Creating a Case Management Database: 3 Simple Steps

/in /by

Learn how to create a case management database for your human services agency.

Data powers the decisions that human services agencies make and helps them provide clients with the best experience possible. Client data can also help caseworkers better manage their workloads and make appointments with clients more efficient, allowing them to get the care they need. More broadly, a comprehensive database allows agencies to visualize important patterns in case data, save time, and serve more clients.

Once your agency has the data it needs, whether from data appending services or through conversations with clients, ensure that it’s accessible, organized, and comprehensive. That way, your agency’s caseworkers can easily reference information about specific cases, add new records, and modify existing ones without needing to sort through data housed on spreadsheets or across multiple platforms.

The best way to organize client data is to invest in case management software. This software can help you streamline your data management process, recording all client data in one program rather than juggling several different spreadsheets or platforms. To get started, it’s important to understand what to look for in a case management solution.

Step 1: Invest in case management software.

Case management software gives your agency one centralized platform to track important client data in. This data can include contact information, billing details, history with your organization, appointment scheduling, specific case notes, and communication preferences.

Outdated data entry and storage methods can cause heavy administrative burdens, staff burnout, and inefficient reporting that could lead to loss of funding to critically important programs. To remedy or prevent this, agencies should choose software that limits the strain on their staff and makes their programs more efficient.

As you look for case management software for your agency, make sure the options you consider have these essential offerings:

  • Progress tracking. Choose software that has a dashboard reporting feature to quickly track and visualize your agency’s progress. This can help keep your staff on the same page about their individual responsibilities, your agency’s overall performance, and how close you are to meeting goals.
  • A modern approach. Case management software should help you modernize your approach to client data. Look for a program that consolidates client data into one streamlined platform and moves away from clunky, difficult-to-use spreadsheets.
  • Access from multiple devices. Depending on who you serve, your caseworkers may need to work from the field to adequately serve clients. The software you choose should allow staff to take notes from their mobile devices so they can update records from anywhere.

Aside from these core considerations, your agency might also need more specific capabilities that are tailored to the services you provide. Disability services, for instance, may require more stringent privacy protections than workforce development programs. By equipping your caseworkers with easy access to the tools and knowledge they need to serve, you can make their lives easier and provide better client experiences.

Step 2: Keep data clean.

To keep your data clean, your agency must commit to practicing good data hygiene. Data hygiene refers to the procedures and processes an organization should regularly complete, ensuring that client data remains relevant, up-to-date, and free of errors and duplications. For human services, maintaining clean data is key to keeping up with clients’ changing needs, giving them personalized and effective care, and producing accurate reports that reflect your program’s impact.

Keeping your data clean is dependent on your staff regularly completing small tasks that limit how many errors or “dirty” data points are in your database. Consider incorporating these practices into your data management protocols:

  • Removing or clarifying ambiguous data.
  • Frequently looking for and deleting duplicate records.
  • Correcting misplaced data, like adding a client’s contact information to the wrong file.
  • Identifying and filling in missing data.

Database software can help to limit input errors and even catch duplicate and missing data for you, reducing the amount of time your caseworkers spend tracking down these errors manually. Then, your staff can get back to serving clients and extending your agency’s impact.

Step 3: Standardize the process.

By using case management software, your agency can prevent many of the data input errors associated with outdated methods like spreadsheets.

But because it’s unlikely that just one person will be entering client data into your database, human error can still result in inaccuracies that interfere with reporting down the line. An important part of data management is to train your staff to input data in a standardized format that reduces the likelihood of these errors happening.

These practices can help you standardize the data entry process and ensure that all of your information remains accurate and clean:

  • Standard formatting. Maintaining the same formatting across all case files is key for data points like names, contact information, dates, and times. By entering an address with the wrong formatting, follow-up documents and other important records may not get delivered to your client. To prevent inconsistencies, you may decide that each address should be formatted using abbreviations like “St.” rather than spelling out “street.”
  • Outline a self-editing process. Create and share guidelines for your staff to ensure that they check for any typos or other errors they might make during data entry. Consider making a helpful checklist they can reference to make sure they review each field before adding the data to the database.
  • Reference existing data before adding new records. Write detailed instructions to help staff search for potential duplicate records before creating a brand new one. In some cases, your clients may go long periods of time without visiting, and it’s important to keep all relevant records and history with your agency in one profile rather than unintentionally creating multiple.

Training staff in data entry best practices can help prevent mistakes that could cause misunderstandings both with other staff members and your clients. Maintaining clear communication with clients prevents lapses in care and leads to positive outcomes.

Not only does a well-organized database help make life easier for caseworkers and give clients better experiences, but it also helps caseworkers build deeper relationships with clients. With a robust case management database, they can reference demographic data, jot down important personal details, and follow up through their preferred contact method much more easily. A structured, accurate database allows your agency to connect and serve clients more efficiently, helping you expand your impact to others in your community.

This guide offers three tips to help your nonprofit get started with fundraising data analytics.

3 Steps to Get Started With Fundraising Data Analytics

/in , /by

For the past six years, charitable donations have continued to grow. Within the past year alone, giving increased by 4.1%. However, many nonprofits still lose out on potential revenue despite this growth. How can your organization maximize revenue?

Using fundraising data analytics is a great place to start.

Fundraising analytics provide a way for nonprofits to measure the effectiveness of campaigns. Your nonprofit can develop a list of strengths and weaknesses backed up by concrete data. This makes it easier to adjust fundraising strategies based on past performances.

In this guide, we’ll walk through the steps to getting started with fundraising analytics. After learning about the different types of fundraising analytics, you’ll read about selecting metrics and collecting the right data. Lastly, we’ll discuss how to analyze data.

In this guide, we’ll cover:

Want to know how to use data to improve your nonprofit’s fundraising strategy? Keep reading to learn more.

Contact NPOInfo to get started with fundraising data analytics.


These are the basics for the three types of fundraising data analytics.

What are fundraising data analytics?

Fundraising data analytics is the process of collecting useful fundraising data and analyzing patterns within that data. This gives your nonprofit a basis to build on current fundraising strategies by using metrics that quantify performance.

