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Top Nonprofit Cloud Tools That Drive Data-Backed Decisions

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Nonprofit Cloud offers an enormous breadth and depth of specialized tools for nonprofits and grantmaking organizations. Built on Salesforce core, It leverages the power of Salesforce CRM to help nonprofits effectively manage and analyze data.

As Fíonta explains, Nonprofit Cloud is ideal for measuring your impact, tracking program progress, and generating reports and visuals communicating your success to key stakeholders. Its tools allow nonprofits to forecast trends and campaign performance, providing the insights needed to make data-driven decisions.

We’ll explore some of the top ways Nonprofit Cloud helps nonprofits track and analyze data effectively. Let’s begin.

Benefits of Using Nonprofit Cloud Tools

Double the Donation’s guide to data collection highlights some of the key benefits of leveraging donor and campaign data, such as:

  • Providing an accurate impact measurement
  • Helping organizations effectively allocate resources
  • Promoting informed decision-making rather than guessing

Nonprofit Cloud empowers your organization to reap these benefits by managing each core part of your operations, including fundraising, program management, and case management.

Top Nonprofit Cloud Tools

The following tools and features are designed to help nonprofits easily and accurately track data, keep data clean and organized, and quickly gain useful insights that inspire wise decisions.

Fundraising Tools

The Nonprofit Cloud for Fundraising module unites fundraising teams on a single platform, offering purpose-built tools your team can use to strengthen donor relationships, improve efficiency, analyze data, and more. The module includes apps tailored to different roles, including fundraising strategy, donor engagement, philanthropy and partnerships, and general fundraising operations.

When it comes to fundraising data, these tools simplify and enhance tracking and analysis:

  • Flexible gift entry: Nonprofit Cloud offers your organization the flexibility to accurately track various types of donations. Enter standard one-time gifts made by individuals or set up recurring gift tracking. Your team can also create a batch to enter a large number of gifts at once, saving time and reducing the chance of human error.
  • Source codes: Source codes are unique codes included in specific links. The source code is activated when a supporter or participant clicks one of these links. Your team can then track campaign performance, understand donors’ communication preferences, calculate ROI, and personalize future communications. As a part of the Salesforce Summer ‘24 release, you can manage outreach source codes using the campaign flow in Marketing Cloud Growth Edition.
  • Custom donor scores: Build custom scores for your donors based on recency, frequency, and monetary (RFM) values. These scores provide a cumulative, at-a-glance RFM score for each donor. Donor scores can be viewed on the donor’s profile along with demographic data and other key insights to quickly gauge the supporter’s affinity and responsiveness to a certain cause or campaign.

These flexible tools ensure that your data reflects your nonprofit’s unique needs and practices, enhancing your data’s accuracy and clarity.

Program Management Tools

Nonprofit Cloud for Programs helps nonprofits plan, deliver, and track their programs. This module improves participant experiences, streamlines staff workflows, and yields the insights needed to improve offerings.

Some of the tools that offer these insights are:

  • Participant profiles: If your nonprofit works with individuals, you likely set goals for participants, assign them to programs, disburse benefits, and manage tasks related to that individual. These details and notes from your sessions are stored within a single participant profile. This gives anyone working with the participant a detailed overview of their history with your nonprofit, goals, and progress so your staff can make the best choices for that individual.
  • Program Management Home Page: This out-of-the-box home page is another product of the recent Summer ‘24 release. It is designed to give your team a comprehensive overview of your nonprofit’s program delivery and allow staff to monitor the status of your programs closely. From this single page, you can quickly assess whether programs are on track to meet organizational goals, get a simple overview of your programs and benefits, and track new referrals.
  • Cohort objects and fields: Group your program participants together using the new Program Cohort object. Then, move those participants through the program together and easily compare cohorts or measure an individual’s progress against their cohort. Nonprofit programs can vary widely and have unique needs, and this method of data collection helps your staff account for those needs and idiosyncrasies.

Managing programs is demanding and has many moving parts. Nonprofit Cloud’s unified platform provides comprehensive overviews of your programs’ health, promoting informed decision-making that drives long-term success.

Case Management Tools

Nonprofit Cloud for Case Management is housed within the Program Management module and emphasizes providing better participant outcomes. This solution remedies heavy case manager workloads, disjointed systems, and barriers to transparent communication and collaboration across your teams.

Additionally, Nonprofit Cloud’s case management tools offer the following features for enhanced data collection and management:

  • Easy, streamlined note-taking: Allow staff to quickly capture detailed notes from sessions with participants. Populate notes with additional information like attendance records, timestamps, and supporting documents for the most comprehensive records possible. These notes can be shared with other case managers, making participant transition simple and keeping data consolidated.
  • Dynamic assessments: Use these assessments during intake to ensure staff ask new participants the most relevant questions. Additionally, staff can easily add necessary documents to the assessment and allow participants to navigate the process at their own pace. This ensures the participant’s intake is efficient and pleasant and organizes all necessary information in a single location.
  • Adaptable data tracking: Your staff will use the Case object to plan care for the participant. Cases can span across multiple programs, and staff can loop in multiple individuals, such as caretakers or other team members at your organization. This flexible tool can conform to any program structure, making it easy to record and report your progress.

Accurate data collection is critical for case management. It influences quality of care, resource allocation, and long-term planning for your programs. In the context of fields like healthcare, your data collection methods must be secure and ethical to comply with regulations.

Other Salesforce Tools and Features

Remember to stay cognizant of and try out other options within Salesforce. With Nonprofit Cloud, your organization can access common features for Industries, apps from the AppExchange, and tools belonging to other Industry Clouds. These solutions can extend Nonprofit Cloud’s capabilities to assist with data hygiene, security, and efficiency.

Consider looking beyond Salesforce for additional assistance for larger organizations or those with very complex needs. Working with a Salesforce tech consultant can help you implement the solution, clean up and migrate data, and maximize your investment in this powerful CRM. If needed, research other services that can enhance your data quality to drive more accurate insights, like appending missing information or enriching your first-party data with third-party, market-level insights.

Collecting, managing, and cleaning your nonprofit’s data is key. After all, if your database is flawed or biased, the insights you glean from it will be, too. Nonprofit Cloud offers powerful, flexible tools that revolutionize how your nonprofit records and analyzes data about your donors, campaigns, and programs.

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How to Use Previous Auction Data to Inform Your Strategy

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Data is the secret weapon for unlocking success in fundraising events, from large nonprofit auction galas to online school auctions. And, with auction software that supports in-depth data reporting and visualization, your school can easily inform your auction strategy with past data.

In this guide, we’ll discuss three important areas of auction data and how you can use this information to boost your school’s fundraising results.

Audience Data

The success of your fundraising auction depends on how well you can appeal to your supporter base. Therefore, it is critical to plan according to your audience’s specific needs, interests, and preferences. Start by analyzing your attendees from previous years, paying close attention to the following categories:

  • Demographics: Understanding your target audience’s average age, gender, geographic location, and family status will give you insight into how to best structure your event and market it. For example, you might note that families in your community with preschool age children come to your auctions less frequently. To help these families, you might explore options for making your auction more family-oriented, such as hosting it earlier in the day or partnering with the local high school to offer babysitting services.
  • Previous engagement: Look into your audience’s previous event attendance and volunteer experience to get an idea of their familiarity with your school. As most of your guests will likely be the parents and family members of your students, consider how you can show off a different side of your school, such as by asking the school jazz band to perform or using student art projects as decorations.
  • Donation history: To set optimal fundraising goals, research your audience’s frequency and recency of donations. Additionally, pinpoint their average donation amount to set reasonable fundraising expectations. Your school can also take your community’s average tax bracket into account to ensure you set reasonable prices for auction items.
  • Interests and hobbies: What sort of activities or events does your audience enjoy? Use social media appending services to understand what types of auction items would appeal to your supporters. You can also get your students to help as kids often have more insight into their parents’ hobbies and interests.

