Fundraising Data: What to Track and How to Prioritize

Most nonprofit leaders today understand that strong donor data is a must-have for successful fundraising. Good data helps fundraisers get to know their donors so they can zero in on those with the greatest potential to give, improve outreach to supporters at all levels, and boost giving.

But it can be hard to know which donor information is most important and how best to gather and manage that data, especially with a limited staff and budget.

Before taking action: Define the problem you want to solve with your data, experts say. Then make sure everyone at your organization understands their roles and prioritizes data management. Smart nonprofits take these steps before selecting systems and technology that can help, including new A.I. tools.

When deciding which data to collect, the goal shouldn’t be to capture as much information as you can, experts say. Instead, focus on getting the right data. And that won’t be the same for every organization.

In fact, one way to figure this out is by considering what makes your nonprofit’s supporters unique. For example, a Virginia university began including dropouts in its fundraising after learning that they often still have a strong connection to the college — and now raises millions more each year as a result.

Don’t let your budget or lack of sophistication stop you from getting started with data analytics. Every nonprofit can do innovative work with donor data, experts say. But you have to set aside time for it. Managers should help tech leaders create space in their workload to “think and innovate and push boundaries,” says one nonprofit executive. Small organizations should also consider outsourcing some tasks, such as combing through data or running reports, or enlist volunteers to help.

This report offers advice from a wide variety of nonprofit leaders, fundraisers, and other experts that can help you build a foundation for actionable donor data, including key tools and processes to put in place to make this work easier and maximize results.

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First, define the “business question.”

Diving into the deep end with a flashy, new tool like ChatGPT is not the most productive way to start working with data, says Jon Thompson, associate vice president of philanthropic strategy and technology at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

Before choosing a technology solution for your nonprofit, first identify your most pressing business need. Then, he suggests, ask questions that frame your query, such as:

• How will data intelligence advance our mission?
• How do we measure success?
• Is the data we capture digestible and actionable?

As an example, Thompson says, his shop needed help identifying the best major-giving prospects. He tried “first-generation A.I.,” and the results were compelling. In the sample, the targeted prospects made their way through increasingly higher levels of giving 17 percent faster, with 22 percent higher average gifts.

“In fact, we had one case in our cancer group that identified somebody who was not in the pipeline at all who made a $6 million dollar gift within a few short months,” Thompson says. “So it meant the entire effort was paid for inside a single fiscal year.”

Figure out how to pull data.

Donor data is useful only if organizations can get it out of their systems and work with it, says Kari Bodell, vice president of development programs strategy at Susan G. Komen.

Donor data is useful only if organizations can get it out of their systems and work with it.

“This is the advice I would give anyone, whether they are in a national role or they’re in a local role: Understand how to pull your reports,” Bodell says. “You don’t need sophisticated business intelligence systems.

Now, they really help. They make a lot of things easier. But as long as you’re pulling your full data set and you understand how to navigate it, you can use the data.”

Learning how to create reports may seem like just one more daunting task to throw on the pile, but Emily Marcason-Tolmie, director of prospect management, research, and analytics at Skidmore College, says it’s very doable. She recommends: asking colleagues — even outside your department — who may have hidden data skills; taking online classes, such as those offered by LinkedIn Learning; and networking with other fundraisers and asking questions.

“Lean into that broader community of fundraisers,” she says. “Find people that are doing work like yours in other shops. People are often very willing to talk.”

Prioritize data security.

Clay Buck, a fundraising consultant, says fundraisers are still far too cavalier in how they handle identity information; some even email unencrypted files of donor data.

When this happens, Buck says, he not only has to refuse and destroy the files but he also needs to walk the fundraiser through the process of resecuring the database they just breached.

Going forward, data security must be top of mind for every fundraiser, says Michal Heiplik, president of the Contributor Development Partnership, which analyzes donor data for public-media organizations. “Non-profits in general just need to spend moretime bringing their own teams up to par in terms of what data security is,” he says.

