 So glad you're here. It's another episode of the nonprofit show. I think I just drew out a little bit of that Texas for you, Micah, because I know you're in Oklahoma, but you're a good old Texas girl. And we talked in a green room chatter. Yeah, my South Carolina and East Coast, southeast coast route. So thrilled to have you here for Blumerang's nonprofit power week. Every single day this week, we have dedicated to Blumerang and so many fantastic conversations. But today, Micah James joins us to talk to us about spring cleaning. And this is specifically for your nonprofit donor database. So stay with us. We promise it's not going to be a snooze fest. Get excited about spring cleaning. Yeah, because this is that nonprofit power week. So every single day this week, again, we're dedicated to, you know, topics that are so just perfectly planned for your organization and things to think about. Blumerang has been such a wonderful partner with us. But this is their very first nonprofit power week. Julia Patrick is here. And if it weren't for you, Julia, we would not be having this conversation on the platform. So Julia serves as the CEO of the American nonprofit academy. She allows me to continue to be of service alongside her. I'm Jarrett Ransom, your nonprofit nerd, CEO of the Raven Group. Yes, and Julia, I'm your private nonprofit nerd as well. Thank you. You know, Jarrett Ransom is one of the great minds in the nonprofit sector on the planet, but especially in our country. And so I always hitch my wagon to her star and say, she's my personal nonprofit nerd. Yeah, call me anytime. I always have time for a phone call. Absolutely. So as we move forward in today's conversation, we have to give a shout out of gratitude. We are so very grateful to have these partners right alongside us. So another shout out to our besties at Blumerang, which Micah joins us from today. Also American nonprofit academy, staffing boutique, nonprofit thought leader, fundraising academy at National University, nonprofit nerd and your part-time controller. These companies, many most in fact have been with us from the very, very beginning. We are so honored to have their partnership and unscripted dialogues as we move forward. And Julia, that is, you know, really unheard of in today's world. It's a gift. I mean, you know, I think it's really important for everyone to realize that our partners don't dictate our content. And that's very rare. And so even with, you know, this nonprofit power week, of course, we spent time saying what we thought we should be talking about, but we really came to Blumerang and said, these are the questions that people are asking us. These are the things that we think we need some clarity on. And so they came to us with that as have all of our previous episodes. So you can find them on Roku, YouTube, Vimeo, Amazon Fire TV, and of course our podcast. So it's pretty amazing. And it's really, Jared, a gift, isn't it? Oh, it's fantastic. I admit I've said this before, like you and I enjoy having our day off, but we also miss it when we're not here because we miss that high level conversation. But if you as a viewer or listener missed anything, you know, where to find us, and it is time to dive deep into this really fun spring cleaning. Again, promise it's not going to be a snooze fest. Michael James, welcome back. You are the manager of professional services at Blumerang. So glad to have you back with us today. I am so glad to be here, Jared. You know that I love talking about this and we could talk about this for hours. Promise it's not going to be hours and promise it's not going to be a snooze fest. I love making data exciting. So glad to be here. Well, you know, Jared and I learned very early on from one of our guests, Sasha Lewis, that we need to make data sexy again. Like it always has been. But we're like, you know, data is really it's where it's at and everybody's talking about it. Everybody should be talking about it. But database cleaning is something we don't talk about. So what does that even mean? Yeah, I think sometimes we forget that database cleaning and maintenance is ongoing. It's not just a one time project. Sometimes, you know, when I talk to organizations, they think about it when they're beginning their CRM or database journey, they want to have a really clean data and they want to have a really good data load. But then they're like, oh, I'm done one and done database cleaning is a part of the ongoing journey of your life. And so this is about optimizing and maximizing the information that you utilize to engage with your donors and your constituents on an ongoing basis. So how do you maintain that? How do you keep it clean so you can be a better fundraiser along the way? It's so important. We always talk about, you know, do we trust our data data in data out is the data dirty, you know, really looking at all of this. So cleaning the data and really just setting that baseline of what is the cleaning of the data, right? And we're going to talk to you and you're going to share your insight about how often we should do it, who should be doing it. So this conversation, albeit brief, is going to be that's right. There's nothing worse than, you know, thinking and and depending on your data and then getting that feedback from a donor that their name is wrong or their address is wrong or, you know, goodness gracious, their spouse is deceased or, you know, something like that. And it just it just makes the organization look bad