A Guide to Helping

Cleaning
Nonprofits
Work Smarter
Authors
Donna Caputo
Managing Director

Your Data
Casey Hines
Business
Development Manager
Liz Murray
Consultant
Kaylen Williams
Consultant
Design
Alexandra Davis
Marketing Coordinator
Table of Contents:
Four Causes of Dirty Data and Quick 3
Changes to Make Now

For Good Measure: Sizing Up 5

Data Quality

Long Term Projects for Big Change 7

Data Enrichment Services and What 8

They Mean

2
Four Causes of Dirty Data
Table of Contents:
Before we talk about identifying and fixing the messy data in your
database, let’s go over what common scenarios cause it.

You do things differently now. You use notes for too many
recorded all the “Do Not Mail” flags on the address record that things.
Here’s an example. Let’s say a few years ago, a user

was returned by the PO as undeliverable. This practice was

Recording information in notes that would be better off in
never documented or handed down when a new staff person
coded fields eliminates the ability to find that data and use it
took over the process of dealing with returned mail. The new
effectively. Details will end up buried in the notes, where they
staff person didn’t know to look on the address record, so she
are inaccessible for reporting or search.
started added “Do Not Mail” as a Solicit Code.

Anyone can create a new code. You make up ways to record

record in the database, you are in a heap of trouble. Different information.
If anyone can create a new code for anything they decide to

codes with similar (or the same) meanings are likely lurking in
How do you record the fact that a donor is deceased? We’ve
your database. By having Security that is too loose, you make
seen organizations put the word “Deceased” in the first line of
things more difficult in the long term (even though the loose
the street address, add “Deceased” to the First or Last Name,
rules were originally meant to make things easier).
or create a “Deceased” note—all while they “forget” to check
the “Deceased” flag or checkbox. Don’t make up ways to
record information when your system already provides a
standard way of tracking the data.

3
Try This: 8 changes your team can make right now to
greatly improve your data quality

1 Table of Contents:
Clearly define what your database’s terms/codes mean.

2 Set expectations for what steps should be taken in order to create a new code.

3 Stick to a naming convention, especially for records like appeals or campaigns.

4 Establish rules for data entry and document them.

5 Regulate empty data fields: leave blank? Enter “N/A”?

6 Use a data overlay service to provide enhanced data for your records.

7 Train your users to enter data correctly.

8 Get rid of exports, queries, and report layouts that people don’t use.

4
For Accuracy
Fundraisers need to be able to trust the

Table of Contents:
Good
information stored within your database.
Simply put, without accurate data, your
system is ineffective. Staff will find alternative
ways to store information, such as personal

Measure:
spreadsheets or email folders, because they
know the data is reliable.
A key factor to maintaining accuracy in your
database is through prevention by
Sizing Up Data Quality establishing formalized end user training and
documentation. Users need ongoing training
As guardians of the database, you provide an on the system and access to detailed
essential service to your organization. You are procedure manuals to know how to correctly
responsible for overseeing the data integrity of your
and uniformly enter information into the
fundraising CRM and its population of loyal users.
How can you ensure that the data in your fundraising system.
CRM is “good”? Consider the following attributes Additionally, modern CRMs can help
when striving to evaluate (and articulate!) the quality automate your “housekeeping” activities by
of your data: allowing you to configure custom processes
that run on a schedule based on your needs.

