Why Clean Data is Key to Successful Fundraising

3 reasons why organized data strengthens your organization

Communication is key to maintaining alumni relations, but without accurate data on your shareholders, it’s impossible to reach them.

By utilizing clean data, you are given an accurate picture of your membership which ensures that you can reach your members with regular communication and invitations to give back to the organization. However if left unattended, your data is likely to work against you instead of for you. Keeping your data organized and up to date is key when it comes to keeping your day to day operations flowing seamlessly.

When is data considered “dirty”?

In order to understand what clean data is, it is important to know what is known as dirty data. Dirty data is data that includes errors such as misspelling, inconsistent formatting, incomplete fields, and duplicates.

These errors disrupt the ability to pull information efficiently from the dataset and cost users precious time and money. Dirty data is the one thing that prevents a set of data from being considered clean. Most dirty data is caused by human error, however the positive of this is that this means that the answer to that question is quite simple: You can easily clean up your data with some time and attention.

The process of cleaning your data set is called scrubbing data, and it can be done by examining the data set and resolving errors. Resolutions could include filling missing data, deleting duplicates, fixing spelling and structural errors, merging common datasets and ensuring there is a consistent system throughout the entire data set.

Now comes the most important question… Why does it matter? Why does data need to be clean?

The top 3 reasons why clean data is important

1. You’ll reach your shareholders efficiently and effectively

When data is dirty, it results in the ineffective use of the information in that data. For example, when pulling a list of names and emails, if the data is not clean, it could result in names being pulled with the incorrect email. Those emails or names could have spelling errors, or they may not even contain both a name and email to pull for any specific client due to missing information.

It is important to ensure a dataset is clean before applying the information in that data to one’s everyday work. This ensures that all data is correct and effectively used when reaching out to shareholders.

2. Reduces your overall cost

Applying dirty data to a task results in extra work and money in the long run.

Mail sent to incorrect addresses is returned and money is wasted, with workers spending extra time on the clock to resolve mistakes. A potential donor never receives a communication, because their email was lost in a mountain of inconsistently formatted data.

Granting extra attention to your data ahead of time will save groups a headache in the future and allow them to put their time and effort towards additional and new tasks to move towards their fundraising goals.

3. Maintain a foundation of trust with your shareholders

Scrubbing your data ensures that the information is correct, and in knowing that your data is clean, it is simpler to trust that all data pulled will be of good quality. When your data is ready to be used, the information in the dataset will be clear, concise, and correct for the organization to apply to their work.

This reassurance is important when reaching out directly to potential donors to any fundraiser. Donors will be more willing to support your cause if they can trust that you handle information and data correctly.