14 Jun Analyzing Nonprofit Donations: Using Data to Understand and Grow Supporter Giving

How do you attract new donors and keep existing ones? In the nonprofit world, donor retention is the name of the game. As you no doubt already know, retaining current donors is a more valuable way to spend your energy than acquiring new donors. You likely need to do both, of course, but once you have a donor on your rolls, you know they’re already invested in your mission.

But whether you are trying to grow your donor rolls or maintain your existing relationships (or both), your data can help you strategize fundraisers.

Your organization’s CRM software allows you to build a robust member or donor database. Ideally, you have good information on supporters, including names, addresses, phone numbers, volunteer roles, special event attendance, and more. Knowing where people’s individual interests lie and including those fields in your database is especially fertile soil.

Ways to Leverage Donation Data

We recommend starting with your upcoming fundraiser goals. What do you hope to achieve? How do your goals break down into “buckets”—giving goal amounts by month, by event, by demographic, by fund? Are you hoping to raise the average giving amount per donor, or are you hoping to add more donors—or both?

Now take a look at the giving data you have collected in recent years. What are some ways you can parse this data to help you strategize meeting your fundraiser goals?

Here are some suggested data analyses you could run:

• What is your average giving amount per donor per year? And what is the median?

• What is your average giving amount by donor zip code or region per year? And what is the median?

• What is your average giving amount by giving mechanism (cash/check (in person, mailed or ACH), phone line, online portal, text giving) per year? And what is the median? Also, what is the frequency by mechanism?

• In the past year, what were your percentages of first-time or one-time givers vs. repeat givers?

• Which special calls for donations or initiatives were most effective in the past year or two, both in terms of total funds raised and number of givers engaged?

The answers to these questions may lead you to more questions. And of course, the possibilities for data analysis are endless—especially for large nonprofits. We suggest you start with some basics and grow your understanding from there.

How We Can Help

Here at mobileAxept, we are text giving and text data experts. In addition to helping you surpass your fundraiser targets with our robust text giving tool, we provide complimentary data consultations to all of our nonprofit clients. We can assist you in finding ways to leverage and marry your CRM and giving data to better understand the motivations of your supporters and the asks that might be most effective.

We invite you to contact us for more information today.