Going Small for Big Results

Whatever size prospect list you have, make it smaller. It doesn't matter if your list is 10 names or a database of thousands. You have to start somewhere. And there is no better place than at the top.  



Create your own RFM score to fill in the blanks indicating your donors'
prospect value and loyalty.

Three measurements from your donors' giving histories point the way: recency, frequency, and giving total (RFM).

I have added longevity as a fourth factor in the score illustrated here.

The result ranks (prioritizes) your prospects relative to each other. Such scores are particularly useful at the segment level for prioritizing your direct marketing, phone calls, and personal visits.

Include the RFM score for each donor in gift reports your database, if you are fortunate enough to have such reporting capabilities. If not, create an Excel file to quickly calculate donor scores.

The particular score is less important than having a consistent methodology to compare prospects relative to each other. Create a score that makes sense for your constituency. You may want to add other variables, such as membership, ticket holders, event attendance, volunteer status, etc.

However, keep it simple. Do include hand review of your top scoring donors.

Detailed data on your donors' giving behavior is unique to your organization. Use it to your competive advantage.

Start Seeing Donors

The donor pyramid is a common analogy fundraisers use to represent donor tiers or segments. 


Visualizing the donor pyramid as communities of donors
can prompt new insight.

Yet such pyramids can be so loaded with complexity and numbers that we lose sight of what the statistics represent.

Let's set the numbers aside for a moment. What else do you see in your nonprofit's donor pyramid?

Hopefully, a picture emerges of donors as individuals and the strategic role that each segment plays in your organization's success.

Intuitively, we realize this. The challenge is to operationalize what we know to be true.

The solution in part requires treating different donors differently, to recognize people for their individuality, even as we learn from each segment's statistical profile.

Closer inspection reveals the donor pyramid as communities of donors. Moreover, such a perspective forces new questions.

What is our engagement strategy for our top donors? How can we more effectively apply scarce resources to involve mid-point donors in a meaningful way to lift them to a higher giving level? And how can our organization add value to attract new donors?

Documenting plans for each donor segment, including contact schedules, message, and channel is instrumental in creating consistent and repeatable outcomes.  

Naturally, a donor pyramid is not an end in itself. But visualizing donors is a good place to start.

You've Got Mail (Insight)

Want to squeeze more value out of your donor database? Then, consider email domains. Review the portion of a donor's email address following the @ for indicators of

Donor Centricity Is All Talk

Donor Centered Fundraising. We have been tossing this term around for years. Yet what does donor centricity mean? Donor centricity at its best is all talk, all channels, all the time.

Donor centricity is about organizing people, technology,

and resources around the voice of the donor.

Here's why.

Let me begin with what donor-centered fundraising is not.

It certainly is not slapping a person's name on yet another fundraising appeal that has nothing to do with the donor's interests. We are really good at that in fundraising -- sending out ever more "targeted" one-way communications.

Nor is donor centered fundraising cultivating a person for a major gift when the project or cause doesn't resonate with the prospect. Instead, donor centered means engaging prospects around their needs, around their hopes.

We have to talk to our donors to achieve such engagement. More importantly we have to listen. What better way to begin the conversation than with a question? For instance, "What prompts you to choose our cause to support?" The channels for such questions could range from face-to-face communications to a simple field in your online pledge form.

Years ago, I attended a presentation at a workshop in Laramie, Wyoming, by the fabulously successful author James Michener. I recall his remark that "everyone has a story to tell. They just need a way to tell that story." Ultimately, our job is to help donors tell their stories.

Oil, Spill, Obama (Twitter)

So what?
I have been using Twitter Venn the last three months to track the relationships between tweets with the term "oil," "spill," and/or "Obama". So what? That's the question I asked myself. Naturally, the most obvious use is Twitter Venn as a trending tool.

Think of it as a as one of various indicators on  a dashboard to measure trends.

For instance, large nonprofits or companies with national campaigns could use Twitter Venn to track indicators of the impact of their messaging.

Twitter Venn, if you are listening. Why not monetize the service by offering a premium version where users could download the stats.

Color Indicators
Life if complicated. So are politics, offshore drilling technology, and oil spills. Venn diagrams help bust through complexity, to still the waters from a flood of information. These particular diagrams suggest a shift in the association of Obama with the oil spill.

What else do you see in the diagrams?

May 26: (top diagram) BP attempts a "top kill" to stop the gusher.

• 50,811 tweets with "oil" (red)
• 3,241 with "oil," "spill" and "obama" (grey)

Aug 9: (bottom) Five days after BP caps well with a "static kill."

• 17,579 tweets with "oil" (red)
• 313 with "oil," "spill," and "obama" (grey)

http://www.neoformix.com/Projects/TwitterVenn/view.php

What Blogs Should I Follow?

Gentle readers,

I am a new kid on the block when it comes to blogging. What blogs should I be following?

My interests include information technology, social media, business analysis, and data mining -- along with a penchant for leveraging existing resources for prospect development.

One blog that I follow is Gary Braley's Technically Speaking at: http://gbraley.blogspot.com/

Mobile Giving: What's Your Experience?

Making donations via cell phones is merely a matter of entering alpha-numeric codes for a text gift. Alicia Keys reportedly commented about her "Give $5 Text ALIVE" campaign on American Idol that "Texting can provide a way to give at that instant when we are moved, rather than later when life takes over."

Fair enough. But is the experience moving for the donor? Perhaps for some. Certainly, many will appreciate the speed and ease of mobile giving. Still. Some donors will be left wanting. What's missing?

Passion.

Remember what has become an adage about philanthropy being the mystical mingling of the joyful giver, artful asker, and grateful recipient? Hopefully we will continue to find ways to connect to the joy of giving even as we leverage new technology.