Building Strategy Using Data-Derived Insights: Major Gifts

Editor's Notes

• #2: Welcome to the WealthEngine Institute’s session on Building Strategy Using Data-Derived Insights for Major Gifts. This is one of a series a brief sessions designed to help you use data and analytics to develop and implement strategies to increase your fundraising effectiveness. Be sure to check back often for additional titles.
• #3: My name is Sally Boucher, I am the Director of Research at WealthEngine Institute. I have a fifteen-year history of working with nonprofits of all types and believe that all nonprofit organizations can benefit from data-driven decision making.
• #4: The information in this session is based on information in our workbook, “Growing Individual Gifts: An Analytic Approach to Data-Driven Success.” The workbook contains information on conducting analysis on historic data, doing a development audit, forecasting budgets, analyzing strengths and weaknesses in your development program and building strategies to take advantage of strengths and mitigate weaknesses. It also contains information, samples, and worksheets to help you implement those strategies. The Workbook is available free of charge for download from the WealthEngine website, www.wealthengine.com, or by joining the WealthEngine Institute, also free of charge and which you can do from our website.
• #5: In case you are not familiar with WealthEngine, we offer data and analytic solutions that help you understand your prospects and constituents. We have a search platform, called FindWealth 8, that allows you to do research on any number of individuals within your subscription period. We can screen and append data along with analytically derived ratings and scores for any number of constituent records you may have from 100 to 2MM or more. We a searchable database of high net worth individuals from which you can prospect by geography, interests, wealth characteristics or other attributes. And if you want to get the most out your data and analytics, we have experienced and knowledgeable consultants who can help you build strategies for success.
• #6: Let’s dive into our topic now and learn how to use analytics to drive strategy
• #7: Analysis is the process of breaking a complex topic or substance into smaller parts to gain a better understanding of it. Think of chemical analysis – you break a chemical compound into it’s constituent elements to learn what its components are.Analytics is the process of developing optimal, realistic decision recommendations based on your analysis. Once you’ve identified all of the components of your chemical compound, analytics would enable you to compare several compounds and recommend the one least likely to damage the environment if used as a fertilizer additive for household lawns.
• #8: Data on its own is simply data or symbols, and by itself has no intrinsic meaning.When data is processed, it becomes information that can be used to answer basic questions – who, what, where, and when questions.The application of data and data derived information is knowledge, and is dependent on our putting it into context. When we add context information becomes knowledge and can answer how and why questions.And lastly, we achieve wisdom by understanding and evaluating our knowledge.This is called the DIKW Pyramid or the Wisdom Hierarchy.
• #9: When developing strategies for your fundraising organization, it is essential to remember that all strategies should grow out of and be tied to organizational goals and objectives. In turn, theses goals and objectives derive from the vision and mission of your organization. Your vision and mission answer Why questions? Why do we exist? Why do we do what we do? Because we envision a world without hunger, and we are here to feed the hungry.Objectives and goals answer What questions: What shall we do to feed the hungry? What needs to happen to enable us to feed the hungry? Be sure that your goals are not only tied to the vision, mission and objectives of your organization, but are also MEASURABLE.Strategies and tactics answer How questions: How are we going to accomplish this goal? How will we raise additional money?
• #10: Let’s now take a look at how data, information and knowledge can guide strategies.
• #11: You can use two measures to determine your best major gift prospects. We all know that good major gift prospects have the capacity, or ability, to give a major gift. And we also know that to be viable, prospects must have an interest in our cause, and a connection to our organization. This can be measured as “likelihood to give” and can be determined according to their giving history with your organization, through an analysis of points of connection with your organization, or through a predictive model. In this diagram we see the best prospect are shaded in green in the upper right hand corner, representing high likelihood and high capacity.
• #12: Substituting numbers for people in this diagram, the green are again our best prospects, and the blue are also good major gift prospects. Because they do not have as high a likelihood to give, or interest and connection to our cause, they will need more cultivation before they are asked for a substantial contribution.
