Analytics

Households with more than one child are more likely to give, and donate a bigger share of their income, if the eldest is a son, a new study finds. But parents with only one child are more likely to give, and to donate generously, if that child is a daughter. The report from the Women's…

The 2015-2016 Nonprofit Accounting Insights & Analysis Survey sought information central to nonprofit financial management, including the amount of time spent inside and outside an organization’s financial system pulling and manipulating data, as well as specific software features used to manage nonprofits...

Nonprofits can grow faster, solicit donations more successfully and better accomplish their missions through greater use of analytics. If you doubt the benefits of data, you can read the book Moneyball. The book and movie of the same name relate the true story of how Billy Beane, general manager of baseball’s Oakland A’s, rebuilds his…

At Turnkey, we try to turn every "gut instinct" decision into one made with data, analysis and supporting theory. But I see people, like me, who seek only information confirming their currently held beliefs, instead of that with which to make the best decision. Why do we do this?

For every $100 in new donations nonprofits gained in fiscal year 2014 over the previous year, they lost $95 in lapsed or reduced donations, according to a new survey. While that five percent net gain in gifts is "disappointing," said Nathan Dietz, senior research associate at the Center on Nonprofits and Philanthropy at the Urban Institute,…

The movie Moneyball shows us a situation in which Oakland A’s Major League general manager Billy Beane, due to enormous pressure to perform, casts aside his natural bias (using visual attributes about players to make decisions) and instead turned to a non-natural way to make decisions: using statistics. Who but a crazy person would rely almost totally on statistics to make decisions?...

There are many times when customers reach out to us to help them increase response rates. When that happens, my first question to them is, “What was the response rate on your last mailing?” Now, you would think that after 24 years in the business the standard response to this question would no longer shock…

Data silos make it hard to manage across an organization. They are barriers to a single view of a donor. But for many fundraising teams this situation is the reality of life today. Given that multiple technology systems led to these silos, how can you use technology to improve this situation? You’ve heard the phrase “what gets measured gets managed.” This is particularly true for fundraising teams...

Our online lives have become highly personalized. Every digital action, whether liking a page on Facebook or binge-watching a series on Netflix, helps to create a clearer picture of who you are online—information that businesses use to feed into their future strategies. While the for-profit world has embraced these processes, there are far fewer examples…

The velocity at which data is being created, coupled with the ability to capture, store and utilize that information (more data crosses the Internet every second than was stored on the entire internet 20 years ago), gives fundraisers more access to pertinent information at the individual level than ever before. In the past, it would have been nearly impossible for fundraisers to imagine amassing such information at the donor level, much less at the prospect level...