How an NGO builds a donor database it can actually use

The trustees meet, the treasurer is asked who gave last year, and nobody can say. The names are in a receipt book, two spreadsheets and a volunteer's phone. Nobody owns them. This post is written as the questions trustees ask in that meeting, with a plain answer to each. By the end you will know what to record, who owns it and when to stop using a sheet.

What is the smallest sheet that works?

One row per donor and eleven columns. Add a column only when you have used one for something, because every empty column teaches people the sheet is not serious.

Name | Phone | Email | Area | Cause interest | Source
First gift | Last gift | Last contact and what | Permission | Owner

A filled row might read, with an invented donor: Mrs Sunanda Kulkarni, 98xxxxxx21, no email, Civil Lines, elderly care, annual dinner, 2021, 2024, called after receipt, WhatsApp yes and calls yes, Meena. Phone is the key for finding duplicates. Source and last contact earn their place early: source shows where donors come from, and last contact stops two people calling on one day.

Print one row on paper and test it on a donor you know. If you cannot fill every cell from what you hold, you have found the first thing to collect.

Who owns it?

One person, named, with a backup. Not "the office". The owner enters new donors from receipts and forms, merges duplicates and prepares the list when someone asks who gave last year. The owner does not decide who is contacted; that stays with the fundraiser or programme head.

If the owner is a volunteer, write down what they are responsible for and agree a handover for when they move on. Donor data is often lost because nobody owned it, not because the tool was wrong.

Why not leave it on the volunteer's phone?

Because the phone leaves with the volunteer. Take an invented case: a women's self-help trust in Prayagraj, running tailoring classes in three wards, has its supporters' numbers in one coordinator's contacts and WhatsApp groups. When the coordinator takes a job in another city, the trust finds it cannot tell which supporters had given more than once, or who had asked not to be called.

The trustees choose one sheet and name the accounts assistant as owner. The assistant enters the receipt books oldest first, marking those rows "old records", and adds a source to each. Fewer than half the rows can be given a source at all, because the early books recorded only a name and an amount. Of those that can, the repeat donors cluster around the annual exhibition, and donors who first gave through the website have never been phoned. A thank-you call to each, with a question about what updates they want, becomes the next task, and the unsourced rows stay as they are until the donors themselves say where they came from.

How do we get everything in?

1. Copy each source into its own tab, then stack the tabs into one.
2. Clean the phone numbers: strip spaces, add missing digits, mark rows with none.
3. Sort by phone, then by name, and merge duplicates by hand, on a fixed day, with one person responsible. When two rows are the same person, keep the older first-gift date and join the history into one row. Check before you merge. One mobile can serve a husband and wife who both give, and one donor can be Kulkarni in one book and Kulakarni in another. The steps are in how to clean and organise CRM data.
4. Fill source and cause for the largest and most recent donors first, not alphabetically.
5. Make a rule that every new receipt or form entry is typed in during the same week, with the date of entry saved.

A sheet copes with a few hundred donors easily and with a few thousand if the owner is careful. With many more, or several offices, the checking takes longer and a proper tool starts to pay for itself.

Can we use donors from the old receipt books?

Yes, after cleaning. Treat them as people who gave once, not as contacts who agreed to every message. Ask for permission on the first thank-you call and record the answer in the permission column.

What must never go in it?

Card numbers, bank account details, passwords and anything a donor told you in confidence about health or family. If you must hold a PAN for a receipt, restrict who can see that column. Rules on donor data and consent differ and change, so check what applies to your trust with your own adviser, and tell donors in plain words what you keep.

Save a copy somewhere safe with the date in the file name, so one wrong paste does not wipe out years of donors.

When do we need a CRM?

Stay on a sheet while one person updates it and you can find a donor in a minute. Think about a CRM when several staff need to see the same donor at once, when you want automatic reminders, or when you keep writing to the wrong list. Does a small business really need a CRM, or is Excel enough has a short scorecard that applies to a trust too, despite the word "business".

Do not buy software before the sheet is clean. A CRM full of duplicates only repeats the mistakes faster. The clean-up and the rules that keep it clean are the work of CRM data cleansing, deduplication and governance.

What do we do with it on Monday?

Name the owner this week and type in the first fifty rows. Then pick a fixed day and choose the ten donors whose last contact is oldest and who gave more than once. Call or write to them; the donor thank-you and follow-up sequence has words for those contacts. More on the trade is under non-profit, and if you want help with the structure or the clean-up, tell us what you need.