Use Your Database To Capture ALL Contacts
There was a discussion on the ASAE Executive Listserver the other day about how to handle business cards that are collected at various trade shows, meetings, etc. My immediate thought was: "If it's worth keeping, put it in your central database. If it's not worth keeping, throw it away."
One of the tremendous values of a centralized database is that everyone has access to the data. Therefore, all the contacts that staff are collecting should be entered into the centralized system, assuming they have some value to someone on staff. And just because a contact doesn't have some value to everyone on staff doesn't mean it shouldn't go in the database. First of all, we can't always know which contacts are going to be valuable to which staff. And secondly, today's staff may be gone tomorrow, and all those contacts go with them, unless they're in the central system.
|