With a clear picture of your audience, your school can improve its decision-making and put together an auction that maximizes attendance and engagement.

Auction Item Data

From gift baskets to sports memorabilia to concert tickets, how do you know which auction items will generate the most interest, bidding activity, and profitability? One very effective approach is to look at data from previous auctions.

Take special note of these pricing metrics from previous years’ bidding process:

  • Starting bids: In addition to researching market value, your school should pay attention to the starting bid amounts that generated interest and adjust your beginning price points accordingly.
  • Minimum bid increments: Typically, bid increments are set at 10% or 15% of an item’s fair market value (FMV), but if a similar item from last year performed better than expected, you might consider lowering the increment to closer to 10% FMV for this year’s auction to incite competitive bidding.
  • Buy-it-now data: For particularly high-value items like a weekend getaway you might offer a buy-it-now option. Buy-it-now options can ensure you will receive at least a certain high amount for these prizes. However, keep in mind that a bidding war may drive up the price even beyond your buy-it-now option. Refer to your past data to see how these types of items performed and whether a buy-it-now option has the potential to earn your school more.

Prior to your event, arrange a time to meet in person as a group with your high-impact school donors. List out auction items that your school is considering procuring and ask them which ones are most appealing or if they have any other suggestions. Thank supporters for their time and recommendations, and then update your item data with their choices.

Event Data

Your school can learn more about how engaging your past auctions were by collecting and assessing the following event data points:

  • Total funds raised: Don’t just focus on the number, focus on where in your auction the funds came from. Evaluate and track your silent auction, your live auction, special appeal, and raffles or games separately. When looking at your special appeal, note whether your school was raising funds for a specific initiative, since that can have a significant impact on participation at your auction.
  • Attendance: How has attendance been trending? Again, the absolute numbers are interesting, but you also want to break them down. Divide the participants of each of your past three or four events into tiers based on how much they contributed to the event’s success. Then, examine the attendance record of each tier.
  • Return on investment (ROI): Were your most successful auctions the most elaborate ones? Look at what your school spent money on in the past. Maybe you had live music for a few years, then stopped; was there a significant impact on the amount you raised?

Based on your school’s previous auction performance, you might identify new ways to save on event costs and generate more revenue going forward. For example, you might decide to focus on finding corporate partners to procure more one-of-a-kind, enticing auction items to engage attendees at your next event without straining your budget.

Bonus: Improving Your Auction Strategy

With past auction data at your disposal, your school can start brainstorming ways to improve your auction strategy. SchoolAuction.net’s silent auction guide shares these tried-and-true tips for boosting your auction success:

  • Promote your auction on a variety of communication channels to attract as many guests as possible.
  • Incorporate countdown clocks and text notifications to increase engagement.
  • Provide a self-check-out option to make your auction experience more convenient.

Finally, an effective and important way to invest in the success of future auctions is to make sure you thank guests after every auction. NXUnite by Nexus Marketing recommends retaining your donors by following up promptly about the impact of their contributions, so they know exactly how they made a difference in your school’s success.

Data is the key to informing your auction planning process. Reference previous audience, auction items, and campaign data points to discover your baseline metrics. From there, you can supplement your data with new insights to refine your strategy.

Remember to follow data hygiene best practices, such as standardizing data inputs and scheduling regular data back-ups to keep your auction information accurate, reliable, and useful in the long term.

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How Your School Can Leverage Donation Tracking: 4 Data Tips

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As a school, charitable gifts from parents, students’ families, and other members of the community are what help you offer the best, most enriching educational experiences possible. This funding helps make things like fun field trips and school-wide events and celebrations possible.

But, are you doing all you can to secure as much funding as possible? In addition to choosing fundraising ideas that align with your audience’s preferences and promoting your campaigns, accurately tracking data can help make your fundraisers successful.

In this guide, we’ll explore a few tips your school can use to accurately track donations and gain insights to boost revenue.

Use the right fundraising software.

A key part of fundraising is accepting as many payment methods as possible, giving your supporters the flexibility and convenience to choose what works best for them. However, this can quickly become complicated from a financial and data-tracking standpoint.

For example, how can you consolidate data from multiple sources like the donation form embedded on your school website, third-party payment apps, and more? The answer is to select specialized school fundraising software that will track and aggregate your donation data. 

Solutions like 99Pledges offer reports that reveal highlights like total donations and number of participants as well as more granular, line-by-line details about individual donors. In addition to these reports, 99Pledges’ guide to kids’ fundraising ideas recommends using this fundraising tool because it:

  • Leverages digital fundraising, helping organizations offer more flexibility to how donors give.
  • Can expand your school’s fundraising potential by reaching geographically remote donors.
  • Allows for a lot of flexibility and creativity when choosing a fundraising idea.

Combined, these benefits mean that your school can launch creative, successful campaigns all while keeping a handle on its fundraising data.

Consider data appends.

Once you have the right solution in place and start seeing your donor data roll in, you might notice some gaps in the information. While you’ll be able to see basic details about donors, like their name and preferred giving method, you may not be privy to other information without performing a data append.

Data appending simply adds new information to your database, either by correcting and updating your existing file or supplementing it with information from external sources. Some of the most common types of data appends include:

  • Contact information appends: Collect donors’ contact information, including phone numbers, email addresses, and home addresses.
  • Employer appends: Learn who your donors’ employers are. This can be particularly helpful for securing matching gifts and other corporate gifts from their employers.
  • Demographic information appends: Append information like donors’ age, gender, income, marital status, and more to build more targeted communication strategies.
  • Social media appends: Update and add information about donors’ social media usage. Then, you can use this information to learn more about them through their profiles, engage them via their preferred platform, and invite them to follow you.

So, what would using data appends look like for your school? Let’s say your school’s baseball team needs to fundraise to travel to an out-of-state baseball camp, and you decide to perform demographic and employer data appends. The former helps you choose the perfect baseball fundraising idea to excite and engage your target audience. The latter identifies donors who work for companies with matching gift programs so you can remind them to apply for a matched gift.

The best way to safely enrich your data—and keep it clean and organized—is to work with a professional service. Research and meet with candidates before selecting one to ensure you choose the right option for your school.

Keep data clean and organized.

“Garbage in, garbage out,” is a commonly used phrase in the computer science world that sums up the impact of using low-quality data. In other words, if your data is flawed, outdated, or poor quality, any insights or output from that data will be too. 

Proper data management and data hygiene practices can keep the garbage out of your database. Frequently audit your donation data to resolve issues like:

  • Duplicated entries for the same donor or donation
  • Incomplete information about donations
  • Outdated information (e.g., a donor moves and their address has changed)
  • Data formats not being standardized

Once you’ve corrected these issues, you can use your clean, accurate donation data in many ways. For example, use your average daily donation amount to make accurate predictions about whether you’ll reach your fundraising goal—and, if you’re not on track, make an effort to course correct. Or, follow Double the Donation’s advice and gamify the process by using a fundraising thermometer to publicly track your progress toward the goal.

Set up automated processes.

Finally, use your fundraising software and donation data to take some of the repetitive fundraising tasks off your plate. Automation can streamline repetitive, rote tasks like sending:

  • Donation receipts: These receipts are legally required for any cash gifts over $250, making them a pain point for many schools. However, automation ensures that donors receive accurate receipts immediately following their donation. Make sure the receipts include key information such as the donor’s name, the amount they donated, and whether the donor received anything in return for their gift.
  • Reminders to pay pledged donations: With pledged donations, donors pledge to give a certain amount at a later date. For example, you might hold a walk-a-thon and collect pledges based on how far participants walk. Automated reminders can prompt donors to donate the pledged amount or simply remind them that you’ll be billing the donation to them.
  • Thank-you messages: Cultivate long-term relationships with donors by sending them heartfelt thank-you messages. Choose an action, in this case donating, that will trigger a thank-you message within 24 to 72 hours. Don’t forget to make these messages genuine, personalized, and authentic. Greet the donor by name, mention their specific gift, and tell them how their individual donation will make a difference at your school.