One nonprofit Buck works with formed a data-governance committee on its board to communicate new data-security guidelines from the top down. “That changed drastically the way that organization used and thought about data at every level, because, of course, in forming the governance committee, they had to review policies and procedures at the board level,” he says.

Integrate your data systems.

Fundraisers often use a dizzying variety of vendors and services to help with their data work, sometimes leading to a tangle of software, lists, databases — and frustration. That can make it easy to forget what you set out to do.

The goal, says Chris Cannon, chief strategy officer at the Zuri Group, a consulting firm, should be to have “everyone dedicated to using a central source of data that is a source of truth and is as trustworthy as possible.”

Data pieces that we track [include] attendance at events, attendance at meetings, status as volunteer.

Rodney Grabowski, the University of Central Florida

Jennifer Filla, a prospect-research consultant, recommends nonprofits seeking to improve data analytics start by hiring a database administrator. That can help them integrate multiple systems and tailor software to an organization’s needs.

The American Indian College Fund’s Houk has a monthly online meeting and a couple of in-person meetings annually with its data analytics vendors and other partners to make sure they stay aligned with the fund’s needs and tactics.

At Heifer International, an Arkansas-based organization focused on easing world hunger through community development, Michelle Dusek Izaguirre, vice president of marketing and resource development operations, has used internal programmers to achieve what many groups seek: user-friendly portals for the organization’s customer relationship management system. The portals are custom designed to be easy to use and understand for particular groups of users, such as senior management, or frontline fundraisers.

Make sure data is collected properly.

To get the best results, it’s crucial to involve everyone at your nonprofit.

“Organizations need to outline a clear vision for how they want to use data and then make it an organization-wide priority, so everyone knows their part,” says Rodney Grabowski, senior vice president for advancement and partnerships at the University of Central Florida.

“Data pieces that we track [include] attendance at events, attendance at meetings, status as volunteer,” Grabowski says. So getting this information requires all staff to understand which data the organization needs and where to enter it.

Because the entire team understands the goals of the data, they can also make recommendations on “what are the gaps and what are our data canyons — meaning we’re not even collecting this information.”

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Focus on what makes your donors different.

Many nonprofits use addresses or ZIP codes to assess donors’ wealth and giving potential. In another fundraising shortcut, educational institutions often focus on graduates, not those who dropped out.

We’ve been blowing it out of the water with small gifts, and a lot of them are people who never graduated.

Natalia Pierson, Norfolk State

But those typical indicators didn’t work well at Norfolk State University, in Virginia.

Natalia Pierson, associate director of prospect management research, learned to give both factors a low priority when assessing prospective donors. Decades of redlining, the banking practice of not issuing mortgages in majority Black neighborhoods, meant ZIP codes were not reliable indicators. Weak financial aid in the past for Norfolk State students meant many of them had to leave college early. Those drop-outs, however, often still have a strong institutional affinity, Pierson learned.

Shifting fundraising strategies to be more inclusive helped increase Norfolk State’s fundraising revenue from $3 million a year in 2020 to $10 million a year. “We’ve been blowing it out of the water with small gifts, and a lot of them are people who never graduated,” says Pierson. The lesson? Don’t assume the analytics that work for other nonprofits will work for yours.

Track donor ‘journeys.’

Savvy nonprofits focus on understanding donors’ “journeys” with their organization — how they first arrived and how their relationship with the nonprofit has evolved — so they can determine how best to keep them engaged.

Sharon Kamegai Cocita, director of development at the Little Tokyo Service Center, which offers an array of social services in Los Angeles, needs to know which of its many programs appeal to donors. “It’s important for us to see how a person became connected with us,” she says, “so we can project from there and see what kind of interests that they might have.”

Understanding donor journeys doesn’t mean bombarding donors with data requests.

“We don’t collect a lot of data at the beginning because we found that can lose people,” says

Brittany Veneris, director of fundraising, U.S., at Movember, a men’s health organization that sponsors an annual fundraiser in which men grow mustaches in November. “We really only ask the questions and gather information that we’re going to use in one way, shape, or form.”

