Data Cleansing for Charities
“The fuzzy matching aspect is something we probably could never have done. Any matching we could have done would be much more primitive than with this product. It’s given us extra capability and a faster time to market.”
Ann-Marie Smith, IT Manager, Business Systems, Barnardo’s
Barnardo’s is the United Kingdom’s largest charity, working annually with over 100,000 children and their families. Barnardo’s believes all children should be free from poverty, abuse, and discrimination.As a charitable organization, Barnardo’s relies on donations to fund its important work with young people. Donations are solicited through a large number of fund-raising and direct marketing activities, which makes accurate customer information key to the successful campaigns. Mailing to duplicate and deceased contacts, or individuals who have moved without providing forwarding addresses, costs the organization time, money, and resources.
Attempts have been made to create in-house software that eliminates bad data, but the program failed to achieve a respectable match rate. With a clean database vital to the charity’s work, Bernardo’s sets out to find an effective solution. After examining several competing applications, Bernardo’s selects two products from helpIT systems: matchIT and suppressIT. The proprietary fuzzy matching algorithms within matchIT locate duplicate records which had previously been extremely difficult to find. matchIT also offers automated job scripting, allowing Barnardo’s to easily repeat regular jobs with just a few clicks of the mouse. suppressIT, utilizing the same fuzzy matching algorithms found within matchIT, gives the organization a comprehensive tool to screen their data for supporters who have moved or died.
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