When using automation, always remember to balance efficiency and convenience for your fundraising team with personalization. The last thing you want is for your school’s communications to feel cold or robotic.

While tracking your donations may seem like a minor step you could skip over, it’s critical to successful fundraising. To truly understand and efficiently engage with your supporters, make sure to choose a tool that will do the heavy lifting for you. Then, you’ll have easy access to data that reveals who your school’s supporters are, their giving habits and motivations, and ways to inspire them to give again and again.

Donor Segmentation 101: Tips for Better Nonprofit Analysis

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Nonprofits looking to step into the world of fundraising data analysis often begin with donor segmentation. Segmenting donor data enables nonprofits to understand their audiences on a deeper level and form more meaningful relationships.

This guide will cover what you need to know to get started with donor segmentation, from common segmentation strategies to software tools that help streamline the process.

What is Donor Segmentation?

87% of businesses say at least some customers expect personalized content. However, developing personalized content for every single one of your supporters would be a major drain on time and resources, especially for large or growing nonprofits.

Donor segmentation is the process of grouping your nonprofit’s donors based on characteristics they have in common. Using segmentation, your nonprofit can develop personalized communications for specific audiences, rather than specific individuals. This can save time while still delivering the personalized experience today’s supporters are looking for.

Strategies for Segmenting Donors

You can group donors in any number of ways, but some categories are more helpful than others for your nonprofit’s strategic decision-making.

For example, recency, frequency, and monetary value (RFM) segmentation is a common tactic. RFM segmentation is a great place to start if you’re looking to explore ways to improve your fundraising outreach because it breaks donors down into categories based on their giving habits.

With this segmentation strategy, you’ll group donors based on the following donation criteria:

  • Recency: Recent or lapsed donors
  • Frequency: Monthly, quarterly, annually, sporadic, etc.
  • Monetary value: Small, mid-tier, or major donors

Of course, RFM segments aren’t the only donor groupings you could create. You may also choose other segmentation strategies, such as dividing donors according to their:

  • Donation type: In-kind or monetary donations
  • Preferred communication platform: Email, direct mail, social media, text, phone calls, or face-to-face meetings
  • Reason for giving: Experience as a volunteer or beneficiary, a family connection to your mission, having a job within the same field as your nonprofit, etc.
  • Preferred program or campaign type to support: Peer-to-peer fundraising, volunteer program, or other specific programs
  • Demographics: Age, gender, location, profession, etc.

 

Develop your segmentation strategy based on your fundraising goals. For example, if you want to increase donor retention, segmenting donors by recency can be a great way to identify those who are likely to be retained and those who are at risk of lapsing. Furthermore, if you want to develop personalized outreach ahead of a capital campaign, grouping donors by reason for giving will allow you to craft impactful messaging to drive your campaign.

What Kind of Tools Do You Need for Donor Segmentation?

You’ll need two things to start segmenting your donors: accurate data, and the tools needed to gather it. Let’s explore some common data-gathering tools and the types of information you can collect using these solutions.

Fundraising and Nonprofit CRM Software

Your fundraising platform and nonprofit CRM system can work together to gather information about donors’ giving patterns. Your fundraising tools are the solutions you use to accept online donations, such as your donation form or peer-to-peer fundraising pages. Your nonprofit CRM, also known as donor management software, is the platform you use to store donor data.

According to Bloomerang’s fundraising software guide, these software platforms help streamline the fundraising process by “[managing] all fundraising campaigns, communications, and reporting from one central system.” With these tools, you can collect data such as:

  • Average donation amount
  • Date of last donation
  • Donation type
  • Donation frequency
  • Past involvement in peer-to-peer fundraising
  • Past volunteer experience

Using this data, you can segment donors by donation amount, recency, frequency, and past involvement.

Wealth Screening Tools

Wealth screening solutions are tools or services that analyze donor data to pinpoint supporters who reflect the characteristics of a major donor. These solutions can help identify the following wealth and warmth indicators:

  • Giving capacity
  • Past donations to other organizations
  • Profession
  • Business affiliations

Wealth screening data will allow you to build a detailed profile of who your major donors are. This can help determine the best communication channels and strategies to use to recruit more major donors.

Donor Surveys

Donor surveys are an effective way to gather any data that is difficult to collect automatically using your software solutions. These surveys allow you to ask donors questions to fill any gaps in your database. With the help of donor surveys, you can gather data such as:

  • Demographics, including age, gender, geographic location, and level of education
  • Preferred communication platform
  • Giving motivations

Donor surveys can help provide more context and background information on each of your segments, helping you understand donors on a more individualized level.

To create donor segments, filter the data in your CRM based on your chosen criteria, and then save each grouping as a unique segment. Once you have several groupings, you can easily reach out to each segment using different marketing channels, like email, direct mail, or phone calls.

Tips to Make the Most of Donor Segmentation

Segmenting donors is just the first step of a larger data analytics process. After developing segments, you can leverage them in multiple ways to further your marketing and fundraising efforts. Use the following tips to make the most of your segmentation:

Create user personas

Personas are fictionalized representations of different segments within your donor base. As you build donor personas, you’ll give each one a unique name, overarching characteristics, unique motivations, and recommendations for how to engage with them.

Here’s a brief example of a persona for an environmental nonprofit that uses tech to mitigate the negative impacts of climate change:

  • Name: Daniel Vega
  • Age: 38 years old
  • Location: Seattle, Washington
  • Level of Education: Master’s Degree in Computer Science
  • Job: Senior Developer at a Tech Agency
  • Lifestyle: Daniel is a working professional with a deep interest in technology as well as the outdoors. He enjoys outdoor activities like hiking, mountain biking, and photography.
  • Reason for giving: Daniel wants to support organizations that use innovative tech solutions to solve environmental issues. He also wants to give to organizations that he knows for sure will make good use of his donation.
  • Communication preferences: As a tech-savvy individual, Daniel prefers digital communication platforms like email and social media over other platforms like phone calls or in-person meetings.

The purpose of developing personas is to make them as realistic and specific as possible. Develop between three and five personas to ensure you’re targeting your core audience groups.

Develop personalized messaging

Take your personas a step further by designing personalized messaging for each segment. Expanding on the previous example, here are a few types of messages that might resonate with Daniel:

  • Impact stories: Daniel wants to ensure his donation will be put to good use. Impact stories that include data and success stories from beneficiaries will be useful for showing Daniel that his gift made a real difference.
  • News about innovations: Daniel is also interested in advancements in the environmental tech sector. Sharing recent studies or innovative technology our nonprofit is using will pique his interest and show how our organization is on the cutting edge.
  • Opportunities to engage: As a tech professional himself, Daniel may be interested in using his skills to support your mission. Invite Daniel to engage more deeply with volunteer opportunities, pro-bono work opportunities, and educational events like webinars.

No matter which persona you’re communicating to, remember that compelling true stories tend to be the most impactful messages. According to nonprofit statistics gathered by NPOInfo, 42% of donors said personal stories from a nonprofit’s beneficiaries influenced their decision to give.

Use your donor research to determine the types of stories that will resonate with each segment. For example, monthly donors may be interested in how their regular donations help keep your volunteer program going, while major donors want to know how you used their gift to refurbish your volunteer supply room.