There are three distinct kinds of fundraising data analytics— descriptive, predictive, and prescriptive. Each of these plays an important role in the overall fundraising data analytics process.

Next, we’ll delve into what makes these types of fundraising analytics unique.

These are the three kinds of fundraising data analytics — descriptive, predictive, and prescriptive.

Descriptive Fundraising Analytics

Descriptive fundraising analytics provides information that describes your donors’ behavior. These metrics create classifications for donors based on their past interactions with your organization.

This information provides key insights into donors’ giving habits and behaviors. Common information found in this category includes metrics like donation amount, donation method, and demographic information.

Predictive Fundraising Analytics

Predictive fundraising analytics build off of the foundational data provided by descriptive fundraising analytics, identifying patterns and trends. These patterns in donor behavior are used to predict donors’ future behaviors.

There are a few things to look for when performing a predictive analysis. The point of predictive fundraising analytics is to reveal patterns in your data, so you should keep an eye out for pattern indicators. We’ll talk about this more later, but common pattern indicators include donation growth and fundraising return on investment.

Prescriptive Fundraising Analytics

Prescriptive fundraising analytics combines the information gathered from descriptive and predictive analytics. Here, donor classifications and predictions about their future behavior inform a nonprofit’s future fundraising strategy.

Prescriptive fundraising analytics provides concrete measurements about past and future fundraising campaigns. The insights gathered inform a nonprofit of its unique needs and how to address them. Nonprofits also walk away with a better understanding of key donor information like giving capacity, which can help maximize fundraising efforts.

A great example of prescriptive fundraising analytics is prospect research. This research focuses on finding prospective major donors based on their giving capacity and affinity.

Giving capacity refers to a prospect’s financial ability to make a major gift— something that can be ascertained using descriptive fundraising analytics. Giving affinity refers to the likelihood that a prospect will want to make a major gift, often ascertained by examining their past giving behaviors— a predictive analytics practice. The combination of the two, prospect research, is the ideal example of prescriptive fundraising analytics.


These are the three steps to using fundraising data analytics.
Getting Started with Fundraising Data Analytics in 3 Steps

The most important steps for getting started with fundraising analytics are choosing your metrics, gathering the right data, and analyzing that data. We outline how to accomplish each step and some best practices to keep in mind.


Learn how to select metrics when analyzing fundraising data.

1. Selecting Fundraising Metrics

Metrics are the foundation for all the insights you gather, so understanding them is key. We’ll cover what fundraising metrics are, list some common examples, and explain how to choose the right ones.

What are fundraising metrics?

Fundraising metrics, sometimes called key performance indicators (KPIs), are data points that are used to measure the strength of fundraising performance. If your nonprofit uses the Google Ad Grant program, you may be familiar with performance indicating metrics such as click-through rate and conversion rate.

Metrics can highlight growth from one campaign to the next. On the other hand, they can also point out weaknesses or stagnation.

8 Common Fundraising Metrics

There are many different metrics to consider, and choosing them depends on your organization’s goals. This list is far from exhaustive, but it gives you a starting point with fundraising metrics.

Here are eight common fundraising metrics:

  • Donation volume: This metric references the number of donations your nonprofit received within a designated time frame.
  • Average gift size: Average gift size reflects how much a gift is on average. You can measure the average gift size from individual donors or the overall average within a given time period. Both of these variations will provide useful insights.
  • Gift recency: This metric refers to how recently an individual donor made a donation.
  • Gift frequency: Similar to gift recency, gift frequency indicates how often a donor donates.
  • Demographics: Demographics are characteristics or traits of your donors. These can include age, gender, and location.
  • Wealth markers: These factors are similar to demographics. However, they are indicators of a donor’s financial ability to make a gift. This includes things like real estate ownership, job title, and stock ownership.
  • Affinity Markers: These reference how willing the donor is to make donations. This includes factors such as past donations, volunteer history, and more.
  • Return on investment (ROI): ROI represents the total revenue your organization gains from promotional activity over the total cost. A promotion could be something like a fundraising campaign or event. ROI is a great metric for determining efficiency.

Metrics like these can help you evaluate your fundraising strategy from an objective perspective. By using these concrete performance measures, your campaigns should improve as you identify strengths and weaknesses.

Common Website Analytics

Your website can give you insight into fundraising performance. With tools like Google Search Console and Google Analytics, you can monitor all sorts of data.

However, some metrics are more useful than others. Here are a few website analytics we recommend keeping an eye on:

  • Traffic Sources: How do people find your website? For instance, organic traffic refers to people who land on your site through Google or Bing, while referral traffic refers to visitors who land on your site from another website. Then, you have social traffic, which allows you to see which social media platforms drive users to your site. This can provide insight into how to best connect with prospects.
  • Ad CTR: If you’re using a platform like Google Ads to promote your website, keep an eye on your click-through rate. This is the number of people who click your ads divided by the number of impressions (i.e. people who see your ad).
  • Conversions: Your conversion rate describes how successfully your site turns visitors into supporters. A conversion might refer to a donation, volunteer registration, petition signature, or newsletter sign-up. Poor conversion rates might indicate poor CTA wording or placement.
  • Session duration. How long are people staying on your site before leaving? If they immediately leave, your website might not provide sufficient information to meet visitors’ needs. If certain landing pages have a high bounce rate, re-evaluate whether you meet the searcher’s intent for its ranking keywords and then revamp the content.

Especially if you’re promoting your website with Google Ads, partner with a Google Ads agency to monitor these metrics. You can integrate your Ad Grants account with Google Analytics to monitor your ad campaign metrics alongside other site data. Not to mention, having an expert on your side will help you interpret that data and make positive changes to your website and its ads.

Work with our recommended Google Ads manager.

How to Choose the Right Metrics

Knowing which metrics to track is half the battle when it comes to fundraising analytics. The most important thing to remember are your goals as a nonprofit.

With this in mind, here are a few helpful tips for choosing the right metrics:

  • Set goals that are tied to metrics. When you are creating goals for a fundraising strategy, select goals that are connected to specific metrics. For example, make it a goal to increase donations and use a metric like average gift size to measure your success.
  • Use metrics that will benefit future fundraising efforts. While you should have goals specific to each campaign, it is also a good idea to identify overarching goals for your nonprofit. Note consistent weaknesses for your organization and choose metrics that measure those areas. That way, you can track strong and weak performances across different campaigns.