and makes you look not reliable. And there are just some simple things you can do along the way that, you know, a part of your, you know, ongoing cycle of maintenance that keep that clean and make you a better fundraiser. So let's talk about that because there are, you touched on some some things and that's the links between fundraising and good data. You know, Jared Ransom has a name that is not gender specific. And she's a lot about this where she gets that why. Yeah. And you too, Mike, Mr. Yeah, Jared Ransom. And so, you know, that right off the bat is like one of those things that just, man, it just makes that balloon of confidence to shrivel up. So what how do we understand what these links are? Yeah, Julia, you're so right. I actually have a really funny story. I actually eliminated colleges when I was a high school senior, but if they knew if I was me or not, if they sent me mail to Mr. I was throwing them in the garbage if they didn't take the time to know if I was Miss Micah James, like they were off the list. So it's just that that intentionality of saying my data is reliable. I'm going to trust it. And there are tools that you can use out there that will help you. It's also making sure that you're not putting data in your database. That is it accurate and true. And so not making assumptions along the way, right? So don't assume that Micah or Jared is is male, female, non binary, whatever. And and don't make those assumptions and put them in the database, unless you have a relationship with that person. And so that's another way that you can keep your data clean and build that relationship with your donors along the way. You are so right. I love that story that you shared. We could exchange those stories also for hours, I'm sure, and that would be a fun conversation. So Anne Feldman, Chief Marketing Officer joined us yesterday and she really talked about, you know, getting that first time donor to a second time donor to retain, you know, retain that support. And I can only imagine that knowing the donor is the baseline, right? Like picking up the phone, having that interpersonal kind of connection, that's going to speak to our data from the onset. Is that accurate? Oh, 100%. And so some of the tools that we have built into Blumerang allow us to capture that accurate data. And so no matter what tool you're using out there, you want to make sure that whatever information that you're capturing inside of that transaction is capturing enough data so that when you follow up, and we recommend that you follow up with a phone call, that you're able to address them in whatever particular way that you need to. So you would call me and know that you're going to get me, right? And so if you just get an email address on that first transaction, you don't have enough information to really do any kind of meaningful follow up. So making sure that you're collecting enough data to be intentional in that follow up. And so when we're talking about spring cleaning your database, not only is it making sure that the data that's already in your database is clean, you know, there aren't miscellaneous characters out there, the fields aren't, you know, all capitalized or lower case or, you know, all of those kinds of things, which is really necessary, but that you have enough data to do good cultivation. And so, you know, first name, last name, what do they like to be called? Or do you have that informal name and that formal name in that database? You know, does Robert like to be called Bob? Does Charles like to be called Chuck? Like, does all of those things, and that's going to add to, you know, all of the ability to be able to be personal and add those touch points. Okay, so now I have a big question for you. Yeah. And that is, when you're doing this, how do you disclose that so that you don't seem creepy? I mean, because like freaked out about privacy and their own data. 100%. What do you say? Like, I'm sitting here in front of my CRM and I just want to make sure we're accurate. You know what I mean? Like, really help us with what this process. Yeah. You know, when I was sitting in the fundraising development chair, you know, it would come around quarterly or, you know, we would do a big push annually to get the data really clean. And so, annually is a part of the, you know, letter writing campaign. Obviously, you would mark anything that bounced back or those kind of things. Those are obvious cleanup markers. But this is an opportunity for you to engage interns or those kind of things to help you with this. And you can develop talk tracks that are really non confrontational. Like, I see that you gave in the last quarter, that's really meaningful to us. We want to make sure that we address your thank you appropriately. Can we, you know, is, is Jan Smith still how you want your thank yous? Or do you want it Mr. and Miss? Like, you can, you can ask those questions in a way that are not like, can I have your favorite color and like your child's birthday, please? Like, you can ask those questions in a way that are not super creepy. Because sometimes, you know, we've all filled out those silly surveys on the internet that feel like we're giving away our passwords and codes and like all of those things. Like, you could ask the questions in a way that's very relational. Like, we know you, you know us. We just want to make sure that we're, we're addressing you appropriately. Is this still correct? And so just do it in a very relational way. I always say that