Week one: stop the bleeding
The database will not fall over the day someone leaves. It falls over three weeks later when acknowledgements stop, a batch is posted twice, and someone "tidies up" the fund codes. So the first week is about control.
- Change the admin password and review who has rights to edit code tables and delete records.
- Nominate one person to post gifts, even if they only do it for an hour a day.
- Print the last three months of reconciliation reports. You will need the baseline.
The database was a mess before the manager left. It just did not have a witness until then.
Weeks two to four: cover the essentials
Gift entry, acknowledgements, and the monthly reconciliation. Everything else can wait. If nobody in-house can do these, this is where an outsourced database manager pays for itself in the first month.
What to ask a managed services provider
- Which of your people will actually be in our database, and are they certified on it?
- How fast will gifts be entered and acknowledged?
- Will you reconcile to finance, and show your work?
- What happens when we rehire?
Month two: decide what you actually need
Half the organizations we work with discover they never needed a full-time role. They needed twenty reliable hours a month and a person who answers the phone. The other half need a full-time hire, and use the managed period to write a better job description.
Either way, run a database health check in month two. New eyes on an inherited system find things nobody documented.
Aldera Chisholm
Frankie