With so many metrics to choose from, narrowing them down can be overwhelming. These tips will prepare you for data analysis and ensure your insights are useful.

This explains how to collect donor data.

2. Collecting the Right Data

After you choose metrics for your fundraising strategy, you’ll need to collect the data to analyze.

How do you collect data?

Fundraising data analytics relies on gathering fundraising metrics. This data can include information about your donors and information about your campaigns themselves.

Data collection happens at every touchpoint your nonprofit has with a donor. For example, when a donor makes a donation, your nonprofit gains access to several data points. Things like gift size, frequency, recency, and donation method can all be derived from one touchpoint.

The data your nonprofit collects is both automatically collected by software and added manually by staff members. Online interactions are easy to add automatically, but some donor touchpoints require manual input. Logging interactions and contact information at an event, for example, will need to be added by hand.

Supplementing Your Data

While there are many metrics your nonprofit can capture on its own, there are often gaps in what you can collect. Data append services like NPOInfo are a great investment for filling in those gaps. NPOInfo is tailored to helping nonprofits and offers a wide variety of quality services.

For example, NPOInfo offers the following services:

  • Employer appends: With an employer append, NPOInfo provides your nonprofit with information about your donors’ employers. The key data points like employer name, job title, and matching gift information clue your nonprofit in to more fundraising opportunities. This data can be difficult to append on your own, and the insights gained can directly increase fundraising revenue.
  • Email appends: Emails are one of the most important donor touchpoints to maintain. However, if you are missing donor emails, it can be hard to know where to start. NPOInfo offers highly accurate email appends to foster meaningful communication to donors.
  • Date of birth appends: Demographic information like age can help your nonprofit understand your donor base. But, gathering birth dates on your own can be difficult and time consuming. Consider NPOInfo as a simple, hassle-free option.

NPOInfo helps nonprofits append the data they need to create the best possible fundraising strategy. Contact us here to learn more about our data append services!

Data Collection Best Practices

Use this checklist to optimize data collection.
Here are some best practices when collecting data:

  • Only collect data relevant to the fundraising metrics you identified in the previous section. Collecting useless data limits the efficiency of your data. For example, if your goal is to increase gift frequency, collecting data related to your ROI will not be helpful. Carefully select data points so you only have to work with the data you need.
  • Optimize your constituent relationship management (CRM) platform. This is where your fundraising data will live, and it should include a full picture of all of your organizational data. If your CRM is disorganized or unable to integrate with your other software solutions, it’s worthwhile to look into upgrading your solution.
  • Link CRM software and fundraising software. Connecting the two can reduce manually inputting information. New information is exchanged automatically between the softwares when they are connected, reducing the amount of work you have to do.
  • Configure data before it enters your database. Before loading any data, set up any tags you would like to track. This could include things like donor name, gift data, and donation source. Setting up tags helps you stay organized, especially when dealing with a lot of data.

These strategies should help you collect accurate, useful data. Keep them in mind as you collect these pieces of information so that your database remains organized.

This explains how to analyze data.

3. Analyzing Data

Now that you’ve selected the metrics you want to analyze and collected the corresponding fundraising data, you can get started analyzing the data.

Identify trends in your data.

Use predictive fundraising analytics to identify trends in your fundraising metrics. Your nonprofit can use these trends to create possible predictions for future campaign behavior.

For example, you might look for trends such as:

  • Growth in donation size: If the amount of individual donations is increasing across your campaigns, consider what caused the change. Pinpoint the reason for the change, like a new donation appeal strategy, and note the impact it had. This will allow your nonprofit to replicate the positive results in the future and see more increases in donation size.
  • Participation: Participation from supporters, which you can measure through things like event attendance, marks how invested donors are in your nonprofit. Note the impact any changes have on participation and plan to replicate any successes. If marketing events on Instagram doubles attendance, market all future events this way.
  • Fundraising ROI: Return on investment is an important measure of efficiency. This will tell you how much you spent on a fundraising campaign versus how much you made. As you experiment with different fundraising strategies, observe how ROI changes. Retire strategies that impact ROI negatively and continue using those that increase it.
  • Online donations: More specifically, this metric tracks what percentage of your total donations come from online sources. Marketing to a younger audience, for example, could bring in more online donations. Note this success and continue to market to them while planning for how to increase these donations even more.

By identifying trends in your nonprofit’s overall fundraising, you can predict outcomes for future campaigns. Your future campaigns will reflect your hard work through increased revenue, participating, and ROI.

Form a strategy.

The final step in analyzing your data is forming a strategy. Your strategy should be based on the information gleaned from organizing donors and identifying donor relationships and focus on growing your nonprofit by building connections, establishing a clear goal, streamlining internal operations, and generally improving your fundraisers’ performance. Creating an effective strategy that will yield strong fundraising performance results is the ultimate goal in fundraising data analytics.

This part of the strategy is based on prescriptive fundraising analytics. Your strategy should be based on prospect research which we discuss further here. As a refresher, here are some pieces of information you can find in this step:

  • Finding matching gift opportunities.
  • Finding major gift donors.
  • Identifying planned gift donors.

Strategy is the culmination of everything we’ve covered. A strategy based on concrete insights and carefully analyzed data could be the push that your fundraising campaigns need.

Fundraising data analytics can give your nonprofit a boost when it comes to how effective your fundraising strategy is. You can maximize fundraising revenue by gaining a deeper understanding of your nonprofit’s strengths and weaknesses through fundraising metrics. These steps are not always simple to navigate, but we’re confident that you can give your organization’s strategy a refresh using fundraising data analytics.

Gathering data can be the trickiest part of fundraising data analytics, and doing it on your own is a huge undertaking. Luckily, services like NPOInfo are great for lifting the burden of appending data off nonprofits’ shoulders. Contact NPOInfo today for a quote!

In the meantime, check out the following additional resources:

To learn more about data-driven fundraising, contact our professionals at NPOInfo.

Follow this guide to learn how alumni management software can drive success.

