We are planning on converting, but want to clean up the database before we do.  Does anyone have a guideline on how far back you would keep a donor/constituent record (obviously with no activity) before purging it?  I had one person say something about 3 years, but that seems kind of short.  Any help is greatly appreciated!!

Am sure you'll get differing opinions - my humble opinion and experience  :-)

We did purge when we converted.  We wanted a clean database of donors. 

Our previous major capital campaign had been 4-5 years earlier.  We have an annual campaign with option for each solicitor to add any prospects they wish to contact (records kept in RE) so did have to re-enter some names but now could better track why they are in database. 

The database we were converting did not have records for our Y membership.  One of our desires in chosing RE was an integration with membership database so we could get up-to-date records that way.  We knew going into the capital campaign shortly after converting that we would be adding up-to-date business and org info through an import file from our Chamber of Commerce. 

So for us, we only converted donors.  I know that's unusual.  We knew we would have potential to add much more up-to-date addresses and contact info. 

I've heard the 3 year number, 5 years and never.  You may want to consider if there is any chance you will want/would have wanted those records if you have a campaign/event coming up.  Or are there other ways to add relevant, up-to-date records to RE.  Also are your records up-to-date with valid addresses and data? If ours had been, we would have considered keeping more.  I personally hate having seemingly useless records in the system.