors will often have multiple email addresses (e.g. one for work email, one for personal email, one for spam). If you’re not careful, these can turn into multiple profiles and duplicate information that will skew your reports. When the average ROI of email marketing is $44 for every $1 spent, you’ll want to make sure your emails are reaching the right people. As people change jobs or simply create a new email, verify their new email addresses are associated with their existing profiles to ensure you’re sending important communications to nonexistent inboxes. 

Not only is this is crucial for disseminating your reports and staying in touch with your supporters, but it also helps identify larger issues in your data pool that can dramatically skew your reporting. As you work through this stage of data hygiene, keep an eye out for recurring inconsistencies. Such inconsistencies are a sign that you need to incorporate formal data hygiene rules into your organization’s processes.

Build out a formal process to ensure everyone has the same standards for inputting data into your system. Document the standards in a formal guide for your staff members. And again, database marketing and data hygiene companies exist to help with these challenging tasks. 

4. Outline a process to prevent future dirty data. 

Data hygiene isn’t just about one big cleanse of your data. Rather, it’s an ongoing process that takes support and investment from teams across your organization. Errors can be introduced at any point — from being entered incorrectly to an accidental change when updating records.

Especially if you have multiple people filing data into your system, it’s crucial to develop a standardized data entry and maintenance process (this is the document where you can also include all of your standard formats for data). With input from your teams, create a process that encourages uniformity in data collection and prevents future dirty data: 

• Entering data. Create guidelines for how each data point is entered into your system. If you have constituents inputting their own information (i.e. via an online survey) you can set automatic restrictions for how each field must be formatted.
• Handling errors. Create guidelines for how to address future errors discovered within your data. Instruct staff on how to handle duplicate, incorrect, and incomplete entries. To avoid ambiguity, consider assigning this to a specific person’s role. 
• Adding/removing fields in data collection forms. Based on your initial audit, set rules for how and when you’ll add essential fields to and remove nonessential ones from your data collection forms.

Furthermore, diminish the risk of future dirty data with a module during staff/volunteer onboarding and training that focuses on data collection and reporting.

Without a defined process, you’ll be starting from scratch each time you run and present a report, wasting your nonprofit’s valuable and limited resources.

5. Update data frequently. 

You’ve cleaned your data and established clear processes for the future. Now what? Despite this great work, your data won’t stay error-free. 

Looking forward, plan to regularly spend some time updating your data. Schedule a routine event on your calendar to manage and assess your nonprofit’s data. It will be a lot less time-consuming to make small updates on a regular basis than to have to conduct a complete overhaul whenever data gets too dirty. 

If your database has deduplication and other hygiene features, set them up to work in the background — so you can identify dirty data as soon as possible and make updates as necessary. If you find that you need additional information on your constituents, AccuData recommends using data enhancement tools to append demographic, geographic, and contact information to your existing data.

As you add/remove programs and your nonprofit’s priorities inevitably change, your data priorities will too. Work backward from the information you hope to publish in your next annual report. Consider what new data will best help your organization and make a conscious effort to collect and organize that information. 

Wrapping Up

Clean data doesn’t happen overnight. For the best results, begin the data hygiene process long before your annual report is due. 

With the data in your corner, you can present your nonprofit with confidence. But clean data won’t by itself further your donor relationships. Nonprofits looking for strategies to present their new clean data to their supporters could gain inspiration from the top annual reports. Supplementing your statistics with powerful images, quotes, and qualitative impact statements can help you connect with donors on both emotional and logical levels.

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A guest post from Grabrielle Perham at AccuData.