Case Study: Nonprofit Tries Rating the Value of Its Donors to Raise More Money

Armed with a trove of donor data, one charity is trying to think smarter about what that information can tell them.

Wells Jones, chief executive of the Guide Dog Foundation for the Blind, is leading an effort to develop a scoring system to measure donor engagement, encourage loyalty, and communicate better with donors.

“It’s helping us target our efforts more effectively and get to the most interested people, the most engaged, first,” says Mr. Jones. “It’s also helping us to change how we communicate to try and build engagement.”

Donors are ranked on four major categories. Nearly 30 factors in each category are assigned a point value, measuring things like how many times donors share news about the organization on social media and how often they give.

The foundation raised more than $8.1 million in 2013 and hopes its new system will help it start raising more.

Some of the factors it considers in its scoring system:

Giving History. Most important are how recently and how often donors have given, how much they’ve contributed, and whether they tend to give more or less with each gift.

It also gives points to donors who volunteer as fundraisers for the group.

Participation. This category tracks factors such as whether a donor also receives the group’s services. The foundation breeds and trains assistance dogs for people with disabilities at no cost.

Volunteering or advocating on behalf of the organization or purchasing products with the group’s logo also adds points.

Communications. Better access to information has changed how the organization communicates with its donors.

“There are far more channels that we can communicate with [donors], and it makes sense for us to try and rank their engagement with us,” Mr. Jones says.

Noting whether donors subscribe to the foundation’s email lists and whether they actually open the emails are key. The group is also working to develop a consolidated score based on donors’ social-media activity and influence.

Ability to give. This category considers a donor’s wealth and whether that person moves to greater levels of giving.

Getting Started

Figuring out where factors rank in importance and how they relate has been challenging, says Tanya Myers, the organization’s database administrator. She says she is always thinking about how to collect the information and analyze it.

It is a system in flux as the organization learns more.

“It will always be evolving,” Mr. Jones says. “We’re getting smarter as we go along.”

Other organizations shouldn’t wait to start ranking donors until they have a perfect a system, Ms. Myers says.

“Certainly take some time to think your process through, but also remember that you can always tweak your process,” she says. “Pick a starting point and see where it takes you. Keep in mind what type of outcome are you hoping to gain from this.”

The information charities gather can show trends that interviews with donors may not, Mr. Jones says.

“I always use the example that if you ask people if they go to the gym or not, a lot more people will say they go than actual experience would show did go,” he says.

Similarly, people may say they prefer to get solicitations by email, but the data show that they don’t give that way.

“It may make more sense to continue to send some direct mail as well, because otherwise we might not get that gift anymore,” he says. “We think that it’s really important to use the data you have to customize the constituent’s experience of the organization, be that through mail, email, web views, mobile.”

It’s too soon to assess whether the system has resulted in more gifts or more involvement, Mr. Jones says. His plan is eventually to verify that increasing rankings does indeed raise giving averages.