Data-Mining Tag Archive

Congrats to our customers who successfully completed the Data Integrity Clinic. We appreciate your commitment to data cleanliness and understanding of the importance of good data. Congrats to:

Deborah Silvia, United Way of Fairfield County
Scott Reed, United way of Fairfield County
Beth Craft, United Way of Fairfield County
Rebekah Osborn, United Way of Broward County
Elizabeth Flores, United Way of Broward County
Jenny Maleitzke, United Way of Broward County

These customers have earned the coveted Data Integrity Badge that they can add to their Andar Software Users Community profile. 

Our Data Integrity Clinic is a mixture of small group learnings along with one-on-one training between your instructor and your team. These sessions are designed for you and your team to learn, analyze, and strategize your data systems' cleanup and planning.

"I certainly recommend the Data Integrity Clinic. It’s important for organizations to go through the process to better understand and better care for their data so they can use it to their best benefit!"

Deb Silvia
Director of Finance and Administration United Way of Fairfield County

Please join us for an upcoming e-Class. These group trainings will cover:

• e-Pledge Refresher - October 30, 2020 (Register)
• Basic Data Mining - November 4, 2020 (Register)
• Advanced Data Mining - November 10, 2020 (Register)

If you have questions please let us know.

*There is a fee for each e-Class.

Please join us for an upcoming e-Class*. These group trainings will cover:

• e-Pledge Refresher - October 30, 2020 (Register)
• Basic Data Mining - November 4, 2020 (Register)
• Advanced Data Mining - November 10, 2020 (Register)

If you have questions please let us know.

*There is a fee for each e-Class.

Have a lot of companies not given you details about their employees' pledges? Would you like to know who those companies are?

Several customers have recently asked how you can determine what companies' pledges have been entered as 'batch' transactions. It might be possible that the company did not provide the details about the employee pledges. Or maybe, you have a policy that batches all of the pledges that were less than a certain dollar amount (for example, perhaps you only entered the details for pledges that were over $250.)

How can you find the answers?

If you have the Andar Executive Plus module, you can write a query to find the employee non-memo pledges that were entered as batch transactions. Otherwise, you might get answers by looking at the list of Envelopes in Andar/360 and using the 'filter' or the 'right-click-and-find' process to identify envelopes that contain batch transactions. Another alternative is to create a Data Mining Operation to find the batch transactions.

To learn more, visit the 'Project Information > Resolution' section of the specific project in Customer Support.

Take Me There

Don't leave potential donations on the table! As you get your campaign on a roll, think about ways you'll be able to fill your fundraising gaps.

One idea is to dig into your database for donors who haven't yet given this year but gave in the past. To get a list of lapsed donors, use the "Pattern" tab in a data mining operation.

After obtaining the list, you can review the accounts for ways to communicate with them. Maybe you have a home contact you can get in touch with, a related person whom you can call, a staff member who knows them, or someone may remember them from an event they volunteered at or attended. You might even be able to find more info by searching for them on Google!

Learn About the Pattern Tab

What's the one currency no one can ever earn back?

Time.

We may not be able to help you travel back in time (yet), but we can help you be more efficient so that you invest less time into tasks that you do within Andar/360.

Try this: When exporting reports, save and re-use report submission parameters. Doing this can big a big time saver if you either run the same report multiple times or like to run variations of the same reports based upon a different set of report parameters.

Show Me How

The number one reason why people stop giving is that they weren't asked. That leads to another question, "Why were people not asked to donate in the first place?"

You have the power to reach out to your community and ask for donations, and it's time you exercise that power to the best of your ability. After all, there's no harm in asking.

One common reason why organizations have trouble reaching out to individuals for donations is that donors have moved to another company. Did you know that you can easily data mine for those individuals that were once donors but have not given this year? Besides, you can select those for whom you have a home telephone number, e-mail, or street address. Imagine all the potential donors that may be waiting there for the asking!

Get Details on Data Mining

Computers don't think the way humans think. For that reason, when we give our computer directions (such as data mining rules), we have to learn how to speak a version of "English" our computer will understand.

Let's say we want a list of all donors living in New York and Chicago. We would probably write the following:

Select individuals where city = "New York" and city = "Chicago"

With this direction, the computer will take each record, one at a time, and perform the test. With an "and," both conditions must be true for the individual record to be selected. Since an individual's address cannot have both New York and Chicago in the same record, we will get no data output from our request. Although, in English, we typically say "New York and Chicago," in "computer-speak", we should say "New York or Chicago." With an "or," either or both have to be true for the individual to be selected. So, we should have written "or" instead of "and."

We also need to be careful when mixing "and" and "or." For example, if we were to write the following:

Select individuals where city = "New York" or city = "Chicago"
and gift > $1000

In "computer-speak," the "and" is always paired before the "or." In other words, the computer understands the statement above as:

Select individuals where city = "New York"
or (city = "Chicago" and gift > $1000)

This will result in a report where everyone from New York, plus only those individuals in Chicago that gave over $1000 will be included. All of this can be hard to remember, so it's always a great idea to put the brackets in for clarification. The above statement would be better written as follows:

Select individuals where (city = "New York" or city = "Chicago")
and gift > $1000

This will select all individuals in New York and Chicago, that have also given over $1000.

This process is related to simple math formulas like: 5 + 2 X 3. Without following the mathematical rule of BEDMAS (that we all fondly remember learning in grade 6 math class), we would wrongly say that the answer is 21, when in fact, the answer is 11. That's because the multiplication has to be performed first. The order of operation is Brackets first, then Exponents/Roots, then Division/Multiplication, then Addition/Subtraction, followed by Comparisons, and finally logical operators And/Or.  

Using data analysis to drive business decisions is a great way to help your organization grow, but what happens if you're not pulling the right data? Or if you're not sure how to extract the data in the first place? Whether you're a beginner or a seasoned veteran at data mining operations, the Data Mining Supplement is bound to have valuable information for you. Get all the details on selecting accounts, conditions, and data below.

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