Cancer Research UK
Cancer Research UK was formed in February 2002 following the successful merger of Imperial Cancer Research Fund and The Cancer Research Campaign. The charity is now the largest volunteer-supported cancer research organisation in the world and has a dedicated team of 3,000 scientists working across the UK to improve treatments for cancer patients. Cancer Research UK’s annual £191 million scientific spend is raised almost entirely by donations from the general public.
The Problem
After the merger of Imperial Cancer Research Fund and The Cancer Research Campaign, details on supporters were pooled into one Cancer Research UK database.
Soon afterwards, Cancer Research UK recognised the need to address the quality of
the data to ensure it could target supporters accurately whilst also meeting the requirements of the Data Protection Act 1998 - and that’s when the charity turned to GB Group for help.
The Solution
GB Group carried out a detailed quality assessment of Cancer Research UK’s supporter database and matched the records against a number of cleansing and suppression datasets.
These included the Direct Marketing Association’s National Suppression File, the Royal Mail’s National Change of Address File, together with a number of gone away and mortality screening databases.
GB Group also identified duplicate records and updated details using its vast National Register® database, which contains current name, address, telephone number and important lifestyle data on 48 million householders and businesses in the UK.
This thorough cleansing exercise ensured Cancer Research UK’s donor data was fully upto- date and accurate - and ready for use as part of the charity’s extensive fundraising activities.
Michael Toothill, head of database at Cancer Research UK comments: “As an organisation that relies on public goodwill in what is a highly competitive marketplace, it is absolutely imperative that Cancer Research UK is able to target communications effectively.
“To achieve this our data has to meet the very highest of standards - and we had great confidence that GB Group could deliver this.
“Cancer Research UK’s database can now complement fully our increasingly sophisticated targeting.
“As with any organisation, but in particular as a charity, Cancer Research UK needs to monitor cost efficiency very closely. The generosity of our supporters is something we can never take for granted.
“As a result of GB Group’s work, we have been able to reduce costs dramatically through deduplication, re-addressing and mortality matching. Accurate data is the foundation that allows Cancer Research UK to demonstrate how much we value the contribution of our supporters.”
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