[Lnc-business] upgrade to membership database & record reduction

Wes Benedict wes.benedict at lp.org
Wed Jan 25 17:02:10 EST 2017


I'm addressing several urgent things but will try to comment more soon. 
Short answer is sounds like a good idea.

Wes Benedict, Executive Director
Libertarian National Committee, Inc.
1444 Duke St., Alexandria, VA 22314
(202) 333-0008 ext. 232, wes.benedict at lp.org
facebook.com/libertarians @LPNational
Join the Libertarian Party at: http://lp.org/membership

On 1/24/2017 5:25 PM, Daniel Hayes wrote:
> Wes,
>
> Thanks for that email.
> As you know I am pushing, if technically feasible for our state 
> affiliates to be given relevant access and use of Raisers Edge NXT. 
>  Andy Burns, our Affiliate Development specialist believes that the 
> the best way he can help affiliates is to give those that are willing 
> integrated, appropriate access to the national data and an integrated 
> CRM.  RE NXT is what we have available to us and I know he wants to 
> work with it to see if it would indeed be of use to our affiliates.
>
> I know that Andy would like to assist with getting RE NXT up and 
> running.  If affiliates get access at some point it's going to be Andy 
> that is assisting them if not outright implementing it for them. 
>  Wouldn't it make sense for him to help with getting RE up and running 
> for the National Party?  I would assume that you would understand his 
> frustration as he feels that he can help and at the same time gain a 
> greater understanding of how to set up RE and how to use it for if and 
> when we roll it out to various states.
>
> It was just a short time ago that you were not allowed to be involved 
> with getting the National website up and running.  I am sure your 
> input would have been valuable in it being done better and more 
> efficiently.  I would think it might be the same with letting Andy 
> help with getting RE up and running especially with regards to 
> deploying it in the future for affiliates.  Of course as a contractor 
> he sets his tasks and schedule in order to achieve the end goal but I 
> am pretty certain that he considers this needed to reach his objective 
> of developing affiliates.
>
> As chairman of the affiliate support committee I feel comfortable 
> saying that data and the ability and knowledge of how to use it is the 
> most universal need expressed by our affiliates.
>
> It's  possible and likely that RE won't be able to meet all the data 
> needs for all the affiliates but it will help to provide an donation 
> management solution that is integrated between affiliates and national 
> for those willing to participate.  It MIGHT however prove to be able 
> to do everything needed.  The only way to know is to try and let our 
> Affiliate Development specialist assist in getting it up and running.
>
> Daniel Hayes
> LNC At Large Member
>
> On Jan 23, 2017, at 10:20 AM, Wes Benedict <wes.benedict at lp.org> wrote:
>
>> Robert Kraus, please forward this note to the state chairs and state 
>> database admins.
>>
>> LNC Regional representatives, you may want to forward this directly 
>> to your regions as well.
>>
>> ===================
>>
>> *SUMMARY*
>>
>> State Chairs and database admins:
>>
>> We're planning a minor upgrade to the LNC's Raiser's Edge database 
>> system over the next couple of months and as part of that expect to 
>> prune around 200,000 of the lowest quality records from our 500,000+ 
>> record database.
>>
>> No action is required from you on this, and at least in the short run 
>> you should not notice any changes in how we use and share data beyond 
>> the fact that the spreadsheets we email to you will be shorter.
>>
>> *MORE BACKGROUND & DETAIL*
>>
>> For over ten years, the national LP has used a membership database 
>> program called Raiser's Edge, a system provided by the company 
>> Blackbaud <https://www.blackbaud.com/>https://www.blackbaud.com/.
>>
>> For most of those ten years we've used one of the most stripped down 
>> entry-level versions of the software. The program is installed and 
>> run on servers at our headquarters office. Among all of staff's other 
>> various duties, those servers are maintained, backed up, 
>> troubleshooted, etc., by staff. New versions of the software are 
>> downloaded and installed by staff. Occasionally, when the servers 
>> keep crashing or what have you, and staff can't get things working 
>> with the help of hardware and Blackbaud or Microsoft tech support, we 
>> bring in other experts and pay them by the hour to troubleshoot them 
>> for us. The two servers we use today I believe were bought in 2010, 
>> back when I was frustrated over how slow our program ran. Those new 
>> servers made a huge difference, but are getting old again.
>>
>> We'll be upgrading to Raiser's Edge NXT 
>> <https://www.blackbaud.com/fundraising-and-relationship-management/raisers-edge-nxt>. 
>> The program will be hosted (or installed) on servers run by 
>> Blackbaud. Raiser's Edge will be "on the cloud" on servers run and 
>> maintained by Blackbaud, instead of on servers in our basement that 
>> are run and maintained by my overworked and under-specialized staff.
>>
>> We've recently hired a couple of people to help with fundraising. By 
>> having Raisers Edge hosted on the cloud, we'll have an easier time 
>> giving access to people outside of the LPHQ office, and those offsite 
>> users will experience a better user interface than what we can do for 
>> them today with the program in our basement.
>>
>> It is possible that we will be able to offer access to state leaders 
>> to their portions of the membership database, and also possible that 
>> we'll choose to add additional features in the future, but I don't 
>> want to promise any of that at this time. I've seen too many projects 
