The American Diabetes Association, Alexandria, VA, said yesterday that it has saved 1,800 man hours in 20 weeks, because of the integration of two databases it uses to keep track of its constituents and various fundraising efforts.
The improved efficiency, which is being realized less than halfway through the ADA's fundraising season for the 230 walks scheduled for this fall, has eliminated the need for staff members to manually enter information from one database to another. It also used the integrated approach for the 76 spring Tour de Cure events.
The databases consist of a Convio online constituent database and a Team Approach master constituent database from Target Software Inc. The two databases combine information about constituents gathered both offline and online and provides information about event participants who register through the Web site. Information is downloaded twice a day into the Target Team Approach database, which houses constituent information acquired through offline activities.
The automatic integration also has improved the accuracy of the ADA's data by eliminating errors that are inevitable with manual data entry. Staff members and volunteers now have quicker access to the full set of constituent data, and can even get real-time updates up until the evening before an event.