Alumni Management: Overview & Our Top 10 Software Picks

/in , /by

Finding effective ways to reach alumni is an important task for educational institutions. Alumni management allows colleges and universities to reach alumni and encourage donations to the institution.

It’s likely that your organization already tracks data on its alumni. But with the right software, you can collect and organize that information more effectively. Alumni management software helps administrators maintain alumni contact information, plan fundraising initiatives, process and track donations, and organize alumni events.

In this comprehensive guide, we’ll cover the basics of alumni management and alumni management software through the following points:

We’ll also discuss the benefits of working with a data append service like NPOInfo. Our team of experts can fill in the gaps of your alumni data to ensure that your fundraising initiatives are built on data you can trust. Let’s get started!

Want to put your alumni data to good use? Contact us for a quote!

Let's explore an overview of alumni management, including what it is and why it is important.

Overview of Alumni Management

What is alumni management?

Alumni management is the process that universities and colleges use to connect and engage with alumni. Alumni management is the process that universities and colleges use to connect and engage with alumni. Building meaningful relationships with alumni can drive success for your higher education program. Although most alumni move away from campus to pursue careers, they’re still accessible and eager to engage with their previous educational institutions.

 

When managed properly, alumni can become:

  • Brand ambassadors for your school.
  • Recruiters for upcoming graduates.
  • A significant source of revenue through donations and memberships.
  • A source of expertise and mentorship for current students.

Schools used to rely solely on snail mail to reach past students, making it difficult to maintain engagement. However, keeping alumni involved is quick and easy in the digital age. With the right software, you can manage alumni in a single secure platform. You can:

  1. Keep an updated database. Collect data on your alumni to determine demographics, communication preferences, engagement level, event attendance, and more.
  2. Plan reunion events. Alumni respond positively to events that reflect school spirit. Leverage nostalgia to attract more attendees.
  3. Share campus news. Share university updates, alumni spotlights, and upcoming events through a blog or newsletter. This will keep alumni invested in your school’s progress.
  4. Provide networking opportunities. Include ways to find information about classmates or other alum to build a professional network.
  5. Start a mentorship program. An alumni mentor can provide career guidance and professional contacts to students. Keep in mind that younger alumni are more likely to mentor students due to a smaller age difference.

By continually creating value for alumni, you encourage them to donate and participate in school-wide events. We’ll dive into the more benefits of alumni management in the next section.

Why is alumni management important?

Higher education programs have a critical task: making an impression on alumni. Alumni management ensures that you never lose access to alumni and can continue to engage with them long after graduation. With strong alumni management, your organization can:

  • Share alumni data. Publish up-to-date statistics on alumni, including the companies they work for and the positions they hold.  This is a powerful way to improve credibility and recruit potential students.
  • Build lifelong relationships. Loyalty is vital in this quickly changing, digitally connected world. With consistent targeted engagement tactics, you can convert one-time supporters into lifelong relationships.
  • Drive event attendance. Alumni events are wonderful professional and personal development opportunities for former students. They can also offer real benefits to the organizing institution. From receptions and galas, to reunions and career networking events, there are a multitude of ways to bring alumni together and boost engagement.
  • Increase funds. When alumni are encouraged to donate, that money goes towards supporting the next generation of students. Use crowdfunding and matching gift programs to kickstart alumni donations.

The main reason that universities prioritize alumni management is because they want to increase alumni giving. According to the top 10 US News, alumni giving rates for colleges range from about 44% to 55%. Since graduates are likely to give back, schools want to find:

  • Alumni who make a significant amount of money and therefore can make large gifts.
  • Alumni who work for companies that offer matching gift programs, so they can receive two donations for the effort of one.

If your college or university is looking to boost its revenue, consider using an alumni management system.


We'll define an alumni management system and explore how your school will benefit.

What is an alumni management system?

An alumni management system is a software solution that allows you to manage all alumni data and activities in a single space.An alumni management system is a software solution that allows you to manage all alumni data and activities in a single space. Most software offer a wide range of features created specifically for schools, universities, alumni associations, and foundations.

Universities benefit from having all their information under one umbrella. Storing data across many systems can lead to information falling through the cracks. Management software, on the other hand, streamlines the process of gathering, storing, and updating data on alumni. It provides a comprehensive view of all alumni engagement efforts and gives new and improved insights into how to increase giving.

Alumni management software eliminates most of the administrative work involved in collecting and organizing data. Rather than spending hours importing alumni data into a spreadsheet, look for a software that allows you to automatically collect and customize information. We’ll take a look at the types of alumni data that you should collect in the next section.

What alumni data should you collect?

Schools should assess what data they want to collect and filter out unnecessary information that will clutter up their database. For example, the on-campus activities that a past student took while enrolled may not provide as much value as an alum’s current job. In general, alumni systems collect:

These are the top 5 pieces of data to collect on alumni.

  • Education: Areas of study will reveal the causes that your donors are most likely to support.
  • Past Giving: Assess how recent a donor’s last gift was, how frequently they give, and how much they typically contribute. This information can help you predict the timing and amount of future donations you will receive.
  • Contact Information: To create an alumni community, you must be able to reach former students. Use address, phone number, and email address appends to maintain updated contact information on your alumni.
  • Communication Preferences: Understanding communication preferences allows you to effectively reach target audiences. Direct mail is the best way to reach donors of all ages, while younger supporters are more likely to respond to virtual outreach efforts.
  • Current Employer and Industry: An individual’s business affiliations can give you an idea of their net worth and potential connections. Plus, if they work for a company with a matching gift program, you can reach out to begin the gift match process.

Although alumni management systems can collect a wide variety of data, sometimes that information isn’t enough. Data appends can fill in the gaps in your database by providing additional information on alumni. NPOInfo’s data appends for alumni have a high degree of accuracy and can reveal what your donor base is doing after graduation.

NPOInfo is one of many systems paving the way in alumni management. We’ll explore more examples in the next section.

The following software and service providers can help you manage alumni data and maintain alumni relations.

Best Alumni Management Software

It’s important to take careful time and consideration when choosing a management platform that fits the needs of your institution. As you search for the right software for your school, consider our list of top alumni management platforms.

