Decoding your data
Data has the power to enhance our customer experience, improve our efficiencies and ultimately raise more funds for our amazing causes. Managed well, your data can unlock supporter journeys and offer bespoke and tailored communications to your donors. Managed poorly, your data can make your organisation look disconnected, uncaring and out of touch. At worst, it can turn supporters off your cause completely when you misuse the information they share with you.
How we capture and use data can be a gamechanger, but for so many of us it can feel like a big task. Whether your database is the fundraising equivalent of a shiny new Mercedes or a slightly tatty Reliant Robin we share our top tips for maximising your data for your fundraising.
Building better relationships with meaningful data
In the fundraising world, our data is information collected about supporters to offer a clear picture of who they are and how they give. We are simply asking questions to understand more about our supporters – what they like and dislike, how they support the cause, which channels they prefer to give through and what motivates them – so that we can drive a more meaningful relationship with people. This could be in face to face meetings or via a series of mailings.
Talking about data can sometime feel a little cold and impersonal, but if unlocking your customer data means you can write thank you letters that recognise a donor’s other contributions, or send them a birthday card to celebrate a special day with them, we start to understand that embracing our database is all about enhancing our supporter relationships.
There’s something deeply satisfying about diving into a spreadsheet and starting to uncover information about campaign performance or trends in your data. We’ve shared some pointers and prompts to take a look at what your database could reveal.
Only capture what you have permission to
Before we jump into the opportunities a little note on data capture. It may sound obvious but just as we want to choose what we share about ourselves our donors feel the same about their data. If a donor has explicitly shared information with you, such as their date of birth, and they are happy for you to retain this in your records, then you are able to. But capturing information that a donor hasn’t consented to is against privacy laws and also means we’re not listening to and respecting our donors’ wishes.
Related to this is knowing what you can share with your donors from your fundraising materials. You may think that they would love to read your latest newsletter or have a copy of your annual fundraising appeal, but if a donor hasn’t opted into receiving these communications, then you need to consider the permissions that have been granted to you, and not overstep the line of data usage.
Clean your data regularly
Spring cleaning your data is a recommended annual activity. Not only does this mean that your database will be up to date and efficient, but it also means no longer sending mailing packs to those who aren’t interacting with your charity or to donors who have moved address or are deceased. This will increase your campaign efficiency and mean you are only in touch with donors who wish to hear from you. Duplicate records often crop up in data and can mean a skew in results, and also potentially mean double mailing certain donors if they’ve been captured in different ways on the same database. For deceased files there are mortality screening companies in Australia who you can check your data against. To manage duplications, check data files each time they are output for a campaign. It is also helpful to stay on top of bounce emails from any email marketing you do to keep your data clean and up to date.
Set a goal for understanding your data to help guide you
Looking at your database as a whole can be an overwhelming task, and without a goal to guide you it won’t be a productive exercise. Set a goal for what you want to understand about your dataset to help guide you. Perhaps you want to look at fundraising campaign performance over a five-year period to see trends in data. Or maybe understand how many of your regular donors are dropping out in their first year of giving.
We do see some commonalities in requests from clients to help interpret their data. The list below might give you a starting point for something you wish to explore in your own database to start to learn more about the power of your data:
- Campaign performance – looking at how a specific campaign has performed
- Campaign trends – looking at how appeals have performed over time (for example a five year view on Christmas mailing packs)
- Overall performance – looking at your fundraising performance over a set period of time to understand which channels are the best performing
- Attrition modelling – measuring the number of donors who leave your pipeline for a particular fundraising channel. Used most commonly in regular giving programmes
- RFM models – looking at recency, frequency and monetary values of a campaign or set of data
- Legacy pipeline – looking at how to identify who is considering leaving a gift in their Will to your cause and where in their stage of preparation they currently sit
- Major donor pipeline – understanding who in your database might be considered for your high net worth file with the propensity to give a large gift and building a pipeline based on likelihood and payment bands levels
Don’t conflate data integrity with relationship building
Great data isn’t an end goal – a flourishing donor relationship is. The data is one of the tools that helps to get us there. Ultimately, we want our database to inform us, to help us reach out to our donors in ways that feel meaningful and allow them to connect to our cause. Knowing our donors, understanding what they are receptive to, and being responsive to their needs should always be front of mind.
Do you have questions about how to get the most out of your database? Get in touch with our friendly team if there’s something you’d like to know more about.