Have you ever gone to a home improvement store and bought all the materials for a project, then got home and asked yourself, “Now what do I do with all of this?”
We’ve found that many people feel that way after implementing a donor management system, like ResultsPlus. They now have access to all of that donor data that they didn’t have the opportunity to take advantage of when they were using Excel spreadsheets.
So now that you have access to all this data (and hopefully have an effective way of tracking it), what can you do with it to increase your relationship-building, cultivation and fundraising efforts?
- Segment your donors. So you don’t want to send an email to your entire donor database, but only those who have given to a specific campaign and donated a certain amount. With accurate donor data, you can divide your donors into groups and send specific, targeted marketing to these groups. This keeps the message relevant and prevents your audience from getting fatigued by too much messaging.
- Establish relationships between donors. You may have spouses, children, friends or colleagues in your database that you can relate to each other. Donor data can help you establish who is related to whom and how they are related. This way, you can appropriately address them, associate them with each other and create targeted lists.
- Find out who your top donors are. You don’t want to ask for a $250,000 gift from someone who has only given two $20 donations to your organization ever, right? By taking a look at your donor data, you can identify your nonprofit’s largest and most consistent donors and reach out to them the next time you have a major ask.
- Reach out to your lapsed donors separately. A LYBUNT and SYBUNT report allows you to identify which of your donors have given in the past, but not in recently. Using this data, you can send a message specifically to this group to try and encourage them to get involved again.
- Create a recurring gift program. After you’ve used your data to find your most consistent donors, you can look into starting a recurring gift program. You now have a great group of regular donors segmented and can work with them to get the program up-and-running.
You’ve exerted a lot of time and energy implementing your nonprofit donor database, so now it’s time to use it (and your data) to its full potential!
How are you and your organization taking advantage of your data? Let us know in the comments below!