Base design- more tables or syncs?

[Lauren_Briskin]

Hi! I'm doing some work for a nonprofit with a limited budget to set Airtable to help manage their annual event.

The event pulls in a variety of pieces of information about each of the following (and this is how I have drafted the workspace):

• Sponsors
  • Sponsors
  • Sponsorship levels
  • Contact log
  • Board members
• Teams participating
  • Teams
  • School/Company/Org team belongs to
  • Contact log
• Yearly base
  • Volunteers who have signed up
  • Volunteer needs
• Budget (TBD on tables)

Some of this should be carried over YTY so the bases could be re-used with new, yearly tables, and some is unique to the calendar year. 

I originally planned to have a base for each of these, and sync where needed. However, until they get a paid plan, syncs would have to be manual, which doesn't seem ideal. 

I'm wondering if it would be better to use a manual sync or combine bases somehow? 

[Databaser]

IMO and without further info on the data, I think this could fit perfectly in 1 base. Depending on some expectations. For "Contact log", I often use just a simple long text field when no automations etc are needed. 

[Lauren_Briskin]

Thank you! Is there any particular info that would help you get a better sense? I built a base last year that spiraled into about 25 tables which was pretty unwieldly but I 'd absolutely love to do this without the need for syncing.

[Databaser]

It's difficult to give solid advice on these kind of things via this community. I would say: think about your structure first, use rollup fields (and thus also lookup and rollup fields) and use the power of separate views to your advantage. Also, use "tags" (eg single select fields) to differentiate years, instead of making new bases/tables for each year.