CDP’s Public Media National Reference File (“NRF”) is a cooperative endeavor that brings together donor and transaction data from hundreds of public media stations, nationwide.
CDP uses the data to analyze the performance of station membership programs, provide each station with a benchmarking analysis – the Revenue Opportunity and Action Report (“ROAR”) – and identify areas of opportunity for future growth. As each station uses a fundraising CRM of their choice, CDP has created a universal categorization system that maps gift coding into a common data model.
Participation in the NRF
Stations choosing to contribute data to the NRF must submit both a Donor File and a Transaction File. CDP has collaborated with key fundraising CRM providers to create built-in processes for NRF file generation. Details may be found by choosing your CRM from this list:
For more detailed instructions on file layouts or data submissions, please contact your CRM provider or email the CDP team at data@cdpcommunity.org.
Gift Coding
Source Code and Source Category are data values that need to be assigned to donor transactions for data to be mapped to CDP’s universal categorization system.
Click here to view our full list of source categories.
File Requirements
Time Frames
Donor and Transaction files should contain data going back at minimum 5 years (8 years preferred if applicable).
Each month, the files should contain giving through the prior month – ex, files submitted in November 2022 should contain giving through October 31st 2022.
File Submission
Files need to be submitted using the following naming conventions (the month should = the month of submission – ex, files submitted in November 2022 should be labeled 1122).
Call Letters_DON_MMYY
Call Letters_TRN_MMYY
Files should be uploaded to CDP’s data repositories as tab-delimited .txt files.
Unique credentials for participating stations will be provided during the onboarding activities.
Deadlines
Files should be submitted monthly.
Files should be submitted by mid-month to allow time for troubleshooting if needed (around the 15th of each month).
The official deadline for file submission closes on the last day of each month.