How to use data for increasing donations for your organization?

The data-driven approach in fundraising tends to yield better, informed decision making, help in understanding donors’ capacity and affinity to give, identifying the major donor prospects, and gauging the potential engagement of various groups of donors and supporters. Typically, the kind of data to track to drive fundraising and engagement involves:

• Demographics (Age, gender, profession, address, and so on);
• Donation and engagement history;
• Any preferences around modes of communication, type of giving, etc.
• Documented qualitative input about the donor for deeper insights.

How to make sure you capture the relevant data and are able to analyze it to make it usable to drive decision making- the answer is investing in a Donor Management System/ Database Management System (commonly known as CRM- Constituent Relationship Manager system). There are many CRM options available these days, some examples are – Salesforce, Raiser’s Edge, HubSpot. If this is not possible, a basic data management system can be built by using simple tools too. Its ability to analyze and give different reports will be limited but can be very useful in maintaining records, analyzing donor profiles, understanding, giving patterns, and so on.

With a deep understanding of your donor data, you can secure more and larger gifts, grow your donor community, and build deeper connections with your donors and supporters too.