What Data Can Do For Nonprofits
With every passing year, data becomes more plentiful and more useful for effective fundraising strategies. If your organization has significant stores of donor and fundraising data, it can be put to use to maximize your strategies and solve fundraising problems. If your organization does not have lots of data, this will shed some light on why it is important to accumulate data and provide some ways donor data can inform your fundraising decision making.
In order to use data, you must gather and store it in a functional way. That may seem straightforward, but establishing proper data collection and storage practices are essential to avoiding stores of incomplete or unorganized, inefficient data. Having data does not do much for your insights unless it is complete and organized. The purpose of collecting data is that it facilitates rapid, evidence-based decision making, and if it is compiled in an unwieldy spreadsheet, it is going to be unhandy when questions arise. Luckily, nonprofits are already highly efficient data gathering systems. Most nonprofits collect donor and volunteer information or if they do not bother to, readily can. It is important to store that data in such a way as to be able to track outreach, donors’ gift portfolios, sort donors based on different variables, track invitations to give, and all other interactions with donors. If data is poorly organized and cannot be easily analyzed, it is more likely decisions will be made without considering it.
Once donor data is on hand and organized, it can immediately be put to use to analyze donor trends. The revelations from this analysis can be used to make changes to fundraising and marketing strategies; it also provides insight into the fundraising health of your nonprofit. Looking at five to ten years of data (or less if it is all you have but consider that these may not be established trends), begin by looking at large trends and then find evidence for why those trends are occurring. Large trends to look at are annual revenue, donor acquisition, and performance of your gift invitations. After understanding those trends, try to understand why they are happening by breaking them down into contributing factors (i.e for revenue, break the data down into revenue by gift size and number of donors per gift level). These are basic analyses that nonprofits should conduct with their data on hand. In addition to this, organizations should use data to track responsiveness to communications, ROI on monthly giving programs (or however your planned giving program is timed), change in gift size from repeat donors, and more. Complete these analyses and include others in order to make data work for you and inform your decisions.
Cold hard data can even be used to improve your personalization strategy. When reaching out to prospective donors, the more personal and friendly the message, the more likely they will take the time to consider your request. With data on donors’ past engagement, new invitations can be personalized to highlight and recognize past contributions and the impact of their gift. Donors are more likely to continue to have high engagement when the impact of their gift is communicated. Having well organized, comprehensive data on hand is an efficient way to develop personalized and high-quality donor invitations.
Whether you are inexperienced with data and data collection seems like a daunting task or you still see it as a tedious task for showing numbers to board members once a year, data use and governance have evolved into a sophisticated practice capable of being brought directly back into your marketing and fundraising mission. With a plan and some due diligence, it can be put to work to influence decisions on all levels, create new media content, and better convert invitations into donations.
Three Simple Steps Here for Utilizing Data:
Collect Your Data
Identify Key Factors
Apply those factors to your data
Combining 30+ years of experience in nonprofit executive roles with an ROI focused approach, the team at NMBL Strategies is equipped to place your nonprofit on the path to success. Contact the team today at info@nmblstrategies.com to learn more about what we offer.