Tag Archives: database

Raising Money for the Arts – with Crowdfunding

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Never heard of crowdfunding? Me either. But it’s raising millions from tiny gifts for artists around the world. The September 4, 2010 issue of the Economist featured a story, “Putting your money where your mouse is” that described the crowdfunding phenomenon quite clearly. People’s comments on the article were even more illuminating.

Going beyond social media and “tip jars” on websites, crowdfunding takes advantage of both of those methods to fund creative works through a defined dollar goal, within a specific time. If the minimum amount is not raised, no funds are collected. Interesting, huh?

Let’s say I need seed funding to create a documentary about the dynamics of homelessness in Tampa Bay, Florida. Using an intermediary like Kickstarter, IndieGogo or Sellaband (yes, they collect a fee), I create a campaign to raise $5,000 minimum within six months. I promote the campaign on my website, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and anywhere else I have built a fan following. Once I reach $5,000 committed I can keep raising money until the time limit. Funds successfully raised for projects have ranged from under $5,000 to as much as $200,000.

The reality is that the funds raised many times do not meet the full project funding needed. Most projects have grant or other funding secured as well. What crowdfunding does is give artists the social leverage they need to secure additional funding and give their fans the chance to be a part of the creation.

Fans getting the opportunity to be part of the creation. Wow! Doesn’t that sound familiar? C’mon! Let’s re-phrase that into language familiar to the fundraiser. Donors getting the opportunity to be part of the campaign. Hah! Now that I’ve got you on that thought-train, doesn’t it highlight how important it is to start with our donors when we are looking to raise funds? They have already given to us, they like us, and they want to help.

Helping fundraisers prioritize the donors in their databases is a service Aspire Research Group is proud to offer its clients. Sometimes we get so excited about the big dollars we hear in the news we forget that there is gold right inside of our own well-nurtured donor base, just waiting to be called upon. Call on yours today!

5 ways to use donor ratings

Focused Fundraising, , , , ,

No matter how we get donor ratings into our databases (vendors like DonorSearch or WealthEngine or even *gasp* Aspire Research Group :-)) sometimes we forget to use them. It’s sort of like carefully selecting coupons for the store and then forgetting to pull them out when you get to the cashier. We all do it. Okay, I can’t speak for you but I have certainly done that!

Let’s start with the most forgotten and work our way to the least forgotten:

(1)  Choosing people to solicit a gift from for a specific project or initiative

(2)  Choosing people to invite to a specific event

(3)  Pulling a list of planned gift prospects or high-end annual appeal prospects to schedule visits with

(4)  Pulling a list of best prospects for an annual appeal (fewer people, less cost, higher return)

(5)  Populating a major gift or campaign prospect pool

For some tasks, combining the best rating scores with other criteria in your database, such as event attendance or interest in a program, gets you the sweetest list. Whenever you pull a list out of your database, ask yourself if you should include donor ratings as part of your strategy. The results will delight you!

Fundraisers like you are busy, creative people.

Have you ever used donor ratings to raise more money and maybe even lessen expenses at the same time?

We’d love to hear about it – please share!

A *Middle Child* Donor Speaks Out

Data Mining, Focused Fundraising, , , , ,

The Chronicle of Philanthropy held a live discussion with Jill Warren – a self-described middle class donor – and then wrote an article about it for readers. The moral of the story was that some people with middle-class incomes are passionate enough to make annual gifts representing $10,000 or more – in Jill’s case, up to 60% of household income. That’s a major gift for many organizations.

I worked for an organization who had a “Jill” on staff. The fundraising team did not want to put her on the major gift track because her income was not great, but her passion for the organization was inspiring and she gave a high percentage of her income to demonstrate that passion. I found it confusing. Based upon her demonstrated giving and absolutely by her lifetime giving she was a significant donor to the organization. But she was never assigned a solicitor or specifically cultivated and nurtured as a donor.

An analogy might be a Mercedes customer who drives a Ford. She drives her Ford into the Mercedes dealership and routinely purchases Mercedes for her chauffer business, but the dealership treats her the same as a customer who has only ever once purchased a Mercedes. Why? Because she drives a Ford. Ridiculous? Absolutely!

Wealth or perceived ability to give should not be our *primary* indicator for a best donor prospect. Sometimes the prospect screening and software vendors lead us astray. Vendors are looking to make a profit and focus on those organizations with the biggest budgets to buy their products.

Nonprofit organizations are not looking for only the biggest wallets to give to their organizations. Nonprofits are looking for the most philanthropic people, the people most passionate about their mission AND THEN of those people, the ones who have the ability to support that mission. Passion trumps wealth.

