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What to Look for in a Data Analytics Company: Top Must-Haves

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When it comes to effective decision-making, accurate data is the most powerful tool at your disposal. According to a PwC survey, over 1,000 senior executives found highly data-driven organizations are three times more likely to report improvements in decision-making compared to those who rely on minimal data.

Regardless of your industry, data should back every decision, so how organizations collect, manage, and analyze data will directly influence their outcomes. In the case of nonprofits, GivingDNA’s nonprofit analytics guide states that “data analytics helps nonprofits identify broad patterns among donors, track changes, and spot opportunities for growth.” 

However, many organizations struggle to tap into the power of these rich datasets and end up making uninformed, costly decisions as a result. To avoid this pitfall, you can partner with an analytics provider and uncover key insights that revolutionize your strategy. 

In this guide, we’ll discuss the top non-negotiables to look for when researching an analytics company, so you can choose one that complements your goals. Let’s get started!

Expertise and experience

When looking for an analytics provider, prioritize one with a proven track record of experience. Specifically, they should have extensive knowledge of the nuances related to your industry. For example, healthcare analytics providers need to be well-versed in EHRs, claims management, and population health management data.

For nonprofits, this means finding a provider that exhibits knowledge of CRM platforms, fundraising analytics, corporate giving, and/or prospect research. 

In general, there are a few key indicators you can rely on to assess a company’s expertise. These include:

  • Impartial third-party reviews: Research third-party sites for professional perspectives on similar providers. Sites like softwareadvice.com and G2 are informative resources that provide a quick summary highlighting recommendations, awards, and pricing. Software users often leave reviews that can give you a more in-depth look at pros and cons for each provider. 
  • Use cases: Dive into specific use cases or testimonials mentioned on a provider’s website. Look for organizations that mirror your cause, size, or vision. How did the provider meet or exceed their needs? If you have additional questions, reach out to current customers and ask for their opinion — are they satisfied with the provider? Would they recommend a different option?
  • Software demos: Once you’ve narrowed down your list, consider requesting a software demo to see a provider’s offerings in action. These can be especially useful to visualize complex functionalities and decide if a solution will be user-friendly for your nonprofit. 

Though not as essential, thought leadership can be another telling indicator of a provider’s expertise. If they keep their blog roll updated, provide a video series, or host a podcast, these are signs that they are attuned to your industry’s shifting environment. Therefore, they might be more reliable when it comes to keeping your database updated with the newest technologies. 

Strong data protections

Nonprofits handle sensitive data such as donor details, beneficiary information, and financial records. The mishandling of this information can lead to significant legal consequences and a breach of trust. 

Safeguarding against these outcomes begins with selecting a provider with strong protections. Ask these questions to ensure your provider practices these precautions:

  • Are they compliant with data privacy regulations? Data privacy regulations such as HIPAA, GDPR, and other relevant legislation help protect vulnerable data. Failing to comply with these laws can lead to irreparable repercussions, like a loss of audience trust. 
  • What data security measures do they use? No organization is immune to cyberattacks. Encryption, user authentication, and intrusion detection systems protect against hackers and other cybersecurity threats. 
  • Have they had any significant breaches? A provider can boast strong data security, but their track record will indicate whether their technology is vulnerable or not. 

It’s better to determine a provider’s security measures beforehand than risk partnering with a company that has weak protections. Maintain and cultivate your community’s trust by choosing a company with secure data handling capabilities. 

Relevant tools and technologies

Effective data analysis requires relevant and intuitive analytics tools. Look for a provider that can sufficiently organize and compare large data sets with user-friendly applications. Then, compare their capabilities to your organization’s needs. For instance, an organization looking to refine its matching gift functionality might look for corporate giving software with advanced autosubmission to streamline its internal processes. 

As a starting point, identify analytics providers with the following capabilities:

  • Customization. Assess their ability to cater to your organization’s individual growth needs. Avoid choosing a provider with a one-size-fits-all approach. Instead, look for a provider that allows flexibility in marketing communication, team coordination, and fundraising analysis.  
  • Integration. Analytics tools need to be able to integrate with multiple additional solutions, including databases, spreadsheets, cloud services, and external sources. Look for a provider that can reduce manual data handling for faster analysis. Additionally, identify providers that offer data enrichment capabilities such as demographic appends to support your outreach efforts. 
  • Reporting. Reporting integrations can help access key insights. Consider providers that have extensive reporting capabilities such as interactive dashboards or speedy ad hoc reporting. For example, Arcadia’s healthcare dashboards illustrate how data can be visualized to empower decision-makers. 
  • Collaboration. Make sure to choose a company that promotes seamless collaboration between teams with a user-friendly interface. This includes data sharing and export, access controls, and real-time notifications to foster a culture of data-driven decision-making. 

Consider fleshing out each of these capabilities in more detail to align with what your organization wants to achieve. That way, you’ll find a provider who can offer the best ROI. With this in mind, you should still prioritize finding a provider that will support your growth long term. This means their infrastructure should be able to handle increasing data volumes and quickly resolve any future bottlenecks you may encounter. 

Support and maintenance

Especially if your organization is new to analytics tools, choose a provider that offers helpful support you can rely on to get you up and running and answer any questions along the way. See if they offer any training videos, help hubs, or other online resources you can reference.

In some cases, there are online communities of users who can walk you through implementation speed bumps with helpful tips. Other times, providers will offer eTraining options and libraries to fill in any knowledge gaps or explain new features. These online resources can help you get the most out of your data analytics and make changes that will set you up for future success.

Data analytics providers can help your team make strategic decisions that benefit your operational health. Choose a provider that not only has a great reputation but also meets your organization’s data management needs. This means prioritizing features that further meaningful collaboration and profitable analysis. 

 

In this guide, learn more about how your organization can do a better job at retaining members by effectively using your data.

3 Important Steps for Leveraging Data to Retain Members

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Retaining current members costs less than recruiting new ones and saves your staff time and energy. Additionally, a high retention rate shows that people find their membership value in line with the price, which bodes well for enticing new members to join. Overall, retaining members is vital to the long-term success of associations and nonprofits with membership programs—and data plays a key role in this effort.

Collecting data and extracting insights from it helps enhance the member experience and boost member retention. Member preferences and interests differ from organization to organization, so it’s essential to have accurate, up-to-date information that will guide your membership program’s decision-making. Below, we’ll walk you through three ways to make your data work for you.

1. Calculate your member retention rate.

The first step in leveraging your data for member retention is to know what your member retention rate actually is. A retention rate provides a baseline for how well you’re preserving members between renewal periods. It allows you to set a goal for the rate you’d like to achieve or maintain. Future updates show how different approaches impacted your efforts to reach that goal.

This ongoing calculation is important to prioritize for several reasons:

  • Member retention impacts your association’s overall reputation. If you can’t retain members, you don’t benefit from word-of-mouth marketing. Prospective members may come to view your organization as unreliable or unsustainable.
  • Retaining members allows your organization to generate more revenue with fewer expenses. The more members you retain, the less you have to emphasize your resources toward a membership recruitment budget.
  • High membership retention can lead to a higher acquisition rate. When you retain members, they’re more likely to tell their wider network about your association. These peer referrals can make recruitment easier.

Calculating your annual member retention rate is simple. Divide the number of members you currently have by the number of members you had in the previous year on that same date. Multiply the resulting number by 100 to get a percentage.

2. Collect key types of member data.

To start collecting data that will help boost member retention, look at your association’s existing data and identify information gaps. You can add fields to your membership applications, send surveys to existing members, or take notes during member engagements to help fill these gaps.

Using membership software makes keeping track of member data easier. All your information is organized in one place for gleaning crucial insights into your member experience. In particular, here are three data types you can collect to help retain more members.

Member Engagement

To build lasting relationships with members, you need to know when and how much they interact with your benefits and services, such as:

This lets you determine which activities your members prefer. It can also provide insights on the days and times that work best for members.

Event Attendance

Events are an important way to bring members together and engage them with your association. Use your event management tools to track event attendance. You can identify the event types your members value most, including whether they’re virtual, hybrid, or in-person. If you keep throwing monthly happy hours that few members attend, but find that your quarterly online webinars are packed, use that data to adjust your event calendar accordingly.

You can also collect member data through pre-event and post-event surveys. These let you gather feedback directly from attendees and gauge their satisfaction with each event. They’ll appreciate that you’re taking the time to seek their opinions—just make sure you follow through on their suggestions.

Membership Level

If your membership operates as a tiered model, one of your association’s goals likely involves promoting membership upgrades. Organizations with different membership levels should track how many members they have in each and how that number changes from year to year.