>> and programs over promise and under-deliver, and I don't want to do 
>> that right off the bat.
>>
>> Another key feature we'll gain is we'll be able to embed donation 
>> forms directly into our websites. Many donations will be processed 
>> directly by the new software, rather than having to import them from 
>> our website, or type them in manually.
>>
>> Some of our renewal processes can be streamlined. To send renewal 
>> emails, our current process is to download a list from Raisers Edge, 
>> modify the columns of data, then upload that list into our email 
>> blast service, iContact, send the renewal email to those contacts, 
>> and the recipients then donate at LP.org <http://LP.org>/membership. 
>> We then have to manually link those donations to the members record 
>> in Raisers Edge, which is easy for unique names like Nicholas 
>> Sarwark, but more difficult for the 65 John Smith's in our database, 
>> and the people like Robert Benedict and Wes Benedict who sometimes 
>> use their middle names. Additionally, it's particularly hard when one 
>> of those Smiths moves to a new address and we don't always know if 
>> they are new person, or an old member renewing at a new address. With 
>> Raisers Edge NXT, we'll be able to email people from directly within 
>> Raisers Edge NXT with links to donate that match the donation exactly 
>> with the existing record.  We'll save time, increase accuracy, and 
>> cut down on the number of customer service complaints.
>>
>> Our old (current) version of Rasiers Edge costs us a flat fee per 
>> year. The new version will be based on how many records we have in 
>> the database. For that reason, we've taken a close look at our 
>> records to see what we could purge to keep our costs in check.
>>
>> Our practice for decades has been to never delete a record. That 
>> means if someone went to our website in 1996 to request information, 
>> but never donated and never left a valid email address or phone 
>> number, that record could still be in our database. If someone added 
>> a contact as part of a joke in 1997, that contact is probably still 
>> in there.
>>
>> We don't plan to purge any records for anyone that has ever given 
>> money to the national LP (donors 1971-2017).
>> We don't plan to purge any records for anyone that has ever "signed 
>> the pledge" and is therefore at least a non-dues-paying member of the 
>> party (members 1971-2017), unless they are deceased or have requested 
>> to be dropped from our membership database.
>> We don't plan to purge any records for anyone that has a valid email 
>> address (emails 199?-2017).
>>
>> We do plan to purge people that were added on or before 12/31/2007, 
>> yet have never donated, have never "signed the membership pledge", 
>> have no valid email address, and have no valid phone number (around 
>> 200,000 contacts).
>>
>> Purging these low-value contacts would probably be worth doing 
>> whether were upgrading our database or not, simply to cut out the 
>> clutter, both for the national LP's benefit, and for the state and 
>> local affiliates that use our data. Removing these contacts will save 
>> national and state leaders time and money by not wasting resources 
>> contacting them.
>>
>> Our plan is to purge those 200,000 records and save them in a 
>> spreadsheet. We'll have the option to re-import them later if we 
>> change our minds. Additionally, we'll break up the 200,000 records 
>> into batches that we'll forward on to the respective states.
>>
>> I think it's possible that if a handful of states prefer to retain 
>> the low-value obsolete data in Raiser's Edge, we can probably 
>> accommodate that. If you want to retain your old contacts in Raisers 
>> Edge, please send a note to Robert.Kraus at lp.org with your request.
>>
>> If it has been a long time since you have sent the records from your 
>> state's database that aren't already in the national database for 
>> integration into the national LP database, please send that to 
>> Robert.Kraus at lp.org as well.
>>
>> Some people may be interested in whether or not we should be sticking 
>> with Raiser's Edge, or should we move to SalesForce, NationBuilder, 
>> CiviCRM, or something else. My thoughts are that most major 
>> membership databases would be fine with me. At the risk of pointing 
>> the finger at myself, our staff, and the LNC, I don't think the data 
>> and information challenges we have faced over the years are due to 
>> the brand of software we use. I can use most any major brand of 
>> software. Our challenges are that we haven't done as much as we could 
>> to maintain our data, share our data, learn how to use our systems, 
>> train our affiliates where applicable, and add features to whatever 
>> software packages we use.
>>
>> Upgrading Raisers Edge is easier than switching to a different 
>> vendor. I'm afraid that if we simply switched to a different vendor, 
>> we'd be too busy with the conversion to focus on upgrading our actual 
>> procedures and practices. Garbage-in, garbage-out, garbage moved next 
>> door, or whatever.
>>
>> Upgrading Raiser's Edge today won't preclude us from moving to 
>> something else in the future. Upgrading successfully and adding some 
>> features today, might make it more clear in the future that something 
>> else is better for us.
>>
>> As we work on this, we may find the need to adjust our plans. We'll 
>> try to keep you informed along the way.
>>
>> Thanks,
>> -- 
>> Wes Benedict, Executive Director
>> Libertarian National Committee, Inc.
>> 1444 Duke St., Alexandria, VA 22314
>> (202) 333-0008 ext. 232,wes.benedict at lp.org
>> facebook.com <http://facebook.com>/libertarians @LPNational
>> Join the Libertarian Party at:http://lp.org/membership
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