Need Help Building Campaign Donation Database

[stevepark]

I posted this previously in a help section and it was suggested that I post in "Paid Support". Is this the right place to pose my questions/requests?

I need to get a database going, and I have never understood them. I'm interested in setting up a database of people who have contributed to local political campaigns.

I have the raw data that I need, but I'm not happy with the interface in some cases or the abilities in other cases of the programs I have used or seen. Most of the data I would use is in Excel format and very little in Access.

I also have donor information from several campaigns that I'd like to get into one place for purposes of eliminating duplicates and one other purpose. Let's say I'm working on a state rep campaign. I have donor data for 3 other area state rep candidates that would be ripe for soliciting for a race like mine. I would like a system where I could upload all of this and among other things I'd like to be able to generate a list of the common donors to all 3 of the other campaigns, thus eliminating friends and family of the other candidates who probably only donated because of their relationship to the candidate, not because they are consistent or usual donors.

Another capability that I'd be interested in would be to be able to pull all the donors from a certain zip code or several zip codes.

Does this make sense and can I do this? I'm willing to buy a template if there are people that make them and sell them, just looking for some guidance. Thank you.

I've split your post from the original thread as it deserves its own thread. (The Gurkha, Moderator).

[Villeroy]

A relational database with a frontend to build forms and reports is a tool set for IT professionals. It does not require an academic degree, but the design of such a structure has more in common with writing a program rather than composing documents or media content.
Base requires that your database follows certain rules of normalization in order to be compatible with it's simplistic set of tools (yes, it's so difficult to use because it's not sophisticated enough). Having some working database somewhere, Base is good enough and easy enough to let office documents interact with that database. But first you need a properly designed and connectable database.
If you don't know how to create such a structure, Base is not as useful as it could be, but still good enough to use it for your mailing labels or import of 2-dimensional row sets for a spreadsheet calculation.
I wish the developers had never introduced the HSQLDB in a single "database document". This structure is broken in too many ways. Beginners can not really work with it while experienced users prefer something better and connect Base with that.

Base is just fine to connect ODF documents with already existing databases, print formatted db-data on paper and use the imported data in various ways.
In my honest opinion it is completely impossible to create productive databases using Base as the only tool. The result is always a somewhat ridiculous plastic toy of a database. Still better than spreadsheets, but a caricature of a database.

I also have donor information from several campaigns that I'd like to get into one place for purposes of eliminating duplicates

Why duplicates? A well formed database of unique entities will never accept the input of any duplicates so there can not be any duplicates.

Another capability that I'd be interested in would be to be able to pull all the donors from a certain zip code or several zip codes.

Pull from where? What is the structure you have? What is the field-type of "zip code"? Is "zip code" mandatory or optional? How is "zip code" related to "donors"? Of course there are filtering tools in Base.

I need to get a database going, and I have never understood them.

You do not need help building a campaign donation database. You need an IT professional to do the job for you. And I doubt that Base will be more than a bridge to this office suite.