This can indicate how appealing each membership level and its associated benefits are to members, letting you make adjustments, as needed. It can also shed light on which member cohorts are most likely to upgrade each year, which can inform how you conduct renewal outreach to these individuals.

3. Implement improvements to retain members.

Your data is only as good as you use it! Once you’ve gathered the information above, it’s time to leverage insights from the data. Use these to improve your membership program in ways that encourage members to renew year after year.

You may want to make a list of the different aspects of your association that you’d like to address, along with notes on the next steps you’ll take for each. Here are a few areas to consider, plus questions that can help you determine next steps:

  • Member onboarding: Do members feel welcomed when they join our association? What frequently asked questions come up that we can better address upfront? Is anything missing from our welcome packet?
  • Member benefits: What benefits do our members use most? How can we better promote or change our underperforming activities? Would investment in learning management software help our members with their goals?
  • Member communications: What forms of communication do our members prefer? Are we checking in with members frequently enough? Is there a social media platform we could better leverage?
  • Member appreciation: Do our members feel appreciated? What are we currently doing each year to thank our members? What is a new event we can try to ensure our members know we value them?
  • Membership website: Is our membership website easy to use? Are there additional resources or discussion boards we should add to our website?

Remember that improving your membership retention strategy should be an ongoing process. The more information you collect, the more equipped you’ll be to make impactful improvements to boost your results.

Use Data to Retain Members and Grow Your Association

Retaining members is key to your membership organization’s growth, as doing so reduces recruitment costs and improves your reputation.

By using member data to inform membership decisions, your association or nonprofit can better communicate with, appeal to, and appreciate your members—three steps critical to retaining members year after year.

In this guide, learn how data about your supporters and past campaign performance can help you raise more for your school.

Help Your School Raise More Using Fundraising Data

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Need money to support your school and its programs? Fortunately, it’s a great time to fundraise as an educational institution. Research shows that in 2022 K-12 schools saw a 5.7% increase in overall fundraising and a nearly 13% boost in online giving alone. But while there are willing, generous supporters out there, it’s up to you to rally their support. 

It can be hard to motivate students’ parents, relatives, and other community members to give to your fundraiser. And even if you choose the perfect fundraising idea, have great supporter turnout, and meet your goals for this year, how can you be sure that you’ll achieve the same or better results next time?

Collecting and analyzing your fundraising data is the key to understanding and replicating your school’s fundraising successes. In this guide, we’ll cover three steps for using fundraising data to improve future fundraisers:

  1. Learn about your donors.
  2. Analyze your marketing efforts.
  3. Evaluate campaign results.

To get started, let’s explore how you can get to know donors and create a customized fundraising appeal that inspires them to support your school.

Step 1: Learn about your donors.

GivingDNA’s guide to data analytics explains that “donors come from varied backgrounds, have different life experiences, and have unique reasons for giving to your organization.” This means that to understand which strategies work best for them, you’ll need to look at past and current donor data.

Here are some of the basic types of donor data and what they can tell you about your supporters:

  • Demographics. This data tells you about donors’ baseline characteristics. It includes socioeconomic traits like age, gender, race, income, education, marital status, and more. For example, if you know that in the past your donors have been parents of students, are between the ages of 35 and 55, and have an average income of $50,000 or more, you can tailor your efforts to the typical preferences of those demographics.

  • Psychographics. This data tells you more about your donors’ lifestyles. It should reveal information like their morals, values, political leanings, hobbies, and interests. Let’s say you learn that a group of parents plays tennis together each weekend. This makes them a great target audience for your initiative to raise money for renovations on your tennis court.

  • Involvement history. This reveals a donor’s past involvement with your school, such as donations made, events attended, or hours volunteered. Pay attention to average gift size and when donors made their last contribution to identify major donors as well as those at risk of lapsing. Once you know who they are, you can send tailored messages that suit their level of involvement and dedication.

  • Communication preferences. Everyone has preferred communication platforms, whether that’s receiving a personal phone call from your school or engaging with your social media posts. Reaching your audience where they already are shows that you understand and value those preferences. Plus, donors will be more likely to see the messages you send them.

  • Wealth indicators. These markers signal your donors’ giving capacity, or the amount they are able to donate. Keep in mind that this is different from giving affinity, which indicates their willingness to give to you. When you have an idea of a donor’s wealth through information about their household income, past donations, employer, or stock and real estate holdings, you’ll have a better idea of what donation amount to ask for from them.

Make sure you are correctly managing your donor data to ensure it stays organized and up-to-date. Keep data fresh by collecting information about supporters via donation forms and surveys, making sure to prioritize data security. Additionally, you can work with a data appending service to fill in any information gaps. 

Step 2: Analyze your marketing efforts.

Once you know who your donors are and what makes them want to give to your school, you need to translate those findings into actionable next steps. In other words, you’ll tailor your marketing efforts to the preferences and motivations of your target audience.

Here’s how data can shape marketing efforts for each communication channel:

  • Digital marketing. Your digital marketing efforts can include your website, social media posts, email marketing, and more. This channel is one of the most flexible and adaptable, making it extremely easy to create text, images, videos, and other content that pinpoints donors’ motivations. For example, you might design two marketing emails with slightly different strategies and perform an A/B test to see which strategy is most effective. Then, you can edit and adjust your email marketing tactics for better results.

  • Direct mail. Because direct mail can be costly, it should only be sent to supporters who strongly prefer this form of communication and are likely to open and engage with the message. Make sure to use language, imagery, and stories tailored to those donors’ giving behaviors. If most recipients are students’ grandparents, for instance, you might tell a story that makes them feel nostalgic and inspired to provide fun experiences for the next generation. To track your direct mail success rate, add a unique, scannable QR code linking to your donation form and attribute donors who scan in to direct mail outreach.

  • Out-of-home or outdoor. This channel includes any print signage or flyers you hang at school or in the community, ideally with language that matches your donors’ giving motivations. While it can be difficult to track how effective these efforts are, you can emulate the direct mail strategy and create unique QR codes linking to your website or donation page. To get even more specific, you might create a different code for each location to see which area gets the most engagement.

Make sure to share these results with your staff, teachers, or PTO to ensure everyone is on the same page when sharing about your campaign online. This way, all communications will feel cohesive and no efforts will go wasted due to ineffective marketing strategies.

Step 3: Evaluate campaign results.

It can be tempting to stop working on a campaign as soon as your fundraiser ends. However, it’s critical that you take the time to carefully analyze your results, learn about new donors, and understand how you can make future improvements.

Using your fundraising software, you can study data from each step of your fundraiser to see what worked well, identify opportunities for growth, and determine profitability. 99Pledges’ guide to kids’ fundraising ideas lays out the steps to a pledge fundraiser—let’s see how you can extract valuable data from each step in the process:

  1. Create a pledge fundraising campaign. By creating both a school- or campaign-wide fundraising page and individual pages for your participants, you’ll understand how many participants are contributing to your fundraising efforts.
  2. Ask participants to share their fundraising page. Track how participants share these pages and who engages with them. This way, you’ll get a feel for which communication channels the audience uses.
  3. Participants collect pledges from friends and family. Keep track of who donates to any of your donation pages. Gather as much data about each donor as you can from the donation form, making sure to cross-reference your database for repeat donors.
  4. Track campaign progress. As you fundraise, keep track of how many donors you have, your average gift size, and the total amount raised. Then at the end of the fundraiser, you can pick out trends in the data (e.g., a spike in donations after trying a new social media marketing tactic).
  5. Receive pledged donations. Once you receive all donations, you can determine the average donation amount, total revenue, and your ROI for the campaign. This is also when you’ll know whether you hit your goal and, ideally, be able to target what strategies got you there.

Regardless of what your results are, remember that it’s essential to steward your donors. Use your fundraising software or another communication tool to send them customized thank-you messages that acknowledge their contributions and convey your genuine gratitude. This will go a long way in cultivating a dedicated supporter base.

Data is only valuable if it is accurate, up-to-date, and organized. So, it’s essential to prioritize data hygiene by frequently auditing your files for outdated information, typos and other errors, duplicate entries, and data that is not entered in your standardized format. By committing to frequently cleaning your data, you’ll ensure that data insights are fresh and accurate to your donors’ current needs.

The Power of Data: KPIs for Your Nonprofit’s Next Event

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Events are a fundamental part of the nonprofit world. Whether they’re raising money, spreading awareness, engaging volunteers, providing education, or giving back to your community, events can be incredibly powerful. However, as nonprofit professionals like you know, events take a lot of time, energy, and money to execute, so you definitely want to do everything you can to ensure success and improve year over year. Collecting and acting upon data during the event planning process is crucial, as is monitoring important metrics that correspond to your nonprofit’s goals by establishing key performance indicators, or KPIs.