At first, Movember requires only a donor’s name, email address, and physical address on online forms, with the option to provide a phone number.

Eventually Veneris maps donor journeys and compares them with engagement. For example, she might look at which communications inspired a donor to get more involved and whether he or she returned the next year. “It all comes down to retention,” she says. “A lot of times people give because they feel passionate in the moment and then they move on to something else. And that’s going to always happen, but how do we minimize that?”

Listen your way to a gift.

Last spring, the American Indian College Fund asked its marketing partner to call every existing donor or lapsed donor from the previous three years. The marketing firm reached around 12,000 people to ask what inspired their first gifts to the fund. No request for an additional gift was made. In a second round of calls, the firm contacted fewer donors and asked only: “What about our work is most inspiring to you?”

NancyJo Houk, chief marketing and development officer for the college fund, sorts through the call transcripts looking for information she can use to help organize donors into groups and build relationships with them. First, she searches for common inspirations for giving. Then she creates other segments based on traits like geography, wealth, age, or profession. She hopes to use A.I. to help write communications tailored to those groups. The fund might send lawyers a story about a scholarship student who is going to law school, for instance.

Houk used to emphasize telling donors the organization’s story. But she shifted to listening to build deeper, longer relationships.

“People like to feel they have been heard,” she says. She and her team have gone from raising $14 million a year in 2013 to being a “$50 million organization,” with a spike last year to $81 million.

Don’t overly focus on big donors.

Many organizations crave major gifts. But high-dollar donors often start out small. At Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Thompson found that four out of 10 million-dollar donors started with gifts of $100 or less.

At the American Indian College Fund, Houk says her “passion project” is looking for donors who have been forgotten by other organizations because donor screening may rule them out. She believes many fundraisers’ obsession with return on investment contributes to the very problem many non-profits complain about — a shrinking pool of donors masked by a few big gifts. One of the traits she looks for as part of her new project is “historical loyalty” — those donors with potential to stick around for the long term.

Create smart surveys.

Nonprofits often survey donors, but if they’re not asking the right questions, they may not be getting the data they need to maximize the chances that donors will continue to give. Including one or two crucial questions on a survey can provide the information needed to reach the donors most willing to give, fundraisers say.

“Any survey you can get someone to fill out is a helpful survey if you ask the right questions,” says Erik Daubert, a nonprofit management consultant. Then you can ideally learn important pieces of information about your donors, which you can use to cultivate them.

Any survey you can get someone to fill out is a helpful survey if you ask the right questions.

Erik Daubert, Nonprofit Management Consultant

So what are some key questions? It will differ based on your organization, but questions that find out where your donors’ priorities lie are a good bet.

“A simple survey question would be, ‘What part of our mission excites you the most: our work with kids, our work with adults, or our work with seniors?’” Daubert says. “Then, provided you listen to that information and utilize it, you can customize your next direct-mail piece, your next digital fundraising piece, or your online communication efforts through emails.”

One of the biggest mistakes nonprofits can make when it comes to donor surveys is not using the data. “If you cannot do anything with the responses that you get, don’t ask,” Brown says. “Do not take people’s time and energy if you cannot change how you interact with them based on what they say.”

Include events data in the central database.

Individual departments within organizations often have events — walkathons, golf tournaments, or lectures, for example. But it can be hard for fundraisers to get data back from those events, including who registered, who attended, who gave money, and what donor follow-up took place.

“It’s our job as a development team to take those donors and develop them as philanthropists for the full organization,” says Kamegai Cocita, of the Little Tokyo Service Center. “We need to remember where they came from and tailor our communications that way.”

Include information gathered during personal interactions.

Data can come from conversations, focus groups, and email interactions. Human prospecting can uncover potential donors that no data screening can. A religious leader whose income isn’t in public databases might be capable of six-figure donations, when wealth screening says they aren’t worth bothering with.

“It’s easy in the conversation around data to get focused on big intimidating analysis,” says Jacqueline La Gamma, director of prospect research and analytics, at Northwell Health Foundation, which supports New York’s largest healthcare system. But “fundraising, no matter whatstage you are in, is very much a people game.”