Update segments regularly

As your audience grows and changes over time, regularly update your audience segments to ensure they reflect your donor base. Review your segments at regular intervals, such as once a year, to check in and update personas as needed.

Use this time to ensure you’re following data management best practices to ensure that your segments are based on accurate, reliable data. Incorporate data hygiene measures like:

  • Regularly auditing your data
  • Identifying duplicate, outdated, or inaccurate information
  • Eliminating or merging data securely

Also, check in with your data collection tools, like your donation form or donor surveys, to verify they’re gathering only useful data. Too much information can clog up your database, so streamline these forms as much as possible by just asking the necessary questions. For example, knowing donors’ favorite local restaurants isn’t as essential as knowing their contact information, favorite program to support, and preferred payment method.

Track engagement metrics across segments

Review key metrics to understand the effectiveness of your segmentation and personalization efforts. For example, you can track relevant engagement metrics like:

  • Email open rate
  • Donation page conversion rate
  • Donor retention rate
  • Average gift size
  • New donor acquisition rate
  • Donor upgrade rate (how often donors increase their giving amount)

Analyzing these metrics will help you adjust your strategy over time to continue connecting with donors in ways that resonate. For instance, if you notice a drop in your email open rate, you can refresh your personas and targeted marketing messages to ensure your communications are tailored to your audience’s interests.

With the right tools and data strategy, donor segmentation can be a lot more straightforward than you might think. All you have to do is develop a smooth transition from your data collection tools to your nonprofit database and segmentation filters. Then, you can start grouping donors based on shared traits and reaching out to them on a more personal level to address their unique needs and motivations.

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4 Data-Driven Fundraising Trends: Staying Ahead in the Field

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Staying on top of the latest and greatest in fundraising is essential for improving your nonprofit’s strategy and continuing to raise enough money to support your cause. In today’s fundraising climate, many of the hottest trends have one thing in common: data.

When you put data at the forefront of your strategy, you can dive deeper into your donor base’s specific preferences to create fundraising campaigns they’re likely to engage with. Check out some of the current data-driven fundraising trends and tips for how your nonprofit can stay ahead.

1. Predictive Analytics

Predictive analytics refers to the use of algorithms and machine learning to analyze data and make predictions based on that information. In the context of fundraising, predictive analytics can help you transform donor data into important insights that guide your fundraising decisions.

According to BWF’s guide to AI fundraising, there are three main types of predictive models nonprofits can use:

  • Giving behavior models. These models can predict factors like individual donors’ preferred giving channels, likelihood of renewal, and likely next gift amounts.
  • Predictive scoring. You may use predictive analytics to assign your donors engagement scores and categorize them based on recency, frequency, and monetary (RFM) value.
  • Giving program success models. Predictive analytics can also help you determine how successful different giving programs could be, such as annual giving, major giving, and planned giving.

Perhaps one of the most common use cases of predictive analytics for fundraising is donor prospecting. You can use predictive analytics tools to streamline the wealth screening process, identify potential major donors, find which donors are most likely to upgrade their giving, and more.

To successfully incorporate predictive analytics into your fundraising strategy, follow these tips:

  • Determine your goals. Before you dive into predictive analytics, choose fundraising goals to guide how you’ll use this technology. For example, the model you create will look very different based on whether you’re focusing on donor retention, prospecting, or planned giving.
  • Clean your data. The more accurate your data is, the better your predictions will be. Follow data hygiene best practices, such as auditing your database, appending missing data, and standardizing data entry, to prepare it for predictive analytics.
  • Choose the right tools. To implement predictive analytics, you’ll need to rely on the appropriate tools and technology to get the job done. Research your options, or outsource the process to an AI fundraising consultant for help.

2. Segmentation and Personalization

Donors crave personalized experiences. They want to feel special and know that your organization values their individual contributions to your cause and community.

The best way to personalize your communications is through segmentation. Segmentation is the process of grouping donors based on similar characteristics to better personalize your messaging to them. Nonprofits may segment their donors based on:

  • Average donation amount
  • Donation frequency
  • Donation recency
  • Donor lifecycle stage
  • Demographics
  • Communication preferences
  • Engagement level
  • Interests related to your cause

When segmenting your donors, it’s important that your nonprofit:

  • Defines its segmentation criteria. As you can see above, there are so many different ways you can segment your donors. Determine which segmentation criteria make the most sense based on your current goals, campaigns, and data.
  • Tailors its campaigns. Once you’ve successfully grouped your supporters, put your segments to use. Let’s say you’re running a discount card fundraiser. ABC Fundraising recommends this type of campaign because it allows you to gather support for local businesses and raise money for your cause. To maximize the success of your discount card fundraiser, you can use your donor demographic segments to help you choose businesses to partner with that reflect your target audience’s preferences. For instance, you could add a toy store to your discount cards if many of your supporters have children.
  • Updates its segments over time. As your donor base grows and changes, so should your segments. Reassess your segmentation strategy regularly to ensure it still reflects your supporters and their needs, and make adjustments where necessary.

3. Automation and Artificial Intelligence

AI can be a controversial topic, but when used correctly, it can help automate nonprofit fundraising processes and allow you to focus on more mission-critical tasks.

In addition to predictive analytics, your nonprofit can use AI for:

  • Donor segmentation. To more efficiently segment your donors, you can use AI to identify patterns in your donor base and group your donors accordingly.
  • Donor stewardship. Let’s say you’ve just wrapped up your school fundraiser and have a ton of tasks still on your plate but want to ensure you thank donors as soon as possible. You can use AI to automate thank-you messages to your donors before sending them more heartfelt notes once you have the time.
  • Donor support. If your inbox is full of donor questions, you may benefit from embedding an AI-powered chatbot on your website. This tool can help provide donor support by answering simple questions, guiding donors through the donation process, or giving them information about upcoming programs or events.

Using AI carefully and ethically is key. Follow these tips for responsible AI use:

  • Protect data privacy. You should store any donor data you’re collecting and using to power your AI fundraising efforts in a secure database or constituent relationship management (CRM) system. Make sure your platform has features like two-factor authentication, access controls, and SOC 2 Type II compliance.
  • Be transparent. Donors may be wary when they hear you’re using AI to process their data. Make it clear how exactly you’re leveraging their data to maintain donor trust, and let donors opt out of having their data used in your AI tools if they wish.
  • Hold your organization accountable. To keep your nonprofit accountable for responsible AI use, develop internal AI policies and guidelines for your team to follow. You should also have procedures for addressing any donor concerns about your AI use.

4. Impact Reporting

Donors want to know that you’re using their gifts responsibly. Many donors are happy to continue supporting your cause—under the unspoken caveat that you’re using their hard-earned funds to help those in need and drive your mission forward.

Keep donors updated on the facts and figures that demonstrate the outcomes of your fundraising efforts by:

  • Creating and sharing an annual report. An annual report is a document that summarizes your nonprofit’s activities for the past year. Include all important data points that illustrate the impact of donors’ contributions, and share the report with all stakeholders.
  • Using visualizations. Make the data in your annual report easy to digest by developing accompanying visualizations. Use a variety of charts and graphs to accurately depict your fundraising results and impact.
  • Incorporating storytelling. In addition to data, feature stories in your report that demonstrate exactly how your donors have allowed you to assist your beneficiaries. For example, an environmental conservation organization may explain that their flower fundraiser allowed them to move forward with their efforts to rescue endangered species like the Sumatran orangutan. They may highlight that one of the orangutans they rescued named Rue is now being rehabilitated at a local zoo thanks to donors’ generosity.

At the end of the day, your nonprofit aims to make a difference and help its beneficiaries as best it can. When you implement the most current data-driven fundraising trends, you can optimize your fundraising operations and maximize the support you gather for your mission.