Let’s review some common KPIs for nonprofit events in four major categories: attendance, fundraising, marketing, and impact.

Attendance

Attendance KPIs help you better understand the overall draw of your nonprofit’s events, both among your regular supporters and the general public, and track it year-over-year. It’s also useful to help you compare the response to the various offerings in your nonprofit’s event portfolio and inform decisions about continuing or discontinuing certain events. There are a number of KPIs to track related to event attendance, including:

  • Registration numbers. The sheer number of attendees for each of your events gives you a good idea about where your supporters’ interest lies in terms of event type and format, and where you should invest your time and effort moving forward.
  • RSVP response rate. Track the number of invitations you sent and the number of responses you received, in addition to the actual number of event attendees. This can give you valuable insight into the strategies you employ to invite potential registrants, your ticketing and RSVP process, and price points for registration.
  • Attendee demographics. The demographics you target versus those that actually attend paint a more detailed picture of your donor base for future marketing and donor cultivation purposes. For instance, let’s say you’re organizing a charity golf tournament. If you find that you get the best response from recurring donors or corporate partners, you can aim your future marketing efforts at these groups to boost your turnout.

Fundraising

The majority of nonprofit events are held with fundraising in mind, whether it’s the sole focus or just a component of another effort. To better understand how the fundraising outcomes of each event are affecting your organization’s bottom line, keep these fundraising KPIs in mind:

  • Total funds raised. This is perhaps the easiest metric to track, and helps you determine if you met or surpassed your fundraising goal for the event. Continuing with the golf tournament example, you’ll want to aggregate the dollars raised from golfer registrations, sponsorship sales, on-course games and contests, mulligan sales, raffle tickets, live or silent auction proceeds, and straight up donations to determine your gross funds raised.
  • Donation conversion rate. The donation conversion rate is the number of donations per number of attendees. The more attendees that responded to the ask to make a contribution to your cause, the higher your conversion rate. This metric helps you understand how engaged attendees are in the event and your cause and how you can make better asks during the event.
  • Average donation size. Look at the average size of the donations made during your event to glean whether your development team should focus on stewarding a few major donors or if you should more broadly target many, smaller donors.

Marketing

Successfully marketing your nonprofit’s event is crucial to its success. Tracking metrics to help you better understand the effectiveness of your marketing strategy lets you grow and scale your event year over year and make improvements to reach even more people. Consider using UTMs in any online marketing, which are a way of tracking where folks come from in online marketing campaigns, and tapping into analytics to get additional data about your marketing efforts. Here are a few marketing KPIs to consider:

  • Social media conversions. Social media has several KPIs you can track, such as post impressions, number of followers, and conversion rate. Impressions and number of followers can indicate how big of an online reach your event marketing has, while conversion rate can tell you how many of your followers feel inspired to take a desired action from your posts.
  • Email open/click-through rates. Email marketing is extremely effective if you can make your messaging compelling and inspire action, which is what your click-through rate measures. These metrics tell you the number of people that opened your and how many people click on your email’s calls-to-action.
  • Registration sources. Look at where folks are coming from to register for your event. Compare paper registration forms to phone calls to online registrations to determine the most effective ways to collect registrations in the future. Consider the time it takes for staff to process registrations and payments through the various methods to determine the most efficient ways moving forward.

Impact

The ultimate goal of your nonprofit’s events is to create an impact that furthers your mission, so it’s important to track metrics that show the direct results of the event. These KPIs could include:

  • Tangible outcomes. Determine how the dollars raised from the event will directly impact the populations you serve or the cause you champion. For example, the number of people helped, projects funded, or other specific outcomes achieved. If the event raised money for a specific project or initiative, be sure to share that information with donors so they better understand how their attendance contributed to the impact.
  • Donor retention. Measure how many donors who contributed to the event have continued to support the organization in subsequent months or years. A high donor retention rate indicates a successful event in terms of building long-term donor relationships.
  • Comparative analysis. Compare the event’s performance to previous events or similar initiatives to identify trends and areas of improvement.

How to Monitor KPIs

If collecting and tracking the above KPIs feels overwhelming, not to worry—technology makes it much simpler to monitor KPIs while keeping your data clean and up-to-date. A simple way to start collecting this important information is through feedback and surveys from event participants, donors, and volunteers and pulling information from your CRM or event management platforms.

Look for a powerful software solution that fits your nonprofit’s specific needs. For instance, charity golf tournament organizers should consider using golf tournament management software, like GolfStatus, so they can not only track the most relevant data, but streamline their event management strategies.

No matter what tech tools or software your nonprofit utilizes, ensure you keep data hygiene best practices in mind, such as regularly auditing your records. NXUnite suggests completing your dataset by appending missing information so you always have the best understanding of where you stand.

Final Thoughts

Data is powerful, and when collected and analyzed properly, can tell a story about your nonprofit’s events that sets you up for continued success. If you don’t have software in place to manage your nonprofit’s events, start by researching options tailored to the specific event and how the platform will help you collect and manage data. Next, do a deep dive into data hygiene practices and implement recommendations. Finally, determine a strategy for collecting the important data that inform KPIs that help your nonprofit reach its goals.

In this blog post, you’ll learn how to use data to enhance your nonprofit’s website.

How to Use Data to Enhance Your Nonprofit’s Website

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Your nonprofit’s website is an essential tool for marketing your mission and pulling in support for your cause. It’s where your supporters learn about your organization, give online gifts, sign up to volunteer, register for your events, and more.

But sometimes it can be difficult to discern exactly how well your website is working to encourage your supporters to take these actions, or even what it is that gets them to visit your site in the first place.

The missing piece to this puzzle? Data, and lots of it—information about who your supporters are, what motivates them, how they journey to your website, and what they do once they’re on it. And learning to harness the power of data can help you in your efforts to enhance your website’s performance and improve it as a marketing and fundraising tool.

In this quick guide, we’ll help you get started tapping into your donor and website analytics data so that you can take your web presence to the next level. Let’s get started.

Gather relevant data about your supporters.

Start by gathering data about your supporters and your website. There are lots of ways you can do this, but you’ll typically need two main tools:

  • Your nonprofit CRM. Your CRM is where your organization stores everything it knows about your donors, volunteers, and other supporters. Use it as a resource for learning about your target audience’s demographics, giving histories, and participation in campaigns, events, and volunteering opportunities. If your CRM is disorganized or your data hasn’t been updated in a while, consider investing in data append services to ensure everything is accurate and up-to-date.
  • Google Analytics. Google Analytics is a data collection and analysis tool that gathers information about the people who visit your nonprofit’s website, like what channels they took to get there, what pages they view, and what actions they take. Google Analytics is free to use and even allows you to set and track goals for your website so that you can optimize your digital presence. To learn how to get started with Google Analytics for your website, check out Cornershop Creative’s ultimate guide.

While these are two solid resources to get started with gathering the relevant data you’ll need to improve your website, you can also use:

  • Surveys to find out what your supporters think of your website, including the user experience (UX) and content
  • Performance tracking tools like Google Search Console to track organic search traffic and monitor your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts
  • Email analytics to understand which email content drives traffic to your website
  • Social media insights to see which content gets the most engagement and drives traffic to your website
  • A/B testing to compare different versions of website elements (like your donation page) to see what version performs better

Gathering data from the right tools will allow you to get a holistic view of your website’s target audience and how well your website is accommodating your audience’s wants and needs.

However, as you gather this wealth of information, it may start to feel overwhelming. This is why you need a solid strategy for analyzing your data.

Analyze your data for patterns and trends.

Learning to tease out actionable insights from your supporter and website data can be tricky. But once you unlock the patterns and trends that are in your data, you’ll be equipped to make design choices for your website that will meet your audience’s needs and expectations.

Here are some tips for analyzing your data:

Get a general idea of who your target audience is and what motivates them.

Begin by looking closely at your audience’s demographics (age, gender, race, ethnicity, marital status, employment status, etc.) and psychographics (attitudes, values, interests, beliefs, etc.).

Next, examine their engagement history, reviewing past donations, hours volunteered, and events attended. You’ll also want to look at your donors’ communications preferences and how past outreach and marketing efforts have been received.

From there, you should be able to identify in general terms who your supporters are. For example, an animal shelter might determine its supporters are (generally):

  • Women in their twenties and thirties
  • Making $60,000-$80,000 annually
  • Passionate about animal rights, the environment, and outdoor activities
  • Giving to and volunteering with multiple environment- or animal-focused nonprofits each year
  • Donating $250-$500 to the nonprofit each year
  • Apt to engage with the organization the most via text and social media

Create a supporter persona.

