Your Member Data is a Dumpster Fire. Now What?
By Matt Kerr, IFANR Research Director
At the Institute for Association and Nonprofit Research (IFANR), we are frequently putting out dumpster fires. It is why associations come to us. But some dumpster fires are more preventable than others, and one such case is with a member database.
First, let’s back up and look at what goes into a questionnaire. In addition to asking relevant questions in a meaningful manner, questionnaires might also seek out basic demographic information about the respondent, e.g., age, gender, race/ethnicity, or employment. Knowing this information allows an association to address the needs of its different constituencies.
Sometimes the client will reject adding these questions, insisting that their own database contains this information and that it can easily be appended to the mailing list used to send out survey invitations. Adding these questions to the questionnaire only makes the survey longer. It’s a good idea, but sometimes backfires.
The demographic data is often self-reported by the member, and therein lies the problem. People simply make mistakes when entering their own data. How many times have you mistyped your email address? Or never updated your address when you moved? A former co-worker told me that she incorrectly listed herself as “male” in her client’s own database. This is why we ask these questions again – to give respondents a chance to set the record straight, at least for this one survey.
That said, there are times when the respondent is wrong, but we need to let them think they are correct. A common example of this is when asking membership status. Invariably, a percentage of respondents will indicate that they are current members, when the client’s own records reliably report that they have not been members in several years. We defer to the respondent in these cases. We don’t want to follow up with a question asking someone why they didn’t renew their membership when they think they are still a member. It’s not a perfect solution, but it avoids upsetting the respondent and provides valuable feedback to the client.
And last, but not least, the client can make mistakes with their database. I once had a client that sent me three membership lists – one for current members, another for members, and the last for “never” members. Unfortunately, some appeared on more than one list, in some instances all three lists. The list was supposed to represent a specific moment in time (i.e., the date on which the lists were pulled), so it is unclear how someone could appear on more than one list at the same time. But there it was, and we had a dumpster fire raging out of control.
So that’s why we try to ask these questions in the survey. The answers allow us to resolve a lot of problems before it is too late to do anything about them. And IFANR can help your organization put out your database dumpster fires. Figuratively speaking, of course. We don’t handle real fires…yet.
