DMEF welcomes and encourages the donation of data sets which will contribute to education and research in the direct/interactive field. We rely upon practitioners like you to provide access to this valuable data. DMEF has established a process which allows companies to contribute data while establishing safeguards for the protection of the donated information.
Type of Data:
The data should reflect a set of customers and/or information about them that would allow for useful analysis by teachers and students. Examples include:
Customer buying history
Customer promotional history
Sets of mailed names and responders
Demographic characteristics via data overlays or enhancement
Compiled data from suppliers
Socio-economic information
Customer transactional information reflecting purchases made, dates of purchases, amounts spent, donor contributions, etc.
Markets:
Any market segment which reflects active marketing in the Direct/Interactive Marketing Disciplines will be considered. Examples include:
Catalogs
E-Marketing
Not-for-Profit and Fundraising
Retail
Subscription based publications
Solo/Continuity Offers (including Loyalty)
Business to Business marketers
The market segment that the data reflects should be identified to provide context for analysis.
Size:
File size should generally be about 100,000 customers. However, larger or smaller files will be considered.
File Format:
DMEF welcomes the donation of data in a format that allows their use with statistical packages (e.g. CSV, SAS).
Contents:
The data should reflect defined entities such as people, businesses, households, etc.
Any personally identifying information should be removed from the file. This includes:
Name
Business Name
Address
Telephone number
Email address
Account numbers
Customer ID
However, if there are multiple records for an entity (such as person level records with a separate record for each purchase), there should be a common identifier to allow the records to be grouped together as representing the same entity.
ZIP Code should be included for geographic designation and appending geographic data.
Help With Understanding the Data:
The data should be accompanied by a complete dictionary reflecting the layout of the information provided, the variables that are reported, and the labels for the attributes of the variables (where appropriate).
In some cases, it may be necessary to provide explanations for the construction of the data. In such cases, DMEF will work with the company to develop a series of FAQs about the data set.
Guidelines to Safeguard the Data:
All information relating to personal identification will be removed.
The actual source of the data will not be associated with the actual data set.
All professors granted access to the data will be approved by the DMEF.
Security agreements will be signed by each professor taking possession of the data for their own use in teaching students. Such agreements will include unequivocal statements that:
The data is to be used for academic purposes only and for no other purpose.
There can be no attempts to market to any members of the representative data.
No “products” can be created from the data sets.
Published research from the data will include citation that the data was provided to the DMEF for such purpose. (Applies to data donated for research purposes).
DMEF is a nonprofit charity incorporated under section 501 (c) (3) of the US tax code, and will, if requested by the donor and if supported by an appropriate independent valuation review as required by the IRS, acknowledge receipt of the datasets as a non-cash contribution. Copies of any research published from the data will be provided to the company upon request.
All costs associated with providing the data to the DMEF are the responsibility of the company and considered as part of the donation.
Contact Information:
For more information regarding participation, please contact:
Marie Adolphe, Vice President – Programming
ph: 212.768-7277 ext.1335
fx: 212-790-1561
[email protected]