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Importance of Database - Presentation

Alper Gungor

Hello,

I am the administrator of Information Systems in our organization and I am going to speak about the importance of database and the value of having a database in an internal meeting. Of course most of them publicly known but I'd like our staff to have a deeper comprehension. I look forward to hear any ideas on this.

Thank you

Alper

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Comments

Elizabeth Johnson

Hi Alper Gungor‍, It might be helpful if you have an outline started to share it to get more feedback.

Hope that helps,

Elizabeth

JoAnn Strommen

Yes, putting some thoughts in front of me would help get me thinking as Elizabeth Johnson‍ suggested.

Our interim CEO has said on numerous occasions that our db is one of our most valuable assets. As a Foundation with various endowment funds it caused me to think. Where would we be without our list of donors, their data, their giving records, notes, interests,etc. etc.?

Alper Gungor

I am planning to start from the definition of database, advantages of having a database - why organizations use databases. I'd need to fill these topics - by providing real-life and business examples probably.

Then I'd like to explain what databases consist of, how they are formed, simplified of course. I don't want to put in so much technical information as the majority of the audience is not familiar with it. Relationships between tables, how they talk to each other etc.

I want to garnish this part and adding more to maintain the purpose of the presentation and for the staff to adopt the database more.

I am open to any comments and improvements, thank you!

Alan French

The mantra we have in our office, as far as reporting goes, is "if it isn't in the database, it didn't happen!"

Faith Murray

I have given presentations to our staff before. I would say, don't bother with an explanation of how data tables interact. Too technical and nobody will care, lol. Instead, relate the database to the work of the people viewing your presentation.

Talk about how staff turnover in fundraising (some stats say fundraisers only stay an avg. 2 years in any job) leads to a new fundraiser not knowing anything about your donors. However, a full repertoire of Notes and Actions can fill them in quickly, so that they can save time, avoid blunders that might offend donors, and pick right up where the last staff person left off.
Talk about how enriched data helps fundraising effectiveness and organizational health. Good data hygiene saves money on postage to wrong addresses, speeds the efficiency of financial processing like donor tax statements, and keeps financial audits and reconciliation easy and pain free.
Talk about the benefit to analytics and strategy implementation. When our current capital campaign began, we began with a phone append and address correction to make sure our donor contact info was up to date. I manually calculated an RFM based on giving trends, and we had analyzed the responsiveness of various demographics in our file (alumni, event donors, etc.) to certain appeal types. Armed with this data, we performed a wealth screen on our top thousand donors. We took all of this to our campaign consultants, divided our campaign asks into segments based on donor communication preferences, and have raised our campaign funds in about half the time it has historically taken us to raise a similar amount in past campaigns.
Talk about the benefits to annual appeal fundraising. With clean data and good data entry, you can analyze past giving trends and donor response, segment your mailings, and then test two different mailing packages to determine the best overall response. Perhaps your alumni respond better to college-themed messages, while your acquisition donors prefer a community-betterment message? Maybe colored envelopes perform better for younger donors while #10 envelopes with large font perform better for seniors? We are in the process of doing this right now with our spring appeal. I have segmented and split the list according to donor relationship, affinity, total and average past giving, size and recency of largest gifts, and geographic location. If you don't have good data, you can't be sure you have an even split in donor types when testing, so you won't know if your tests are truly accurate.

These are some ideas. Make it relatable to them, ask yourself why would the people you are talking to care about the database? In the end, it will boil down to how it affects the organization's bottom line, or ease the daily work of the people listening to you.

Alper Gungor

Thank you so much, Faith Murray‍. These are really good points. Great advices to expand the presentation with some untraditional topics.

Linda Gatzow

Jumping in late here. I very much agree with Faith Murray. That's the tact I took when presenting the importance of our database to my colleagues. It's got to be about how it helps them do their job better. DATA - a word I do not like; non-data people tune it out. Instead, substitute "information" in its place. Emphasize that "data" is actually living, breathing, PEOPLE that your organization has a relationship with. Data becomes information...who are these people, what do they like about your organization, what do they best respond to, how often should you contact them, etc. I also love Alan French's perspective: If it isn't in the database, it didn't happen. Good luck with your presentation!

Judy Spigarelli

I agree with the suggestions below. I often ask colleagues to "help me help you". The more information they share, or add to notes or actions, allows me to produce better information for them - better profiles, better portfolios, better segments.

Also, I try to give them relatable examples, for instance, I had a trustee what type of information would be useful in a contact report. He had just mentioned an alum who sold their local business and now can golf more. I told him this was relevant to me, because when we solicit the business, we need to know the correct contact person, and when we hold our golf tournament we want to ensure he's invited. Real life examples help bring the database out of an abyss and into functional tool. Best of luck!