Improving Donor Data
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Join guest presenters Build Consulting as they share a story of how one nonprofit organization improved their donor data. They relate how the organization did this, what they learned about their donors, and how they used what they learned to increase revenue, sustainer giving, and program outcomes. This story includes key lessons that can be leveraged by any nonprofit to increase organizational knowledge of its constituents and how to turn that information into outcomes.
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Improving Donor Data
- 1. Improving DonorData A Real-Life Story
- 2. Interact Ask questions via chat. Focus Avoid multitasking. You may just miss the best part of the presentation! Webinar Recording and Slides Links to the recording and slides will be shared after the webinar.
- 3. Invested Work exclusively with nonprofit organizations; have served over 1,000. Strategic Help our clients make IT and IS decisions that support mission. Collaborative Empower you to make informed choices.
- 4. Peter Mirus (Me), Partner at Build Consulting
- 7. Story:TheOrganization • A 15-year-old nonprofit • Niche: providing news and analysis related to certain cultural issues • Baseline constituent figures: • 4.5M potential constituents • 55,000 “known” constituents • 4,000 donors; 2,000 active within the past year
- 8. WhatTheyWantedtoAccomplish 1. Increase overall revenue 2. Smooth out cashflow peaks and valleys 3. Reduce stress on donors and fundraisers
- 9. ThreePhasestoThisStory 1. Clear for Action 2. Take Action 3. Assess Impact
- 10. PhaseOne:ClearforAction • Decrease the “noise” in the database • Get to know the constituents • Learn more about best practices and engagement/giving trends • Develop a plan and build consensus
- 11. Decrease Noise
- 12. Get to Know the Constituents
- 15. PhaseTwo:TakingAction Aligned marketing, development, and programs to better serve constituents. Development-specific examples: • Reduced friction in the subscription and donation processes • Improved handling of potentially fraudulent transactions • Pushed the right Call to Action • Improved donor data analysis and segmentation • Increased integration and process automation • Applied greater discipline in constituent data management
- 26. Questions?
Editor's Notes
- Welcome to the November webinar for Community IT Innovators, titled “Improving Donor Data: A Real-Life Story.” This month’s webinar is presented in partnership with Build Consulting.
- Before we get started on the webinar, here are a few housekeeping notes….
- Now, a little bit about Community IT and Build Consulting. We both work exclusively with nonprofit organizations to help them make information technology and information system decisions that support their mission. We have a collaborative approach, empowering our clients to make informed choices for their organizations.
- My name is Peter Mirus and I’m a partner at Build Consulting. At Build, I serve nonprofit organizations a part-time Chief Information Officer and project leader for data and technology initiatives. Clients I have worked with include such as The Humane Society of the United States and NeighborWorks America.
- Build Consulting leads in the social good sector by providing three types of services. We serve as part-time or in interim Chief Information Officers for nonprofits. We perform business process, technology, and data projects – ranging from strategic assessments and tech roadmaps to system selections and implementations. With Build Teams, we provide outsourced data managers with deep Development operations experience and nonprofit CRM expertise.
- And now, I’d like to begin today’s story about improving donor data.
- Chosen for this story because the challenges they faced—and the solutions they applied—are relevant to all sizes of nonprofits and the solutions applied are transferrable to larger environments Baseline constituent figures: 4.5M potential constituents (determined based on the number of recurring information consumers across all channels) 55,000 “known” constituents – full name and at least one method of direct communication; 45,000 of these via free subscription to an email-delivered information service 4,000 donors; 2,000 active within the past year
- Decreasing the “noise” in the database Used queries to pull the data out of the constituent database (constituent, activity, and transaction records) into CSV files for analysis in Excel and Power BI Analyzed the data using a range of criteria, then used the findings from that analysis to: Eliminate or consolidate duplicative records Eliminated outdated constituent and gift coding, custom attributes, notes Eliminated any non-necessary data that was so inconsistently collected in the past that it served as no better than “anecdata” moving forward – preserved only a written narrative (outside the database) of what might or might not be reasonably inferred from the data, if anything. Archived all data eliminated from the database in easily accessible flat files Result A clean set of constituent data from which to generate accurate reports (that were not constantly being filtered, merged, or otherwise adjusted to account for the junk in the database). An honest view of what could reasonably be known about the constituents (individually and as a whole) from data in-hand.
- Learning more about the constituents Surveyed constituents to determine: Engagement behaviors Giving behaviors Value proposition Emotional needs Expanding the relationship Referral potential Competition Buying behaviors Informed this information with demographic and constituent behavior data from sources such as Google Analytics and Quantcast Developed a group of 30 key constituent stakeholder (including top donors and other high-engagement and/or well-connected constituents) to provide additional input and achieve buy-in on future direction. This group were called the “Boosters.”
