Data Cleansing & Validation

Cleansing and Enriching an Alumni Database for a Top-20 University

Cleansing, researching, enriching, and updating contact information and other details on college alumni. Top 20 University with 300,000+ living alumni.

Overview

Deepening Alumni Relationships in Spite of Stale Data

The alumni relations team for a top-20 private research university in the U.S. recognized that their alumni interactions offered significant value to the school. The client had an illustrious alumni base and a well-funded, strong alumni relations program led by highly successful individuals. While they had orchestrated a number of standout capital campaigns for the university in recent years, they determined that a large number of alumni were not engaged with the school.

Seeking to increase involvement with the department and university, the client took stock of its data. They found that their database of living alumni was underappreciated and underutilized, and most fundraising officers relied on the tight networks and existing relationships that they had formed. University leadership requested deeper connectivity with the broader alumni base of alumni, but the client realized that their outdated and stale database posed a challenge to expanding their outreach.

Challenge

Deepening Alumni Relationships in Spite of Stale Data

Solution

Cultivating a Database with Assivo Content Enrichment Specialists

The client approached Assivo with the problem of updating an alumni database containing outdated details for 300,000+ living alumni worldwide. The task was simply too colossal for the client’s internal team to manage. Assivo worked with several key constituents in the department to scope out a plan to enrich, deduplicate, cleanse, and update the database. Assivo project managers worked with client to define the data points that mattered most.

With a clear framework in place, Assivo staffed a team of 15 full-time associates who executed the database enrichment and cleansing over a 6-month period. The database was cultivated with up-to-date contact information, employment details, social media profiles, community involvement, and other metrics that the client could leverage to engage with alumni in the future.

Result

Data Quality Becomes Instrumental in Improved Fundraising and Engagement

The Assivo team was able to accurately and quickly enrich the client’s alumni database, empowering the alumni relations team with data and details for driving connections with past students. The client recognized that the size of its email list, alumni engagement levels, fundraising activity, and several other key indicators measurably improved. The client engaged a team of 5 full-time associates from Assivo on a maintenance contract to review and update the database as an ongoing project to ensure that all alumni records are consistently up-to-date for alumni relations to use in outreach campaigns.

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