From Excel to Python - A Journey in Name Matching Techniques

University of Chicago Prospect Development is often asked to match event attendance lists with prospects in our database. Instead of manually searching each attendee in our database, we asked ourselves: how can we do this more efficiently?

Using several projects as examples, this presentation will walk through different approaches to name matching techniques that are accessible to everyone. While we will start using spreadsheet software like Excel and end using simple Python Scripts. Through this process, this presentation will also show why you shouldn't assume coding is beyond your abilities.