Get more specific by creating a supporter persona. A supporter persona is a fictional representation of a real supporter comprised of traits that represent the trends you see in your organization’s data.

For instance, continuing with the example above, the animal shelter’s persona might be “Camille Adams,” a 30-year-old woman who cares about animal rights and the environment and who enjoys hiking and mountain biking. Camille volunteers with a climate advocacy group and gives the animal shelter $300 on an annual basis. She also follows the shelter on Instagram and Twitter and responds well to text-to-give campaigns.

With a supporter persona like this, you have a clear audience member to keep in mind when optimizing your website or creating content. You can ask yourself questions like, “What would they think of this web page?” or “How would they respond to this blog post?”

Examine supporters’ conversion journeys.

Understanding who your supporters are is only half the battle. Next you need to understand how they behave on your website and what it takes for them to complete a desired action, like making a donation, signing up for your newsletter, or registering for an event.

Here are a few tips for analyzing conversion journeys:

  • Look at your website’s traffic sources (such as organic search, social media, email campaigns, etc.).
  • Set up conversion tracking in Google Analytics to identify the pages visitors view and engage with before taking an action.
  • Take a close look at how well your content guides visitors through the conversion funnel from awareness to action. This will include looking at the calls-to-action (CTAs) across your website and how you link pages to one another.
  • Identify any parts of your conversion funnel where visitors are prone to dropping off.

As you begin to see what is and isn’t working on your website, take note of the good things you’re already doing that you can apply to any problem areas. Also prioritize the most important fixes. For example, the steep drop-off you’re seeing on your donation page should likely be addressed before you figure out why one of your blog posts isn’t getting as much attention as the others.

Use audience insights to improve your website design.

Now that you’ve discovered the trends and patterns awaiting you in your data, you can begin to make positive changes to the design of your website that will enhance the UX and encourage more of your visitors to use your website to take action for your cause.

Here are some areas to focus on as you make improvements:

  • Navigation. Prioritize smooth and easy navigation. Ensure your navigation menu links to your most important pages and is easy to view and click on no matter what page a visitor lands on.
  • Overall visual look and feel. Your website should have a cohesive look to communicate your organization’s professionalism and help visitors feel they can trust your site. If your brand look needs some defining (or refining!), Kwala recommends building out a brand kit that includes elements like your color palette, typography, and logos.
  • CTAs. CTAs are phrases, often formatted as clickable buttons, that encourage website visitors to take an action. Ensure your CTAs are eye-catching and brief, directing your visitors to your most important action pages.
  • Mobile optimization. Since over 55% of web traffic comes from mobile devices, making sure your website is mobile-friendly is a must. Ensure that your web design will adjust to fit multiple screen sizes and that buttons are thumb-friendly. You should also compress any large files, like images, that could slow down your load speed.
  • Accessibility. Ensure that people of all abilities can access your website. Review the Web Accessibility Initiative guidelines and follow best practices such as ensuring that your website can be navigated by keyboard, images include alternative text (alt text), and text and background colors provide a high contrast for readability.

After making initial changes to your website, monitor your progress using Google Analytics and make adjustments as needed. You can even set goals for seeing improvements in things like event sign-ups or online donations and establish metrics that you’ll track to see your progress toward those goals.

For your own site to join the ranks of the best nonprofit websites out there, you need data on your side. When you understand who your supporters are and what they need from your website, you’ll be able to make enhancements to your website that lead to more support.

Revisit your data often and practice good data hygiene to continue gaining useful insights about your community. And, to take your website to the next level, consider leaving the design work to nonprofit web design experts. You can do this!

In this guide, you'll learn six ways to measure your nonprofit's fundraising success as it relates to silent auction events.

6 Ways to Measure Your Silent Auction’s Fundraising Success

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When your nonprofit hosts a silent auction fundraising event, most of the planning process is typically focused on logistical details and procuring auction items. After all, your supporters are more likely to attend a well-organized event that features prizes they’re excited to bid on!

However, there are two other critical steps in planning a successful silent auction that are sometimes overlooked. The first is taking the time to set specific, achievable goals for your fundraiser, and the second is determining how you’ll know if you reached those goals after the event ends.

There are a variety of objectives you could be working toward as you plan your fundraiser, and each of them will be best measured by a different metric. In this guide, we’ll look at six popular metrics nonprofits use to evaluate their silent auction’s fundraising success, including:

  1. Return on Investment (ROI)
  2. Items Sold
  3. Donor Acquisition Rate
  4. Donor Retention Rate
  5. Marketing Conversions
  6. Participant Satisfaction

Applying any or all of these metrics to your nonprofit’s silent auctions will help you identify what you did well, where there is room for improvement, and how you can adjust your strategy as you plan future auctions. Let’s dive in!

1. Return on Investment (ROI)

One of the easiest metrics to calculate from your silent auction fundraising data is the total amount raised from ticket sales, winning bids, financial sponsorships, and additional donations made during the event. However, this doesn’t take into account the upfront expenses that tend to be associated with auctions—venue rentals, fundraising software payments, marketing materials, any prizes that your organization purchased rather than receiving as in-kind donations, and more.

Return on investment (ROI) is a more holistic metric that considers both the revenue your nonprofit generates from your silent auction and the expenses you incurred while planning it. You can calculate it using the following equation:

ROI = [(Total Amount Raised – Total Costs) / Total Costs] x 100

If your ROI is negative, it means that your auction cost more money than it raised, and you’ll need to find ways to reduce your expenses when planning future events. On the other hand, a positive ROI means your auction was financially successful. Ideally, you’d want your ROI to be a larger positive number, as this would indicate that you raised significantly more money than you spent.

2. Items Sold

At an auction, the items are the star of the show. Plus, procurement is often the most time-consuming and resource-intensive part of the planning process. So, it makes sense to include metrics related to the sale of your silent auction items when evaluating your fundraising success.

Review the completed bid sheets from your event to calculate the following item-related metrics:

  • Sell-through rate. This is simply the percentage of items that sold at your silent auction. For instance, if you had 100 prizes up for auction and 95 of them were purchased by participants, your sell-through rate would be 95%.
  • Average bid amount. Determine this number by adding up all of your supporters’ winning bids, then divide by the number of items sold. This metric demonstrates how valuable participants perceived your items to be.
  • Number of items that sold at or above their fair market value (FMV). Winspire defines FMV as “[an auction] item’s worth relative to what supporters would pay if they purchased it elsewhere.” Since participants often choose to purchase items at auction because they’re hoping for a discount they couldn’t get otherwise, any prizes that sell at or above their FMV are particularly appealing to your supporter base.

Knowing this information about the items that sold at your silent auction can help you hone the procurement process for future auctions—you can make sure to find items that your supporters are interested in and perceive as high-value to maximize your ROI.

3. Donor Acquisition Rate

In the context of a silent auction, donor acquisition rate refers to the percentage of participants who engaged with your nonprofit for the first time by attending your event. If 200 people participated in your silent auction and 80 of them were first-time supporters of your organization, your donor acquisition rate would be 40%.

Auctions are particularly effective for attracting new supporters because while some participants will sign up specifically to contribute to your nonprofit, others just want to purchase one-of-a-kind items that also happen to support a good cause. Make sure to follow up with these new donors after your auction to encourage them to learn more about your mission and stay involved with your organization.

4. Donor Retention Rate

Donor acquisition and retention are complementary to one another. Acquisition allows your organization to engage more community members and plan for growth, and retention helps you cultivate lasting relationships with supporters and sustainably fund your mission.

The most common way to calculate donor retention rates in the context of silent auctions is to determine the percentage of participants from a previous auction that also attended your most recent one. For example, if 75 of the 150 supporters who participated in last year’s silent auction came to this year’s event as well, your donor retention rate would be 50%.

5. Marketing Conversions

Leveraging multiple print and digital marketing channels is essential for attracting as many participants to your silent auction as possible. After the event, conversion data can help you determine which methods were most effective for generating registrations.

Track the number of auction signups from each of the following promotion channels:

  • Direct mail invitations
  • Email marketing messages
  • Your nonprofit’s various social media accounts
  • Google Search Ads
  • Redirections to your event registration form from other pages on your website

Understanding which methods compel the most supporters to register can help you allocate your marketing budget more effectively in the future. For instance, if you find that direct mail had the lowest conversion rate of any channel and social media generated the most signups, you may decide to reduce your spending on mailed invitations and instead put that money toward paid ads on Instagram and Facebook for your next auction.

