A series about four common fundraising problems that can poison your work and flatten revenue. I wish I could put a “Mr. Yuk” sticker on those practices.

My mother-in-law died more than three years ago. After she passed, all her mail was forwarded to our address. She supported a number of nonprofits and political causes. So for a while, we got a lot of direct mail in fundraising meant for her.

Most of it stopped coming after a few months.

But some of it is still coming. In fact, one or two pieces per day are still coming. (It’s mostly the political mailers.)

That’s just sloppy. They’ve never run a NCOA on their lists, and they just keep passing them around (probably selling lists to like-minded fundraisers).

It’s a waste of money. And it makes them look bad.

Messy data is a big problem. Maybe worse than sending mail for to a deceased person for years is when you get a donor’s name wrong. Or the transaction records are wrong. Or you’re sending duplicates to people.

All that tells donors you don’t care about them. You aren’t paying much attention. You’re sloppy and/or incompetent.

And it’s a completely fair criticism. Maybe you don’t care, or aren’t paying attention, or are sloppy, or incompetent.

Between wasting money and annoying your donors, it is toxic to your fundraising.

Make clean, accurate data a priority.