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Top Metrics for Measuring Nonprofit Marketing Success

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Donors want to hear about the story of your nonprofit, its beneficiaries, and its work. In fact, 42% of donors indicate that stories from beneficiaries influenced their decision to donate. The best way to tell your organization’s story is through cohesive, effective marketing campaigns—but how can you know that your campaigns are having the impact you intended?

In this guide, we’ll explore some of the top metrics you’ll need to track to accurately assess your marketing campaign’s success, whether your goals are to boost donor acquisition, grow your social media following, or drive revenue. Let’s get started!

Why Analyzing Marketing Data Is Important

As GivingDNA’s guide to data analytics for nonprofits explains, tracking your organization’s metrics involves “collecting data and analyzing it to uncover trends, patterns, and insights that will help guide fundraising strategies.” In other words, you’ll understand your donors and each campaign’s strengths and weaknesses, allowing you to create a roadmap to marketing success.

Tracking and analyzing your marketing metrics is a critically important step, since it allows you to:

  • Get a 360-degree view of your marketing efforts. Use your data to follow donor journeys, see which strategies are most effective, identify gaps that lead to abandoned donation forms, and more.
  • Refine your strategy to enhance campaign outcomes. By tracking progress during the campaign, you can alter your approach to yield better end results.
  • Establish benchmarks. This will help you accurately predict the results of future campaigns.
  • Efficiently allocate resources. For example, spend more on the channels that generate the most conversions.

As you collect this data, remember to effectively manage your donors’ information. Integrate your technology to eliminate data silos and house all information on one platform. Additionally, protect any sensitive donor data, such as payment information, by limiting access to your database, leveraging data encryption, and requiring two-factor authentication to log into the software.

4 Types of Marketing Data

There are many different types of key performance indicators (KPIs) that your nonprofit may choose to track to gauge its progress. Select these metrics based on your goals for the campaign and which communication channels you’re using. For example, if your goal is to increase donations, it’s more important to focus on conversion metrics and total fundraising dollars than social media follows.

Here are four common types of KPIs to help you get started:

Engagement Metrics

Engagement metrics indicate how and when users interacted with your campaign. They reveal how well-aligned your content is with the audience’s interests and preferences.

This category can encompass many different metrics across a variety of communication channels, but some common examples include:

  • Click-through rate, which indicates whether a supporter clicked on the link in your marketing messages. For example, if you use digital donation cards, you would track the number of clicks from the card to your donation form.
  • Time spent on page, which reveals how long a user engages with the campaign landing page after clicking through. The longer they spend, the more interested they are in your content.
  • Donation form abandonment rate, which shows what percentage of those who click through to your form abandoned the page before completing their donation. Ideally, this metric should be as low as possible to indicate that most of your supporters are donating once they land on the page.

Your nonprofit should carefully track these metrics as soon as your campaign launches. Just remember that high engagement does not always equate to more conversions (e.g., donating).

Audience Metrics

These metrics demonstrate who is interacting with your marketing messages and how far your campaign is spreading. Some of the key metrics related to your audience will include:

  • Reach, which refers to the total number of unique users who were exposed to your campaign in some way.
  • Frequency indicates how many times those users see your ad. For example, each person might see a post an average of three times, making your frequency three.
  • Impressions denote the number of times your campaign was displayed. Impressions are typically higher than reach because one user could have multiple impressions. If you reach 10 users and have a frequency of three, impressions would equal 300.

Tracking demographic data such as the user’s age, gender, location, occupation, and other socioeconomic factors can also be helpful, especially if your campaign taps into new audiences. Learning about these new audiences can help you cultivate deeper relationships with them by tailoring your communications from the very first thank-you message or welcome email.

Platform-Specific Metrics

While some marketing metrics are relatively general—or even considered to be universal across all communication channels—some are hyper-specific to certain platforms. As more digital and social media platforms are established, this list will likely grow.

For example, the following digital platforms each have unique metrics you’ll need to understand and analyze to chart your campaign’s performance:

  • Social media: Most social media platforms measure engagement through metrics like views, likes, comments, shares, saves, and follows. Some have unique actions that count toward engagement—think of TikTok’s Stitch feature or reposting on X (formerly Twitter).
  • Email: Measure your email campaign’s performance with metrics like delivery and open rates to see how many of your messages reach their intended recipients.
  • Website: See how many visitors your site receives from your campaign, as well as the quality of those visitors. Monitor total website traffic, number of sessions, page views, time spent on page, bounce rate, and more.

Additionally, confirm that your organization is tracking data from its fundraising tools. This important information can sometimes fall through the cracks, particularly if you’re using a more niche tool like silent auction software or a gift card fundraiser platform.

Conversion Metrics

A conversion happens when a user interacts with your campaign and takes the intended next action. The way you measure the number of conversions depends on your campaign’s goal. For example, a user might convert by:

  • Donating
  • Subscribing to your email newsletter or direct mail list
  • Following your social media accounts
  • Purchasing merchandise to support your mission
  • Joining your sustainer program
  • Apply to be a volunteer

Your conversion rate is then calculated by dividing the total number of conversions that occurred during the campaign by the number of clicks or visits to your website. Aim to boost conversions as much as you can, but don’t stress about reaching an unattainable number. For instance, the average online donation conversion rate for nonprofits in 2023 was 16% for desktop users and 10% for mobile. Using these figures as a benchmark, you can determine what’s feasible for your nonprofit and start there.

Remember that data insights will only be as accurate as the file you’re pulling them from. This is why it’s so important to practice data hygiene and ensure that your data attribution is correct and up-to-date. A nonprofit marketing agency can help you analyze, understand, and protect the quality of your data to promote continuous improvements and take your campaigns to the next level.

The title of the article, which reads “Strategies to Build a Culture of Data-Backed Decision-Making.”

Strategies to Build a Culture of Data-Backed Decision-Making

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Anyone can see why adding data to the decision-making process is worthwhile. By establishing credibility and unifying collaborators, data informs you to take the next step with confidence, whatever that may be.

However, having data-backed decision-making become second nature in your organization can pose a challenge, especially if you’re unsure of which insights to prioritize. Not to mention, unorganized, missing, or dirty data can stall your progress or lead you down the wrong path.

To strengthen your organization’s informed decision-making, we’ve compiled a list of five strategies you can employ to back your ideas with solid evidence.

1. Lead by example

When your organization’s leaders set an example, the rest of the team will likely follow suit. Start at the top of your organization to explore ways your leadership can set the tone for following evidence-based strategies. A few leadership techniques could include:

  • Setting a regular cadence of reviewing organizational performance metrics to remind teams of what metrics to go after, what healthy results look like, and how to navigate any lacking or surprising results.
  • Sifting through case studies before finalizing decisions to allow previous insights to guide your strategy. This could mean diving into studies your organization has conducted or reviewing relevant ones within your industry.
  • Reviewing evidence-based action plans to ensure you have informed each step of your process with relevant data. For comprehensive action plans, this would mean citing multiple sources and proactively explaining any gaps.
  • Offering data research and presentation best practices from leadership’s expertise. Give tips and strategies for presenting data and research in a way that is both compelling and relevant for your audience.

These strategies should be unique to your company’s needs and objectives. For example, a healthcare organization may set expectations to review the risk adjustment process with new employees so that they understand the workflow and compliance requirements. According to Arcadia, this may mean breaking down each step to accurately suspect, engage, and assess patient needs while maintaining quality standards.

2. Provide data literacy training

While data is a useful tool for decision-making, it can sometimes be tricky to interpret, especially when gathering actionable insights from specific data points. Ensure everyone has the needed level of data literacy training to manage your organization’s data. Explore the following:

  • Hands-on data analysis projects related to team members’ roles, allowing them to explore and analyze data independently.
  • Peer-to-peer learning sessions where team members from various departments can collaborate and share their best practices.
  • External training opportunities, such as workshops or conferences, that provide team members with opportunities to learn more about data analysis.

