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How do I prepare my data for self-import?
Updated over 2 months ago

Auditing and cleaning your historic data may seem like a challenge, but we recommend taking some time to do so before importing anything into Donor Management. Not only does it help speed up the process, it also gives you control on where you’d like to see certain fields created and listed in the system later on.

Cleaning the data also helps make sure that the data you’re adding to your brand-new system is as accurate as possible. Uploading incomplete or incorrect data can result in higher email bounce rates, more mail returned to sender, and an overall loss of integrity of your contact’s data.

Trust us – it's a lot easier to clean up your records beforehand!

Before You Begin

The Network for Good Data Import Team strongly recommends that you export or download all data from your former donor management system. This allows you to have a complete archive of your former system, in the event that a field is overlooked during the import process.

For guidance on how to export that data from some of the most common donor management platforms, please check out our helpful resource here.

Step 1: Download the simple self-import data template.

To make things easier for you, we've created a downloadable spreadsheet that you can use as a template for importing data into Donor Management that includes the most common fields that organizations choose to include in their imports. This template also easily color-codes which fields are required or recommended, so you'll easily be able to tell what information you must (or should) include.

You can find a copy of that spreadsheet here.

You can also find a downloadable version of this spreadsheet in Donor Management – you should see an option to download the template on the fourth step of the import process detailed here.

This spreadsheet is only meant to be a guide – but it’s a helpful guide to see exactly what information you might want to include in your records.

It’s also a helpful way to see how to format that information so it will import into Donor Management as smoothly as possible; the closer your data is to the template’s formatting, the faster your import process will go.

If you're looking for a more complex data import that includes other, less common fields, you can review this resource here.

Step 2: Remove any unnecessary fields by deleting empty or irrelevant columns.

If you're working directly from your historic data, to minimize confusion (and to appear much less overwhelming!), you can delete any columns from your data that you don’t plan on importing into Donor Management. In many cases, this is a column that’s tracking outdated or irrelevant information; it can also be a blank column that was included when you exported out your historic files.

Remember - we have a helpful template that includes the required and recommended data, so a good rule of thumb is to focus on the data that aligns with those specific fields.

Either way, deleting those unnecessary fields will streamline your data and make it easier to continue cleaning and updating your information.

Step 3: Make sure that all required fields are present.

As we've discussed before, there are some fields are are necessary and required in order for your import to process properly in Donor Management. You’ll want to make sure that you’re including those required fields for each record, so that you don’t run into any errors during the import process.

  • Contacts: Each contact record needs to have a first name (or, if no first name is available, an email address needs to be listed in the “first name” field.) While it isn’t required, we also recommend having an email or physical address for each contact record as well, to make sure that you have a way to communicate with this individual later on.

  • Donations: Each donation record needs to have some way to be associated with a contact record – in most cases, this is by the donor’s email address, but some organizations instead use a field like internal ID to make that association. Donation records also need to include the exact date of the donation (MM/DD/YYYY), the amount, and the payment method used to make the transaction. If you don’t know the date of a donation, you can always enter it as January 1st of the current year.

We've created a quick and easy guide on how to ensure you're including those fields here - we encourage you to check that out as you walk through this process.

Step 4: Review your data for any duplicate contacts or records.

While we’ve discussed the ways that Donor Management finds and addresses potential duplicates, we also recommend taking some time reviewing your data prior to import to try to find and minimize those potential duplicate records.

We recommend this for two major reasons: firstly, because you know your data best and will be able to quickly identify and resolve duplicates on your own – and secondly, because reviewing potential duplicates can’t be done in bulk through Donor Management, and you may be able to save yourself time if you review them beforehand. (This is especially important if you’re submitting multiple spreadsheets for import!)

One important thing to note – each donation made by a contact will have its own individual donation record. You should be extra careful when reviewing donation records for duplicates, as it’s possible that two separate donation records may appear to be duplicates when in actuality, they’re two completely different transactions.

If your historic data includes a unique ID number for each donor, you can also include that in the “External User ID” field in a more complex import. This can help minimize duplicates, and can help make sure historic donations correspond to the correct donor!

Step 5: Separate organization contact records from individual contact records.

Organization contacts are treated differently than individual contact records in our importing process. We recommend saving all organizational contacts in a separate Excel file (not tab!) to make it easier for you to process those independently (and review the results more comprehensively.

Organization contact records function slightly differently from their individual contact record counterparts; we strongly recommend reviewing this guide on available import fields to make sure you're setting those records up correctly for import.

Step 6: Save your import files in the correct file format.

In order to import a file into Donor Management, the file needs to be saved as either an Excel document (.xls or .xlsx), or a Comma Separated Value document (.csv).

You may need to change the file format on your historic files to match one of those two formats before you can begin importing into Donor Management.

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