CRM Hygiene From Day One
Whatever system you inherited, make it trustworthy: clean records, simple codes, and reports you can stand behind.
Through the Environment lens
Your membership file and your advocacy file are two different populations wearing the same name field: a petition signer is not a donor, and coding the difference cleanly keeps a mailing list from becoming a fundraising list by accident. DAF and stock gifts show up more often here than the sector's modest average gift would suggest, and a c3/c4 fund code is a compliance flag, not a preference, since routing a gift to the wrong entity is a real problem, not a hygiene one.
Continuing education
1.00 points · non-fundraising
Current and Prospective Donor Research · Leadership and Management
Learning objectives
- State the four jobs a small shop's CRM does, remember giving, remember people, find groups, and tell the truth in reports, and the two habits that keep it doing them: everything goes in, and what goes in follows the rules.
- Build a seven-code scheme covering fund, appeal, gift type, donor type, contact flags, relationship role, and acknowledgment, with year-first names and a one-page definitions sheet, and refuse sentiment and speculative wealth codes.
- Run a four-week cleanup sprint that backs up the file, counts what is there, perfects the top 50 records, merges the duplicates that matter, and quarantines inactive records under an INACTIVE tag.
- Apply a posted gift entry standard that matches donors to existing records first, honors memo-line restrictions, handles DAF, match, tribute, stock, cash, and pledge gifts correctly, and reconciles with finance to the dollar each month.
Designed for CFRE continuing education. Not yet accepted; no CFRE points can be claimed.
Lessons
- 15 min
Video lesson
Your database is your memory
II See · Current and Prospective Donor Research
- 20 min
Field guide· PDF
The minimum viable coding scheme
II See · Leadership and Management
- 25 min
Worksheet· XLSX
Data cleanup sprint plan
II See · Current and Prospective Donor Research
- 10 min
Template· DOCX
Gift entry standards checklist
V Receive · Leadership and Management
This is members-only material.
Members get every lesson, template, and worksheet in all eight tracks, plus the support to put them to work in your shop.
More in this stage
Fundamentals & Ethics
How Fundraising Works
The map you weren't given: where the money comes from, why people give, and what a development program is made of.
Major & Principal Gifts
Your First Donor Conversations
Scripts, practice, and nerve for the conversations that fund your mission: discovery visits, thank-you calls, and your first ask.
Annual Giving & Direct Response
The Annual Fund, Explained
Appeals, segments, and the giving calendar: how recurring annual revenue gets built, one season at a time.