Independent Age
A supporter database audit was conducted on over 240,000 records and allowed the charity to identify that just under 10% of their supporters were goneaways, over 4% were flagged as deceased and just under 3% of their supporters could be re-activated with a new forwarding address.
Although known as Independent Age since 2005, The Charity traces its roots back to 1863, when the United Kingdom Beneficent Association (UKBA) was established. UKBA was incorporated under the Royal Charter to become RUKBA, and later merged with two other charities, Counsel and Care and the Universal Beneficent Society (UBS). Today Independent Age is helping to build a better future for older people in the UK.
Challenge
Independent Age have a significant supporter database, and had traditionally cleansed their data for specific campaigns. However, Peter Doonican, Head of CRM decided to embark on a wider data quality strategy and audit their entire supporter database. To assist with this project, they turned to Data8.
In the first instance, the objectives for the charity were very clear – what does the data quality for the entire supporter database look like? What steps would need to be taken to improve and enhance the overall quality of their data, specifically the address details of their supporters? Peter also needed to gain the buy-in of the trustees of the charity in order to see the potential ROI in assessing data quality at Independent Age.
Solution
The first step for the Charity was to conduct a supporter database audit on their entire database. This gave them a high level view of potential quality issues within their CRM. The audit is a free service that produces a detailed report allowing charities to identify deceased, movers, and goneaways, as well as highlighting any address quality issues and potential duplicates.
Results
The audit was conducted on over 240,000 records and allowed the charity to identify that just under 10% of their supporters were goneaways, over 4% were flagged as deceased and just under 3% of their supporters could be re-activated with a new forwarding address. The key outcome was to ensure that they were working with PAF Validated addresses and all suppression and mover flags were imported back onto their CRM.
The charity is now looking to the next step in their data quality journey, by moving from data cleansing on a periodic basis to proactively preventing data quality issues at the point of capture. To achieve this, the charity is working closely with us and our validation services.
The audit was conducted on over 240,000 records and allowed the charity to identify that just under 10% of their supporters were gone-aways, over 4% were flagged as deceased and just under 3% of their supporters could be re-activated with a new forwarding address.
