Matthew Mielcarek is Vice President, Analytics & Insights Strategy at Pursuant. Matthew works with nonprofit organizations to support short and long term strategic campaign planning. The focus is to deliver donor file assessments, strategic segmentation strategy and market opportunity analyses to drive fundraising and donor growth. Matthew’s team applies business intelligence and industry best practices to create, execute, and analyze breakthrough action plans that increase brand awareness, drive retention and loyalty.

Drawing the Line with Donor Data During CRM Migration

A new donor database CRM unlocks the potential for nonprofits to deliver exceptional experiences to their donors.  Modern features enable fundraisers to track all aspects of relationship building through the design and execution of sophisticated donor engagement plans. However, for those in the Development Office, a fundraising technology switch can also draw out as much anxiety as promise.

The Challenging Data Dilemma: What Stays? What Goes?

One of the biggest questions that organizations face during a CRM migration is where to draw the line when taking data to the new platform.  Is a constituent in or out?  What criteria should be used to qualify worthiness?  And most importantly, will the decision by Development be made based on constituent value – or more arbitrarily based on record date or most recent activity?

The performance of your new CRM should fly and legacy data certainly has the potential to bog it down.  However, many organizations often have decades worth of constituent, transaction, and solicitation records within their legacy systems. All of these donor records contain value, but performance and data storage cost savings must be balanced with the ability to have all data readily at hand.

Data archiving serves to keep CRM platforms nimble prioritizing only the “most relevant data” — but involves myriad technology solutions, each with varied long-term implications for accessibility to that data.  Without guidance from Development, these performance-optimizing strategies can leave less engaged constituents – including lapsed donors – orphaned from a new system.

Three Tips to Support Development-Driven CRM Migrations

So how can Development leaders who are part of a CRM migration ensure that their input is considered as part of decision-making?  The answer lies in knowing your constituents and approaching a CRM migration with deep insights on your donor file. From there, Development can participate in decision-making without disruption to a fundraising program that remains in flight.

Here are three ways Development professionals can ensure the data transition to a new CRM doesn’t disrupt any donor relationships:

1. Take a current-state snapshot of your donor file. Identify current active donors and revenue for every level of your donor pyramid. Identify lapsed or unengaged constituents by last activity date.
2. Seek to understand donor migration dynamics. Gain a complete picture of donor trends and your coverage ratio as donors enter your file, upgrade or lapse. This deep analysis ensures that multi-year fundraising trends and insights are captured while data is available in one place – and identifies growth trends that should receive attention to continue.
3. Explore data hygiene.  Research contact-ability of each of your donors through postal mail and digital means. Determine contact record completeness and make a duplicate record assessment.

Each of these steps are designed to empower nonprofit Development leaders to make informed CRM migration decisions.

Get to Know the Donors Behind Your Data

There is never a bad time to leverage the data you have to learn more about your donors. At Pursuant, our Analytics, Insights, and Experience team focuses specifically on helping our clients gain more actionable insights from your data.

Whether you’re planning to migrate to a new CRM or trying to evaluate the effectiveness of your current fundraising program, our 3D Assessment file analysis was created to help you learn more about you donors and get a comprehensive perspective on the overall health of your fundraising program.

Click here to learn more about Pursuant’s 3D Assessment today.>>