Have you ever seen one of those maps showing where all an organisation’s supporters are? Looks impressive. And genuinely useful.
The good news is – you don’t need expensive tools to do it.
But before you get to the map, there’s one simple step most people miss: getting your data ready. Start by thinking about what you actually want to see.
If it’s just a basic map of where your supporters are, you only need a few fields:
- a unique ID
- a full address (including postcode) split into separate fields for ease
That’s enough to get something working. But if you want to go a bit further, for example:
- spotting clusters of higher value supporters
- identifying specific groups (animal adopters, event participants, shop purchasers)you’ll need to include that information in your data as well.
Once you’ve got your dataset, the next step is to add latitude and longitude — the coordinates that place each person on a map. There are simple tools that will do this for you. I’ve used Doogal
(https://www.doogal.co.uk/BatchGeocoding) – paste your data in, and it will return the coordinates. Once you’ve got those, you’re ready to map.
It’s a small step, but it makes everything that follows much easier – and much more useful. I’ve got space over the coming months to help teams get this kind of thing set up properly.
And if you know a team that’s a bit stuck with their data – whether that’s processes, their CRM, or just getting things to work as they should – I’d really appreciate an introduction.
#DataQuality
#CRM
#CharitySector
#DataGovernance
#Nonprofits
