Data Cleanup 101: Preparing Your Raiser's Edge Data Before Migration
- Ohana Focus Team
- Jan 16
- 7 min read
By Ohana Focus Team | January 3, 2025 | 12 min read
Your organization has made the strategic decision to migrate from Raiser's Edge to Salesforce—a transformative step that promises enhanced donor engagement, streamlined operations, and powerful insights. But before you can reap these benefits, there's one critical task that will determine whether your migration succeeds or struggles: data cleanup.
The quality of data you migrate directly impacts everything from user adoption to reporting accuracy to your team's confidence in the new system. Yet many nonprofits rush through—or skip entirely—the crucial data preparation phase, only to face costly consequences after go-live.
This comprehensive guide will walk you through everything you need to know about preparing your Raiser's Edge data for Salesforce migration, from initial assessment to final validation. Whether you're managing this process internally or working with a migration partner like Ohana Focus, these strategies will help ensure your data arrives in Salesforce clean, organized, and ready to power your mission.
Understanding the True Cost of Poor Data Quality
Before diving into the how-to, let's understand why data quality matters so much for your CRM migration success.
Immediate Migration Impact
Poor data quality directly affects your migration process. Messy data takes longer to map and transform, increasing consultant hours and project costs. Complex data structures with inconsistencies require custom migration scripts that add weeks to timelines. Testing becomes more difficult when you can't be sure whether issues are migration problems or pre-existing data quality issues.
Long-Term Operational Consequences
Beyond the migration itself, poor data quality undermines your entire Salesforce implementation. Staff lose confidence when they find duplicate donors or incorrect information. Reports and dashboards produce unreliable results, leading to poor decision-making. Email campaigns reach the wrong people or bounce due to bad contact data. Major gift officers waste time sorting through duplicate records and incomplete prospect information.
The Financial Impact
Let's talk numbers. A typical nonprofit organization with 25,000 constituents might spend an estimated 150-200 hours on proper pre-migration data cleanup. If that same organization skips cleanup, they often face:
• 400-600 hours of post-migration data remediation
• Ongoing productivity losses from working with poor data
• Reduced fundraising effectiveness due to data quality issues
The return on investment for pre-migration cleanup is compelling: every hour spent cleaning data before migration saves three to five hours of work after migration.
Phase 1: Comprehensive Data Assessment
Effective data cleanup starts with understanding exactly what you're working with. Don't skip this crucial assessment phase.
Inventory Your Data
Begin by documenting what exists in your Raiser's Edge database:
• Create a complete field inventory listing every table, field, and attribute in your system
• Document which fields are actively used versus historical artifacts
• Identify custom fields and their purposes—many organizations discover fields no one remembers creating
• Note coded values and table entries, especially those that vary by case or spelling
This inventory becomes your roadmap for the entire cleanup process. It helps you identify what's essential to migrate versus what can be archived or deprecated.
Run Quality Reports
Leverage Raiser's Edge reporting to quantify your data quality issues. Create queries to identify:
• Constituents without email addresses
• Records with incomplete addresses
• Phone numbers in inconsistent formats
• Gifts without proper attribution
• Relationships that may be outdated
• Records that haven't been updated in three-plus years
Phase 2: Strategic Planning and Prioritization
With assessment complete, create a focused plan that maximizes impact while respecting time and resource constraints.
Define Your Data Standards
Before cleaning data, establish clear standards for how information should be formatted. Document:
• Phone number format (e.g., (555) 123-4567 or 555-123-4567)
• Address formatting conventions (including abbreviations)
• Capitalization rules for names and organizations
• How to record relationships and household connections
• Standardized values for custom fields and coded entries
Prioritize by Impact
Not all data cleanup has equal value. High priority areas include:
• Active donor records (gifts in the last 3-5 years)
• Incomplete contact information that prevents communication
• Duplicate records that will cause confusion
• Gift data critical for reporting and analysis
• Current relationships that drive engagement strategy
Phase 3: Tackling Duplicate Records
Duplicate records are consistently the most challenging and time-consuming aspect of data cleanup. They're also among the most important to address.
Why Duplicates Happen
Understanding how duplicates emerge helps you find and fix them. Common causes include:
• Name variations (Robert vs. Bob, Elizabeth vs. Liz)
• Maiden names versus married names
• Organizations recorded with slight spelling differences
• Couples entered separately instead of as household members
• Lack of duplicate detection during data entry
The Merge Process
Develop a consistent process for merging duplicate records. Before merging any pair:
• Review gift history for both records to avoid losing donations
• Check for different contact information (one might have current data)
• Examine relationships and ensure all connections are preserved
• Look at notes and interactions for unique information
• Verify custom field data across both records
Phase 4: Standardizing Contact Information
Consistent, accurate contact information is essential for maintaining donor relationships in Salesforce.
