Neglecting your database isn’t an option for any organization with a goal of sustainability. If you don’t have time or expertise to manage the important tasks tied to your database, then you may want to consider outsourcing.

Before you can identify the right partner for outsourcing your database management, here are some very important points to consider:

One thing that you can’t control is staff turnover. There are so many reasons why a team member may choose to leave your organization including an attractive job offer from another organization or an opportunity to return to school full time.

Identifying quality prospects or trends in a donor database upon which future solicitation efforts can be based is an exercise most non-profit organizations embark upon once in a great while. Typically, it is done in advance of a major campaign to identify major gift prospects.

Sadly, many institutions opt straight for purchase and/or subscription to elaborate wealth screening systems promising results, not realizing that even the most comprehensive and technically complex quantitative analysis only tells the smallest part of the story - donor capacity. Even those results are dicey at best given the ability for donors to shield their assets and giving history from the public through the use of tools such as donor advised funds or private foundations.

Coming from a healthcare background, members of our staff frequently heard the statement that taking risks with systems risks people’s lives. From our perspective, this is wise advice regardless of the industry. As a technical leader at your non-profit, you have a fiduciary responsibility to your donors. In those rare windows when resources come your way, your only option is success. Far too many technical leaders get shown the door for failed implementations.

Many vendors, new and old, are racing to create a new generation of donor system platforms. We agree it is long overdue. The approaches, target audiences and reasons are varied. The obvious reason is that the current generation of platforms could at best be kindly described as legacy. The not so obvious reasons are that the new generation generally carries with it three new elements – a higher degree of uncertainty, proprietary control, and higher cost.

While we see the economic landscape change literally every week, we spend time with our clients advising them on strategies and solutions to turn their donor database around quickly and consistently.