if you can't say it across the table to somebody at a coffee or at a lunch, like, then it's probably, you're probably getting off base. You know what? I love that. I think that's a great way to frame it up. Absolutely. It's true. Don't you think that, oh yeah, you, we've, we've become so fearful of disclosing things that it does seem, you know, I think most donors have no idea what CRMs are and that we track these things. I think they're just, they knew they were shocked. Yeah. And, and, and it goes to the other topics, the points that we're going to talk about in a minute. You're going to collect miscellaneous data points along the life cycle of a donor, right? And so, you know, we're going to get into this as a team sport in just a minute. But like when I engage with a donor and find out that, you know, they, their mother lives in the same town or, you know, their kid plays basketball or, you know, all of those kind of things. Those are things that you can collect and put in your CRM, but not in the creepy, like, will you fill out the survey and tell me everything about your life kind of way? So it's just a different way of cultivating relational information. I used to have a friend who worked for an insurance agency and I always used to wonder how they knew everything about me when I would pick up the phone. It's because, it's because their screen pops up with all of that data when I call. And I was like, why, why don't we as fundraisers do the same thing? Like when I pick up the phone, my screen should be open to their donor profile. And as I engage with them, I should take notes. I should fill in fields. I should update things. You know, if I'm out of lunch with them, maybe I write it down on a napkin, but I take that napkin back to my desk and then I update the profile in the CRM. So it's, it's just one of those things about being good about best practices and updating. Well, let's dive into this team sport. So hit the nail in the head. I've been at so many events. I know you too, Julia. And, you know, we take notes. I have to say I'm very guilty. My phone right now, the note section, right? Like it's much longer than I would like, but cleaning data is a team sport. So you've already shared a lot of really good tips of how we can do this. And one of the challenges that I know I see often is at that executive level, not transferring the information to the data. So if you can talk to us about how we can like get all team members, you know, on the same page. Well, the first thing I encourage you to do is download our app. If you're a Bloomer and customer, we have an app. Take it with you, do those notes instead of on the napkin, do it straight on the app. But if you have, you know, another management system, you know, be really intentional about making it a best practice, get back to your desk and update your system. The other thing is, is if you're not, you know, everybody's not doing it, you're fighting against yourself. And so, you know, if the executive and the fundraising and the administrative, if everybody isn't following the same best practices, standard operating procedure about how things are going into the database, how things are going into the management system, you're going to be constantly wasting time and energy, like chasing each other's tail, right? So, you know, the admin is going to put in the check one way, and then the fundraising development officer is going to update the address another way. And then the executive is going to make a note a different way. You're going to be wasting so many people time hours chasing each other in that admin efficiency that you could be spending on mission, vision, value, purpose things. So just have a meeting, come up with like those standardized ways that you put it in. Do you want everything? Do you want avenues spelled out or do you want it abbreviated? Like, let's all, let's all get on the same page, right? And so, I mean, it's those silly things that we think aren't going to take up a lot of time that when it comes to running the annual campaign letter, that you're going to spend a ton of time like copy pasting, fill and replace like all of that manpower, women power hours, like doing. And so I just encourage you to like be proactive, have the conversation and don't work opposite directions on those kind of things. Yeah. It's like, you know, it's just pulling and pushing in all those different directions. I love that you mentioned the avenues because now with online fundraising, truly increasing, right? Like many of us go in and we put our information in there and that is automatically generated, populated into the donor database. So if I'm a person that types everything in lowercase or everything in caps, you know, that's exactly how it's showing up in the database. Yeah. And so, yeah. And so again, it's creating cycles of regular cleaning. It's not a one and done thing. And so maybe it's a weekly review of the gifts that came in. One of the beautiful things about most systems is you can do an export, re-import real quick clean of those kind of fields. And so, you know, you can get that clean instead of waiting a year to do like 100 cleans. And so just, you know, do it really quickly. I read a great book once and I always say it's my superpower. It's called Getting Things Done by David Allen. I'm going to give it a shout out. If it takes less than two minutes, do it right now. And so it's one of those things, like if you can update Avenue to Avenue, do it right