The following software and service providers can help you manage alumni data and maintain alumni relations. To qualify for inclusion in the list, a system must:

  • Maintain alumni data. 
  • Facilitate fundraising efforts and donation processing.  
  • Provide a means for communication with alumni. 

Let’s get started with our favorite alumni management software!

NPOInfo

NPOInfo can collect the most accurate information about the lives of your students after graduation. NPOInfo understands that the core of your donor base is alumni. Our team of professionals strives to collect the most accurate information about the lives of your students after graduation. Data appends for alumni often have the highest accuracy of all constituent groups. That’s because there are a few key data points that your organization is almost certainly able to provide upfront. And the more data points, the better matches we can guarantee!

NPOInfo offers email, phone number, address, and employer appends. Simply send us some preliminary information about your alumni, and we’ll provide the name of your alum’s employer and whether their company offers a matching gift program. Let NPOInfo empower your organization to claim the matching gift revenue your donors are missing out on!

Want to put your alumni data to good use? Contact us for a quote!

Double the Donation

Double the Donation helps organizations generate the funding needed to focus on their core missions of education. Double the Donation helps organizations generate the funding needed to focus on their core missions of education, community enrichment, scientific research, or charitable giving. Double the Donation provides the ability to add a search to your donation form to determine if a donor’s employer provides matching gifts.

This solution then provides the donor with actionable matching gift next steps immediately after the donation process. The details of the search, including any applicable gift information, is sent to Double the Donation’s 360MatchPro Platform which allows you to track match-eligible gifts and automate outreach.

Member365

Member365 is an all-in-one membership management system. Member365 is an all-in-one membership management system. On the Member365 app, you can oversee memberships, events, email marketing, payments, and more. You can also get access to all of your membership statistics through one centralized dashboard.

Easily manage all of your contacts in one database so that you have instant access to all of your relationships, including members, prospects, volunteers, and sponsors. Member365 saves you time and money, so your organization can focus on what matters most: membership engagement.

Graduway

Graduway is a 4-in-1 virtual community to recruit and mentor students, engage alumni and volunteers, and cultivate donors.Graduway is a 4-in-1 virtual community to recruit and mentor students, engage alumni and volunteers, and cultivate donors. As the world’s leading education management and engagement software provider, Graduway serves over 2,000 clients in 80 countries. Their mission is to cultivate a network of supporters for your organization.

The foundation of this network is built on engaging students, parents, alumni, volunteers and donors before asking for anything in return. It features a customized platform to engage with alumni through an online directory, event management, and data analytics. Graduway also offers automatically curated newsletters and a business directory where alumni can connect with one another.

Vaave

Vaave is a hosted platform to create an alumni portal and an exclusive alumni network for your school or college or company. .Vaave is a hosted platform to create an alumni portal and an exclusive alumni network for your school or college or company. Their system offers all the solutions that alumni managers need: data security, member database, email marketing, event management, donation processing, targeted communications, and alumni networking resources.

Vaave is a one-stop solution to launch your own interactive alumni portal to manage your alumni relations seamlessly while keeping your alumni engaged. Request a free demo and go live in as fast as 7 days.

Wild Apricot

WildApricot is the #1 rated management software used by over 300 alumni organizations across North America. WildApricot is the #1 rated management software used by over 300 alumni organizations across North America. Manage your organization in one place. WildApricot’s platform allows you to manage contacts, process donations, send emails, register event attendees, create a website, and more.

Their powerful cloud software makes it easy for you to stay engaged and connected with alumni. Cut out complicated paperwork by creating a  web-based, mobile-friendly  form  where alumni can provide their information and donate online. You can try a free, 30-day trial of WildApricot and set up  a professional-looking website with online event registration in a matter of minutes.

Hivebrite

Hivebrite creates an exclusive space for your alumni to find, connect, and network with each other. Their mission is to unleash your alumni community. Hivebrite creates an exclusive space for your alumni to find, connect, and network with each other. Their mission is to unleash your alumni community. Boost your alumni data, foster a sense of belonging, and facilitate fundraising with Hivebrite.

This is a great platform for providing value to your alumni data. Get real-time analytics about your alumni to increase engagement and satisfaction with your alumni. When your alumni are satisfied, your sources of funding through membership renewals, fundraising campaigns, and donations will increase.

Firsthand

With Firsthand, you can turn your alumni network into a community.With Firsthand, you can turn your alumni network into a community. Trusted by leading institutions like Harvard and Cambridge, this career-engagement platform provides mentoring, enrollment, and career engagement programs in a single space. Firsthand strives to engage with more alumni and inspire them to give back.

Alumni on Firsthand are 40% more likely to volunteer or donate. This cloud-based alumni networking platform uses mentoring programs and virtual events to reach potential donors. Administrators can create online campus communities to enlist students as ambassadors or alumni as mentors and host group discussions, open houses, and one-on-one meetings on a centralized dashboard.

Almabase

Almabase is one of the highest rated alumni management software options.Almabase is one of the highest rated alumni management software options. Their team believes that alumni should be at the center of a school’s fundraising and marketing efforts. Almabase is an alumni-centric platform that strives to build lifelong relationships.

With Almabase, institutions can acquire new donors, drive event attendance, increase digital engagement and inspire new volunteers. They provide schools with the right technology and strategy to drive success.

Raklet

Raklet is a powerful nonprofit management software that serves as an all-in-one solution for higher education fundraising. Raklet is a powerful nonprofit management software that serves as an all-in-one solution for higher education fundraising. This digital platform can power your organization through its robust CRM, fundraising campaigns, email automation, and event management. With its simple and effective technology, your nonprofit can easily drive engagement and grow your impact.

Raklet is an all-in-one platform that provides everything your organization needs to manage and grow your mission. It provides alumni associations with customized membership plans and application forms as well as private social networks to reach alumni and organize events.

 

Keep these tools in mind when choosing a management platform to fit the needs of your organization and alumni.

Whether you manage your alumni in-house or outsource it to an alumni management system, like NPOInfo, your return on investment will be positive.

Wrapping Up

Whether you manage your alumni in-house or outsource it to an alumni management system, like NPOInfo, your return on investment will be positive.

NPOInfo is a fully certified data append service here to fill in the gaps in your alumni data. Our team of experts offers free quotes and resources to help your organization plan a successful campaign strategy.

