Stuart shares insight and experience about how to work with data to get the best outcomes for your fundraising.

1. Tips, Tricks & Freebies
Using Data to Improve Your ROI
IoF North East SiG Bi-Monthly Meeting - 15th July 2015

2. The Gutenberg Press
The original revolution in information
technology came not with the
microchip but with the printing press in
1440.
This was the first time that
standardised information had been
made available to the masses.

3. Post Gutenberg Press

4. Mass production of set, more uniform information than before but…
As with the early days of the World Wide Web and many fundraising
databases, the quality was still poor, and…
…exposure to so many new ideas can be confusing
Post Gutenberg Press

5. Supporter Information

6. What data is
important?
What type of data
should we collect?
Where are the
sources for data?
Data Capture

7.  Age
 Marital Status
 Gender
 Business Title
 Email address
 Business/home phone
 Others?
Biographical Contact Giving History
 Last Staff Contact
 Event Attendance
 Last Solicitation
 Amount of Last
Solicitation
 # of Contacts Overall
 # of Contacts in last 3
years, 5 years
 Others?
 First Gift Date / First Gift
Amount
 Last Gift Date / Last Gift
Amount
 Total Giving / Total # of gifts
 Largest Gift Amount /
Largest Gift Date
 Average gift (annual vs.
major)
 Other factors?
Data Types

8. What Do Your Donors Look Like?

9. What Do Your Donors Look Like?
Using data to maximise supporter relationships:
• Have you profiled your data?
• Do you know what significant differences exist between your key
supporter groups?

10. Supporter Profiling
Take all key variables and build pen portraits of your active and lapsed supporter segments: wealth,
gender, UK region, age, tenure, RFV, cLTV, transactional behaviour, etc.
Then establish what statistically significant differences exist between different cohorts of supporters in
terms of behaviour, demographics and attitudes.

11. Why Profile your Supporters?
• Understand the key characteristics of your different supporters
• To find lookalike prospects for the key fundraising products
• To support and validate targeting/propensity models
• To assess how homogenous your supporter base is
• Look for ‘White Spaces’ for potential product innovation
• Inform product portfolio analysis (lifetime of your fundraising products)
• Inform copy, creative and proposition
• Identify those supporters who ought to be excluded from various activity (eg:
reactivation, upgrade, etc.) because they are unlikely to break even
• Profiles can also be used to significantly reduce costs and improve the match rate when
conducting wealth screening for high value donors and legacy prospects
ImproveMyData.com
For free demographic profiles of your different supporter groups

12. Loyalty & Engagement

13. • Response ratios, average value, lifetime value, etc.
• MONTHLY retention/attrition reporting
• LYBUNT
• Supporter Profiling
• Targeting models
• Build an engagement score
Adrian Sargeant estimates that a 10% increase in retention
can result in a 200% increase in supporter Lifetime Value
Loyalty & Engagement

14. Modelling Donor Engagement
Take all positive supporter actions:
Giving (RFV)
Response Ratio
No. areas ‘present’ in (cash giving, DD, Legacy, volunteering, etc.)
Email actions (open, click through, response)
Membership and specialist communications/publications sign ups
Has a valid address, email and telephone
Opt-outs (downgrade their score), etc.
Then build a segmentation or simple score for every supporter to gauge how into
you they are (could be any type of data model but a FUZZY MODEL works just as
well)
This has direct application to your communications planning, supporter
development program, pricing strategy and targeting AND can also be used as a
variable in itself within your data models

15. Data Quality

16. Data Quality
Good data quality is VITAL! One-fifth of revenue is typically lost to poor
data quality (‘Data Strategy’ – March 2008).
Variety of data is VITAL! Not every organisation has the budget but
consider data enhancements such as ACORN/Mosaic and Date of Birth.
Are regular data quality control reports being run in your organisation?
What regular, accurate, timely reporting do you have in place?
Conduct data cleaning before mailings, especially if you are contacting
long-lapsed supporters (Mortascreen, NCOA, gone away, etc.)
‘Stay close to your donors’ – Mal Warwick. Get personal with your donors
by designing a supporter questionnaire. Ask why they support your
organisation (deduce their proximity to cause). See p147 of ‘Fundraising
When Money is Tight’.