now. You're one and done, clean, move on. Yeah. You know, and I don't know about the two of you, but I don't even remember what I ate for dinner last night, let alone a year from now if Catherine wants to be called Kathy. So under that two minutes, I think it's really important, which takes us to the consistency, right? You would mention, and I know we had asked, you know, is this quarterly? Is this annually? Is this bi-weekly? Is this daily? I know for me any time that I'm in this position, I am in the database every single day. Every day. Every day. Well, and we hope you are. Yeah. If you're not, we've got systematic issues, right? Exactly. Exactly. You know, I think one of the things is to get people to engage with it. And I know board meetings that I attend where at the beginning of the board meeting, some of these lists are circulated. And we have people in the mission on this, it's printed out to say, can you go through this? And if you see anything that's unusual, maybe, you know, a spouse is not listed correctly, or there's been, you know, a death or a divorce or, I mean, go through these things. And I think we need to be engaging our teams more in this piece and you to follow along with that, getting clean and getting consistent. How do you know if you're off track versus being on track? Yeah, consistency is key. And so one of the things that I would regularly do is, you know, one of the best things is in COA scrubs. And so you can get back in there and make sure that the tool is helping you. So it's checking for things that have changed. It's, you know, doing that on the back end. So, you know, as much as I love to rely on community knowledge, sometimes it's not the most reliable source. And so there are things that can help us stay up to date. And then if we're regularly utilizing tools and functions on a consistent basis, you know, we're not having to rely on community knowledge to stay as clean as we possibly could be. And so again, it's creating kind of that system and workflow to stay consistent so it doesn't all build up on us. And then we have this kind of panic moment before we're trying to run a big mailer, or we're trying to do some kind of fundraising event. And so it's creating a consistent rhythm of checks across our database and across our organization. And so it's who's in charge? Who's in charge of making sure that our groups are clean? Who's in charge of making sure our addresses are clean? Who's in charge of making sure that, you know, the transactions are assigned appropriately? And so does everybody know who's in charge of what? Because when nobody's in charge, it doesn't get done. When everybody's in charge, it doesn't get done. So we just need to make sure that everybody, you know, kind of knows the system and workflows. Because again, I always say that unspoken expectations gets us all in trouble. So we just need to have a conversation about expectations, workflows, and consistency. Yeah, Julia, do you see this often at the board level where the data is provided? Because you mentioned something that really hit home for me. There could be a death in the family, there could be a divorce. We all know that households nowadays look very different than they did back in the 50s, 60s, whatever. And donor databases have to keep up with those trends and allow us those fields. So let me just stop and ask again, like, are you seeing this around the board table? You know, not as much as it should be. I think it's really valuable because one of the other things, and Jared, we've talked about this before on other episodes, sometimes, you know, we'll see these lists and it'll be like, oh my gosh, holy cow, that's my neighbor. Right. And then there's a way to say, hey, we have them on our list, but we don't know who they are, or they're your neighbor. Could you get them to our annual breakfast? I mean, I think that this is a piece that also helps elevate the discussion and the expectation of the board to be engaged in this relationship building. A lot of times, and you know this, Jared, we've talked about this, you know, that's development's job. Yeah. Julia, you're so right. One of my favorite tools in our database is the relationship tool. I tell our orgs all the time, I think it brings depth to your database when you map those relationships. And I'm not just talking about the husband, wife, spouse, like children, like who's your friend, who's your neighbor, who goes to church with you, who's in the social club with you. I had a, I worked for an executive director once who had like 47 sorority sisters. And I knew, and they all came to the events. And I knew as soon as she moved on from the organization, they were going to move on as well. So it was going to be a whole different cultivation relationship with those particular people. So we mapped those relationships. And so we could track them if and when that particular person left the organization. So Julia, you're spot on. It needs to be that way. And I think too, man, just going back to starting day one with Josh Meyer and hearing about this bleed off of, you know, one time the first and only givers. And I think it's got to really be like so important that we understand this is sustainability. We were running a flower shop or a spa or a car dealer, and we only had, you know, an 18% return with our customers. We couldn't stay in business. Right? 