Our services include:

  • Employer Appends: Using our proprietary screening and identification methods we append employer information, and oftentimes a job role, to individual records.
  • Email Appends: Email is the most cost-efficient method to promote matching gifts to a large number of donors. In order to do so, we’ll find your alumni email addresses.
  • Phone Number Appends: Our phone number append service provides you with both cellphone and landline numbers. Use this information for both your regular donation solicitations as well as matching gift reminders.
  • Date of Birth Appends: Our Date of Birth (DoB) append service helps you add age information to your database. With average match rates of 40-70%, our date of birth appending can provide you with the month and year that individuals were born.
  • Address Appends: Our screenings ensure your organization has up-to-date mailing addresses.

In the meantime, explore these additional resources to continue your research on data appends and alumni management:

Interested in alumni management? Let NPOInfo help you make the most of your alumni data.

Follow this guide to learn how data collection can benefit your organization

What Data Should Nonprofits Collect? Overview & Top Tips

/in , /by

Far too many nonprofit organizations collect data without using analytics to drive success. In an increasingly data-driven world, it’s important to evaluate your nonprofit’s facts and figures. This process of data collection will allow your nonprofit to transform data into actionable knowledge.

Data collection is essential in measuring your nonprofit’s hard work. It reveals valuable insights such as how many people you serve, how best to target your supporters, and which campaigns are the most successful.

At NPOInfo, we strive to improve your fundraising efficiency using data. We’ve written this guide to give you insight into everything you need to know about data collection, including the importance of data analytics and the types of data your organization should be tracking.

We’ll cover the following points:

When collected and managed properly, data can be an asset to your organization. Let’s dive into the benefits of data collection.

Contact the professionals at NPOInfo to get started with data append services

Why Is Data Collection Important For Nonprofits?

According to a study by NonprofitHub, 90% of nonprofits collect data. Nonprofits can better serve their communities with a comprehensive data collection plan, as data allows nonprofits to track trends, make informed decisions, strategize for future fundraising efforts, and more.

Most nonprofits already hold valuable information about their donors, campaigns, and marketing efforts in their constituent relationship management (CRM) systems. However, nearly half of nonprofit organizations are unsure how data can support their work.

Effective data collection can help your nonprofit:

Data collection can help your nonprofit build relationships, improve communication, and more

  • Update your donor database. Collecting relevant donor data allows you to regularly update your donor database and, in turn, make informed decisions about your donor retention efforts.
  • Build relationships. Nonprofits need to build strong relationships with their supporters to survive. With the right data, your nonprofit can personalize interactions with donors, increase engagement, and solicit donations successfully.
  • Improve communication. Data empowers your nonprofit to quantify and communicate your impact to the community. This both builds your nonprofit’s credibility as a trustworthy organization to which to donate.
  • Inform decision making. Make adaptive decisions based on the data that you receive. Data can answer key questions, support or refute assumptions, and assess the efficacy of campaigns.
  • Drive marketing and fundraising efforts. Data-driven nonprofits are more likely to be financially successful. Use metrics to focus your nonprofit’s development efforts and boost donations.

From driving donations to informing decisions, data collection can be an asset to your organization. However, you don’t want to collect every data point available to your nonprofit— that would quickly grow overwhelming.

7 Types of Data That Your Nonprofit Should Be Tracking

Now that you understand the importance of data collection, it’s time to review the types of data that your organization should capture and analyze. As a general rule of thumb, prioritize growth by tracking data that will lead to more funding, quantify your impact, and help target areas for improvement.

Your nonprofit should collect information on donors, campaigns, marketing efforts, finances, website traffic, and mission

To ensure data is relevant, collect information on your donors, campaigns, marketing efforts, finances, website traffic, and mission. From mailing preferences to campaign performance metrics, these details will help your nonprofit shape engagement and retention efforts. There are countless data points that you could collect, but the following list will serve as a strong foundation for your nonprofit’s data collection process.

Donor Data

It can be difficult to strengthen donor relations without collecting or understanding your donor data.

Donor metrics reveal who your supporters are and how best to reach them. Donor data is crucial in catering to your specific audience. The data that you collect can strengthen your fundraising efforts and increase donor engagement.

To better understand your donors, start by tracking the following basic personal information:

  • Name: Address donors by their preferred name and title in your solicitations to improve your chances of receiving a response.
  • Age: Direct mail is the best way to reach donors of all ages, while younger supporters are more likely to respond to marketing outreach efforts on social media.
  • Email Address, Phone Number, and Physical Address: Updated contact information allows for regular donation solicitations and matching gift reminders.
  • Employment Status and Employer: An individual’s business affiliations can give you an idea of their net worth and potential connections. Plus, if they work for a company with a matching gift program, you can reach out to begin the gift match process.
  • Educational Background: Student involvement and areas of study will reveal the causes that your donors are most likely to support.

If any of this information is missing, your organization can invest in a nonprofit data append service which will be discussed later in the guide. Once you have an idea of who your donors are, you’ll want to dig deeper to determine their motivations and propensity for giving. Consider collecting this advanced information:

  • Giving History (Recurring, One-Time, Major Gift): Assess how recent a donor’s last gift was, the frequency of their giving, and the typical amount of their monetary contributions. This information can help you predict the timing and amount of future donations you will receive.
  • Hobbies and Interests: Apply this information to your fundraising efforts. For example, if the majority of your donors are avid readers, host a volunteering event at the library.
  • Advocacy Participation: Target potential donors that have a history of donating, volunteering, attending events, or advocating for charitable organizations more generally. Consider the organizations that your prospective donors support and focus on those whose interests align with your mission.
  • Business Connections: These connections can help you leverage major gifts since donors are more likely to respond to appeals from acquaintances.

Before gathering these facts and figures, clean your donor database by removing duplicate profiles and requesting updated contact information. That way, you can more accurately identify and communicate with donors, rather than simply adding more information to a cluttered database.

Campaign Data

Chances are your nonprofit works diligently to plan and execute campaigns. Don’t let that time and energy go to waste by neglecting campaign data. This vital information can help your organization raise donations, engagement, and event attendance in future campaigns.