6. Participant Satisfaction

Participant satisfaction is a less objective measurement than the other fundraising success metrics discussed above. However, it’s still important to consider when evaluating your silent auction. After all, a major purpose of nonprofit events is to bring your community together around a cause, and learning what supporters thought about your auction can tell you whether you did this effectively.

Post-event surveys are one of the best ways to track participant satisfaction. MemberClicks’ guide to event feedback surveys recommends referencing your auction check-in list to ensure you get feedback from actual participants and incentivizing survey completion by entering respondents’ names into a drawing for a gift card or branded merchandise. Additionally, include both multiple-choice and open-ended questions on your survey to encourage supporters to share their honest opinions.

The metrics your nonprofit will find most useful will depend on the primary goal of your silent auction. If the main objective is revenue generation, your ROI and item-related data analysis will tell you how successful your event was. Marketing conversions are the most important metrics if your goal is to spread awareness about your organization. And measuring donor acquisition, retention, and satisfaction is essential if you’re focused on supporter engagement.

No matter how you plan to measure your silent auction’s success, make sure to store all of your event data in one place so it’s easier to analyze and evaluate. Happy fundraising!

A man reviewing the Google Ad Grant website policy on his computer.

Is Your Nonprofit Website Google Ad Grant Ready? 4 Signs

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The Google Ad Grant represents an incredible marketing opportunity for nonprofits to get their name in front of online users. Through this program, Google offers eligible nonprofits $10,000 worth of ad credits to use every month.

Getting Attention’s guide to Google Ad Grant Requirements points out that applying for this grant is really a two-part process. We’ll focus on the first step, which involves having your website approved by Google to ensure that your ads lead to updated, quality content.

According to Google’s website policy, “Your site must have a robust and clear description of your organization, mission, and activities. It must have substantial content, updated events and information, clear navigation, and clear calls to action for a high-quality user experience.” 

So, what do all of these website must-haves look like? And how can your organization know its website is ready to harness the power of the Google Ad Grant? In this guide, we’ll break down the top four signs your website is on par with these standards to ensure your eligibility.

You’ve implemented proper security measures

First things first—your website must be secure to protect any visitor. Here’s how you can tell that your website protections are reliable:

  • Your nonprofit website represents a valid charitable status. While Google does not require you to include your EIN (in the case of U.S.-based nonprofits), doing so is still a good idea since it does not pose any security threats. Rather, it indicates that you are registered as a 501(c)(3) organization to anyone considering donating, volunteering, or signing up for an event.
  • You’ve obtained an SSL (Secure Socket Layer) Certificate. This encrypts any data collected on your site and protects donors’ payment information, names, and other data that hackers could reach. If your web address begins with https instead of http, you’re SSL-certified. You can obtain your SSL certificate by verifying your site through ICANN Lookup, generating the Certificate Signing Request (CSR), validating your domain by submitting your CSR to the Certificate Authority, and installing the certificate on your site.

These measures will enable Google to mark your website as trustworthy and reliable. And here’s a big plus:  Google’s transparency report found that Windows, Mac, and Android users spend 85% of their browser time on SSL-certified websites. This means that implementing these requirements is not only a data hygiene best practice but also a strategy to boost your site traffic!

You’ve prioritized user experience

In a broad context, user experience (UX) encompasses every interaction a user has with your website. To gauge your site’s current UX, ask yourself questions like, “Could our visitors be frustrated by the site’s layout?” or “How easily can they learn about our mission?”

Once you’ve identified some UX problem areas,  you can make sure these best practices are incorporated:

  • Clear navigation. Descriptive labels and a sticky menu are the hallmarks of a navigable site. This means your menu is accessible even while scrolling through a page and each label accurately describes your page content.
  • No broken links. Each link should lead to the intended destination. You can use tools like Google Search Console or Screaming Frog to identify and update broken links. Be sure your external links also lead to the right sites as well.
  • Quick load speeds. Arguably, your load speed is an influential factor in determining other website metrics such as donation rates since users will quickly abandon a slow-loading site. Optimize your image files and leverage browser caching to speed things up.
  • Clear calls to action (CTAs). CTAs like “Donate now” or “Check out our events calendar” should have sufficient contrast, lead to the intended form or page, and be placed in a relevant location.
  • Mobile responsiveness. Both desktop and mobile views should provide valuable UX. You’ll need to be sure your content easily loads in mobile view and incorporates a touch-friendly design to ensure elements are accurately sized and spaced out.

Optimizing these elements will streamline the Google Grant application process as you can be confident your website provides top-tier UX once you submit it to Google.

If you’re unsure of where to start or have questions, conduct some research to get a sense of how high-performing nonprofits structure their website experience. For instance, Loop’s roundup of the best nonprofit websites calls out North York Women’s Shelter for its accessible format and enhanced safety features.

Your pages are full of mission-relevant content

Here’s where Google’s description of robust, clear, and updated content comes into play. This means if visitors cannot easily discover who your organization is (or if you’re still in operation), you’re in need of a content refresh. Perform a quick content check-up and be sure the following information is up to date:

  • About Us page
  • Contact information
  • Programs and services
  • Giving statistics
  • Events calendar
  • Testimonials and stories
  • Donation and volunteer information
  • Blog content

Update your landing pages—donation pages, volunteer sign-up pages, and events pages—first. These are the ones you’ll promote via your Google Ads, so to maximize conversions they should be relevant and helpful for website visitors.

For example, if you plan on using your Google Ad Grant to promote your upcoming fundraising auction, your event registration page should include a clear description of the event details, such as the time, place, and ticket price, and an easy-to-use registration form. Engaging media elements like video teasers and social media share links can also lead to more conversions.

Your website is well-branded

The look and feel of your website should be cohesive and representative of your organization. This will place website visitors at ease and promote your organization’s credibility. A well-branded website will include these elements:

  • A logo. Your logo or wordmark should be clearly visible on your landing pages so that visitors instantly recognize your website and get a sense of what your organization stands for.
  • Consistent fonts and colors. Keep fonts and colors consistent across your website pages so users are not confused when they go from page to page. Consider using colors that offer a high contrast to keep your content accessible. Sans serif fonts are also a great choice for content as they are easy to read and come in a variety of font choices.
  • Clear tone and messaging. Depending on your specific nonprofit brand, tone and messaging will likely vary. For example, a nonprofit that connects people with disabilities to people without disabilities might use a friendly tone to reflect its community-oriented goals, whereas a healthcare-related nonprofit might carry a more informative tone. Just be sure yours is both cohesive and representative across your site.
  • High-quality images. Clearly-branded websites can have a wide range of high-quality visuals, from donation infographics to volunteer or beneficiary photos. However, each one should directly relate to your nonprofit’s mission.

If your website exhibits these best practices for branding, you should be good to go. Otherwise, complete an audit to ensure all elements of your site are branded to your organization in a recognizable and professional fashion.

While all of these website requirements might seem rigorous, a well-maintained website will most likely include these elements already. The most substantial requirement you should note is your security, as a website that is not SSL-certified will not be eligible for Google Grant funding.

Otherwise, all other content and UX changes you make will only lead to higher conversion rates as users are more likely to respond to a fresh, inviting website that features helpful content.

This guide explores three ways your nonprofit can use its CRM data to drive the decisions that will boost its impact.

3 Ways Your CRM Data Can Drive Nonprofit Decisions

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For a nonprofit to truly impact the communities it serves, thoughtful decision-making must guide its fundraising efforts, programs, and other activities. 

But to make these decisions, you must be equipped with more than just the authority of your leadership position.

A collection of data about your nonprofit’s work can give you the context you need to make crucial decisions, and your constituent relationship management (CRM) software is a treasure trove of this helpful information. Let’s take a closer look at three ways your CRM data can drive decision-making for your organization.

Encourage Further Involvement

Your nonprofit’s donors will make it to different points of the donor journey. The ones that stick around for the long haul are loyal supporters with whom you should develop strong relationships. Newly acquired or less involved donors simply have an ever-increasing potential to achieve a level of loyalty, and your CRM data can point both out.

