The handful of fields that make appeals personal, and the ones that just clutter your database.
Donor databases tend to grow fields until nobody fills any of them in. A small, disciplined set of data is more useful than a comprehensive one that is half empty.
The fields that earn their place
Contact details and preferred channel, full giving history with dates and amounts, the appeal or campaign each gift came from, communication preferences and consent, and any restriction on how the money can be used. Those support almost every decision a fundraising team makes.
What makes appeals personal
Knowing what someone gave to last time, and being able to tell them what it achieved, is worth more than any demographic field. Interest area and relationship to the organisation, such as volunteer or beneficiary family, are the two that most improve response.
What to leave out
Speculative wealth estimates, unverified personal details, and free-text notes with subjective judgements about donors. These create risk under data protection rules and rarely change what you actually send.
Audit the database annually: any field filled in for under a fifth of records is either not being collected or not being used, and both are reasons to remove it.
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