The following forms of campaign data will help you understand the effectiveness of your past efforts:

  • Event Attendance: Events generate a lot of data. Keep track of how many people attend your virtual or in-person events as well as how many registered in advance and opened your post-event thank you emails.
  • Supporter Satisfaction: Gathering feedback should be a top priority for your team. Information received through surveys can help supporters feel included and staff improve their efforts.
  • Donor Acquisition Cost (DAC): DAC is the financial price you pay to convince a potential donor to make a gift. To determine this cost, sum the price of appeals and marketing efforts over a given period, and divide it by the number of donors you acquired in that time.
  • Revenue: Track appeals, fundraising proceeds, matching gifts, corporate sponsorships, and online gift frequency. With this information, you can make informed decisions about your budget and strategy.
  • Campaign Conversions: Measure how many people your campaign converts into first-time donors, volunteers, newsletter subscribers, or website visitors. Use these numbers to run tests on campaign efficiency and set objectives for the future.
  • Donor and Volunteer Retention Rates: Donor retention rates reveal the successes and setbacks of your engagement efforts. Review this information with your team to discuss strategies for retaining donors and volunteers.

Campaign data is crucial in measuring the success of your fundraising and outreach efforts. Use these stats to identify trends across campaigns, manage your budget, and raise awareness for your mission going forward.

Marketing Data

Not only does marketing data clarify how best to reach your audiences, but it also assists in amplifying your mission and soliciting donations.

Nonprofit marketing encourages long-term relationships with donors and solidifies credibility. When marketing your mission, data analysis can be used to determine the appropriate marketing channels and engagement strategies for your nonprofit.

Let’s review the forms of marketing data that can be used to communicate your impact:

  • Website Traffic: Determine how many people visit your website, how they get there, and how long they stay. This information will help you to optimize your site to receive the most traffic.
  • Subscriptions: Donor retention rates increase drastically when supporters subscribe to newsletters, emails, and recurring donations. To encourage subscriptions, offer clear incentives and add pop-up forms to your website to advertise the opportunity.
  • Social Media Engagement: Social media engagement can be measured through likes, shares, comments, and link clicks. Create content that encourages the most valuable engagement.
  • Email Open Rates: According to MailChimp, the average open rate for nonprofit emails is 25%, meaning three quarters of your audience won’t open your emails. To increase your chances of reaching donors, write compelling subject lines, keep the frequency of your emails consistent, ensure subject matter is relevant, and send emails at an appropriate time.

To gather this information, conduct an audit on past marketing efforts using the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) analysis, a strategic planning technique that identifies the effectiveness of your nonprofit. To learn more about incorporating data into your marketing, check out this comprehensive guide to creating a nonprofit marketing plan.

Financial Data

Like for-profit corporations, nonprofit organizations rely on data to boost revenue and cover operating expenses. Financial data allows nonprofits to assess cash flow, maintain financial stability, and strategize budgets for future fundraising efforts. Consider the following types of data associated with accounting and budgeting:

  • Expenses: From staff salaries to campaign and fundraising costs, nonprofits can easily rack up expenses. While you might be tempted to keep expenses low, it’s important to invest in your organization. In turn, you’ll see higher rates of engagement and donations.
  • Income: Nonprofits can receive revenue through donations, membership fees, selling products, and more. Examine past expenses and revenue to project growth targets.
  • Cash-on-hand: Cash-on-hand, or the total amount of money accessible at any given time from paper bills, bank accounts, and assets, will show how long your nonprofit can survive without donations or funding. Track cash flows to determine whether or not your nonprofit has enough revenue to cover expenses.
  • Volunteer Hours: Volunteer hours reveal the labor, time, and resources needed to accomplish your goals. Log these hours to secure grants and raise awareness for your organization.

Through collecting this type of data, your nonprofit can increase return on investments and improve the quality of programs.

Website Data

Most nonprofits have a dedicated website with blog content, donation buttons, contact forms, testimonials, and more. Data analytics can be used to show which content is the most popular, determine content strategies, and create a better user experience. In order to increase traffic and prompt visitors to take action, it’s important to measure how the site performs.

If you haven’t already, start tracking these three important pieces of information:

  • Traffic Sources: Potential donors can land on your site through an organic search, a referral from another site, or a redirection from social media. Once you understand how most users get to your website, you can optimize the most-trafficked referral sources to increase site visitors over time.
  • Bounce Rate: This refers to the percentage of visitors who visit your site and leave, rather than continuing to view other pages or take action on your site. If your bounce rate is high, prioritize updating your web pages to provide a better user experience.
  • Click-Through Rate (CTR): CTR is the percentage of users who click on a specific link to view a blog post, email, or advertisement. If you have a low CTR, revamp your calls-to-action and tailor messages to specific supporters.

You can use website analytics tools to track these details. Google Analytics is free for nonprofits through the Google for Nonprofits program. Plus, if you venture into PPC (pay-per-click) advertising like Google Ads, you can monitor site performance with this tool and tweak your ads with ease.

If that sounds too far out of reach, turn to an expert to help out. Marketing experts and paid advertising managers know how to leverage these tools to improve your website’s performance and drive more meaningful traffic.

What it all boils down to is that website data can help you convert visitors into donors. Using that data to optimize your website will boost your online presence and raise awareness for your mission. Make sure you’re using all available resources to monitor your website’s performance.

Turn to a paid advertising expert to manage your web analytics.

External Data

While collecting data from your own organization is important, harnessing information from third parties helps to promote growth and productivity. External data comes from sources outside of your organization and offers information related to your organization’s mission.

External data allows nonprofits to stay updated on field-related information. Your organization can access these facts and figures through public records or private data shared by other organizations. Examples of external data include water quality, homeless populations, and census information.

Whether a national average, industry standard, or third-party idea, external data can be used to shape decision-making and communicate your impact to the public. For example, let’s say a homeless shelter serves a community in which 56% of individuals suffer from food insecurity. That statistic becomes more powerful when compared to the national average of food insecurity, which is only 10%.

From donor data to external data, your nonprofit has plenty of information to collect, which can be overwhelming. Fortunately, we’ve created a list of best practices to help you achieve the maximum value from data collection.

