Working with the nonprofit sector for the past 30+ years has been—without a doubt— both a rewarding and frustrating experience. 

I have often told my clients that I should pay them as I enjoy the challenge of helping them to achieve their goals. In 2012, I began writing a book based on a course we ran called “Four Days”. The premise of the course was as follows: If your fund development department quit today, how well would your charity be able to continue its fundraising programs?  

I recently had an experience where my medical history became very important information for my doctor and their team. I thought about all the relevant information they had available that assisted them in making positive decisions for my care. Then, I wondered what would have been the outcome had my doctor and their medical team used different methods to capture the information they were accessing?

For the charitable sector the issue of capturing and maintaining relevant information has been a challenge since well before 2012 and unfortunately has not improved. If anything, there is a decline in the idea of building a knowledge-base of donors, funders, advocates and how and why they are important to a charity and its development goals.

I have witnessed the effect of a good method going awry. Let’s examine a few:

• the fundraiser who uses a spreadsheet that is inaccessible to other users and may not even be backed-up, so could potentially be lost  
• the “scribbler” who uses a notebook and then asks an administrative support staff to transcribe their notes into the software when they decide to leave the organization—notes that could just as easily have been originally placed where they were meaningful, accessible and legible 
• the development officer who considers their notes as “belonging to them” not the charity and therefore takes the information when they leave the organization 
• those fundraisers who never take notes and rarely spend time speaking with their donors. (We had the personal experience of giving to an organization for over 15 years with our only interactions being asked for more money. We finally just quit.) 
• a major donor who gives through their company. The company is recorded in the database but no contact name. Who gets thanked? If only one staff member knows the name of this generous donor and they leave the organization, what happens? 
• Finally, there is the unskilled staffer who makes errors because they don’t receive proper training (it’s a “cost”) and therefore don’t know how to access the data.  

None of these examples are exaggerations, but stories that identify the chaos that runs through many charitable organizations.

The advent of AI could have a critical effect on charity hiring. If no one is addressing the relationship aspect of data capture, the role of development officer may become obsolete. Bots can do the basic job and retain information from one verbal transaction to the next. 

What is the solution or better yet, is there a solution? 

An issue as important as data capture to build a knowledge base and organizational history needs to be addressed, but how charities are run is fluid depending on the board and the staff hired. Understanding the value of a knowledge-base that is accessible and being committed to learning the tools they use, is the first place to start.

When senior management know little about the systems they are responsible for, and delegate decisions to fundraising staff without specifying policies and practices established to maintain the charity, chaos is all that can be expected and unfortunately is usual result.

Suggestions, ideas or questions? Contact me at ease@batschgroup.com

Sharron Batsch is the developer of @EASE Fund Development Software and the author of From Chaos to Control, Build a High Performance Team Using Knowledge Management. She has worked with a wide variety of charities for over 36 years as both a consultant and volunteer fundraiser and event chair. 

She developed and managed a training program through Continuing Education for the University of Manitoba for the business use of microcomputer solutions offering 147 courses annually. While at the University she redeveloped a certificate program in Information Management, and hosted a breakfast series for senior IT managers. 

She has received awards for her work in Knowledge Management from the Consulting Engineers of Canada and the Alberta Consulting Engineers.  Her work helps define how charities can best use the data they collect and create an environment with 15 second retrieval using a Knowledge Management System. She specializes in information management for the not-for-profit community.