No More Chinese Walls

 

Sometimes, users will tell me, "I'm happy for my contacts' records to be held on the database, but I don't want anyone else to see them. At all." Which rather makes my heart sink - as this almost completely defeats the object of having the records on the database in the first place. It’s a scenario known as a "Chinese Wall":  And I don't want to have to climb it.

To clarify, a Chinese Wall means that if, say, the Celebrity department are managing Richard Branson, and thus they obviously need to access his supporter record on the database, if the Community Fundraising team were to search for Richard Branson then they wouldn't even see that his record was on the database at all. Period. To them, he doesn't exist on the system full stop.

The problem with this is several-fold
These are just some of the issues with this:

• First, if the Community Fundraising team do have a genuine reason to need to view/add data about Richard Branson, then if they don't know he already has a record on the database then they will add a new one - a duplicate record.
• Secondly, both teams, including the Celebrity department, will be none the wiser that the other team has or is building a relationship with the charity. This can clearly lead to all sorts of problems, from multiple communications, multiple asks, embarrassment, DP issues and so on.
• What if the Corporate team then look at the Virgin Group's record. Are they allowed to see that Richard Branson is the Founder of Virgin? One would presume so. But if they then try to click-through to his record, they'll find they can't. Is that a good thing? So will they keep information on Branson on some other part of the Virgin record?
• What is Mr Branson phoned Supporter Care for some reason, and they couldn't see his record or his interaction & involvement with the charity? And yes, okay, I realise that specific scenario is unlikely but other VIPs etc might well do.
• Or what if someone else in the charity is going to meet his spouse, who may not be managed by the Celebrity department? Are they allowed to see Richard Branson is married to her? Surely yes; but then… [return to above…]

I know some teams who "own" records like this say, Oh, well, all the other users have to do if they come across Branson is come and talk to us. But that of course presumes everyone else knows Branson already has a relationship with the charity, that they will do that, that they can be bothered to do that, that someone in the Celebrity team is available to talk… And okay, Richard Branson may be a well-known person in the charity, but what about the other celebrities/VIPs who are not? And if a Chinese Wall stretches to cover us more common folk then this doesn't even bear thinking about.

So what to do instead

When this request does happen, I try to dig further to see what the user really means, and usually it is one of the following points:

• I don't want other users to contact my records; and/or:
• I don’t want other users to see sensitive information about my contacts.

Both are potentially reasonable requests, but in both instances there are better ways to address the issue than just completely blocking access. I say "potentially" because the first point above, that you don't want someone else to contact your records, is something I bang on about a lot. Firstly, they are not "your" records - see my other blog on that - and secondly, if everyone in the charity does agree that you are the best relationship manager for such contacts then that still doesn’t mean that you should blanket stop other people from seeing such records.

Instead, for both instances, the first thing that can be done is that the record can be flagged as such, with whatever appropriate code/wording which will help everyone in the charity understand the relationship. And ensure processes are in place to manage that.

Secondly, protecting sensitive information such as Richard Branson's giving history or personal phone number, is clearly an important point, but what the database should do is still give limited access to such contacts' records so that other people can see they do exist on the database and understand the relationship, and simply block the sensitive information so that only those users who should be able to see it can see it. That's a far more effective and open approach.

This is my belief anyway.

The only walls I want to see on a fundraising database are Kim Wall, Roger Water's Wall, Max Wall, Wall's Ice Cream… [that's enough Walls - Ed].

But no Chinese Walls thank you.

How England Could Have Won The World Cup If Only They Had Used a Fundraising Database

Forget about goal-line technology or dodgy refereeing. Don't worry about lacklustre performances or inept defending. (Actually, do worry about inept defending - that was indefensible). And who cares about whether Lampard can play with Gerrard, or whether Rooney plays better with Heskey?

Well, actually, maybe we should care about that last point. Because that does matter - and England could have understood that, and really could have won the World Cup, if only they had used a database, preferably a fundraising database. Honestly. Don’t believe me? Then read on...

The thing is, fundraising, like football, is a contact sport. It is all about relationships and communication, action and analysis, pitches, targets, goals... I could go on. And yes, they are both about the money. But it is also about research and tactics. England just needed to understand how they should be playing each match based on their previous games. And the best way to understand that? Data analysis. More accurately, data analysis on a relationship management database.

Because a fundraising database could hold all the information which don Fabio could ever have wished to have known. All the players would be Contacts (date of birth, club, number of games etc), their past matches would be Communication History, and any half-decent database (Brian) would be able to record plenty of additional match info on that history, like the opponent, quality, performance, passes made etc. Heck, it could even record strikers' goals on the Donation records, and by doing that use all those lovely reports showing performance and goal analysis... I would say that the database could even record how much each player earns, although I realise we might need to extend the field lengths for that.

But the coup-de-grâce is of course that the fundraising database could hold all the relationships between the players. Who plays with who, who was playing with who, what position, how long and so on. And then, of course, with a quick Crystal Report here and a nifty pivot table there, one could compare all that data with the Communication History and Goals, analyse it against the opposition, and do predictive analysis to see how England should play against the USA, Germany or the mighty Slovenia. And then we would know that Lampard can play with Gerrard, as long as Gerrard plays in the hole, and David James plays well in goal when he has Terry and Rio in front of him, and only a fool would take off Defoe and bring on Heskey with 15 minutes to go when we need to score 3 goals. And, thus, understand exactly from history what we should do in the future.

Football: it’s a simple game.

If you have read this far (well done!) and are hoping for a serious point, well okay, here you go. My point here is that as users of fundraising databases, we should sometimes stretch our minds and think outside the box to consider if we could actually use the systems for just a bit more than we are doing right now. (Although, Frank, if you are reading this, next time you are outside the box, please think about 6 inches lower). Why should we just have to record basic donor information and their gifts, who they know and what events they quite like attending. What else could we record? (And yes, yes, I know there is that pesky little thing called the data protection act, but that aside...) How else could we be using our databases to really push the boundaries and truly help the fundraisers and decision makers see data differently and give us an advantage over other, competitive campaigns.

Anyone got any thoughts or ideas? Not on fundraising, of course, but on how we could use the fundraising database to help ensure England win the next World Cup? Anyone? Please?