By offering training and collaboration opportunities, your entire team will be on the same page when approaching various decisions. Additionally, you should avoid sequestering your data science team from the rest of the organization to ensure transparency across the team. Instead, make sure they are heavily involved in explaining any process or system updates and catching any new team members up to speed.

3. Offer secure data access and management

Although the majority of your team could benefit from data-backed decision-making, it’s important to safeguard sensitive information by ensuring it’s only viewed by authorized team members. Offer secure data access and management by employing the following strategies:

  • Leverage integration: Disorganized data lacks both efficiency and security, since it’s difficult to find and may be accessible by unauthorized parties. Convert your data to a digital format and aggregate it into a central location to keep it secure. For example, a healthcare organization might consolidate patient data by leveraging EHR integration.
  • Provide data security training: Set up a series of meetings or an official training program to cover basic security principles with your team. This may include tips on how to create strong passwords, identify phishing scams, and update software. You might also offer hands-on training through simulations to help your team put these tips into practice.
  • Use clear data access controls: Employ strict access controls to ensure only authorized users can access sensitive data. For example, you may use multi-factor authentication (MFA) or biometric authentication to verify a team member’s identity before allowing them access. You can also implement logging and monitoring mechanisms to keep an eye on who accesses this information.

Beyond implementing controls on which team members have access to specific data, you can also protect the organization’s information by determining which data sources are most relevant for certain team members. Consolidating data provides a comprehensive overview of your organization’s most important information.

This way, you’ll be able to build data-backed, team-based workflows so each department can access the data they need without sacrificing security. Just be sure to identify any incomplete or missing data before you finalize any workflows. If needed, request a data append to fill in any gaps.

4. Define clear objectives and KPIs

To reinforce a culture of data-backed decision-making, your organization must build its overall goals around relevant metrics. Double the Donation’s nonprofit marketing guide recommends using the SMART method to create specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound goals. Then, you’ll have a clear plan for how and when you’ll achieve these goals.

Enforce a coordinated effort to leverage data in decision-making by aligning these data-backed goals across departments. A few ways you can do this include:

  • Encouraging collaboration: Enable teams to collaborate on projects by sharing relevant data and insights.
  • Establishing Key Performance Indicators (KPIs): Develop KPIs for each team that support the organization’s overarching goals. Track them regularly and share progress across the entire team.
  • Implementing data-backed performance reviews: Use KPIs to track team performance and acknowledge team members who go above and beyond.

A collective effort to achieve goals based on actionable data will not just enhance your organization’s culture. Equipped with clear goals and the support needed to accomplish them, your team can work cohesively toward the success of the organization.

5. Provide relevant resources and support

While you may have an organized approach to data collection, you should also leverage relevant resources to simplify decision-making for your team. Consider the following ways you can support data-backed decisions:

  • Leverage knowledge-sharing platforms: Enable team members to access tutorials, case studies, and best practices through internal knowledge-sharing platforms.
  • Use analytics: Allow your whole team to access analytics tools to collect data analysis from various perspectives.
  • Continually improve the process: Regularly evaluate and improve your organization’s data processes and practices. Ask for feedback from team members to determine data needs and address challenges.

An organization’s team can only employ data-backed decision-making when they’re equipped with the right resources and support. In addition to these tools and resources, provide data quality assurance so that team members can work with consistent and reliable information.

An organizational culture that encourages data-backed decision-making benefits not only your organization as a whole but also your individual team members. With enhanced collaboration and greater technical skills, your team will produce better organizational results.

Embrace data to drive innovation and growth relevant to your organization’s objectives, and establish clear expectations for team members to support this strategy. Where possible, explain the importance of data in team members’ roles to transparently implement data-driven processes. Prioritize data across your entire team for better results in every initiative.

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4 Types of Metrics to Track When Accepting In-Kind Donations

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Although less flexible than monetary donations, in-kind donations are still valuable to nonprofits for various reasons. For instance, the non-financial nature of these donations may lead to increased generosity, as donors unable to make monetary gifts may be happy to donate items or services instead. Some fundraising organizations even offer the opportunity for your nonprofit to raise funds through the collection of in-kind donations by hosting events like a clothes drive collecting recyclable clothes.

To maximize any donation type, regardless of whether they’re major gifts or matching gifts, you must start with data. In-kind gifts are no exception, as you’ll need to collect information on key metrics to determine the best path toward increasing the support your nonprofit receives. But which data points do you need to track to do so?

In this guide, we’ll cover the four types of data to track when accepting in-kind donations. By collecting and assessing this information, your nonprofit can grow the support it receives and more conveniently fulfill its mission. Let’s dive in!

1. Donor Data

When it comes to securing recurring donations or support, donor data is key. With this information, you can segment your supporters into groups with shared characteristics. This allows you to send out targeted messages that are more likely to secure future support.

Key information you should collect on your in-kind donors include:

  • Name
  • Contact information
  • Demographics
  • Engagement history
  • Giving history
  • Interests and hobbies
  • Communication preferences

For instance, let’s say that a woman named Sarah drops off canned beans at your nonprofit’s food drive. You have her fill out a form that asks for the information above, and you learn that:

  • Sarah has donated canned food at your nonprofit’s past three food drives.
  • She hasn’t participated in any other in-kind donation drives or made a monetary donation.
  • She prefers to be contacted through email and text.
  • She usually finds out about your food drives through neighborhood flyers.

From this information, you can gather that addressing food insecurity is important to Sarah. You may be able to secure a larger in-kind donation from her in the future if she’s given more time to prepare.

With that in mind, you can group Sarah with other donors who share her views and preferences. Before your next food drive, you’ll send out an email to this group letting them know about your upcoming event and inviting them to donate. By doing so, you’ll secure these donors’ repeated support and may even increase the number of items they donate.

Be sure to store your donor data in a secure location to ensure that their privacy is respected. Kindful recommends using a constituent relationship management (CRM) system for this purpose. A dedicated nonprofit CRM allows you to easily access donor information, segment donors into groups, and send personalized messages requesting support.

2. Donation and Inventory Details

Since in-kind donations are usually goods or services, your nonprofit will want to create an inventory of donated items. This ensures you don’t use your hard-earned funds on an item you already own and helps you keep track of donations for bookkeeping purposes. Keeping an updated inventory is particularly important for any donation that you plan to keep long-term, such as livestreaming equipment, computers, or furniture.

When recording in-kind donations, be sure to include the following information:

  • Description of items or services
  • Estimated value
  • Quality and condition
  • Date of donation
  • Method of delivery, such as a drop-off delivery or pickup by staff members
  • Location

Additionally, depending on the number of in-kind donations you usually receive, you may need volunteer help to process and inventory these items. In that case, you may want to track volunteer metrics as well to ensure that you’re providing a great volunteer experience for your supporters.

3. Marketing Metrics

Donors can only make gifts to your nonprofit if they know that your organization needs support, making marketing a key aspect of your nonprofit’s operations. Therefore, tracking the success of your marketing efforts is crucial to securing future in-kind donations.

