Gloucestershire Historical Churches Trust

Gloucestershire Historical Churches Trust had a number of lists that contained their sponsors, gift aid donors and other contacts that the Trust wished to keep on record.

This information was stored in many lists, in many separate places, with many being in paper format. Many of these lists had not been maintained, contained duplicates and differing records. It also included contacts that wanted to be taken off the list or were deceased.

The Trust was keen to have a single list that was: up to date; easily maintainable; and be able to be filtered based on information about the contacts. This would also ensure the Trust would be GDPR compliant and prepare the list to be managed and maintained in electronic format, allowing them to move away from contacts by post or phone, to electronic only.

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Our approach was to start with the data. This allowed us to gain a good understanding of what contact data was important to the Trust and where they used this in their day to day running of the Trust.

Access to the data allowed us to analyse what records they had and what data headings were important to them. From the analysis and mappings, we created a merged data set that could be used as the Master List and as a source for their campaigns.

We created a data store using Excel as this provided the easiest and best option to hold the volume of data for them. The Master List can be used to import the contact details into various applications used by the Trust. By using Excel, this gives them the ability to filter, perform validation and present a management view of the data by means of a dashboard.

On completion of this small project the Master List delivered good quality data, in a standard format, with the ability to monitor and manage future updates and removal of contacts who want to unsubscribe. As part of the handover, we ran a short training session to present the Master List to their Leadership Team and show how it could be used and maintained.

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