100%. Yes. So it's got to be that way with us in our data. Right. And I think that's part of the thing that nonprofits realize. And we get so scared about asking the next time we're like, Oh, that we like, and I think that this whole donor fatigue thing is a complete myth. And I just want to call it out today and like get your data clean and start asking. Don't say no on their behalf. Like they are big humans. They are grownups. They can say no if they say no and no today doesn't mean no tomorrow. And so get your data clean and ask and ask again. I love it. It's so important. And then two, you know, I know our time is running up and we've talked a lot about households. We've talked a lot about, you know, names, but we also talked yesterday with Ann about segmenting based off of interest. Right. And this is data. As you mentioned, it takes you to a different level, a depth of relationship. Having that impact for their interest is important data just as much as updating the avenue. Yeah, we see all the time and the ability to we have the ability to add custom fields on many of our inquiries or transaction forms. And I see organizations get creative with this all the time. And sometimes it's silly, like tell us your favorite color or but sometimes it's like, how did you find us or tell us tell us which part of the organization inspires you the most? And so those pieces of data are critical to engaging donors again and again, because if somebody, let's just say, you know, one of my passions is homelessness prevention, let's just say somebody is like, I'm really passionate about sustainable housing, like you can engage them few in future, you know, advocacy efforts or correspondence about that particular niche of your organization, because you have that one piece of data. And so it's just it's just interesting. And again, don't be scared to ask. I love that you said that. Well, it's always such a joy to have you on and to learn from you. I feel like you make this achievable and you you bring it back home so that we understand why we're doing things. You know, I feel like a lot of people look at their data and their CRMs as a slog. And they don't they don't respect it or appreciate its value. Right. And 100%. Yeah. And I always sell to start small, like start with start with cleaning up names, start with cleaning up and then then go to addresses. Like if you look at your whole database, you start with your whole database, you'll be like, Oh, I cannot do this today. Too much, like bite size, you know, how do you eat an elephant one bite at a time? Yeah. Oh my gosh, Micah, we could talk to you in fact for hours, but I really do hope to get you back on today. Micah James, manager, professional services, Bloomerang. Anytime I need to talk to a client about data cleaning, this is certainly an episode that I'm going to bring, you know, to the conversation. So thank you so much for just oozing passion on this. I feel it, you know, it's just amazing. So again, for those of you watching and listening, this is a nonprofit power week dedicated to Bloomerang. Julie and I are here for the nerdiness, the conversations, the passion that Micah, you know, shares so vividly. So thank you for that. We have a couple of more conversations. We've had a couple of conversations previous to today because it's Wednesday. And so looking at, I know, find how that balance is out. So we started off with learning from current nonprofit giving trends with Josh, first time donor journey. There was five tips that Anne shared with us yesterday, your spring cleaning, thanks to Micah. And then tomorrow we have tax receding, which again is a very critical piece to retaining those donors. And then Friday we'll wrap up with an ask and answer for five commonly asked questions about nonprofit CRMs. Julia, I learned so much from this team. I love having these conversations. And I just, I wish this week was like, you know, longer than five days. I know me too, because I think it's no matter who you work with, if you have a CRM, if you're thinking about getting a CRM, these discussions have been extremely, extremely holistic. And to get us into the framework of what we need to be thinking about and how we need to be behaving. So it's been really, really exciting to hear these different perspectives. And so Micah, thank you so much. Again, we want to give our thanks as well to all of our partners that we have in nonprofit Power Week, of course, Blumerang, as Jared defined them, our besties over at Blumerang. There's a wonderful team of so many different people. All the folks at American Nonprofit Academy, Staffing Boutique, Nonprofit Thought Leader, Fundraising Academy at National University, the Nonprofit Nurture Self Share Ransom, and your part-time controller. These are the folks that allow us to have these amazing discussions day in and day out. Wow. Okay, Jared, I'm going back onto my database, and I'm really going to start looking at that. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the Ave versus Avenue. It can be as simple as that. Absolutely. Yeah, but you got to, you know, bite size, like you said, Micah. So, so fantastic. Again, I really think this is a conversation. Just as you mentioned, you know, we clean our data consistently. We should talk about this consistently. So thank you for bringing it so, you know, full of life to today's conversation. Thank you both. Yeah. It's been amazing. Hey, everybody, as we journey forth, we want to remind everyone to join us in our daily mantra. And that is to stay well so you can do well. We'll see you back here tomorrow. Micah, thank you so much.