Donations to nonprofits were down in 2022. What are you doing about 2023? If you aren’t using data to drive your strategy, you should! The work you do is too important to leave up to guesswork and luck. This article gives you a step-by-step guide to use your data to run your best end-of-year giving campaign ever!
Step 1: Know Where You Are
You can’t know how to get to where you want to go without first figuring out where you are. Run a comprehensive report of all giving from the previous year. Where are you up? Where are you down? Where do you need to concentrate your efforts? Be sure to look at more than dollar amounts. Frequency of gifts and one-time versus recurring donors matter a lot too. As much as possible, consider demographic factors like age, location, and employment.
Step 2: Create Your Segments
Marketing is most effective when it is personalized, so use your data to segment your total audience into 3-5 groups. Those groups will depend on your situation, but here are a few ideas.
- Major Donors: People who have given a substantial amount within a specified timeframe.
- Monthly donors: People who make monthly recurring donations.
- Lapsed donors: People who have given in the past but stopped giving this year.
- One-Time-Donors: People who have only given once.
- Crisis Donors: A subset of one-time donors who gave in response to a crisis.
Step 3: Set Your Budget
For each segment, set a goal and a budget. The goal should determine your budget. We humans have something called “loss aversion bias.” It means we hate the idea of losing money way more than we like the idea of gaining it. As much as possible, think about your dollars not as an expense but an investment. Planning ahead will help you make smarter decisions. If your extra $10 increases a donation by $100, that’s like a 1000% interest rate. Most of us would jump at that opportunity!
Step 4: Send Snail Mail
Wait a minute! This is a tech consulting firm! Why are we recommending actual printed copy? The reason is that we do live in a digital age, which means our inboxes are flooded and our brains are overwhelmed. People who get direct mail are 300% more likely to give in response to an email request later. Send the direct mail first, then send the email. (Bonus points if you include a QR code in your letter or postcard.)
Do segment your snail mail the way you segment your email. Some print shops do not make that economical, but there may be ways we can help.
Step 5: Go Social
Donors are also more likely to give when they receive multiple messages. Naturally, you are going to use your segments to send different campaigns, but you should plan to do social media posts as well. You may even want to use your segmenting to inform profiles you create for targeted advertising.
After you send your first blast, create another segment for people who opened your email but opted not to give (or better yet, those who clicked a link but then didn’t give). You can generate this report from your email analytics.
Step 6: Thank Your Donors
Your work isn’t over after December 31. It costs a lot less to keep a donor than it does to gain a new one, and a great way to keep your donors is to make them feel appreciated. Thank them. Tell them what their gift made possible. If you can, invite them to share reasons for why they donated (you can use this in later marketing).
You are going to want to segment your audience here as well. You might want to thank a $50 donor with an email but a $5,000 with a phone call. You also might want to set apart people who became recurring donors, recurring donors who increased their gifts, or lapsed donors who returned. Decide on your priorities, and review your data accordingly.
Step 7: Reflect Back
There is one more final and important action you need to take. Namely, take stock! Right after you’ve done something is the best time to make notes about how you would do things differently next time. Look at your budgets, look at your results, and come up with a project plan for the next year. You want to do this right after your campaign draws to a close. It will be harder to remember if you wait.
Conclusion
By taking the time to create data driven goals, segment your audiences, send personalized letters and emails, follow up, and evaluate your results, you are likely to see improved giving this year, and year over year, as you refine your approach. The time and money you spend is well worth it.
If you are a young nonprofit, then you may not have a single source of truth you can rely on to quickly generate the reports you need. We can help with that. We have custom apps that allow us to clean up data messes about 5x faster than it takes by hand. It’s one of our most cost-effective services, and it’s definitely worth the investment. Book a call, and we can start on a free estimate.
David J. Dunn
David is the founder of Undaunted Consulting. He specializes in data management system optimization and rapid app development for social service, social justice, and environmental justice nonprofits.