Dear all,

I have been asked to produce a audit report on the data quality of Raisers Edge. I have begun to create queries for the most obvious things like title missing, postcode blank, addressee/Salutation blank etc... Is there anything else outside of the norm I could include in my report to determine whether we need to pay for the clean up to be done externally.

All advice will be appreciated.

Many Thanks

Ryan Abbott

Really depends on what you define as an Organisation as 'missing' or 'unclean' data.   Seems you've cover the basic stuff, which I would hope you didn't have many that hit those criteria :)  If you are getting a lot of hits on the queries you've mention and still getting new ones, I'd look to implement some serious data entry procedures.  In the database I would mark those key areas as essential, so you can't even create/save a new record without them being present.
 

Now for Database cleaning, I would look at cleaning out dead wood.  As I'm sure you're a fund raising Organisation I'd look to clean out those that haven't giving in a finite period, say in the last 3+ years, marking them as archived. 

Andrew, I am going to have to disagree with you on some of your points.  I think it is essential to have a complete list of queries to run regularly to find errors in the system.  And there is very often no way to stop RE from accepting incorrect data and human error becomes a factor.  Yes, where you can you should make data required but even though it is required does not mean it was entered correctly!  RE is also missing a huge checks and balances with its business rule where it runs only on opening a record not on closing - so conditionally required fields (based on internal policies i.e. records with a foundation constituent code must have a foundation type attribute.) do not get caught until either a) you open the record again or b) you run an audit query.

I completely disagree about cleaning out dead wood.  I believe there is absolutely no value in marking records as inactive simply due to inactivity.  It does not make searching quicker or have any other value.  Every time I run a query for a mailing, prospect meeting, phone-a-thon I am using giving dates as criteria - sometimes 3 years or sometimes 5 or more when we are focusing on reactivation.  I keep them as active records to be included in these pulls whenever needed.  I only inactivate records where a constituent has asked to be "removed" fromt he database or receive "no contact".

Ryan, I have about 10 queries that I check on a daily bases to do cleanup for our data base, but two of them really help:   

One query is filtered on the field "Constituent" and I pull in "last changed by" - exclude yourself

then the other queries is filtered on the field "Constituent" and I pull in "Added by" - exclude yourself

With these two queries I can see who in the office has set up a brand new constituent and also see who makes

changes on a constitutents record.  These are the ones I check top to bottom.  I'm the only one in the office who can enter gifts though, so any errors there, then I know it's me who made the error.  Hope this helps a little bit

Lynn Taniguchi

Have you considered the integrity of the tables being used. ie constituent, attributes, funds, etc. Our are all being used incorrectly so need to be revamped and cleaned up.

Hi Lynn, I hope you don't mind me asking you a question directly after reading your post. I work in the Development Dept. at Cheshire Medical Center and I'm incharge of managing the database and all gift entry. It's daunting sometimes and I've only been using the program for a year. I find it very frustrating and would love to get some advise on cleanup and constituency codes that you may use given that you are in healthcare as well. I have about 350 records that aren't coded because I either forgot to add them or they had never been coded. Do you have any advise on types of  codes that work for you and the org? I've set up all records with giving history with a "donor" code. However, I've been reading other posts and found that other RE users disagree strongly and use much more specific codes for each record.

 What are your thoughts on this topic?

Thanks,
Martha Devlin Krishna

We are a Hospital Foundation and the codes that we use the most are:

 Individual for those people that we get from county records, health screenings, etc.

MasterKey-which is our donor giving program

Hospital Board Member

Foundation Board Member

Volunteer

Honor/Memorial Donor are those that give a tribute gift and that we are not going to solicit again because it was a one time thing

Honor/memorial record is for those people that have tribute gifts

 I know some will not agree with me but those have worked really good for us.

I work with 5 hospitals, 28 clincis , etc. and we have a bit of a different system than Rhonda.

'Donor' we use for individual donors that may have been patients, etc. that have a 'general public' relationship with us.

We have a few different levels of employees (and also affiliates employees as constituency codes)

Board Members are a constituency code (encompassing all Boards but the specific Board detail is housed elsewhere)

Corporations, Foundations, Estates, not for profits, matching gift orgs, Deceased etc. are all codes as well

Individual & Organization are constituent record types so i don't feel a need to categorize that way. I also don't feel a need to categorize what I consider gift types or appeals' as constituenct codes - i.e. Memorial Donors. I use solicit codes to use as an indication whether or not to mail to someone going forward.

We use the codes most in demographical/statistical reporting so you may want to base your constituency codes on how you want to report historically and going forward. Things like measuring employee participation, etc. BTW I use a deceased constituency code in addition to the deceased checkmark so that when these reports are run management can easily see what percentage of gifts are not renewable resources.

Hope this helps

Thank you all for your great suggestions and advise. This helps me a lot to try and figure out what I have and the best way to categorize my records. Thanks,

Martha Devlin Krishna