Are Fundraisers Really Ready for Insight? Do You Have a Story?

I often start my blogs with "I must be honest …" — and this one is no different. There are multiple reasons I write this blog, and believe it or not, one is because of my inability to find nonprofit marketers who can speak to me about how they leverage insight in their programs through time and testing. In fact, if you work for a nonprofit and feel that you have a story, email me now! We can stand together in Washington, D.C. in a few weeks to share my stories and yours for the hundreds of nonprofit fundraisers that will be at the DMA Nonprofit Federation's Washington Nonprofit Conference.

I must be honest, I had two fantastic speakers lined up (hence "my stories" that I can tell), but for unplanned reasons both of them are now unable to join us in D.C. But the part that shocks me is the number of people who have said, "I would love to do this with you, but I don't think I have a story."

Arghhhhhh … does that mean that everyone is really still using RFM? Does that mean that the data scientists at the agencies are not helping their clients understand how "insight" is truly being used outside of RFM?? Of course I'm bummed about my session falling apart, but I'm super worried that I can't find other stories and what this really means.

Let me be clear: I'm not talking about acquisition modeling using third-party/external data. I know the industry is very effective at using acquisition modeling, and I'm very supportive and downright excited to know that has almost become a mainstream business practice. What I'm talking about is the concept of using insight outside of RFM to understand who your current (and/or lapsed) constituents are and how you can segment them better and market to them more closely. That's right — I'm talking about external data like extended demographics, buying behaviors, attitudinal clustering and much more.