March 21, 2023
Nonprofit Technology & Fundraising Blog
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November 28, 2007 | Categories Donor Management, DonorPerfect Fundraising Software
Over the last several months and with our new releases of Version 9 and DonorPerfect, we had something happened that I didn’t predict- we sold too much software.
Why? Because most of our new clients needed data conversions, and though we have a full time department with dedicated data conversion specialists, it was clear that our backlog was getting too large. Yes, we hired 2 more people, but we also knew it would take some time to get them up to speed.
Enter in the old guys. Yep- us old timers that have been around since the beginning. For those scoring at home, that’s myself and Mike Sernoff.
In the beginning of DonorPerfect, about 12 years ago, Mike and I did ALL of the conversions. Back then data had to be converted on old 486’s (and even a few 386’s), downloaded to Floppy 3.5 inch disk drives, and physically mailed via UPS to the client. Many nights were spent working until the magic time of 8:05pm, when it was absolutely, positively the last drop off time for our packages. I believe Mike even invited the UPS driver to his wedding.
Flash forward to today, and our immediate short term solution to our sales ‘problem’ was to assign several conversions to Mike and I to complete- we had to get them done one way or another.
One of my conversions ended up being a poster child for why it’s so important to treat data conversions as a serious endeavor to finally clean up your data. What you want to avoid, at all costs , is GIEGO – Garbage In Equals Garbage Out. That’s why it’s almost never a good idea to use an import utility to load your data the first time- no matter how sophisticated the import module is, it will never catch the majority of problems inherent to all data conversions.
Here’s a short list of all the problems I found with the data conversion I was working on:
Luckily, as part of our standard conversion process, I was able to correct all these problems so that the client was left with a very clean system, ready to work for them instead of against them.
That’s why it’s so important to treat the data conversion process as a golden opportunity to improve your fundraising results- it’s an investment that pays off!
Thanks!
Thanks!
It really depends on the nature of the problem(s) you are having. Some of them can be cleaned up more or less automatically- others may have to be cleaned up manually.
I encourage you to send an email to Linda Wagner at lwagner@donorperfect.com. Linda is the Data Conversion Department head and can follow-up on your request.
It really depends on the nature of the problem(s) you are having. Some of them can be cleaned up more or less automatically- others may have to be cleaned up manually.
I encourage you to send an email to Linda Wagner at lwagner@donorperfect.com. Linda is the Data Conversion Department head and can follow-up on your request.