Understanding data benchmarks and structural guidelines

Defining your donor universe

Data-based donor upgrade strategies

Maintaining data integrity

Easy-to-implement strategies to structuring your data

Using that data to define your donor universe

Creating donor upgrade strategies based on your defined donor universe

How do you define data in your system?

What data do you currently capture on your donors?

How do you ensure this data is captured?

What do you do with data once you’ve got it?

How do you define data in your system?a. Data codingb. Multi-levelc. Based on giving status, prospect status,

moves management etc.d. Should include any official PP capacity

(board member, honorary chair, committee member etc.)

What data do you currently capture on your donors?

Giving history, biographical, business, philanthropy, relationship to PP,

contact history, demographic, psychographic etc.

How do you ensure this data is captured?

Define what donor information you want and how you want to captured

Require those fields for your data entry staff/prospect managers

Define a series of giving levels

Define a series of relationship levels

Create definitive staff portfolios

Using established donor coding, how may constituents fall into each category?

What is the best way to reach these donors?

Do they have other things in common?ex. How did they give? In response to what?

Using established donor levels, how may donors do you have in each giving category?

Assigned levels based on cumulative giving

Overlap giving with donor codes and response motivator

Works well with annual campaignsDirect mail, Annual appeals, E-appeals, Telemarketing

Based on the defined donor universe

Utilizes list segmentation and preset donor upgrade levels

List segmentation—every donor list you pull for any appeal mailing should contain the following information:a. Donor nameb. Addressc. Phone number and yeard. Last 3-5 fiscal years of giving

Divide list into sections

a. Gave this FY and met previous FY givingb. Gave this FY and haven’t met previous FY

givingc. LYBNT (last year but not this year)d. SYBNT (some year but not this year)

Create upgrade correlations

Donor Level Ask Amount

$0-$499 $600

$400-$999 $1,200

$1,000-$1,499 $1,700

$1,500-$1,999 $2,500

$2,000-$2,499 $3,000

Apply ask correlations to groupsa. Gave this FY and met previous FY giving: no

specific amount; “special gift” askb. Gave this FY and haven’t met previous FY

giving: apply ask correlationsc. LYBNT (last year but not this year): apply ask

correlationsd. SYBNT (some year but not this year): ask for

your minimum “major donor” amount

Bridge Donors Donors who oscillate between major

donor giving and lower-dollar giving

Works well with programs that have both a direct mail and major donor/annual fund component

Periodic review of high dollar direct mail donors

Set an amount at which direct mail donors get moved to major donor/annual fund list

Monitor performance

Keep positioning fluid

Understand that data is not an obstacle to overcome

Communicate this effectively to your staff

Place emphasis on correct, accurate, and updated data

Assign responsibility for maintaining data integrity

Build that responsibility into performance evaluations

Set achievable goals and deadlines

Periodically review data sets, codes etc. for effectiveness and applicability