There are many universal truths in data management. Some examples:

• You will always have duplicate records.
• Your business rules are the easiest thing to change to improve data management.
• Reporting and querying is always a challenge.

In a recent conversation with a client, I was reminded of another universal truth: No matter what you do, volunteers and staff will ask for things that they already have access to.

In this particular case, in a focus group with volunteers, they asked for access to certain types of data about association and chapter membership. In follow up discussions with staff, staff explained the volunteers already have access to this information via the association volunteer portal.

This did not surprise me. I've conducted thousands of interviews in my career, and one of the most common themes is users are unaware of what data and what system functionality is available to them.

What to do? Accept it. Do what you can to communicate what data and functionality staff and volunteers have access to, but understand and accept that no matter how often you tell them, not everyone will internalize it. Someone will inevitably ask for something they already have.

You can't change a universal truth...