23 April 2021 | Article | Ryan Teo

Fine-tune Your Fundraising Strategy Using Donor Data

The advent of data as a valuable resource in today’s times cannot be understated, and this applies to fundraising as well. As we modernise as a society through increased access to technology, more and more non-profits use data to drive crucial decisions in their fundraising strategies. In order to be useful, data doesn’t have to be complicated in the first instance.

Here are three quick ways you can use your data (most CRMs keep the data listed in this article) to support your fundraising decisions.

Calculate your LTV

Lifetime Value (LTV) is the estimated total gift contribution a donor will contribute to their chosen cause in their lifetime as a donor. This looks at factors such as (but not limited to) donor lifespan, average gift size, and donor frequency. Calculating the LTV of your donors becomes increasingly strategic when filtering these through different lenses. E.g. breaking down by acquisition channel, or gift amounts.

Understanding your LTV is a starting point towards answering:

• Which acquisition channel is currently over- or under-performing? (do solutions employed look at remedying the acquisition factors or retention factors?)
• Is your current gift ask strategic in optimising donor contributions?
• What is your current expected ROI on donors?

Utilise your Donor History

Your current donor base and their historical performance is arguably the most important source of data you own, and a clear understanding of their performance can provide your non-profit with valuable information in predicting trends.

Understanding the trends in your donor behaviour can support your retention practices. For example, noticing a high drop-off rate as tax season closes might indicate a requirement for more intervention points prior to this period.

Understanding your donor history is a starting point towards answering:

• Is there a specific audience which can be targeted?
• When should you ask for a gift?
• Should you increase or decrease your gift ask?

Keep Tabs on Donor Contact

Donors are the lifestream of any non-profit, and the relationship is constantly growing and evolving. As such, keeping clear and accessible records of your contact with donors can prove useful.

For example, out of all the e-mails you send to your donors, which ones have been the most popular? This can support designing future email communications to your donors. Call outcomes can also be recorded to understand how responsive your donors are to phone appeals.

When understanding donor contact, we begin to answer:

• Are donors engaged by the current theme and content of your sent materials? (newsletters, e-mails)
• Should you modify your current call script or campaigns?
• How can you optimise your donor contact to solicit higher gifts?

About SG Support

Managing over 3 million donor records, SG Support exists to make fundraising easy for charities. We work with them to acquire new donors, retain existing ones and win back those who have left. We do this through our complete suite of services that range from data-driven strategy and consultancy, all the way down to the operational aspects of payment processing, contact centre and financial reporting.

Interested to know more about how SG Support can utilise your data set to support your fundraising?

Contact us at consulting@sgsupport.com or drop us a message here.