To assess the effectiveness of your nonprofit’s marketing, keep an eye on these metrics:

  • Conversion rate. This metric refers to the percentage of users who complete a desired action. In the case of in-kind gifts, this means dropping off a donation, scheduling a donation pickup, or pledging a service. For example, if you have a call-to-action (CTA) on your website to schedule an in-kind donation pickup, you can assess the conversion rate of this CTA to see how effective it is at getting web visitors to click and complete the pickup form.
  • Donor acquisition rate. If you’re hoping to secure new donors through in-kind gifts, the donor acquisition rate is key. To calculate this, you’ll divide the number of first-time donors by the number of all donors. For instance, let’s say you spent the entirety of last month focusing on requests for in-kind gifts. If you had a total of 200 donors and 47 of them were new donors, you’d have an acquisition rate of 23.5%.
  • Engagement metrics. Gauge the interest surrounding in-kind gifts by tracking metrics related to engagement. This includes website traffic, email open rates, and social media engagement on messages that feature in-kind gifts. If you have a lot of engagement with these messages, you’ll know that your supporters are receptive and open to making in-kind donations.
  • Referral sources. To determine which marketing channels are most effective at garnering in-kind donations, track referral sources to your key in-kind donation landing pages. Common referral sources include on-site CTAs, email newsletters, and social media posts.

By examining these data points, you’ll have a better understanding of the effectiveness of your marketing messages, which marketing channels are best for requesting in-kind donations, and how successfully you’re attracting new donors.

4. Donation Impact

Much like with monetary donations, donors want to know how you use their in-kind gifts to positively impact your beneficiaries. By collecting information related to donation impact, you’ll be able to answer their questions and alleviate concerns with quantitative data.

Metrics that you can track for donation impact include:

  • Cost savings. If you’re already tracking the estimated value of in-kind gifts, you can easily translate this metric into your nonprofit’s cost savings. For instance, let’s say that you recently requested donations of livestreaming equipment for your next hybrid event. You could let your donors know that their generous in-kind donations helped you save $5,000 in video equipment, lighting, and microphones.
  • Beneficiaries helped. If you’re collecting in-kind donations to directly give to your nonprofit’s beneficiaries, you can track exactly how many beneficiaries your in-kind donations helped to show your impact. Let’s say your nonprofit’s mission is to aid people experiencing homelessness and you host a clothing drive to collect warm winter clothing. In your thank-you letters, you could mention that your drive allowed you to provide warm clothes to 500 beneficiaries.
  • Environmental impact. According to Donate This Recycle That, in-kind donations of goods are a great way for supporters to recycle and give new life to old items. If your nonprofit deals with environmental issues, let donors know the positive environmental impact of their donations. For example, you can tell supporters that together, they donated over half a ton of clothing, saving these textiles from landfills.

These metrics are especially important when it comes to your donor recognition efforts. In particular, you can feature relevant information in your thank-you messages. By doing so, you’ll demonstrate the impact your donors have on your beneficiaries and show that your organization is trustworthy and deserving of support.

If you’re serious about maximizing the number of in-kind gifts you receive and the impact you create with them, it’s essential that you track these four categories of metrics. To streamline your data collection and analysis, consider looking into a partnership with a data analytics company. These organizations can help you get started and set you up for in-kind donation success!

Explore data-backed strategies that nonprofits can use to increase matching gift participation.

4 Data-Driven Strategies to Boost Matching Gift Revenue

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Matching gifts have the power to skyrocket your nonprofit’s fundraising potential. For every dollar a donor gives, another dollar could be waiting to be matched by their employer. However, many nonprofits struggle with limited donor awareness of matching gift programs and inefficient processes for identifying eligible donors.

These challenges often result in missed opportunities to double contributions and maximize revenue, but fear not! We’re here to shed light on data-backed strategies for identifying more match-eligible donors and driving matching gifts to completion.

Chances are, you just need to take a closer look at your donor data, clean up your identification processes, and be proactive with marketing. With some simple adjustments, you can level up your matching gift game and increase your cause’s revenue.

Employ multiple approaches to identify match-eligible donors.

Corporate giving research indicates that 78% of donors are unaware if their employer offers matching gifts and what the program’s guidelines are. This means it’s up to your nonprofit to educate donors.

According to that same resource, using multiple methods to identify match opportunities leads to a 77% increase in the number of match-eligible donations identified. Here are some efficient ways to identify these opportunities:

  • Collect employer information from donors. Make sure you know where your donors work. Ask for employers’ names in donor surveys, event registration forms, and donation forms. That way, you can directly look into those companies’ matching gift policies.
  • Invest in matching gift search tools. These tools enable donors to easily search for their employers’ matching gift programs and find guidance on submitting match requests. In the next section, we’ll explore ideal ways to integrate these tools into the donation process.
  • Host donor outreach events. Host in-person or virtual events focused on matching gifts where your nonprofit provides information and answers questions about matching gift programs. These events can also serve as opportunities to securely collect donors’ employer data.
  • Look for CLMA-certified employers. Keep an eye out for any donors in your network who work for CLMA-certified companies. These are going to be some of your best matching gift opportunities, and the certification ensures the process is a quick and easy one for your supporters.

Above all, be proactive about marketing matching gifts. While you can look into companies that employ many of your donors, it’s impossible to research every donor’s match eligibility manually.

Instead, share informational posts on social media, mention matching gifts in all fundraising appeals, and post testimonials about the impact of matching gifts on your website. Urge supporters to check if their employers offer matching gifts, create helpful infographics, and share links to a matching gift search tool where supporters can research their eligibility. You can even tap into paid advertising to amplify your website’s dedicated matching gift page.

Integrate matching gifts into the donation process.

360MatchPro’s matching gift research indicates that 84% of donors are more likely to donate if a match is offered. Meanwhile, 1 in 3 donors will give a larger donation if they know their employer will match it.

There’s no better time to encourage donors to check into their eligibility than when they’re in the middle of donating! Simplify donors’ research as much as possible by integrating a convenient employer search tool into the donation process.

With the tool, donors can search for their employers and receive information about their matching gift program’s requirements for donation amounts, employee eligibility, and nonprofit eligibility. They’ll also see the rate at which eligible donations are matched, such as 1:1 (which is a dollar-for-dollar match) or 2:1 (which means an employer will donate twice as much as the original donation).

Here are some key places to embed this tool into your website and encourage participation:

  • Donation page. That same list of matching gift statistics states that 73% of donors will use a matching gift search field on a donation form. Embedding a search tool may even convince supporters to increase their contributions before hitting the “donate” button.

Embed an employer search tool into your donation page to encourage donors to research their employers’ programs.

  • Donation confirmation page. Give donors another chance to research their eligibility by embedding your search tool in your donation confirmation page. Knowing they have the chance to double the contribution they just made can encourage them to pursue a matching gift.
  • Post-donation follow-up. Encourage anyone who hasn’t submitted a request or verified their eligibility to do so with follow-up emails. For anyone who has submitted a request, send them updates as you track the progress of their match. Some matching gift software will even send automated emails, reminding eligible donors to submit their forms and donors with unknown match statuses to research their eligibility.

Highlighting matching gifts during the donation process shows donors that they can potentially double their impact. These reminders serve as a powerful incentive for donors to give and keep giving, because they know their gift will make a bigger difference than normal if it’s matched.

Use matching gift auto-submission to increase participation.

A tricky part of securing matching gifts is convincing donors to complete the match request form. They may want to multiply their contributions, but manually filling out a form for their employer can deter them. That’s where auto-submission steps in!

Offered exclusively by Double the Donation, auto-submission is the latest innovation in matching gift technology. Your software will do the heavy lifting by automatically completing donors’ match request forms. When donating online, all donors need to do is click a checkbox to opt into auto-submission. If eligible, the donor will be prompted to answer a few additional questions, such as providing their work email addresses, and the software will automatically submit their request form. That means less work for donors and more matching gift revenue for your nonprofit!

Auto-submission cuts down the matching gift process into three easy steps.

According to corporate giving software research, this technology is expected to help nonprofits yield an 80% increase in matching gift revenue. Be aware that this feature only works if companies use CSR software that integrates with 360MatchPro by Double the Donation.

Luckily, 360MatchPro is partnered with some of the most popular CSR software vendors, like Millie, POINT, Givinga, and Selflessly. Talk to your corporate partners who use these platforms to ensure they enable auto-submission, helping increase matching gift participation.