Phone Numbers
Phone number standardization seems simple, but requires attention to detail:
• Choose a standard format and apply it consistently
• Remove invalid numbers (all zeros, repeating digits like 111-1111)
• Verify country codes for international numbers
• Add labels to distinguish mobile, home, and work numbers
Email Addresses
Email is your primary digital communication channel:
• Validate that addresses follow the proper format
• Flag role-based emails (info@, admin@) that may be less effective
• Consider email verification services for large databases
Physical Addresses
Address standardization improves deliverability and data quality:
• Use USPS standardized abbreviations for street types
• Standardize state abbreviations (two-letter codes)
• Ensure consistent ZIP code format
• Verify city names match ZIP codes
• Consider using USPS address validation tools
Phase 5: Validating Gift Data
Your gift history is arguably your most valuable data. Ensuring its accuracy is paramount for fundraising success in Salesforce.
Gift Record Essentials
Every gift record should have a valid date, amount, and payment method. Run queries to identify:
• Gifts missing dates—these often indicate data entry errors
• Gifts with zero or negative amounts
• Gifts not attributed to actual constituent records
• Payment methods that are inconsistently coded
• Gifts with future dates (except documented pledges)
Pledge Management
Pledges require special attention during cleanup. Verify that:
• Each pledge has an expected completion date
• Linked payments are properly associated with the pledge
• Status accurately reflects whether the pledge is active or completed
• Pledge amount matches expected payment schedule
Best Practices for Maintaining Data Quality Post-Migration
Data cleanup isn't a one-time project—it's an ongoing commitment. As you plan your CRM migration, also plan for data quality maintenance in Salesforce:
• Establish data entry standards and training
• Use Salesforce validation rules to prevent bad data entry
• Implement duplicate rules to prevent duplicate creation
• Schedule regular data quality audits
• Assign ongoing data stewardship responsibilities
The effort you put into cleaning data before migration will be wasted if you don't maintain quality standards in your new system.
When to Seek Expert Help
While many aspects of data cleanup can be managed internally, consider engaging a Salesforce consulting partner like Ohana Focus if you're facing:
• Very large databases (50,000+ records)
• Severe data quality issues (40%+ duplicates, extensive inconsistencies)
• Lack of internal resources with time and expertise
• Need to accelerate the cleanup timeline
• Want to ensure best practices are followed throughout the process
Experienced consultants bring tools, processes, and expertise developed across hundreds of nonprofit CRM migrations. They can often complete cleanup work in a fraction of the time internal teams require while simultaneously teaching your team best practices for ongoing data management.
Data cleanup is complex, detailed work that can make or break your CRM migration. But you don't have to navigate it alone. Ohana Focus specializes in helping nonprofits successfully migrate from Raiser's Edge to Salesforce. Our proven methodology starts with thorough data assessment and cleanup, ensuring your migration is built on a foundation of quality data. Our team brings:
• Deep expertise in both Raiser's Edge and Salesforce platforms
• Proprietary tools and processes that accelerate data cleanup
• Hands-on experience cleaning hundreds of nonprofit databases
• Strategic guidance on data structure and governance
• Ongoing support to maintain data quality in your new system
We've helped organizations of all sizes—from small community nonprofits to major national organizations—achieve successful Salesforce migrations. Our clients consistently report higher user adoption, more accurate reporting, and greater confidence in their CRM investment.
Preparing your Raiser's Edge data for migration to Salesforce is one of the most important investments you can make in your CRM migration success. While the work is detailed and time-consuming, clean data will make your migration smoother, reduce post-migration issues, improve user adoption, and provide a solid foundation for years of effective donor relationship management.
Start your data cleanup early—ideally several months before your planned migration date. Be thorough, be consistent, and don't hesitate to seek expert help when needed. Your future self (and your team) will thank you when you're working in a Salesforce environment built on accurate, reliable data.
Remember, data cleanup isn't about perfection—it's about significant improvement. Even reducing duplicates by 80% and improving contact information completeness by 50% will make a dramatic difference in your Salesforce experience. Focus on progress, not perfection, and you'll set your nonprofit up for CRM success.
About Ohana Focus
Ohana Focus is a certified Salesforce consulting partner dedicated exclusively to serving nonprofit organizations. We specialize in Salesforce implementations, CRM migrations, and ongoing support that helps nonprofits maximize their technology investment and advance their missions.
Our team combines deep technical expertise with a genuine understanding of nonprofit operations, fundraising, and program management. We've successfully completed migrations for educational institutions, healthcare organizations, social service agencies, arts and culture organizations, and advocacy groups across the United States.
When you partner with Ohana Focus, you gain more than a consultant—you gain a trusted advisor committed to your long-term success. Let us know when you're ready to make the switch!
Topics: CRM Migration, Data Management, Raiser's Edge, Salesforce, Nonprofit Technology, Data Quality
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