Finding Data to Identify Your Top Donor Prospects
Our last blog post talked about the importance of using data to work smarter, not harder, in your development work.
You might ask yourself, “That’s all well and good, but where do I find this magical data that will make my life so much easier?” The short answer lies closer than you think – literally at your fingertips!
The first and best place to find data to support your development work sits in your donor database. If you don’t have a database, get one. Pure and simple. And, no, Excel is not a database! Many relatively inexpensive and easy-to-use databases exist out there. Do your homework, ask your colleagues, and get one. Yes, you will need to invest some money and time to get it set up, but the long-term gains will more than outweigh the short-term pain.
Once you have a database, make sure that you have standard operating procedures that outline how everyone should enter the data. Everyone who touches the database must receive training and follow established procedures to ensure consistent data entry. This will make pulling and using the data so much easier.
In addition to correctly entering the data, you need to know how to pull reports. Depending on your database, reach out to their customer support team or check their website or YouTube to learn how to pull the right reports for you. At a minimum, you want to know each donor’s total giving for the current year, last year, and lifetime (which means since you started entering data). If you have more years of data and can pull that, great! The more data you have the better; it will let you see trends.
Once you have the data, load it into an Excel spreadsheet and let the fun begins! I like to sort the data, first to look at which donors have given the most in their lifetime followed by how consistently they have given and whose giving has increased. Simple formulas can help you discern the latter two data points. They all identify donors with a strong affinity for your organization and perhaps the means to make a larger gift. They all certainly deserve your attention.
Beyond reviewing donor-level data, look at your macro-level giving data. Where do you get your gifts? Individuals? Corporations? Grants? What percentage of your income comes from each source? Does this meet best practice standards? How do your gifts distribute across the giving pyramid? Do 90% of your gifts (by total amount given) come from 10% of your donors (by number of donors)? If not, you have greater potential by focusing on major gifts (too few top donors) or need to broaden your pipeline by expanding your broad-based solicitation campaigns (too few lower level donors). Macro-level analysis also lets you see if you have sufficient diversity of your funding sources to withstand a change in funder priorities or economic upheaval.
Once you have examined the data from your database, you can dig deeper to find hidden giving potential. Three strategies can help you do that.
Conduct a wealth screening. Wealth screening companies will run your data through their system and append information that identifies giving capacity and indications of wealth. Many companies do this kind of work; Wastyn & Associates recently began a partnership with iWave to make it easier and less expensive, especially for smaller organizations.
Your screened data will let you see your wealthiest donors and the ones most likely to give; play with Excel to prioritize them based on these factors. Once you have this information, engage your board, volunteers, and staff. Who do they know? What can they tell you about them? Will they introduce you in a warm handoff? If you know them, don’t wait. Pick up the phone and call them!
Public data sources also exist that can help you learn more about these prospects, especially the ones that no one close to your organization knows. For example, social media – especially LinkedIn – can provide a treasure trove of information on someone. Sites like the White Pages can provide updated contact information. I recently used Perplexity to find out if prospects on an old list had died; it gave me great information very quickly. And don’t forget good ol’ Google! Sometimes you can learn something about a person just by reviewing their online history and fingerprints. Make sure you capture this information about the prospect in your database so that your successor does not have to reinvent the wheel.
Armed with these data points, you can prioritize who will most likely make a gift to your organization and who could make a larger gift. And always remember, people give to people so further prioritize the prospects who have a personal relationship with you, a board member, staff member, or volunteer.