17. Data Quality
• Data Cleaning
• Deceased, Gone Aways
• National Change of Address (NCOA)
• TPS, MPS
• Address cleaning
Case Study ‘A’ - small charity with £1m annual fundraised income
ImproveMyData.com
Free online service from CallCredit
Upload distinct supporter segments, eg: long-lapsed donors, for gone away
and deceased screening
Name and address validation, eg: correcting missing/incomplete postcodes
MPS & TPS

18. Legacy Fundraising

19. Legacies
• Long-term loyal support
• Connection to the cause
• Retired, cash-poor, asset rich supporters can often be excellent legacy
prospects
• Consideration of bequests: 49 years old
• IoF Insight SiG training: ‘Pinpointing Pledgers’
• IoF Legacy & In Mem SiG

20. Legacies
Elements that make a good legacy donor may differ from charity to
charity. Certainly the importance, or ‘weighting’, that you put on each
element, or variable, will differ.
‘Miss’ aged 50+
Committed Giving status
Wills Guide status
Recency of last Cash gift
Affluence - geo-demographic overlay
Lifestage - geo-demographic overlay
Gift Aid Status
Lifetime no. of donations
Values of first and last donations
Unprogressed legacy enquiries
Number of active relationships
Evidence of engagement

21. Reporting

22. Reporting
1 - I have a connection with disability myself
2 - A member of my family is disabled
3 - Another person I know is disabled
4 - I have a professional connection with disability
5 - I have no connection with disability
9 - No response
7% 6%
1%
7%
3%
11%
5%
14% 17%
20%
15%
43%
17%
16%
25% 22%
21%
25%
12%
22%
22%
6% 12%
11%
7%
2%
11%
14%
44%
42%
45% 44%
38% 35%
42%
3% 1% 2% 1% 2% 3% 2%
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
CA CG H2H LG PYRL RF UP
5
4
3
2
1
Connection with Disability

23. FastStats
Microsoft Dynamics
SAS
Business Objects
IMASRO
Blue Tahiti
BBPM
The Information Edge
Crystal Reports
Smart Focus
QlikView
Portrait
Unica
Oracle Business Intelligence
Tableau
Alterian
Common Reporting Solutions

24. Your first and most important question following the reporting requirements gathering
phase ought to be:
“To what extent can we deliver the project requirements using
our EXISTING internal assets and resources with no significant
adverse impact on the day-to-day?”
 Excel Pivot Tables
Reporting Projects

25. Project Management
The more complicated the solution the bigger the risk, the greater the cost
and greater the resource to maintain an effective, working solution.

26. Free Tools

27. Free Map Tools
• xxx

28. Free Map Tools
Free Map Tools
Can be used to geographically target your best prospects for legacy focus
groups, prospect days, etc.
Gives you all postal sectors within a chosen radius of a UK postcode
http://www.freemaptools.com/find-uk-postcodes-inside-radius.htm

29. Scientific Management

30. Scientific Management
Fredrick Winslow Taylor
‘The Principles of Scientific Management’ (1911)
Process management, time analysis, logic, work ethic, rationality,
standardisation of best practices
• Analyse your processes and protocols
• Talk to everyone involved
• Put in place essential reporting
• Overlay prospect volumes, income and costs
• And in particular, look at how long it takes for a prospect to be researched,
approached and re-approached
• Scenario plan

31. Prioritisation of Your Prospects in the
Major Donor Pipeline
A recent wealth screening exercise has matched 500 warm, high net worth
individuals.
How do you go about prioritising which ones to research and approach first so
as to yield maximum returns?
And what is most important, the estimated net worth of the individual or the
likelihood that they will donate?
How might creative data insight help?

32. Process Audits
Audit Your Internal Processes
Is all legacy data capture being added to the database promptly?
Welcome pack process and other warm lead generation for pledgers.
Review and audit your warm legacy supporter programme.
Who else within the organisation is communicating with your active legacy
supporters? Keep a tab on it.
Start and end dates of legacy relationships
Major Donor prospecting – capture all actions, calls, comms, etc.
Wealth Screening: Wealth Engine freebies

33. Research

34. Research Studies & White Papers
Health, Wealth and Charitable Estate Planning
Russell N James, University of Georgia, 2008
Neuroimaging & Legacy Marketing
Russell James, University of Georgia, 2013
Charitable Bequests & Wealth at Death in Great Britain
Atkinson et al, University of Southampton, 2009
Seasonal Patterns in Household Giving in the UK
City University London, 2008
The Fundraisers Guide to Mid-Value Donors
Bluefrog, 2007
The Fundraisers Guide to Lapsers
Bluefrog, 2009

35. DM Insight
Stuart McCoy - Data Strategy Consultant
stuartdmi@ymail.com
07980 767566