12 Dec 2011

Managing Names and Addresses

by Skip

SKIP was lucky enough to have a board member at the beginning that developed PHP applications. He developed our address management system and I integrateded the front-end web forms. But, not every charity is so lucky and PHP development can be expensive. In this article I’ll walk you through the basics of managing the addresses your charity has using spreadsheet software, such as Microsoft Excel.

Stay organized

Information to Collect

Some charities only collect necessary information to send care packages – name and address. SKIP collected much more than that, to include things like, rank, branch of service, deployment date, redeployment date, gender, home of record, component (active duty, reserve, national guard), and an alternate contact person’s name and email address. We chose to collect that much information mostly for our own records, so we could keep track of how many service members had been supported for each piece of information. We collected other pieces so we had a better idea of what the service member would need during their deployment and when they would need it. You can collect as much information as you want, but here are a few pieces that I highly recommend to every charity.

1. Name – required to send packages.
2. Address – required to send packages.
3. Email – in case of address problems and other direct communication needs.
4. Deployment date – sometimes military members know their deployment address before deploying and request packages for deployment while stateside.
5. Redeployment date – sometimes packages are requested with too little time to send anything before redeployment (coming home). Many times, military members don’t think to tell the charities that they have redeployed and you might get returned packages, which is wasted money. A redeployment date lets you plan ahead.
6. Alternate point of contact – this can save a lot of headaches when contacting the military member falls through for whatever reason.

Never Abuse Trust

When you are given the military member’s information, it is your responsibility to safeguard that information. They trust that you will. Your privacy policy should state that you will. They also trust that you will not use their information for reasons other than what they signed up for. In other words, don’t add them to your email marketing list or any other list without their prior consent. Even more importantly, never, ever sell or rent their information. The CAN-SPAM Act is in place to prevent you from doing those things, but a lot of people still do it. Don’t abuse the trust you’ve been given.

How to Collect the Information

I recommend a web form as your primary method for collecting information. The web form I created is below. It doesn’t do anything today, so feel free to play with it.

Here are a few web form solutions that are worth checking out – from easiest (and fastest) to most features (and difficult).

1. Wufoo – For quick and easy forms, Wufoo seems to be okay.
2. PHP Forms – decent features, ideal for people with some HTML knowledge. I used an early version of PHP Forms to create the first few web forms for the SKIP website.
3. FormBoss – extremely feature rich, but expect a significant learning curve. Do not attempt without significant knowledge of HTML and some knowledge of PHP. This is the application used to create the form above.
4. Develop your own – developing your own forms can give you customized capabilities that form building software can’t. But, unless you have extensive knowledge of PHP and HTML I’d highly recommend using software; it’s quick and is guaranteed to work.

In addition to creating web forms I also suggest creating a paper version of the form that you can use at fundraising events. Chances are, at those events it will be family and friends completing the forms, so try to keep them as simple and quick to fill out as possible. For example, your paper form may only ask for name, address and email address of the military member, and the name and email address of an alternate contact. You can always get more information later, if you want.