Hey Reader,

Somewhere in your CRM right now, I'll bet there's a donor listed under three different names.

One is “Bob Smith,” one is “Robert Smith,” and another is “Smith, Bobby” with a trailing space. That latest donor report you pulled says you acquired two new donors this spring? Probably not.

I chatted with a client recently who told me she was thrilled with their recent spring campaign numbers. Open rates were up. Gifts were coming in. Or so it seemed. She revealed that when she sat down to plan a stewardship email sequence for first-time donors, something felt off.

She’d downloaded a list of every donor who gave for the first time. There were 47 names. But as she scrolled through the recent list, she kept recognizing people she'd thanked personally years ago.

Some were showing up as new because they'd used a different email address. Others had moved and updated their mailing info, which had accidentally created a duplicate record.

Of those 47 “new” donors, she estimated that a third weren't new at all. Sound familiar?

It matters more than it might seem. First-time donors who don't receive the right welcome sequence are far less likely to give again.

And if you're sending a “thank you for your first gift” email to someone who's been giving for six years, you're telling that donor you don't know them. In online fundraising, feeling unknown is a fast track to the unsubscribe button.

As the director she dug deeper, she found a few root causes: Volunteers who entered gifts at the spring event used nicknames; the donation platform and CRM were not syncing; and no one had ever established data standards for entering names or addresses.

None of these were massive failures, but small errors, accumulated over time, undermine the accuracy of every report and every future campaign.

Cleaning data doesn't feel urgent because the damage is often invisible. It’s challenging to see the donor who quietly stopped giving because you kept sending them the wrong message. Or that lapsed donor you never re-engaged because they appeared as a brand-new contact.

Not only are you losing a donor, but you're losing trust, one mismatch at a time.

Here's the bigger picture: clean data isn't about fixing today's campaign. It's creating the foundation that makes everything you want to do in the future possible.

You don’t need a giant database overhaul, but working toward three new habits, done consistently, can help you begin and lead to a cleaner CRM.

1. Choose one data field as your unique donor identifier. An email address works great for most organizations. Before any campaign, run a quick duplicate check filtered by first and last name, and write down a simple data entry standard. Check for email bounces. Create a one-page document that says “always use full first name, no nicknames” and explains how it makes a difference when volunteers are entering gifts at an event.
2. Segmentation. Sending different messages to first-time donors versus long-time supporters only works if you can trust your data to tell you who's who.
3. Automation. A welcome sequence, a new donor sequence, a lapsed donor re-engagement flow, and the recurring giving asks will only work if the records triggering those emails are accurate.

This week, try pulling a donor list from the last 12 months and filtering for any email addresses that appear more than once. Find the duplicates and either remove them or combine them to add additional information. Even if it’s only a few, you'll have a cleaner list of data than most organizations.

While you're in there, if you collect first names, make sure to update the names. Hint: it’s a great way to connect with your donors when you ask them.

These small habits, maintained consistently, can make everything else run cleaner. The organizations that can do more with less and still reach the right donors with the right message at the right time.

If you're not sure how to run a report like this one in your CRM, or you'd like a simple data entry standards template to share with your team, just reply to this email. I read every response.

Cleaning data may seem like boring work, but imagine how it can pay off across every campaign you run.

Link 💜

I can't say enough about Meena Das. She's an expert and wonderful human who cares about the 'data and it's intention and purpose to be useful." Check out her website Namaste Data and learn all there is to know about data, equity, and inclusion.

When your data is clean, this tool works way better. Keysearch is an affordable SEO tool for fast-growing websites. Research keywords, analyze competitors, and write content that grows your website traffic, even in the new AI era.

From meme generator to gif creator, Imgflip is the fastest one on the planet. Have fun while adding text to images or memes.