Clean Data is Happy Data

Ehren Foss
09/23/2013

When I started at EverTrue, one of the first things I worked on was our internal Salesforce.com instance.

How could EverTrue, a company focused on building great communities with great data, have a messy CRM!?

I’m an unapologetic CRM nerd. I’m also a little obsessed with data quality. I wanted to share a couple tactics that have worked particularly well for us. These helped fill in more than 70% of missing data while actually reducing the amount of manual work we need to do.

Keep it Simple, Stupid

I’ve tried a significant number of changes with our Salesforce.com database, as I’m sure you have with your constituent database. The only changes that are still around are changes that made the system simpler. Here’s an example:

EverTrue Data Trophy

We work with many different types of organizations: private high schools, nonprofits, colleges, MBA programs, K-8 schools, and so on. Some high schools have a post graduate “PG” year, some schools are grade 7 – 12 instead of 6-12. Initially, I converted our somewhat messy text annotations about this to a set of almost 20 checkboxes, not to mention a few fields for gender, boarding, or other parameters, that allowed us to completely describe an institution in this regard.

You know what? That’s not how we worked. We didn’t do any targeted marketing to girls only day schools that include a PG year. Having all those extra fields didn’t help us support those partners.

We now have just one dropdown for type of organization. Changing to this approach has helped make our reports much simpler, and has also streamlined the integrations with Insight Squared and HubSpot. When someone fills out an inbound marketing form with us, the exact same values are presented for organization type that we report on in Salesforce and that surface in our reports in Insight Squared.

“It seems that perfection is reached not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away” -Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Notita Optimo

Once our validation rules were humming along and most of the missing data was filled in, I decided to try a little… friendly competition.

Now, every month, the EverTrue Salesforce user with the best data not only gets a handsome trophy to show off, they also decorate the office of the user at the bottom of the pile.

I imagine gift officers or prospect researchers might respond to this reward system as well.

What kinds of things has your organization done to help keep data clean?

Endowment Spending & Growth Calculator

Enter your fund's current value and adjust the return, spending, and inflation sliders to see how its value in today's dollars changes over time.

Starting fund value

Expected investment return 6.0%

0%12%

Spending rate 4.0%

2%7%

Inflation rate 3.0%

0%8%

Duration (years) 10

5 yrs25 yrs

Value in 10 years

In today's dollars

4. Continue to Steward Donors

Your relationship with the donors who give to your endowment doesn’t end when you secure their gifts. Because your endowment exists to make a difference in the long term, your supporters will want you to keep in touch about its progress. Ongoing stewardship means keeping donors updated about your endowment’s performance and impact. A report that strengthens your relationship with donors should cover:

The fund’s balance at the start and end of the year
Spending amounts and allocations
How the fund’s returns compare to your investment targets
A short narrative detailing the specific impacts the endowment achieved

Create a report for each endowment rather than sending an identical document to everyone. A donor who endowed a scholarship wants to hear about the students it supported, while a donor who endowed a building fund wants updates on construction projects.

5. Upgrade Your Endowment Management Tools

Your endowment management tools should make applying your spending policy across every fund easy. Investing in dedicated software is especially useful as your endowment grows. Handling unitization in spreadsheets might work for a few funds, but as you begin to manage dozens or hundreds of gifts, dedicated software can save your team time spent manually calculating gains and losses for each one.

Why Nonprofits Need Dedicated Endowment Management Software

Dedicated endowment software brings accuracy and consistency to every part of the management process, from tracking individual funds to improving security. See how these solutions compare to a spreadsheet-based approach:

nfographic table outlining the information below.

How These Methods Compare:

In managing your endowment with traditional spreadsheets, you may see:

High administrative burden: Manual entry across disconnected systems
Limited security and audit footprints: Reduced version control and audit trail visibility
Difficulty with donor transparency: Spreadsheets provide only static data that is difficult to turn into custom results.

By using dedicated software, you are likely to find the following improvements:

Lower administrative burden: Automated fund tracking and calculated allocations
Enhanced security and audit footprint: Audit-ready reconciliation with clear tracking
Greater donor transparency: Connects with reporting platforms

Dedicated endowment management software keeps your organization compliant while freeing up the time your team once spent manually managing spreadsheets.

Secure Your Endowment with Balance by EverTrue

Effective endowment management begins with excellent accounting. Balance by EverTrue handles unitization, applies spending rules, and produces audit-ready reports, so your team can spend more time on the donor relationships that built the fund in the first place.

Turn your data into a clear picture of long-term impact. Combine accurate fund accounting with donor reporting that showcases impact.
Connect with the tools you already use. Pair Balance with Impact by EverTrue and ODDER by EverTrue to create and deliver compelling digital endowment reports that you can send to donors with ease.
Know where every fund stands in real time. Check market values, gift history, and available spending for any fund. Then, share view-only versions with your team, so everyone stays informed.

With Balance, your team can stop spending all your time on manual management and instead add balance to your endowment workflow.

Additional Resources

To learn more about managing your endowment and other ways that technology can help your organization, check out these additional resources:

Webinar: Building a Seamless Relationship Between Endowment Finance and Advancement. In this webinar, we cover the keys to un-complicating your institution’s financial endowment reporting process. Explore how building a connection between your finance and advancement teams can lead to happier donors and happier staff.
The Best Alumni Management Software Solutions in 2026. Alumni management software allows your university to maintain an active community that supports your school in a number of ways. Review top software solutions.
Donor Segmentation: How Organizing Donors Boosts Retention. What is donor segmentation, and how can you use it to boost retention? Learn the need-to-know information in this guide from EverTrue’s fundraising experts.

Less stress, higher endowment funds. Discover how Balance provides the organization, security, and accuracy your endowment needs. Request a demo.

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