Use your CRM data to understand donors’ giving frequencies and track important metrics, such as:

  • Donor retention rate: What percentage of your supporters continue to give to your organization? Learning your donor retention rate can help you identify how many donors continue their involvement, which ones keep giving, and help you start thinking about how to increase that number. According to Double the Donation, you can also use the data from your CRM to develop a donor retention program that will help you encourage donors to continue giving in specific ways.
  • Gift amount history: Is there a pattern or trend in giving? Can you see different data when you segment your audiences? If you discover that your fundraising trends increase seasonally, or with a certain demographic, you have insights on where to focus your efforts. When there’s a significant change from the historical data, you can address it—either by doubling down on what’s working or exploring what could be going wrong.
  • Donor lifetime value: Donor lifetime value (LTV) is a critical metric for nonprofits. It not only shows you donor behavior in the past, but it can help you predict fundraising revenues in the future. LTV is also an important tool when your nonprofit is looking for major gift donors.

Equipped with this donor data, you’ll be able to better understand patterns of involvement. That way, your nonprofit can plan involvement opportunities that appeal to its supporters and encourage them to stay involved.

Communicate Based on Donor Segments

The data about your donors collected in your CRM can help you learn more about them and how to better communicate with them. Not only will you observe communication preferences, such as the channels your donors most actively engage with, but you’ll also learn what content appeals to them and how to craft your donation ask to most resonate with them. 

Also, when your CRM manages donor communications for you, you can even more easily put this data to work. CharityEngine’s guide to nonprofit CRMs recommends searching for a CRM that streamlines donor communications through features such as:

  • Email campaigns: The right CRM helps you create customized emails that represent your organization’s brand and populate supporters’ names in the salutation by using information from their donor profiles. For example, you can create a thank-you email using the donor’s name, email address, and information about the size of their gift and the program they supported.
  • Direct mail marketing: Direct mail isn’t dead! Many nonprofits get most of their fundraising dollars from direct mail. When you have a CRM that offers all the tools fundraisers need, you can easily plug direct mail into a highly effective omnichannel campaign.
  • Automated messages: Set up automated thank-yous to send recipients a quick confirmation immediately after a fundraiser. You might prepare different messages for each audience segment, such as a summary of the donation amount for donors and a recap of volunteer hours served for volunteers.

Be sure to keep additional communication data hygienic to avoid sending messages to the wrong contact information or targeting the wrong supporters. Conduct a data append to ensure all your information is correct, then maintain it by standardizing your data input processes and cleaning the database regularly.

Plan Future Fundraising Events

When you analyze your fundraising data, you’ll be able to better understand which efforts were successful, which ones weren’t, and how you can improve them to boost donations in the future. Track the following data through your CRM: 

  • Event attendance: This information can help you determine the most effective and appealing event types and activities to engage your supporters.
  • Donor satisfaction: After your event, ask attendees what they thought. Was there an opportunity for them to engage, and at what rate did they engage? Figure out what worked so you can repeat it!
  • Event revenue: It’s important to measure event revenue, but then dig deeper. What raised more money, the ticket sales or the auction? Drill down into where your nonprofit makes the most fundraising money.

Your data isn’t the only tool that will help you plan future fundraising events. The CRM itself can support your fundraising initiatives through features such as secure payment processing for nonprofits. After using data to plan your event, execute it well by leveraging your CRM’s other tools to make donating and getting involved easy for supporters.

Your nonprofit’s data is an important resource for decision-making. To add on to the data your CRM automatically collects, conduct your own research to learn even more about your donors and how you can improve your fundraising efforts. For example, you might send out a donor survey to ask for their opinions on a specific project and your approach to serving the community. The more data you have, the more accurate the conclusions you derive from it will be.

 

Learn more about how data analytics can be used in the financial management of your nonprofit.

How Donor Analytics Inform Nonprofit Financial Management

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Your nonprofit likely collects many different types of data on its supporters. Between the donor profiles in your CRM, your online donation page, registration forms, feedback surveys, and marketing conversion data, there is a wealth of information available for your organization to use when making strategic decisions.

However, all of this data contains untapped potential unless you draw applicable conclusions from it. These insights are collectively known as donor analytics. Jitasa’s guide to donor analytics divides these insights into four major categories: giving, engagement, demographic, and predictive analytics.

Donor analytics can inform many areas of your nonprofit’s operations, including financial management. To help you get started, this guide will discuss four major areas of your organization’s financial management strategy that can benefit from data-driven insights, including:

  1. Measuring Fundraising Effectiveness
  2. Evaluating Expense Budgets
  3. Cultivating Major Gifts
  4. Improving Donor Retention Rates

As you adapt the tips in this post to your organization’s needs, keep in mind that financial management and fundraising are closely linked. A data-driven approach to bringing in and handling funding maximizes your nonprofit’s ability to further its mission. Let’s dive in!

1. Measuring Fundraising Effectiveness

You’ve probably heard the saying, “Begin with the end in mind.” When your nonprofit plans a fundraising campaign, you should consider how you’ll determine if you succeeded after the fundraiser ends.

Donor giving and engagement analytics from past campaigns can help you figure out what concrete metrics to use to measure your fundraising success. In addition to the total amount of revenue you generate, some common data-driven fundraising metrics include:

  • Donor participation rate. You can either measure this on an overall level or break down participation rates by supporter segment to gauge donor engagement.
  • Average gift amount. While it’s helpful to know your overall average, you could also categorize your donations into small, mid-level, and major gifts to find the average amount in each tier.
  • Lifetime value. Analyzing information about each of your donors allows you to better understand the efficiency of your fundraising efforts per donor. You should calculate your overall fundraising return on investment (ROI) after each event or campaign, but also measuring your ROI per supporter can help you determine who your most valuable donors are.

Although giving analytics are discussed most often when it comes to fundraising success, keep in mind that monetary donations aren’t the only way supporters provide value to your organization during a campaign. Donor engagement analytics, such as volunteer participation, event attendance, and in-kind donations, provide a more complete picture of how supporters help further your organization’s mission. So, your fundraising campaign goals should take both giving and other forms of engagement into account.

2. Evaluating Expense Budgets

Your nonprofit’s operating budget is one of the most important documents for effective financial management because it predicts your revenue and expenses for the coming year. Most organizations categorize their predicted revenue by source and break down expenses into program, administrative, and fundraising costs. Your administrative and fundraising expenses together make up your nonprofit’s overhead.

You might have heard of the 65/35 rule of expense budgeting, which states that nonprofits should plan to spend at least 65% of their revenue on programming and no more than 35% on overhead. In reality, this breakdown will look different for every nonprofit. 

It’s best to treat the 65/35 rule as a flexible guideline and instead focus on leveraging donor analytics to expand your organization’s program spending and reduce overhead. This process could take many forms, including:

  • Analyzing engagement rates for various communication methods. You can lower your organization’s spending on marketing by focusing on the channels with the highest conversion rates and taking the communication preferences donors have expressed into account.
  • Exploring corporate philanthropy opportunities. Appending employer data lets you know what companies supporters work for and what philanthropic programs those companies have. This information can help you take advantage of corporate sponsorship opportunities to offset event planning and administrative costs.
  • Playing to individual donors’ interests. To allocate more resources toward your programs, consider asking supporters to donate to initiatives that align with the individual interests listed in their donor profiles. For instance, if an environmental nonprofit knew that one of their supporters was passionate about education, they could ask that donor to contribute to their initiatives to teach elementary school students about recycling.

As you consider these data-driven strategies to allocate your expenses more effectively, keep in mind that your spending still needs to align with available cash flows. A nonprofit accountant or outsourced chief financial officer (CFO) can help predict cash flows and create a range of possible scenarios to ensure your estimates for overhead and program expenses are realistic.

3. Cultivating Major Gifts

Another commonly cited guideline when it comes to nonprofit finances is the 80/20 rule, which states that 80% of individual donation revenue comes from the top 20% of donors. While these percentages may vary for each organization, they show that major gifts are critical for your nonprofit to bring in funding.

The main purpose of predictive donor analytics—data-driven conclusions that provide insight into donors’ future involvement with your cause—is to help identify potential major donors through prospect research. DonorSearch’s guide to major gifts recommends analyzing both wealth and philanthropic indicators to identify major donor prospects:

  • Wealth indicators demonstrate that a prospect is capable of making a major gift and include data points such as net income, stock ownership, political giving, and real estate holdings.
  • Philanthropic indicators show whether the prospect would be willing to support your cause. These indicators include past donations, volunteer hours, event attendance, and board membership either at your organization or with other similar nonprofits.

While your donor database can serve as a starting point for finding major donor prospects, you’ll likely need to use specialized wealth screening and prospecting tools to build an accurate list. Predictive analytics can also be useful once you start soliciting major gifts, since they help you tailor each fundraising ask to the individual donor.

4. Retaining Donors Over Time

Donor retention has multiple financial benefits for your organization. Not only is it more cost effective than acquiring new donors, but it also provides more sustainable funding for your organization.

