70 Nonprofit Trends for 2015

Rachel Armbruster, CEO, Armbruster Consulting Group
5. The days of standard sponsorships are gone. Organizations are focused on developing partnerships. This requires more effort from partners and charities to activate and share campaign messaging with their audiences. Building these programs and monitoring progress has become a priority. Establishing key milestones and minuting progress ensures annual goals will be realized and help with retention.

DATA/REPORTING
Miriam Kagan, senior fundraising principal, Kimbia
1. Staffing for data. As nonprofits consolidate their data and interaction for their constituents in one place, many are finding themselves sitting on a mountain and not knowing which data really matters. Understanding how to develop a data- and analytics-driven organization, finding the right resources to really drive insight and then leverage it, is very important. Good analysts and data officers are like unicorns; staffing correctly will mean having the ability to leverage all that integration work. This also means investing in the right data visualization toolsets — if your awesome analyst spends 80 percent of her time just wrangling the data into submission, then you are wasting a precious resources.

Richard Perry, founding partner, and Jeff Schreifels, senior partner, Veritus Group
2. An increase in accountability and measurement of fundraising, program and management effectiveness as the donating public demands more transparency and reporting on how their giving made a difference.

Rich Dietz, senior product manager, digital fundraising, Abila
3. Donor loyalty and lifetime value: Tracking donor engagement will be crucial. Organizations will spend more time analyzing characteristics and behaviors of all of their constituents — not just major donors — to better understand what drives their giving behavior. By tracking donor engagement, organizations will be able to further segment their appeals, personalize their outreach to donors, significantly increase donor loyalty, improve lifetime value and treat all donors like major donors.