American Civil Liberties Union: Data Management Strategy
www.aclu.org
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is a premier national non-profit that works to preserve civil liberties in the United States. The ACLU is comprised of national staff located primarily in New York and Washington, DC, and 53 affiliate offices located across the country.
The Challenge
The ACLU’s national office and its 53 affiliates were experiencing difficulties mining and sharing constituent data across the organization: the process was cumbersome, time-consuming and prone to errors.
Beaconfire was approached to provide assistance in defining and addressing two critical challenges: the ACLU’s system of multiple data entry points for data processing, reporting, and communications was ineffective and its technological system of non-integrated databases was an inefficient way to operate in a large organization with more than 700,000 donor records.
The Solution
Through a series of workshops and interviews, Beaconfire identified the underlying issues that were contributing to the organization’s data management challenges. Beaconfire found that the ACLU and its affiliates didn’t have shared technologies, they had an incompatible coding structure, and the organization needed assistance around technological and business processes related to sharing data and information. Armed with this information, Beaconfire analyzed the problem and devised a strategic process to address the ACLU’s data management problems.
Beaconfire led a steering team that worked with the national and affiliate office staff to select from a variety of options for tackling these challenges. After a decision was made to go with a centralized database, Beaconfire then developed a plan outlining the projects needed to fully implement the new data management plan.
At every step along the way, the ACLU and Beaconfire conducted full briefings with ACLU affiliate offices on the progress of the project and obtained input to ensure the organization’s full support. A key issues document incorporating input from ACLU staff was developed and presented to the field during a national conference. And each affiliate was provided the opportunity to complete a survey outlining its needs related to data management.
The ACLU was extremely pleased with the outcome of the data management solution process and has retained Beaconfire to take the next step of conduct an RFP process for selecting a new centralized database vendor.