There are several ways to use supporter data to refine your nonprofit’s donor retention strategy, including:

  • Sending personalized thank-you messages that include donors’ preferred names, giving amounts, and other details about their history with your organization.
  • Providing recommendations for future involvement based on each donor’s past engagement.
  • Regularly updating supporters’ contact information so they never miss your emails, phone calls, texts, or direct mail messages.

By regularly reaching out to donors in a personalized way, you’ll let them know that your organization values them as individuals. This allows you to build stronger relationships with each of them, leading to higher retention rates.

While donor analytics can inform various aspects of your nonprofit’s operations, financial management is the most essential way to apply these conclusions. This is because financial management is the foundation of all of your nonprofit’s activities, including fundraising, marketing, supporter engagement, and more. Whether you’re planning next year’s budget or looking for more sustainable funding methods, make sure your efforts are data-driven.

Explore the fundamentals about donor cultivation in this comprehensive guide.

Donor Cultivation 101: How to Build Lasting Relationships

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Your nonprofit works day in and day out to bring its mission to life. A big part of that is inspiring supporters to donate, attend events, and volunteer for your cause. Although, it doesn’t stop there. From there, you have to steward them and inspire them to stick around for the long term. As a fundraiser, you need to know the donor cultivation cycle inside and out, including everything from locating prospects to inspiring them to continue giving.

At NPOInfo, we understand the importance of establishing relationships and then effectively leveraging donor data to fuel those connections. We know it takes a lot of patience and persistence. For new and seasoned professionals alike, cultivating donors can be challenging. After all, every donor is different!

Our goal with this guide is to demystify the process, so you can build genuine relationships that last. To help, here’s what we’ll cover:

Your prospects and current supporters deserve a positive experience with your organization. Taking steps to establish and steward lasting relationships will go a long way in building a sustainable future for your nonprofit. Let’s dive in.

Get a quote for our data append services to cultivate donor relationships.

Donor Cultivation FAQ

Before diving into the nitty-gritty details of the donor cultivation cycle, let’s explore the fundamentals of what cultivation is and why it’s vital to your everyday work. That way, you’ll have the foundational knowledge you need to craft a comprehensive plan.

What Is Donor Cultivation?

Donor cultivation is the process of establishing and strengthening relationships with prospective and current donors over time. The term describes how you identify potential donors, inspire them to give, and steward meaningful relationships with them.

Effective cultivation involves a range of activities, including personalized communication, effective donor recognition, engaging events, and volunteerism. Every stage of the cycle is fueled by insightful data your nonprofit collects, such as donors’ wealth capacities, giving histories, and contact information.

The ultimate goal of donor cultivation is to create a sustainable base of loyal donors who support the organization’s overall mission and goals.

What Are The Goals of Donor Cultivation?

While each nonprofit pursues a different mission, every organization’s reason for cultivating donors remains the same: they want to establish and deepen relationships with those who believe in their cause.

Let’s break down that overarching objective into a few key goals:

  • Engage donors: The cultivation process helps create engagement opportunities that encourage interaction with your organization to learn more about your mission, programs, and impact.
  • Build trust: Your donor cultivation efforts will build rapport with donors when you demonstrate your organization’s commitment to transparency, accountability, and responsible stewardship of donations.
  • Retain donors: Effective cultivation means you can retain donors and inspire them to stay engaged in your activities. The cycle involves maintaining regular communication and recognizing their contributions.
  • Boost donor lifetime value: As fundraisers, we all know that donor attrition can be costly. Instead of letting new donors churn, following the donor cultivation cycle religiously will allow you to inspire donors to stick around. By convincing them to give again and give large gifts over time, you’ll increase their lifetime value.

The core goals of donor cultivation include engaging donors, building trust, retaining support, and boosting donor lifetime value.

Overall, thoughtful donor cultivation means you can establish a reliable foundation of support.

How Long Does The Donor Cultivation Cycle Take?

The length of donor cultivation varies depending on your organization’s goals, each donor’s interests, and the level of engagement.

Donor cultivation can take several months or years based on these facts. Know that it’s an ongoing process, so donor cultivation never really “ends.” It’s essential to understand that cultivating strong relationships with supporters is a long-term investment that requires patience, commitment, and consistency.

What’s The Difference Between Donor Cultivation and Solicitation?

Donor cultivation is the process of building relationships with potential donors, while solicitation is the direct request for a donation. Cultivation precedes solicitation and focuses on engagement, education, and relationship-building, while solicitation is the ask for a gift.

Think of cultivation as the fun stage where you get to personally know your donors and what drives them to give. Once you understand their motivations and gain their trust, you can make a tailored ask based on their needs.

Breaking Down the Donor Cultivation Cycle

As professional fundraisers, we’re always chasing the coveted “golden” donation. Even once someone donates, we must continue building relationships and maintaining trust. That often means repeating stages, which turns donor cultivation into a cycle. We’ll break the donor cultivation into 5 steps.

It’s important to note that the cycle is ongoing, and donors can move in and out of each step depending on their interests and engagement level. To properly cultivate donors, your organization should continuously assess where each individual is in the cycle and adjust engagement strategies accordingly.

This graphic breaks down the donor cultivation cycle into 5 steps.

Step 1) Identification

The first step in the donor cultivation cycle is to identify potential donors. This stage requires finding people who have the capacity and interest to support your cause.

To create a list of prospects, consider everyone in your network who might support your mission. They might support your work via volunteering or some other method. You can also assess board members’ and donors’ networks to generate this list.

Step 2) Research and Qualification

Once potential donors are identified, your organization qualifies them by assessing their giving capacity, philanthropic interests, and likelihood of supporting the organization. This step in the donor cultivation cycle helps you prioritize which donors to engage with more deeply.

Heavily dependent on thorough prospect research, this stage allows you to determine whether the prospects you’ve identified will be high-capacity donors for your mission. Donorly’s prospect research guide explains you should look into two types of data during this stage:

  1. Capacity (wealth) markers: These data points indicate a donor’s financial position and help predict whether they’d be a high-capacity donor for your nonprofit. Examples of capacity markers include real estate ownership, stock holdings, and business affiliations.
  2. Affinity (warmth) markers:  These data points show whether a donor might be interested in supporting your mission based on their experiences or values. Examples of affinity markers include political involvement, and demographics.

If you find that you’re missing any of this information, that’s a strong indication that you should conduct a data append. You’ll be able to fill in information that’s inaccurate or missing from your CRM, whether you need to append demographic details, wealth indicators, or contact information. Doing so will help you paint a complete picture for each prospect.

Step 3) Cultivation

Here comes the fun part: getting to know your prospects! This step in the donor cultivation cycle is where you begin forming a relationship with each potential donor. This might involve activities like:

  • Sending personalized communications that appeal to their interests
  • Inviting them to your nonprofit’s events or tours
  • Promote volunteer opportunities

The goal of this stage is to educate the prospective donor about your nonprofit’s mission, programs, and impact. To cultivate donors, you’ll need to use this stage to build trust and rapport, positioning your organization as trustworthy and impactful.

Step 4) Solicitation

Once you’ve sufficiently cultivated a relationship with a prospect, it’s time to make a direct ask for a gift.

This may involve making a face-to-face request, sending a fundraising letter or email, or making an online appeal. It all depends on the individual’s communication preferences.

In any case, the solicitation should be personalized and aligned with the donor’s interests and giving capacity. Take a look at the philanthropic and wealth indicators you found during the research stage. Then, tailor your ask to fit their budget and appeal to what draws them toward your organization.

Step 5) Stewardship

You’ve successfully acquired a donation. Wonderful! The work isn’t done yet. After all, it is a donor cultivation cycle.

After receiving a gift, your nonprofit should engage in stewardship activities, including:

  • Thanking the donor with a personalized thank-you email, handwritten letter, or a gift for impactful donations
  • Acknowledging their gift’s impact on your beneficiaries
  • Reporting back on how the funds were used to further your mission

One of the biggest considerations in your cycle is how you’ll sufficiently steward donors since this directly impacts retention. The key is timely, consistent, and genuine communication. After all, they clearly already believe in your mission.

Even after you steward donors, you’ll need to enter them back into the donor cultivation cycle, so you can upgrade them. Over time, you’ll strengthen your financial stability and build a reliable base of donors.

5 Donor Cultivation Strategies

While understanding the general donor cultivation cycle is certainly helpful, you need some concrete strategies that tailor your plan to your audience. Let’s walk through five of our favorite ideas.

This graphic outlines some of our favorite donor cultivation strategies, like eCards and data appending.

• Offer Unique Fundraising Opportunities.