Append employer information for more accurate match identification.

Your nonprofit CRM houses valuable data, including donors’ employment details. You should collect donors’ employer information whenever you can do so naturally, such as through donor surveys, event registration forms, and donation forms.

However, people constantly change jobs, and their first thought isn’t necessarily to update their employer information with the nonprofits they support. That’s where data appending can help.

NXUnite’s data append guide explains the process of turning to an appending service provider who pulls data from external sources to correct incorrect and supplement incomplete data. They use supporter information you provide, such as contact information, to identify the correct individuals and pair them with their missing data.

Luckily for nonprofits, these services extend to employment information. By appending employer information to donor records, your nonprofit can identify donors who work for companies with matching gift programs. This enables your team to target these donors with matching gift outreach, increasing the likelihood that they’ll get their gifts matched. Not to mention, this means you can avoid reaching out to previously match-eligible donors whose new employers don’t offer matching gifts.

Final Thoughts: Start Using A Data-Driven Approach

Now that we’ve shared our favorite strategies, it’s time to put them into action. Take the first step by incorporating matching gift information into your outreach and integrating helpful software into the donation process. Soon enough, more matching gift dollars will start rolling in.

Remember, every dollar matched has the potential to make a greater impact on your organization’s fundraising goals. Get started and unlock the full potential of matching gifts to support your mission!

This guide shares data-backed ways to improve employee morale at nonprofits.

3 Data-Backed Strategies to Motivate Employees to Excel

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Nonprofits operate in a landscape where resources are limited and stakes are high. This makes it tough to set aside time to prioritize employee engagement. However, ensuring your team remains dedicated can directly influence your organization’s impact.

Fortunately, we have an abundance of nonprofit data and software available to understand the intricacies of employee engagement, and we’re here to share exciting opportunities for motivating your team.

Basing your employee engagement efforts on research can help unlock their full potential, driving them to excel in their roles and more effectively contribute to your organization’s mission. Now, let’s dive into our first strategy.

1. Use eCards As A Personalized Motivational Tool.

Employee recognition research indicates that 80% of employees are motivated to work harder when they feel recognized by their superiors, so recognize those who face challenges head-on and make the most of opportunities with our favorite strategy: eCards.

Also known as digital greeting cards, eCards allow you to recognize employees with a personalized, visually engaging virtual message.

Let’s look at how eCards can motivate your employees:

  • Celebrate milestones and achievements. eCards are versatile. Whether the eCard acknowledges a work-related accomplishment, birthday, or personal life event, sending thoughtful eCards demonstrates your nonprofit’s investment in employees’ well-being.
  • Create eCards that emphasize your organization’s mission. Your nonprofit operates with a strong sense of purpose, and eCards are an opportunity to promote your organization’s core values and appreciate employees who demonstrate them. By connecting an employee’s contributions to your nonprofit’s broader impact, you’ll create a deeper sense of fulfillment. Here’s an example of an eCard that does just that:

This employee appreciation eCard is branded with the organization’s colors and says, ‘Thank you for committing to our value: Compassion.’

  • Encourage peer recognition. Allow team members to send eCards to colleagues to acknowledge each other’s efforts. Not only will this boost morale, but it’ll also foster a culture of mutual support.

By infusing eCards into your everyday recognition strategy, you can create a work environment where employees feel valued and inspired to excel.

2. Create a rewards program.

Take your recognition strategies one step further with a rewards program. Around 75% of employees experience higher job satisfaction for 3+ months after receiving a thoughtful gift, and rewards programs help employees feel like they’ve earned those gifts.

Tangible rewards add an extra layer of motivation and don’t need to be extravagant. eCardWidget’s employee gift guide shares several thoughtful ideas for rewards that can motivate your team:

  • Gift cards to a restaurant, retailer, online marketplace, or entertainment service like Spotify
  • Company merchandise like t-shirts, hats, water bottles, and mugs
  • Health and wellness benefits like a stipend for a gym membership or fitness classes
  • Tickets to a sports event, concert, or cultural activity

You can manage this program manually, but we recommend automating the work with employee recognition software. These platforms help track employee performance and enable managers to identify and reward high-performing employees.

Try combining your recognition efforts by following up eCards with a tangible reward. For example, the individual who received the most recognition eCards during a performance period will receive a gift basket, or management may pick a few standout individuals to reward with branded apparel.

3. Streamline time-intensive tasks.

Repetitive and tedious work takes away employees’ time to focus on bigger projects that are more meaningful to your mission. Worse, it can even lead to employee burnout. Luckily, nonprofit technology is advancing every day and can eliminate this demotivator.

66% of employees claim they spend at least 2 hours per week handling less-than-productive tasks like sending project status updates. On the other hand, those who use automation tools and strategies can save a notable 3.6 hours per week.

Ultimately, choosing the right solutions and automating tasks when possible empowers employees to be more productive and successful in their roles, fostering a sense of accomplishment and motivation. Here are two solutions we recommend:

Data appends

Your nonprofit collects a lot of donor data, which can become outdated as people move, change their phone numbers, and get new email addresses. That’s where data appending comes in handy.

Instead of contacting donors to update their data, your team can outsource the work to a data appending provider. These services involve correcting outdated, void, or inaccurate data and supplementing existing data with information you don’t already have.

Here’s how data appending works with a service like NPOInfo:

  1. Select your services. Consider what gaps need to be filled in your database. This could include email addresses, phone numbers, postal addresses, birthdates, or employer information.
  2. Upload your records. Securely send your records to us with as much information as you can provide. We’ll use this information to identify your donors within our comprehensive database, so we can correct missing, outdated, or otherwise inaccurate details.
  3. Receive your appended records. We’ll return the updated information to your team and can even help you import the appended data into your CRM.

Enriching donor data provides your team with comprehensive, accurate donor profiles, empowering them to cultivate stronger donor relationships. Then, they can better tailor their fundraising strategies and do their jobs more efficiently, ultimately boosting employee morale.

Matching gift automation

Corporate giving is a powerful revenue source, and software makes it easy for your team to automate the matching gifts process. 360MatchPro’s nonprofit fundraising automation guide explains how matching gift software removes menial tasks from your team’s plates, empowering them to do more with their time and see a larger return on their fundraising efforts.

In particular, matching gift automation accelerates the process of identifying and claiming matches through powerful features, such as:

  • Automated match identification. Instead of manually researching and verifying matching gift eligibility for each donation, automation software instantly identifies potential matches based on the information donors provide.
  • Automated follow-up. Set trigger emails based on donors’ match status, reducing the manual outreach your team needs to conduct. The software will continue following up and drive matches automatically.
  • Auto-submission. Your donors can skip the process of submitting a match request altogether thanks to auto-submission, the latest innovation in matching gift technology. By clicking a checkbox while donating online, donors enable the software to fill out their requests automatically. That leads to more donors submitting their requests accurately and more revenue acquired.

Nonprofits Source’s online giving research has found that leveraging matching gift software leads to 77% more donations flagged as match-eligible, which can double or even triple your nonprofit’s donations. Even better, new auto-submission functionality is projected to yield an 80% increase in matching gift revenue. That means your fundraising team can accomplish more with less work!

These features ensure that matching gift opportunities aren’t overlooked, ultimately increasing your fundraising team’s impact and leading to greater job satisfaction.

Wrapping Up

From expressing gratitude to leveraging software to develop stronger donor relationships, you can boost employee morale at your nonprofit in several ways. When choosing strategies, take your employees’ preferences into account. You might even survey them to learn what ideas they’d find most impactful.

In any case, showing recognition and streamlining menial tasks are some of the most common ways modern organizations improve their workplaces. Start there and build an organization your employees are passionate about supporting.