It's a simple fact of data management that is often overlooked: Any data that is not actively managed will eventually become useless. And it's truer now than ever.

If you take a moment to think about your members, whether they are individuals or organizations, every point of data that you collect about them can and very likely will change at some point during their tenure with your organization. On a person's record, the only data points that never change are birthdate and, well, cell phone number. And on an organization's record, there are likely no absolutes at all. Every single data point could change at some point, and many of them will change!

What this means for those of us managing data is that we have to have processes in place to keep the data as up-to-date as possible. Here are just a few options:

• An annual "census" of members asking them to go online and update their profile. This should include asking them to update any demographic data you may be collecting about them (individually or organizationally).
• Asking for updates during e-commerce session like event registration and membership renewal (fair warning: asking questions like this can depress response rates so tread carefully!).
• When talking with members on the phone, build in a couple of questions every time: "Before I let you go, this is the information I have about you. Is it correct?"

I can't count the number of times I've heard clients say "We have this data point, but it hasn't been updated in years, so we're pretty sure it's not good anymore." That's because the data was never actively managed. Don't let this happen in your organization!