As with every evolutionary process, it's time to go to the next stage — moving from focusing on all the data to focusing on the right data. That's where the confusion comes in — what exactly is the right data to measure?
Michell Whittaker, digital communications director for faith-based advocacy organization the General Board of Church and Society (GBCS), discusses what to look for in a constituent database management system.
Segmentation and targeting are vital in direct-mail fundraising. If you aren't using it, you risk losing donors altogether. Because if a donor receives too much mail from too many places from one nonprofit, it may bug him or her enough to tune all of its communications out.
Here are four mistakes to avoid and three ideas to keep in mind when digging through your data to get those major gifts.
Would you treat one of your $100 donors differently if you knew he or she had given a $100,000 gift to another charity, and would you treat those donors differently if you knew there were 5,000 more just like them on your housefile?
In an effort to "open my eyes" more to the world, here are a few observations I've made this week that relate to our work as fundraisers.
Of course you do. When you have more donors than you can remember, you always need a database to keep track of them. But do you need a donor database in the traditional sense? Maybe the time has come to think about it in a new way.
In some cases, the nonprofit sector is as siloed as any other industry. And it’s natural! If you hire a direct-response or media- and corporate-relations expert, by default that’s what she does. It takes a special charity, leader or advocate within the marketing teams to fight to connect the dots. But when you have a few successes under your belt, it can be magic.
Three fundraising professionals shared 30 ideas for fundraising success at Fund Raising Day in New York. Here are ideas 21-30.
These 12 strategies aren't the only things I'd do to transform my donor-development office. They may not even be the most urgent things I'd do, or even the most important. But they are the things I'd do that I think would have the most lasting impact. They would make the most difference to converting my imaginary donor-development department from the under-funded, misunderstood appendage to the fundraising function that I found on joining the organization into the finely honed, high-
earning core activity that I'd like to leave behind when, in the fullness of time, I move on to pastures new (you have to indulge me a little here, in this fantasy). Anyway, here we go.