One of the keys to inspiring donations is to offer unique fundraising opportunities. Our favorite option is donation eCards. Everyone loves receiving a greeting card, even more so when the proceeds go to a good cause!

You can create eCards branded to your mission that donors can send to their loved ones, either letting them know they gave in their name or challenging them to donate too.

Alternatively, create cards for special occasions that anyone can buy. That way, you can help supporters celebrate birthdays, say thanks to their loved ones, or send well wishes with holiday donation cards.

Sell fundraising eCards like this one to cultivate donors and inspire them to donate.

Then, you have a few ways to sell them to donors. Fundraising Letters’ charity eCards guide explains you can offer them in three ways:

  1. Use eCards as integrated donation forms. Add eCards directly to your site’s donation process. With this approach, a donor selects their preferred eCard, chooses a donation amount, adds the recipient’s contact information, and supplies their payment details.
  2. Sell eCards as fundraising products. If you have an online fundraising store, add your eCards and sell them for fixed rates. Donors can browse your collection, personalize the eCards, and send them to loved ones.
  3. Add eCards to your donation confirmation page. Embed your eCards into your giving confirmation page. While you can promote the reward before someone donates, it can be a fun surprise if a donor doesn’t know they can send an eCard until it pops up on the confirmation page.

The key to this donor cultivation strategy is to leverage a strong eCard creation platform. We recommend eCardWidget for its user-friendly design tools and fundraising features. The platform makes it incredibly easy to sell digital greeting cards for your cause. Plus, it’s a fantastic way to incentivize donors to give (and keep giving)!

If you're looking for unique fundraising and donor cultivation strategies, create and sell eCards to donors.

• Ensure You Have Updated Donor Data.

Your donor data is crucial to the donor cultivation cycle. Beyond your initial research, you’ll need to maintain sufficient data to ensure your communications are delivered and based on accurate information.

Common donor data we recommend consistently monitoring include:

Proper donor cultivation requires robust supporter profiles with accurate data.

  • Contact information: Consistently update postal addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses. Accurate contact details are essential for effective communication and engagement. Otherwise, your messages will go undelivered.
  • Giving history: Track donors’ giving history, including the amount, frequency, and date of their donations. You can then use this data to identify giving patterns and generate targeted fundraising appeals.
  • Demographic information: Collect demographic information about donors, such as age, gender, and income. Knowing this information will allow you to craft appeals tailored to their budgets and programmatic interests.
  • Donor preferences: Your nonprofit should track donors’ interests, values, and philanthropic preferences. Knowing this information can help tailor engagement efforts to each donor’s individual needs and build a deeper relationship.

Note that data appends can help you acquire any missing or outdated information in your CRM. Essentially, this process involves cross-checking the information you have with an external comprehensive database to ensure you have the right information.

Invest in your donor cultivation strategies by getting a quote for our data append services.

• Maximize Impact With Matching Gifts.

One simple yet highly effective way to cultivate donors is with corporate matching gifts. As a form of corporate philanthropy, matching gifts multiply the gifts your donors give. If their employer offers one of these programs, their donation to your nonprofit might be eligible to be matched, effectively doubling their contribution.

Double the Donation’s donation matching guide explains that there are a few key times to promote corporate giving during the donor cultivation cycle:

  • During the donation process: Donating is when engagement is at its pique. Share information about donation matching by adding a snippet about it on your donation form and adding an employer research tool to your confirmation page.
  • Throughout your website: Prospective and current donors alike will turn to your website for updated information about your cause. No matter where they are in the donor cultivation cycle, encourage them to check their eligibility. You can also design a page devoted to explaining matching gifts.
  • Across communications: Donor cultivation requires open communication. From your social media posts to your monthly newsletter, mention donation matching whenever you can!

Regardless of timing, promoting matching gifts is great for inspiring initial donations and encouraging donors to take their existing donations further.

Make sure you have accurate employer information for your donors, so you can follow up with match-eligible supporters and cultivate lasting relationships. Learn more about this process with our guide to employer appends for nonprofits.

• Proactively Thank Your Donors.

Showing appreciation is crucial for inspiring donors to stick around. When you treat your existing donors with respect, the word will get around to prospective ones as well.

Make supporters feel valued by consistently recognizing their generosity. Here are a few donor recognition ideas that work for any organization:

  • Thank-you eCards. While great for fundraising, eCards are also a fantastic recognition strategy. Sending a personalized eCard can help communicate that individual donors are valued and appreciated. Create one or two thank-you card designs you can send whenever someone gives. Then, personalize the message sent with each eCard with the donor’s name, giving amount, and a message from your team.
  • Donor gifts. From branded merchandise to full-out donor appreciation events, gifts can help cultivate relationships with existing donors. Re:Charity’s guide to donor gifts recommends picking gifts based on donation tiers. After all, donors entrust you because they respect your ability to spend fundraising revenue properly. For example, a personalized eCard is great for someone who gives $25, while a gift basket is more appropriate for someone who gives $1,000.
  • Impact reports. Creating an impact report that highlights the organization’s accomplishments and the impact of donors’ support can be a powerful way to show appreciation and cultivate donors. Within your report, include statistics, stories, and testimonials that demonstrate the organization’s success thanks to donors.

Beyond post-donation, reaching out during other times of the year lets donors know you’re thinking about them. Connect with them during the holidays and other special occasions to reiterate your gratitude for their continued support. Remember, timely and consistent communication is key for effective donor cultivation.

• Encourage Other Forms of Engagement.

When it comes to donor cultivation, other forms of engagement outside of donating can be just as meaningful. A couple of ways that can help you build meaningful donor relationships include:

  • Volunteerism: Sharing volunteer opportunities can be an effective way to grow support. Volunteerism allows donors to engage with the organization on the ground level and provides opportunities for them to use their skills and expertise to support the cause.
  • Events: Build a sense of community around your cause by hosting regular events and inviting committed supporters. Hosting events such as tours, volunteer events, or donor appreciation events can help donors feel more connected to your work. Events provide opportunities for donors to meet staff, learn more about your work, and see the impact of their support firsthand.

Overall, getting donors involved in other areas of your organization can help them understand why financial support is so crucial. Plus, they’ll see that your nonprofit views them as more than a funding opportunity.

Aside from asking supporters to get directly involved with your nonprofit in new ways, you can also increase their engagement by reaching your donors and target audiences in more places. This involves expanding your nonprofit’s network of partner organizations and corporate sponsors.

Consider the direct touchpoints that your supporters have with your nonprofit. Right now, they might include hearing about you from friends and family, making a first donation, attending an event, receiving ongoing updates and appeals, giving recurring donations, volunteering, or having one-on-one chats with your development team. But if you can find ways to grow deeper roots in your community and reach supporters outside of these direct interactions, you can become a more meaningful, recurring part of their lives.

For example, consider these indirect touchpoints you might foster through expanding your nonprofit’s network:

  • Establishing workplace giving programs with local businesses
  • Securing event and campaign sponsorships from businesses
  • Partnering with other organizations in the community to co-host programs and events
  • Lending volunteer power to public institutions like libraries and parks with special events
  • Weighing in on public issues and state and local policy developments that relate to your mission
  • Joining debates and roundtables hosted by other groups in the community
  • Offering free educational programming in partnership with peer organizations and community groups

Each of these strategies can grow your audience, strengthen your partnerships, and ultimately make your nonprofit a more central part of your supporters’ lives. When your organization is recognizable as an active player in the community, engaged with businesses, community groups, and governments, you can foster longer-lasting and more meaningful relationships with donors.

Corporate giving programs are among the easiest ways to get started expanding your network and building more touchpoints with donors. That’s because they’re mutually beneficial for both your nonprofit and businesses, which receive public recognition and increased employee engagement as a result of giving back to the community. It’s a win-win!

 

Pro tip: Kick off your relationship-building efforts by digging into your data! If you have records of donors’ employers (or can secure this data through an append service), see if any businesses crop up repeatedly. Research their corporate giving programs, promote relevant opportunities like matching gifts to those donors, and then reach out to the business to express your thanks and discuss additional partnership opportunities.

Final Thoughts on Donor Cultivation

Effective donor cultivation looks different for every organization. Beyond understanding the fundamentals of the cycle, your nonprofit will thrive by experimenting with different strategies like thank-you eCards and data appending.

Remember, the cycle is an ongoing process. It never truly ends. Rather, you need to re-enter donors into the cycle every time they give, so you can maintain those relationships and upgrade their support.

As you refine your donor cultivation strategies, check out these additional resources:

Leverage our data append services to build your donor profiles and cultivate donor relationships.