Fundraisers Getting Friendly with Fundraising Data

As a nonprofit fundraiser you may avoid data and your organization's CRM like the plague, but they can and should be your friends.

If this is you, there are some simple steps you can take to nurture and grow a friendship with your organization's prospect and donor data. Here are three places to start today.

1. Pull a list of your prospects.
   Lists can be called different things depending on the CRM your organization uses. They may be called, among other things, a query, custom export, custom query, report, or just plain ole list. No matter the name, know how to pull it on your own. If you don't know how to do this, ask one of your more data savvy teammates to show you. It won't take too long and the return on this small investment will be huge.
2. Run a progress report.
   Be sure you know how to run a year-to-date fundraising progress report directly from the system on your own. This may be in the form of a traditional report, a dashboard, or other type of output. Again, if you don't know how to do this, ask for help.
3. Lend a hand.
   Ask the person in charge of your database what you can do to help the data in your prospect portfolio be as clean and up-to-date as possible. Work with your organization's "data person" on a simple cleanup plan you can help implement for the data you use most.

These steps will help you become a more data-friendly fundraiser, not to mention the good vibes it will create with your data team.