- Learning more about nonprofit constituent engagement and giving trends Identified industry best practices for fundraising, focused on Moving non-donors to donate Turning one-time or annual donors into monthly sustainers Increasing giving commitments Fundraising campaign messaging Matching contributions
- Socialized the findings The outputs from the previous steps took most of the guess-work out of what the organization needed to do moving forward. In a subtle way it increased accountability by highlighting where ego, personal preference, hunches, or convenience were driving strategic and tactical decisions, rather than data and best practices. Because the findings from the analysis were well-documented and socialized, board members, executives, staff, and even key constituent stakeholders were all on board.
- Example 1: Reduced friction in the subscription and donation process. To reduce friction in the digital experience with constituents, online registration and donation forms were stripped down to the bare essentials and aligned to industry best practices to achieve better conversion percentages. Previously, competing interests from Marketing and Development, not grounded enough in industry best practices, had resulted in way too much information being collected up-front, dramatically increasing friction and decreasing conversion rates. Survey data provided enough direction to make gathering most of this information on a per-constituent basis completely unnecessary.
- Example 2: Better handling of potentially fraudulent transactions. Additional reduction of friction was made by changing to a payment gateway with better and more configurable anti-fraud mechanisms. We also integrated predictive analytics into to the donation form. This resulted in several benefits: Fewer false-positives in fraud detection. As an example: foreign donors in Asia being able to make large donations on credit cards—their preferred method payment method. They had not been able to do so with the previous gateway. Fewer fraudulent transactions allowed. This dramatically decreased the number of chargebacks and refunds.
- Example 3: Pushing the right Call to Action On digital properties, priority was placed on getting people to register for a free information service rather than getting them to donate. Data indicated that with certain changes to use of promotional (or “call to action”) real estate on the website and social media channels, subscription conversion rates would be increase. It also indicated the organization was much more likely to get a donation from an information service subscriber than a non-subscriber, because (1) it entered the person into a value-based dialogue or exchange of information with the organization; (2) having a minimal amount of personal information combined with some behavior data from other sources allowed for more personal fundraising messaging.
- Example 4: Better donor data analysis and segmentation Identified one-time or annual donors that might be converted to monthly sustainer donors, and direct more personal messages encouraging them to pledge a recurring monthly amount representing a slight increase over their previous giving levels. Identified major donors that might be willing to increase their giving levels, as well as provide funds for matching campaigns. Identified high-engagement non-donor constituents and engaged them in more personal dialogue about becoming donors. Made fundraising communications less frequent, more targeted, and more value-oriented.
- Example 5: greater integration and process automation Improved integration between the CRM and online marketing platform, leading to better end-to-end tracking and analysis of online engagement Streamlined the process for constituent record management for data managers, as well as account management self-service for constituents Used automation to predict constituent and donor readiness to deepen the relationship, and elevate that indication to Development’s awareness Simplified process for processing refunds and making gift adjustments
- Example 6: Greater discipline in constituent data management Consistent application of fewer and better-defined constituent, gift, and campaign codes More consistent use of Actions Less frequent use of Notes, taking the time to record that data in more appropriate (and more reportable fields) on the constituent record More careful and consistent use of tools to keep constituent data clean
- Average revenue increase in each of the next three years, with the biggest boost (15%) occurring in Year One.
- Example: July, a difficult month in which to fundraise, had a first-year increase of 30%, which was sustained with additional slight increases over the next two years
- Streamlining fundraising messages, and making them more confident and value-oriented, increased attentiveness to fundraising messaging. (Instead of droning on and on about the constant need for money, using the same generic messages over and over again.) Increased revenue, improved cashflow, greater trust in the strategy and process, more time spent in productive dialogue with donors and less time spent in customer services and records management – all of these led to a more cheery, bright outlook and greater staff energy – resulting in greater creativity and energy to continue advancing standards for donor data moving forward.
- That’s it. I’m happy to take any questions there might be on any of the information we’ve covered today. - How can I introduce the importance of improving donor data to executives? - Share this story with them - Find other stories that demonstrate how better donor data can lead to improved outcomes - Where possible, identify clear, relatable industry benchmarks that help support the case for change Is improving donor data expensive? It can be, but it doesn’t have to be. A lot of having good donor data relies on culture – the willingness to be informed by best practices and the discipline to apply them internally. Technology is rarely the only problem, and sometimes isn’t a problem at all. So it starts with leadership and organizational culture, and getting that right can dramatically reduce the costs of what come downstream. After that, creating a realistic plan that can be implemented incrementally is key to cost control. But for some organizations, it will be necessary to make significant investments to get all the way to where they want to be from a donor data standpoint. But in general, there should be a right-sized solution for every nonprofit to make some progress in donor data improvement. - What are some of the systems that this client was using? - This particular client was using custom, home-grown solutions with limited functionality. This presented some challenges in terms of limiting the number of features available, but gave more direct access to the constituent data (in SQL Server). But in general, this case story is indicative of what an organization can do without a significant increase in technology spending. - We’ve seen clients implement similar donor data improvement projects with The Raisers’ Edge, DonorPerfect, Salesforce, and other CRM systems. Though we’ve seen many donor data improvement projects take place within the context of a CRM system replacement, we’ve also seen many nonprofits make significant improvements without significantly changing the technology.