Sponsors and Potential Corporate Partners 

Staying on top of donors’ business connections can help you identify prospects for potential corporate partnerships. However, while a major donor facilitating an introduction with a business’s leadership is helpful, successful sponsorship agreements need data to back them up. 

Before meeting a potential sponsor, ensure you have the following data ready: 

  • Philanthropic history. If a business has shown a positive affinity to causes like yours in the past, they may be inclined to support your nonprofit this time around. Most businesses proudly promote their past philanthropic initiatives by having a dedicated page or even an entire website dedicated to their philanthropic mission and the causes they’ve contributed to. Look for these resources and press releases from nonprofit organizations similar to yours about their recent sponsors. 
  • Giving capacity. What is a business partner able to give? When approaching potential sponsors, you should already know what you intend to request of them. Make sure this request, whether it’s a financial donation or free or discounted services, aligns with their giving history. If you’re unsure how much a business will be willing to contribute, consider presenting sponsorship tiers with pre-set benefits and donation requirements for them to choose from. 
  • The success of past sponsorships. When approaching businesses, emphasize the benefits of working with your nonprofit, and when possible, back it up with data from past successful sponsorships. This might include the number of guests that attended an event that featured sponsors or positive press coverage. 

Like with other types of data, keep careful records of your past deals with sponsors. Ideally, your nonprofit should ensure businesses always reach out to the same point of contact at your organization to build a relationship and provide consistency. If you experience turnover or expand your team, your records will be vital in maintaining business connections and avoiding disruptions in your ongoing sponsorships. 

Nonprofit Data Collection: Top Tips

Data collection is necessary for every organization, regardless of the size of your nonprofit. There are plenty of ways to gather information, from giving histories and surveys to management software and audits. Now that you understand the importance of strong data and the different types, it’s time to devise a data collection strategy.

These top tips will help you devise a data collection strategy for your nonprofit

In the next sections, we’ll introduce you to the best practices for data collection. Through these tips, you will learn how to audit data, organize your information, and identify areas where you can improve. Let’s get started!

Perform a data audit.

A data audit is a critical review of your organization’s data collection process. examine the quality of your nonprofit’s current data and data collection process.

Performing an audit can help you discover areas for improvement in your database and collect data more effectively going forward. Here are the four basic steps of performing a data audit:

  1. Gather: Collect quantitative and quantitative data from surveys, reports, interviews, emails, and donor profiles.
  2. Reflect: Consider the purposes for each dataset and how it can be used to better your organization.
  3. Assess: Evaluate your findings to determine if you’re collecting the right data to learn about and build relationships with supporters.
  4. Identify: Locate areas for improvement and work with your team to devise a data-driven strategy.

During a data audit, you might notice that your data is unorganized. That’s where the next step comes into play. You’ll need to optimize your information to more easily understand it.

Keep your data clean.

Prioritizing data hygiene will help your organization to remove inaccurate and unnecessary information and standardize the data collection process. Your nonprofit should focus only on harnessing high-quality information that will help you raise donations and awareness towards your mission.

Holding onto excessive or incorrect data is a detriment to your organization, as it overshadows valuable information. Don’t waste time and money sending marketing material to people who won’t answer your calls-to-action. In order to rid your data of useless information, you should remove:

  • Deceased donors.
  • Duplicate profiles.
  • Outdated contact information.
  • People on do not call or do not mail lists.

When you eliminate this extraneous information, you’re left with a clean database containing information about attainable donors. You should also work to standardize your data, ensuring numbers, abbreviations, and mailing addresses have the same format (i.e. St. verus street).

Store data in a database.

Now that you’ve optimized your data, it’s time to store this quality information in your customer relationship management (CRM) database. With the right features, your CRM can store data, track interactions, and share information with your team. In turn, this highly organized information will strengthen and grow your mission.

Here’s a closer look at the CRM features that can benefit your nonprofit’s data management:

  • Third-Party Integration: Integrate your other fundraising software directly into the CRM. That way, the CRM will function as the main database for your organization, holding the most comprehensive information.
  • Real-Time Data: Automatically track personal information about your supporters and organize that data through filters. This is a far quicker process than manually inputting information into a spreadsheet.
  • Data Visualization: Turn raw data into engaging visuals. Graphics and charts will help your organization tell data-driven stories.
  • Mobile Access: Access your CRM on the go to ensure you always have the updated information you need to drive your mission forward.
  • Searchability: Easily pull data and search for particular records using search features. This will allow you to quickly find important information.

The more functional your CRM is, the more of an asset it will be to your organization. Just make sure your database protects sensitive data like the personal information of donors and financial information. Work with your team to create protocols that implement data protection.

Our Final Tip: Invest in nonprofit data append services.

A data append is the process of adding new data points into an existing database with the goal of filling any gaps in the nonprofit’s information. Most data appending services will organize your data and set up automation for verifying it regularly. NPOInfo goes a step further.

At NPOInfo, we guarantee a high degree of accuracy in appending your donor data and ensuring your fundraising efforts are built on data you can trust. Take advantage of the following services:

  1. Employer Appends: Discover where your donors work to increase corporate matching gifts and deepen corporate relationships.
  2. Email Appends: We’ll maintain an accurate list of your donors’ email addresses, so that you can promote fundraising opportunities to supporters using correct email addresses.
  3. Phone Number Appends: Keep up-to-date phone numbers for regular donation solicitations and matching gift reminders.
  4. Date of Birth Appends: Get dates of birth to target donors in specific age brackets and improve your marketing efforts.
  5. Address Appends: Find out when your supporters move and update your database with accurate mailing addresses to more effectively reach your audience.

We’ll guide you through the appending process, making sure your nonprofit understands the data it’s collecting and how that information can be turned into meaningful action.

Data is power in the nonprofit sector. It allows you to attract donors, improve campaigns, and promote your mission. Collecting, analyzing, and cleaning data reveals what’s working and what’s not working in your organization.

NPOInfo’s team of experts offer services and resources to help your nonprofit organization make the most of its data. Get a quote today!

Want to continue your research on data collection or learn how to manage data more effectively? Explore these additional resources:

Get a quote from NPOInfo to enhance your collected data with a data append