Data Hygiene Matters: Seven Steps to Strengthen Your Advancement Database
By McKenzie Diehm, Senior Consultant
In advancement, your database is the engine that powers your team’s ability to identify prospects, personalize outreach, measure performance, and ultimately generate more philanthropic revenue for transformational impact at your school. After more than a decade working in education fundraising operations and analytics, I’ve seen one truth play out over and over again:
A clean database empowers fundraising. A messy database silently damages fundraising efforts. At its basest level, a CRM’s purpose is to build affinity. When a prospect’s information is inaccurate or incomplete, you risk hindering or damaging your chance to build a deep and meaningful relationship with them. (We’ve all received those curt reminders that a separated couple has received a joint mailing!) As you prepare for the new year, here are seven practical steps your team can take to strengthen your CRM and set your fundraisers up for success.
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Check For Duplicate Records
Duplicate records undermine data integrity more than almost any other issue. They distort giving totals, create confusion for frontline fundraisers, and make stewardship more difficult than it needs to be.
Run duplicate checks regularly—not once a year, but as part of a routine. Most systems offer automated or semi-automated duplicate detection; use it, fine-tune it, and treat resolution as a priority, not an afterthought.
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Run Your Database Through a Deceased Record Finder
Few things erode donor trust faster than inappropriate outreach. Running your database through a deceased record finder protects your institution from wasting resources, but even more importantly helps prevent embarrassing or difficult donor-family interactions.
You do not have to screen your entire constituent database at one time. You may choose to start with alumni, donors, and parents over a certain age threshold, and then expand by segment as time and budget allow.
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Run Your Database Through an Address Validation Service
Accurate contact information is foundational to strong engagement. An address validation or National Change of Address (NCOA) service helps ensure your mailings reach the right households and reduces wasted print and postage costs.
Beyond physical addresses, take time to verify phone numbers, email bounce rates, and communication preferences. In today’s multichannel environment, clean contact data dramatically improves your ability to reach constituents efficiently.
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Ensure Alumni Records Are Complete
At colleges, degree, class year, major, and minor fields are often overlooked, but they’re essential data points for segmentation, outreach, and volunteer recruitment. At independent schools, you won’t record a major or minor, but you should record athletic teams or other points of interest.
If you’re missing this information, prioritize a cleanup project—many institutions can fill gaps through registrar exports or historical records. At independent schools, you may have to manually go through past yearbooks to gather information.
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Confirm Current Parent–Student Relationships
Clear household and relationship information is critical for independent schools and many colleges. Without accurate parent–student relationships, you lose information for stewardship and the ability to accurately personalize messages.
Make sure each current parent has an active student relationship attached in your CRM.
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Develop a Process Document for Data Entry Standards
One of the biggest threats to long-term data integrity is a lack of data entry standards.
Create a data standards guide that defines required fields, formatting rules (phone numbers, addresses, salutations), what belongs in a contact report/interaction note, how to record notes and proposals, and who is responsible for entering or approving which data.
This document ensures continuity as staff turn over and it preserves institutional memory in your CRM instead of someone’s head.
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Conduct Periodic Database Reviews
Building off of creating a process document, your data hygiene is not a one-time project. Schedule regular audits that include random record sampling, contact detail verification, review of prospect statuses, and analysis of missing or incomplete fields. Less regularly, run your database through the aforementioned third party services.
Whether you are a private liberal arts college, a large research university, or an independent school, strengthening your database is one of the most cost-effective ways to strengthen your fundraising program.
If your team needs support auditing your database, developing standards, or building metrics that drive performance, AdvancementEDU is here to help.
McKenzie Diehm brings over a decade of expertise in educational development, having served both small liberal arts colleges and large AAU-member institutions. Holding an M.B.A. in Finance and Data Analytics/Business Intelligence, she specializes in prospect research, prospect management, CRM best practices, and fundraising analytics. McKenzie has developed fundraiser metric matrices at two separate institutions, tracking critical KPIs to drive performance. Her work has supported over $700 million in funds raised. In addition, she has overseen the development of CRM training modules at two separate institutions, increasing data literacy for frontline fundraisers. At AdvancementEDU, she delivers customized, data-driven solutions to empower fundraisers, data analysts, and prospect development staff, helping clients exceed their fundraising goals.