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Robert Kraus, please forward this note to the state chairs and state
database admins. <br>
<br>
LNC Regional representatives, you may want to forward this directly
to your regions as well.<br>
<p>===================<br>
</p>
<p><b>SUMMARY</b></p>
<p>State Chairs and database admins:<br>
</p>
<p>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.<br>
</p>
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. <br>
<br>
<b>MORE BACKGROUND & DETAIL</b><br>
<br>
For over ten years, the national LP has used a membership database
program called Raiser's Edge, a system provided by the company <a
href="https://www.blackbaud.com/">Blackbaud </a><a
class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.blackbaud.com/">https://www.blackbaud.com/</a>.
<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
We'll be upgrading to <a
href="https://www.blackbaud.com/fundraising-and-relationship-management/raisers-edge-nxt">Raiser's
Edge NXT</a>. 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. <br>
<br>
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. <br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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. <br>
<br>
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/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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
We don't plan to purge any records for anyone that has ever given
money to the national LP (donors 1971-2017).<br>
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.<br>
We don't plan to purge any records for anyone that has a valid email
address (emails 199?-2017).<br>
<br>
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).<br>
<br>
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. <br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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 <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated"
href="mailto:Robert.Kraus@lp.org">Robert.Kraus@lp.org</a> with
your request.<br>
<br>
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 <a
class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:Robert.Kraus@lp.org">Robert.Kraus@lp.org</a>
as well.<br>
<br>
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. <br>
<br>
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. <br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
As we work on this, we may find the need to adjust our plans. We'll
try to keep you informed along the way.<br>
<br>
Thanks,<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Wes Benedict, Executive Director
Libertarian National Committee, Inc.
1444 Duke St., Alexandria, VA 22314
(202) 333-0008 ext. 232, <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:wes.benedict@lp.org">wes.benedict@lp.org</a>
facebook.com/libertarians @LPNational
Join the Libertarian Party at: <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://lp.org/membership">http://lp.org/membership</a></pre>
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