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Carve out time to innovate, even if you’re short on money.

Money can help buy speed and sophistication, says Thompson of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, “but [lack of] it doesn’t prevent anybody — if they’ve got the time — from doing some really innovative work.”

My first advice for any small shop would be for leadership to help carve out 10 percent free time for their tech leaders.

Jon Thompson, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia

His organization uses a combination of data from its system combined with commercial data to create psychographic profiles of donors, which use data to try to piece together how supporters think. Thompson realizes this level of sophistication is not a possibility for everyone — but every nonprofit can do cool things, given enough time.

“My first advice for any small shop would be for leadership to help carve out 10 percent free time for their tech leaders,” Thompson says. “Let them have space to think and innovate and to push boundaries. I think you’d be surprised what comes back.”

Outsource some tasks.

Small organizations have to realize that they have limited bandwidth, says Lori Stirling, senior vice president of advancement strategy at Affinaquest.

“If you’re one person or a very small organization, you can’t be doing everything,” she says. “You’re going to go home exhausted, and you’re not going to be effective.”

Think about where your talents and interests lie, and then consider outsourcing other responsibilities. If you don’t have a database manager to go through the data and pull reports, perhaps outsource those tasks. If you love data and want time to work with it but have other tasks that need doing, outsource those.

Include data managers in strategy development.

It’s important to include database managers in day-to-day fundraising strategy, rather than only calling on them when fundraisers have data queries, says Jay Kahn, senior assistant vice president for advancement and campaigns at the University of Oklahoma Foundation. He makes sure data analysts and prospect researchers are active participants in fundraising meetings and don’t just work at the beck and call of fundraisers.

“They’re not in meetings as support staff; they’re in meetings as partners, and they have a say in how the work’s going to get done,” Kahn says. “Fundraisers are encouraged to treat them like their partner, not like a service.”

Frontline fundraisers don’t win gifts on their own. Kahn says people like database managers and prospect researchers enable gift officers to identify potential donors faster and build stronger relationships with them more quickly.

“As a frontline fundraiser, you are not effective if everybody else is ineffective.”

Use data visualization to inform strategies.

Senior nonprofit leaders have come to expect data visualization, such as charts, infographics, or animations.

“Nobody wants to look at a list anymore,” La Gamma says.

Visualizations can deliver fresh insights, including ones that overturn an organization’s traditional thinking. One nonprofit that Filla, the consultant, worked with thought it was getting more donations from foundations than from individuals but learned through visualization that the opposite was true.

Marry good design with a deep under- standing of what’s relevant to produce meaningful visualizations.

“Pretty data isn’t any better than data in a spreadsheet,” says Dusek Izaguirre of Heifer International. “It’s still overwhelming unless you show the right things.”

For nonprofits on a tight budget, inexpensive tools are available, including visualization features in spreadsheet software and low-cost or free resources like Fundraising Report Card and Tableau Public, the free version of the visualization software Tableau.

Use A.I. — thoughtfully.

When experimenting with artificial intelligence, many smaller nonprofits are relying on outside vendors who combine the organization’s donor data with “big data” gleaned from the internet. The analytic results can be useful, but since vendors don’t typically tell their customers which external data sets they are using, it can be difficult to know if the analysis is trash or treasure.

To get more relevant results, experts say, look for vendors who will provide lists of broad interests that you can select for use in searches, such as fine arts, higher education, children’s issues, and whether someone has given money through crowdfunding sites.

At Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Thompson says he focuses on using A.I. and other complex data analysis to optimize a donor’s “lifetime value.” Rather than focusing on what a donor might give in the next year, he seeks a view of their potential giving for the rest of their lives.

To avoid “analysis paralysis,” he decides which information he initially gives to fundraisers. Prospects might be ranked, for instance, in terms of how aggressive the fundraiser can be to maximize the chances of getting a gift.

“Can A.I. make a really meaningful contribution to philanthropy and philanthropic strategy?” he asks. “Absolutely. But it’s at its infancy.”