The NonProfit Times - July 15, 2008 - (Page 13)

DEMOGRAPHICS Continued from page 12 names and addresses to a company for a data append the percent of households that match the company’s database is usually between 80 percent and 90 percent. However, that does not mean that all of the data elements in the database are present for each household. Age is one of the variables that have high availability. Of the donor names provided, between 70 percent and 90 percent will have a match for age of head of household. Gender is also present on most overlaid records because it can be deduced from the first name. Estimated income has a high match rate because it is often inferred from nearby households with a known income or from census data. Also, some companies have proprietary models to estimate income from other, more readily available, data. Known marital status might be present on about 50 percent of the donor records while for another 40 percent the marital status is inferred. Occupation could be known for between 20 percent and 30 percent of your donors and educational level for 20 percent or less. Lifestyle information, such as an interest in golf, pets, travel, etc., is likely to be present for just a small percentage of your donors. When you select the data elements you want appended to your donor records, you should select those that are available on the highest percent of households and can be useful in marketing. To summarize, the information that you receive about your donors will be spotty in most cases. To gauge the accuracy of the data, it is a good idea to include the names and addresses of staff members in the overlay. Then you can compare actual information to what appears in the overlay. There is another decision to be made older than the age of 65; 65 percent of your donors are female; 30 percent have some college education.These data can be presented as bar charts and even compared to the U.S. general population so you have an idea of how different your donors are to the U.S. as a whole. This level of information has somewhat limited marketing usefulness, however.You after data have been appended to your donor file. What method will you use to characterize your donors? Two options are profiling and clustering.You will probably have to send your data to an outside company for analysis. Please respect your donors by not including names and addresses if you do this. In the profiling method the data will be described one variable at a time. For example, 70 percent of your donors are won’t know how many donors are married, older than 65, and have incomes of more than $70,000, for example.This might be an important donor segment for some organizations. Many organizations have a segment of donors that is made up of affluent families with children, who make larger-than-average contributions. This would not be evident from a donor profile. Clustering is a statistical method that groups like donors into clusters or seg- ments. It would tell you if you have a segment of donors that is made up of affluent families with children, who make largerthan-average contributions and what percent of your donors are in this segment. It would tell you what percent of your donors are single females older than 60 with no children and low incomes.It is useful to keep the numbers of segments that are developed to no more than five or six. Most organizations would not want to develop more than this number of strategies for their donor base. The information derived from cluster analysis is more actionable that that gained from profiling. For example, organizations can go out to more affluent families with more personalized messages and appeals. Often the characteristics of a segment can be used to select prospect names from a compiled database. With either method you will have gone a long way toward answering the question, “Who are my donors?” But, ultimately you will come back to the question of how to specifically use the information to improve your fundraising. Like other marketing analytics, profiling and clustering are just tools, not ends in and of themselves. NPT Don Austin, Ph.D., is vice president of Client Strategy at May Development Services in Greenwich, Conn., a division of Direct Media. His email is daustin@directmedia.com SEARCH Thousands OF MILLION DOLLAR+ www.nptimes.com THE NONPROFIT TIMES is excited to announce a new portal offering free searches to our database of over 4,400 corporate million dollar+ donations. The only FREE portal of its kind, this is a valuable tool for nonprofits looking for information on corporate giving. Using a portal on our home page, www.nptimes.com, or by visiting www.nptgrantsearch.com visitors will have access to an extensive database of 4,400+ corporate donations. This regularly updated data can be easily searched by business name or by over 25 different recipient causes. Once retrieved, the data can be downloaded into an Excel spreadsheet. Information on gift size, donation year, recipient and donor are all provided. Another great service from the industry leader. As the leading business publication for nonprofits, we continually look for ways to help nonprofits effectively manage their organizations and raise funds. We encourage you to visit our new portal and try a free search! Information powered by Nozasearch.com FREE! JULY 15, 2008 CORPORATE Donations THE NONPROFIT TIMES www.nptimes.com 13 http://www.nptimes.com http://www.nptimes.com http://www.nptgrantsearch.com http://Nozasearch.com http://www.nptimes.com

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The NonProfit Times - July 15, 2008

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