"When Wellbeing of Women was chosen as one of the beneficiary charities of the Lord Mayor's Appeal it realised that just using their own database wouldn't be sufficient to effectively manage the data", says Liz Campbell
This story was published in Professional Fundraising Magazine's Spotlight on Data feature February 2008
"The Lord Mayor's Appeal takes place each year in London. The charities that are to benefit from the appeal are personally nominated by the Lord Mayor himself. Wellbeing of Women and ORBIS have been selected as the 2008 partners. In the case of Wellbeing of Women, the resulting funds will go towards a new international medical research resource - a database of tissue samples and related data - which will help WoW in its mission to overcome major complications in pregnancy; while ORBIS will be supporting the development of two specialist children's eye care centres in India.
"The Lord Mayor's Appeal is a very complex project for a smaller charity. You have 12 months to make the most of a fantastic, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. We were determined to create a legacy both in terms of what we used the appeal income for and also of raising the profile of both charities and building on the great new relationships we were going to make during the year.
"The appeal is creating thousands more records than what currently exist at either charity, which at the end of the year will be uploaded into the individual databases unless donors have asked to be excluded. Fundamental to making the appeal a success is managing the relationship we create with these contacts - our database plays a key role in this.
"We were determined to uphold standards of data protection and needed to ensure that information relating to the individual charities was kept separate with different protocol and security settings being applied to each set of data. For example, individuals who are added to the appeal database may not want to be added to the Wellbeing of Women or ORBIS databases. Additionally, the Lord Mayor's Appeal has a small team dedicated to running the appeal on behalf of both of the charities. This team need to maintain confidentiality of donor records including many VIP and celebrity contacts and to act fairly in the interests of both charities. We weren't confident that our existing systems could cope with this so the decision was made to create a second separate database, which will enable them to do this without fear of compromising their data during the lifetime of the appeal. We chose the ProgressCRM database from Fisk Brett.
"The database of contacts will be shared between Wellbeing of Women and ORBIS depending on ‘opt-in' permissions given by the donors. Therefore, when setting up the contact relationship management database structure, we had to ensure that any future personal, company or financial records could be easily exported when we close down the appeal.
"The contact records are being allocated to ‘groups' and ‘flags' specifically to enable distinct mailings to different company sectors, potential sponsors and the general public. These categories enable the fundraisers to precisely target supporters with events relevant to their interests. Functionality also allows the events to be managed within the database - such as invitations, correspondence, badges etc, plus all the financial aspects of the donations made and final analysis of the attendance and promotional effectiveness
"Maintaining accuracy and security of the database is overseen by one individual. It is essential to manage this properly and to keep the data secure considering the status of the donors that the chairmen and directors of LMA and the charities meet with.
"Fundraising events are to take place throughout the year, which range from sporting events to social dinners to an evening with the Philharmonic orchestra at the Guildhall in Central London".
Liz CampbellFebruary 2008