5
 Recency
Fundraisers must keep up-to-date on
donor activities to provide
exceptional donor experiences.
Table of Contents:
When interacting with your
organization, donors expect a
streamlined experience across teams
(e.g. the left arm must know what the
right arm is doing).
As database administrators, you are
in pivotal position to act as the
catalyst in ensuring your data is up-
to-date. Within your direct control,
you can set delivery timelines for
when staff can expect to see various
data types in the system. For
example, staff can expect to see
direct marketing appeals added to
constituent records within 1 week of
the drop-date.
You can additionally work with team
leads to establish data governance
policies that define the
organizational expectations for
timely data entry for staff outside of
your team (e.g. gift entry, contact
reports).
Completeness
Fundraisers need to understand the
full picture behind a donor’s giving
in order to effectively build lasting
relationships. A CRM should allow
fundraisers to efficiently review all
pertinent information about a
donor from a centralized location.
This information allows fundraisers
to cultivate and steward constituents
based on their specific relationship
to your organization. The absence
of information can create confusion
(followed quickly by frustration!) and
can cause staff to make false
assumptions based on limited data.
Measuring your data based on its
accuracy, recency, and
completeness allows you to create
a data governance framework that
goes beyond “good” data. You can
clearly articulate the strengths of
your data (and pat yourself on the
back for a job well done!), and
identify specific priorities to address
as areas of improvement. This will
allow you to develop meaningful
policies and procedures that support
the maintenance of quality donor
data.
6
Long-term projects for dramatically improving and
filtering your unhelpful data.
Table of Contents:
Speak to your leadership.
Get buy-in from the top down.
Help your leadership
understand that poor data
quality leads to poor ROI.
Point to the nitty-gritty: show
the mess, and let them
visualize your process.
Review the database and take
note of its capabilities.
Evaluate the issues within
your database, either on your
own or with a professional.
Once you’ve explored the
data, come up with a plan for
tackling quick-wins with your
team—and a timeline for the
bigger projects.
Get help where you need it!
Whether it’s an assessment,
the development of a clean-
up plan, or some key data
overlays (like NCOA, deceased
identification, or email/phone
appends), reach out for
professional advice.
Create policies, procedures,
and seriousness.
The hardest part shouldn’t be
keeping it clean. Once you’ve
done the work, implement
policies to prevent trouble
again in the future. Don’t let
your hard work go to waste.
7
Data Enrichment Services
Table of Contents:
Data decays at a rate of over 22% every year, not just due to inaccurate or incorrectly-formatted
information, but also because your constituents are constantly moving, marrying, divorcing, and updating
email addresses. These changes make data verification and database cleaning a necessary part of global
business maintenance. You have plenty of options
for making these changes, so let’s break them down
individually...

Data Verification
Clean, verify, standardize, and complete names, phone
numbers, addresses, and emails and match name-to-address
to authenticate the identity of a customer.

Address Verification
Validate, correct, standardize, and transliterate addresses in
over 240 countries.

Email Verification
Verify mailboxes, correct syntax and domains, and detect FCC
mobile domains for full email data quality.

Phone Verification Name Verification

Ensure all phone numbers are valid and callable. In addition, Personalize communications, flag fake or vulgar names, and
you can get number geocoding, suggestions, mobile even identify gender with name parsing, determination, and
verification, caller ID and more. casing.

8
Data Enrichment
Add missing information for omni-channel success through

Table of
improved segmentation, insight, and personalization.

Demographics
Append important constituent information like gender, email
addresses, mailing addresses, phone numbers, do-not-call
information, and more.

Firmographics
Utilize firmographic data for over 25 million businesses,
including: employee size (range), employee sales revenue
(range), email addresses, mailing addresses, phone numbers,
fax numbers, SIC coding, NAICS coding and contact names/
titles.

Social Media

Updating Services
Enhance your data with information from 20 different top
social networks, like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and more.

U.S. Property Data
Get U.S. property and mortgage data for over 140 million U.S.
businesses and homes, including building information, value,
sales history, and more.
JCA helps identify movers in your list and updates their
address information so you can keep a clean, connected list
of customers and prospects.
NCOA & International NCOA
Identify and update your consitutent address changes with
48 month NCOA history. Available for U.S., Canadian, and
international change-of-address.

mCOA & pCOA (Non USPS)

Reach the additional 40% of movers who did not report their
move to the USPS, with address data going back up to 30
years.

9
Location Services
JCA’s location services help you perform accurate spatial

Table of Contents:
analysis and mapping, as well as improve sales and
marketing decisions, through geocoding, reverse geocoding,
and IP location services.

Geocoding
Get precise, plotted latitude/longitude coordinates down to
the rooftop level.

IP Location
Identify your visitors’ exact location based on unobtrusive IP
location.

Reverse Geocoding
Append address data to latitude/longitude coordinates and
address key for data enrichment.

Matching Services
JCA’s matching services give you the power to remove
duplicates, find near matches, and define relationships
between records—easily and quickly.

Survivorship/Golden Record
Determine the most accurate view of every customer—also
known as the Golden Record.

Advanced Matching
Dedupe even your closest matches with advanced fuzzy
matching algorithms and deep domain knowledge.

10
Need help?
Contact us.
Kate Mead, PMP
Director of Professional Services
kate.mead@jcainc.com
212.981.8438

jcainc.com/contact
jcainc.com/data-enrichment
 We can help! Learn about our
data cleaning services and more at:
jcainc.com/data-enrichment