How a Splash of Color Helped Johns Hopkins Fundraisers Use Data

Presentation makes a big difference in helping fundraisers understand data analysis and act on the findings in their work, says Lisa Howley, director of relationship management at the Johns Hopkins Institutions.

When Ms. Howley’s office first offered a service to help departments analyze their gift officers’ portfolios, the approach entailed using simple tables to organize donor prospects based on the size gifts the research thought they could make and their inclination to give.

When the service was slow to take off, Ms. Howley revised the format so that various colors were added to the tables to indicate different levels of priority in the donor portfolios.

“All of a sudden,” she says, “it started to get a ton of attention.”

Below see a sample portfolio from Johns Hopkins that uses hypothetical numbers to illustrate how analysts at the institution use color in the portfolio analyses.