Passion provides us with donors who:

  • give recurring or monthly gifts that pay keep our organization running every day
  • give us multiple major gifts and challenge other donors to stretch their gifts
  • leave us part or all of their estate
  • inspire our program recipients, our donors, and ourselves

If you look for wealth first you will miss the passionate “Jill”s in your database.

You can use common sense prospect research techniques to identify those people in your database with passion. Affinity searches can be as simple as filtering for recency, frequency and longevity of giving or you can invest in a more sophisticated statistical analysis to take into account event attendance and other data points.

Get your list together and then get out there!

Moves Management = Money

Focused Fundraising, , , ,

In the business world it’s called Customer Relationship Management or CRM. In fundraising we usually call it moves management or prospect tracking. Whatever we name our system, we use it to keep our prospects on track to a gift and to steward our donors to keep giving.

In larger shops there are prospect research positions devoted to the data maintenance involved in moves management. Small shops do not have the luxury of prospect research staff, but have the same need to bring in gifts. I have a free publication on my website that describes in some detail how to build a moves management system.

So I thought I would use this space to share with you great solutions that some small and mid-size development shops are using successfully.

  • A woman at the Planet Philanthropy conference in Boca Raton, Florida, described how she exports her top prospects to a spreadsheet. Because she does not have the time or staff to input all of the data into her database, she tracks her progress in Excel. Gifts and significant pieces of information go in the database, but the tracking does not.
  • Another person I spoke to uses the free individual version of Salesforce.com because her donor database does not have a function to track actions taken with a prospect. This online software allows her to get reminders and document the contacts she has made with prospects and donors. It even has a tracking mechanism she uses to print reports on just her proposals and solicitations.
  • More than one fundraiser I have spoken to uses Outlook to manage top prospects and donors. By making notes in the address book and marking actions to be taken on the calendar, people have been crafting their own methods of tracking. Whatever works to keep you in contact with your prospects!
  • And for those very special donors and prospects, people do all sorts of things to keep them on their minds. A post-it note on the computer as a daily reminder is my favorite.

Creating a moves management system that uses the full potential of your donor database is the most effective and efficient way to go, but there are alternatives when database functionality is limited. Aspire Research Group helps organizations create custom moves management systems that work for you, your organization and most importantly, your donors. If you have questions about creating a moves management system, call us at (727) 231-0516.

Whether you have 10 top prospects or 110, if you stay in touch with them consistently the gifts will arrive. So get moving!

Facebook and your Database

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HubSMThe Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) group on LinkedIn had a recent discussion posted. A fundraiser was wondering if there was an automated or easy way to get a list of her organization’s fans so she could add this information into the donor database.

As it turns out someone commented that his organization has a direct update from Facebook to its Harris Connect online alumni community. From there the data is exported in and out of the donor database.

Are you looking for ways to keep track of your different methods of engagement?

The Multi-Channel Fundraising Game

Data Mining, Discussion, , ,

WoodGameThe Philanthropy Journal wrote an article about the results of a new study released by Convio: The Next Generation of American Giving.  What I found most compelling is that people across the ages are responding and engaging with nonprofits through many different channels such as direct mail, website, social media, and events. My own preferences are that I enjoy getting Facebook updates, I like to attend events of interest, I receive a printed request to give and then make the gift through the website.

What does this mean for prospect research? Right now many nonprofits are struggling with how to track and evaluate direct mail and events, but movement is afoot to track and evaluate interaction across all those channels. By incorporating multi-channel interaction into the donor database, donor analytics could take on new dimensions saving time and money by allowing nonprofits to react and predict donor behaviors.

Is your organization tracking Facebook interactions in your database? How about Twitter or LinkedIn? Do you know if the commenter on your blog is a donor?

Privacy-New version being released

Data Mining, , , ,

QuestionGirlsmallThe New York Times ran an article today entitled “How Privacy Vanishes Online“. It is a nice summary of what has mostly been reported separately up until now. We all know that we are revealing a lot of personal information online and we should watch our privacy settings and be aware of scams. However, many of us do not realize that we are not anonymous online – or more than ever before – offline.

Simply put, data mining is the analysis of a large set of data to find patterns and then predict things. What the New York Times is telling us is that we are providing a lot of pieces of personal data that when analyzed in one set can predict not just our behaviors but reveal our identities. No-one is anonymous and this is not a television show!

So maybe we need to evaluate our definitions of privacy. As nonprofits, we need to ensure we have a privacy policy that defines how we maintain our own information but it is also very important that it covers how we work with outside vendors.

For example, if our donor database is hosted online, what does that mean in terms of privacy? Will the vendor be collecting and using any of the information? ANY INFORMATION is a new thought. As the smart folks at the University of Texas and Carnegie Mellon University have demonstrated, it is not enough anymore to strip data of typical identifiers and feel confident it is anonymous.