Webinar: Surviving a Clean-Up Without Losing Your Mind

A practical (and sanity-saving) look at deduping records, merging families or households, and steering clear of merge disasters. Learn the strategies and safeguards that keep your data clean and your donors happy while avoiding the most common pitfalls.

Our panelists were absolutely wonderful, thank you to everyone that participated in the webinar! It was lively and informative, all the things that webinars ought to be.

Here are 3 key takeaways from the webinar:

1. The Big Picture

• A clean database is crucial: It saves money on things like direct mail and creates a professional impression with donors.
• Merging is an ongoing process: New data will always introduce duplicates, so it’s not a one-time project.
• Duplicates have many sources: They often originate from data migrations, online forms, and inconsistent data entry.

2. Best Practices for Merging

• Prioritize key records: Focus on merging high-value records and those with recent activity to ensure donor communications are accurate and effective.
• Use specialized tools: Third-party tools like Omatic’s MergeOmatic offer advanced matching capabilities and built-in audit trails that are more robust than native functions.
• Establish a clear policy: Decide on a “survivor record” policy and manually check for any remaining duplicate data after a merge is complete.

3. Advanced Merging Scenarios

• Handle company mergers carefully: Take a case-by-case approach based on how the new entity wants to be recognized.
• Consider record reduction: Tools like Omatic’s List Management can lower database costs by moving non-donor records into a separate, non-billable storage area.
• Merge relationship records with caution: A two-step process using both NXT and database view is often required to ensure all data from participant and relationship records is captured.