I’ve written in the past about establishing a contact tracking policy for your organization. In my experience, very few organizations execute this successfully.
One of my clients, Grantmakers for Effective Organizations (GEO), recently put together a short guideline for staff on tracking interactions with their constituents. With J McCray’s permission, I’m reprinting four questions (developed by Laurel Jacobsen at GEO) that help guide staff with deciding whether or not an interaction should be recorded in their database.
- Is this an e-mail that I might need to track down months from now to verify information or a decision that was made?
- If my colleague were to call this individual tomorrow, would s/he want to know that my conversation with this same individual took place today?
- Does this e-mail signify a commitment to join GEO, an indication about a funding decision, or a commitment to volunteer their time with GEO?
- Was my call with this person an introduction of our work for them? Was this our first interaction with this individual?
These are great guidelines for deciding whether or not the interaction should be tracked in the database. Over time, GEO will have a wealth of information about how their constituency interacts with them.
What kind of questions should your staff be asking themselves?