What should I ask any data vendor before I sign?

Think of your data as a grocery store. Each source is a supplier. The schema is the store: aisles (tables), products (fields), and labels so anyone can find things. Mission's Field Guide is the label system. With that picture, the five questions are easy to ask:

1. How does this system guarantee I can find exactly one record for each person? One supporter should be one record, whatever system they came in through.

2. What identifier connects records across my systems? Email, address, a supporter ID. Ask how matching works and what happens when two records look alike.

3. Can you show me a diagram of how my data is structured? Tables, how they join, which fields are computed. If there is no diagram, there is no structure.

4. What moves data between my systems, when does it run, and what happens when it fails? A weekly file is fine. A process nobody can describe is not.

5. When we need to store a new kind of information, where does it go? The answer tells you whether the system was built to grow or to be rebuilt.

Mission answers all five in public: the Field Guide shows every table, field and computed insight, which CRM each one reads from, and the pathways built on them.

• The Field Guide's schema, field by field
• Learn Mission: Connect