Datasheet

Part I: Basic Training

✓ A third table, again containing the volunteer number, would include the

volunteer’s preferences for activities — things they’re good at, enjoy

doing, and special skills or resources they can offer, such as training

homeless dogs or providing space in a barn for rescued horses.

Because you don’t have to fill in every field for each volunteer’s record (in

any table in the database) if you don’t have a phone number or don’t know

how many hours someone can work, it’s okay to leave those fields blank until

you’ve obtained that information.

With these three tables in place, any type of volunteer or useful contact

(past, current, or potential) can be entered into the database, and only the

table(s) that apply to that person need be populated with data. When a

potential volunteer becomes a current one, relevant data can be entered into

the appropriate table(s). If a potential volunteer never becomes available to

help out, you can delete that person’s name when a prescribed length of time

has elapsed — or perhaps you can set up a fourth table to hold archived vol-

unteer records. The options are limited only by your needs and intended use

of the data.

Failure to plan? Plan to fail

If you think carefully about your database, how you use your data, and what

you need to know about your employees, customers, volunteers, donors,

products, or projects — whatever you’re storing information about — you

can plan

✓ How many tables you’ll need

✓ Which data will go into which table

✓ How you’ll use the tables together to get the reports you need

Feel free to sketch your planned database on paper, drawing a kind of flow

chart with boxes for each table and lists of fields that you’ll have in each one.

Draw arrows to show how they might be related — it’s sort of like drawing

a simple family tree — and you’re well on your way to a well-planned, useful

database.

Here’s a handy procedure to follow if you’re new to the process of planning a

database:

1. On paper or in a word processing document, whichever is more com-

fortable, type the following:

• A tentative name for your database

• A list of the pieces of information you plan on getting from that

database on a daily or regular basis

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