Altru Database Cleanup and Best Practice Tips - Two Part Series!

Anah McRae

The other day I signed up for online yoga classes 2 days a week. I’ve done yoga many times in my life, but I must admit, it’s been a while. I’m excited to get back into practice and work on my inner and outer self. I’ve heard a lot about others taking on new hobbies, workout routines and more during our shelter in place times. Isolation, it seems, provides a great backdrop for reflection, cleanup and rework.
And just this morning, my search engine had a link under the search bar that says “Make the most of your time at home with tips, recipes, workouts and more…”
This got me thinking about Altru. So many organizations have had Altru for years now and gone through much turnover in that time. Usually this means that it will take some cleanup and rework to get the Altru database in top form. And it is a great time to create processes moving forward that will keep your database in top shape.
We have created two recorded sessions full of tips and instructions for Altru database cleanup and health. Here are the topics by session:

1. I ran a mailing, and there’s a bunch of people that pulled in without addresses.
2. In my merge, the member name is incorrect if the couple has different last names.
3. In my mailing, the Addressee/ Salutations appear as Mrs. And Mr.
4. In our Organization records, we are missing contacts.
5. In our Constituent records, we find children not connected to households.
6. Our Query List is full of queries we no longer use and needs cleanup.
7. We have Members that have no web login on their record and have never registered on our site.
8. We have So Many Price Types that our ticket desk finds it difficult to find the right one.
9. We have so many Discounts that our ticket desk finds it difficult to find the right one.
10. We have lots of Membership Discounts and it is confusing to members and staff.
11. We have a huge list of Merchandise Items and many we no longer stock or sell.
12. We have many letters in our Acknowledgement process, we are not always sure we have the right people and we end up editing each letter which takes a lot of time.
13. We have a lot of Constituent Codes that we are no longer using.
14. We have a lot of Attributes that we are no longer using.
15. We setup Smart Fields way back and aren’t using all of them today but think some new ones may help!
16. We have historical Pledges that are no longer valid but show up in reports.
17. We have dual members that are not connected by their relationship when the membership was purchased online.
18. It’s 2020, and we have records with no email!
19. Our webforms need an update!
20. We don’t have Policies and Procedures to keep our data clean and provide guidance.

Here are links to the recorded sessions. Each session includes a resource list for you!

Altru Database Cleanup and Best Practice Tips – Part 1
Altru Database Cleanup and Best Practice Tips – Part 2
And as a reminder, we created the Policies and Procedures session to help you get started creating those documents. As you identify cleanup and rework necessary it is a great time to create processes moving forward and create documentation to keep your organization on track. You can view this session here: Building Policies and Procedures Guides and Best Practice.
Happy Cleanup!

 

Regina Holten

THANK YOU! I have an off site volunteer that has been helping me so much - and I need more ideas of where to look for clean up.  Will review this series tomorrow.