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Newsletter, January 2006

By Karen Graham, Client Development Manager

Nonprofit Neighborhood

Spread the word: thedatabank has more new clients

The Minnesota Project  - The Minnesota Project is a nonprofit organization dedicated to environmental protection and sustainable development in greater Minnesota . They will be adding DonorMax and PowerMail, in addition to e-ActionMax which they already use through the Minnesota Environmental Partnership.

Friends of Peter McLaughlin - The McLaughlin campaign has selected PowerMail to handle bulk email for his County Commissioner re-election campaign.

Illinois Network of Charter Schools - The voice of Illinois' charter schools, INCS advocates for legislation to strengthen charter schools, educates the public about the value of charter schools, and supports the dissemination of best practices throughout the system. They will use DonorMax to manage relationships with schools, parents, and other supporters.

Minnesota League of Conservation Voters - The Minnesota League of Conservation Voters Education Fund seeks to educate citizens and organizations on effective participation in government to further conservation goals. Three key ways they do this are a voter's guide, budget analysis, and the Minnesota Environmental Action Network [www.mnaction.org]. An Action Alert client since 1998, now the MN LCV is adding DonorMax, PowerMail and Meetings, which will result in a comprehensive database management and communication system.

Tip du Jour
Enhanced access to your data using Access

Downloading a data selection from your database is easy but what do you do with the information once you've downloaded it? For simple data downloads, MS Excel usually works just fine but sometimes you need something with a bit more horsepower. Although a bit intimidating, MS Access might be just the tool you need to analyze your multi-table downloads. Of course, as with most Microsoft tools, there's more than meets the eye for making the most of your data. The first, most important step, is getting the data into Access and linking them so your member table correctly connects to your other tables.

We've written step by step directions for linking data tables within MS Access. They and other handy tips can be found at:

Karen's Blog

New Words

What was the first intelligible word uttered by my fun-loving niece? "Jump!" That was only a month ago, and now she chatters like a magpie. With about 900,000 words in the English language, there's always more to learn. I was thinking the other day about all of the new words I've learned just in the past year: podcast, VOIP. I've also mastered pregnancy vocabulary: vernix, lanugo, and that grammatical anomaly, dilatation. And apparently I'm not the only person at thedatabank who is interested in words and language. At a recent meeting of our technical staff, it is reported that the etymology of the word "buck" was discussed at some length.

Every subject has its own jargon - including database management. If you're not familiar with database technology, the language might seem intimidating or confusing. That's why our new user guide will include a glossary of common database terms. Wait, did I just say new user guide? Yes! thedatabank, along with talented technical writer Robin Thomas, is hard at work revising the DonorMax user guide. The new guide will feature comprehensive, updated instructions; more intuitive organization, and a printer-friendly format

Karen

n. pl. Karen or Ka·rens

1. A member of a Thai people inhabiting southern and eastern Myanmar ( Burma ).
2. Any of the Tibeto-Burman languages of this people.
From dictionary.com

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