Suppose you are the manager of fund-raising for a local public television statio

Question

Suppose you are the manager of fund-raising for a local public television station. Twice a year you conduct fund drives during which the station runs commercials that ask viewers to donate. These drives are important; they provide nearly 40 percent of the station’s operating budget. One of your job functions is to find volunteers to staff the phones during these drives. You need 10 volunteers per night for 6 nights, or 60 people, twice per year. The volunteers’ job is exhausting, and normally a volunteer will work only one night during a drive. Finding volunteers for each drive is a perpetual headache. Two months before a drive begins, you and your staff start calling potential volunteers. You first call volunteers from prior drives, using a roster that your administrative assistant prepares for each drive. Some volunteers have been helping for years; you’d like to know that information before you call them so that you can tell them how much you appreciate their continuing support. Unfortunately, the roster does not have that data. Additionally, some volunteers are more effective than others. Some have a particular knack for increasing the callers’ donations. Although those data are available, the information is not in a format that you can use when calling for volunteers. You think you could better staff the fund-raising drives if you had that missing information.

. Explain how you could use a spreadsheet to solve the volunteer problem at the television station. What data would you place in each column and row of your spreadsheet? Name each column and row of your spreadsheet. What advantages does a database have over a spreadsheet for this problem?

Explanation / Answer

First, let me list the problems with existing data collection and maintenance.

1. There is no uniformity in data collection.

2. Data is maintained in manual books.

3. There is no data consistency.

4. Lack of availability of collected data.

5. Lack of data maintenance.

6. No backup or maintenance of data.

7. Difficult to analyze and get the reports.

Explain how you could use a spreadsheet to solve the volunteer problem at the television station. What data would you place in each column and row of your spreadsheet? Name each column and row of your spreadsheet.

In order to solve, these problems the data can be maintained in a spreadsheet. A Spreadsheet is a worksheet which is made up of rows and columns. There are many benefits to using a spreadsheet.

1. Data can be validated by applying data validation constraints.

2. Defaults formulas can be used to find the calculations.

3. Filters can be used.

4. Easy to use and learn.

5. No loss of data.

The rows/columns of a spreadsheet are given below.

VolunteerID, Full Name, Email ID, Phone Number, List of Volunteer Programs attended, Joining Date, fundraised, Location.

What advantages does a database have over a spreadsheet for this problem?

Even though, there are many advantages of using Spread Sheet it is not much favorable when compared to a database. A database is a collection of logically related data. There are many advantages of using a database than a spreadsheet.

1. A database can be centralized which can be accessed using many platforms.

2. Security mechanisms can be implemented to protect the data.

3. A data can be converted into multiple entities and relationships which would help for data analysis.

4. Complex queries can be programmed to get the results. For example: Get the report of volunteers who worked more than 2 years, raised fund above 1 lakh, who is a part of the specific volunteer program and who is from a specific location.

5. Data can be normalized properly. For an instance, in a spreadsheet, there is a column saying "List of Volunteer Programs attended" if there are 100 programs the volunteer attended we will saving that information in this list. Moreover, we cannot create multiple columns for each volunteer program. If we create it would become 100 columns here. This can be solved using DB wherein "List of Volunteer programs attended" can be one table which can be linked with VolunteerId of another table.

6. Automatic Triggering can be set. For an instance, first send triggering CRON event to 10 volunteers per night for 6 nights, or 60 people, twice per year. You don't need to wait, set conditions and DB will automatically trigger based on what conditions you set.

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