Today, we are thrilled to host our very first guest blogger,
Jen Filla, from Aspire Research Group, LLC!
We’ve been big fans of Jen for some time, and are just delighted she
would spend a little time and share a little wisdom over here on the APRA
MidSouth blog. Today, she’s bringing some
great advice for our smaller shops, though larger shops will definitely gain a
little insight too. Enjoy!
How healthy is your donor database? Especially if you are a
prospect researcher in a small fundraising office, this critical question could
be going unasked!
I’ve seen various products over the past few years offering
different approaches to providing a health check on the donor database, but
when I am faced with the small fundraising office the one-size-fits-all approach
just doesn’t fit well. Small offices can operate with wildly different
approaches to fundraising and data, which might be shaped by staff turnover,
fundraiser skill levels, and leadership interest.
The good news for the small office prospect researcher is
that you have the opportunity to be methodical and use your research skills, and
have the potential to provide some meaningful fundraising leadership.
Recently I worked with a client that had three fundraising staff.
The fundraising VP had a strong background in planned giving, the gift officer
had a strong background in corporate and foundation fundraising and they had a
database manager - a lot of great skill sets jumping in to awaken what had been
a dormant fundraising program. They were keen to acquire new donors and had the
opportunity to piggyback on their marketing department and rent lists. The
first acquisition mailing had a response rate of 2%. Above average!
When we first met I was sure I would be helping them source
new major and planned gift prospects. But I suggested that they let me start by
taking a look at who was in the donor database and once we knew what the donors
looked like we could decide on a specific course of action. I asked the data a
lot of questions. Many of the answers provided information they already knew
anecdotally. But one question provided a shocking answer. Where were those
donors from the first acquisition mailing - now? It turned out that in year
three only 14% were still giving. Ouch.
How does something like that happen? These were skilled,
very experienced fundraisers and yet they were counting their hard-won new
donors without measuring for retention. It happens because in a small office
there is SO MUCH to record, count, measure and DO. And that is also the
challenge for the small office prospect researcher. You have to manage your
time well, choose rewarding lines of inquiry, and pay as much attention to
general fundraising education as you do to prospect research skills.
Although the opportunity to sit at the leadership table is
real for prospect researchers, to be successful we have to be prepared. What
are the priorities for fundraising? Are there specific goals? Start your donor
health check by asking questions about what’s important to your leadership. Be
sure to document your questions, what you think the answers will be, and the
process you took to answer the questions. Because when you present your
findings, you will be asked many more questions and may have to go back and
re-work your process to eliminate things like bequests or other outliers that
distort your results.
Keep in mind that I’m not talking about analytics here. Not
really. I’m talking about asking intelligent questions you can answer through
database reporting or an export to Excel for manipulation. There’s no shame in
doing simple analysis. The shame is in not doing anything.
For example, my client put envelopes in almost all their
mailings and donors gave in different envelopes across the year. This made it
pointless to measure how each of their two appeals did year after year - those
donors might decide to give in a different envelope any given year. Trying to
apply some of the best practices from larger institutions to a small
fundraising office can be frustrating and ineffective. Many of our
organizations are not operating like big fundraising offices and that’s
perfectly alright. We can still be great prospect researchers and create method
out of mayhem, sending gift amounts ever higher!
Once you have results from your line of questioning that
leadership is ready to act upon, more than likely you will get to participate
in the discussion about how to tweak or change the fundraising messaging to
drive more giving. After all, you have all those donor and fundraising studies read
and carefully labeled in a binder on your bookshelf, right? Of course you do.
And you want to be there at the end of that conversation so
you can help shape what will be tracked and measured. Knowing that we can
control our behaviors, but we can’t control whether someone will make a gift,
encourage tracking your team’s behaviors alongside the gifts.
If you want to start asking your data questions, but aren’t
sure where to begin, I created a worksheet to get you started. Click here for
the PDF.
But I know many of you already have GREAT stories about
asking smart questions and translating the data into answers that can be acted
upon by fundraising leadership (like you, 5/29/13 blogger Amanda Madonia!).
Please SHARE your story by commenting. Thank you!