• #13: In our scenario, we can now look at all the constituents in our data base to determine the top two tiers for major gift cultivation, in green and blue.
• #14: 28 are optimal, with high capacity and high likelihood to give.
• #15: 544 are good prospects who need additional cultivation. We would be well served to put some of these into a high-touch leadership giving campaign or assign to gift officers or prospect managers to start the cultivation process.
• #16: Organizations often select their best prospects for major gifts based on the prospects giving history to the organization and anecdotal information or gut feelings.
• #17: For instance, this organization based their portfolio assignments purely on past giving. They have 243 prospects assigned to gift officers. When we total the capacity of all their assigned prospects it works out to $46.4MM under management.
• #18: Now let’s look at how we can increase fundraising potential by assigning the highest capacity and likelihood prospects we identified through data analysis.
• #19: Assigning the top 243 candidates based on highest capacity and highest likelihood to give gives us a total capacity under management of nearly $286MM. This is 6 times the amount that is being managed with the current assignments.
• #20: Let’s assume for a moment that this organization closes on average 20 major gifts during a year. And we’ll assume that they close on average at 10% of the capacity of the prospect. Under the current assignments, the organization stands to raise $381,500 from these 20 gifts.If they replace the current assignments with the high capacity and high likelihood prospects, they stand to raise $2,351,000 from the 20 closed gifts. That’s an additional $2MM from 20 gifts closed.To implement this strategy, they will simply review the current prospects and remove any under active cultivation that are not part of the high capacity/high likelihood group, or those in or near solicitation. Then they will replenish the portfolios with these newly identified, high potential prospects.Any prospects in the next tier down should receive high-touch communications, invitations and appeals, and these will form a pipeline of additional prospects.
• #21: In major gifts, it is often hard to know exactly how much to ask for. Ask amounts may be based on instinct, gut feelings or what feels comfortable for the solicitor or major gift officer.
• #22: Capacity estimates make it very easy to analyze your major gift production. For instance, we can look at data for two gift officers, Jocelyn and Sarah, and knowing the capacity of their prospects, the amount asked for in their proposals, and the amount received, we can determine their average % of capacity asked, % of ask received, and % of capacity received.
• #23: In this example, we can see that the two officers are closing gifts that average about 10% of their prospects capacity.
• #24: When we consider that the minimum major gift amount for this organization is $25,000, and we see that both Sarah and Jocelyn are averaging asks around $25,000, it may be the case that they feel confident and comfortable asking for that amount, but are reluctant or unsure when asking for higher amounts.
• #25: On average, they are receiving gifts slightly below their asks, averaging around $13,500.
• #26: As before, if they close 20 gifts at the current ratios, they will raise $263,000 for the major gift program.
• #27: Now let’s see how capacity estimates can help guide gift officers and development managers towards higher, yet appropriate, ask amounts.
• #28: Sarah was only asking for gifts of about 14% of capacity. Jocelyn was asking for gifts of 25% of capacity. Let’s see what happens when we increase Sarah's confidence in her prospects high capability, and encourage her to increase her asks to 25% of capacity on average. First, it increases her average ask size from $24,000 up to almost $42,000.
• #29: Keeping percentage of ask received constant, this leads to an increase in average gift received from 10% to 17%
• #30: With an average closed gift value of 15% for both officers, based on their average of 20 closed gifts they would raise $394,986 based on this single, and simple, change.
• #31: This represents $132,000 in additional revenues from the major gift team. I don’t want to give the impression that I am recommending everyone ask a static 25% of capacity – on the contrary, each prospect should be evaluated individually and an appropriate ask amount should be determined based on their closeness to the organization, other charities they may be supporting, their unique interests and your unique funding needs, and the timing and life stage of your prospect.However, be aware that gift officers often require training to fully understand capacity ratings and how they are developed; experience to come to trust the ratings and data upon which they are based; and skill-building and practice to gain comfort in the major gift solicitation process.
• #32: Investing in data and analytics, or simply analyzing the data you already have, can lead you to make simple strategy adjustments that can uncover untapped fundraising potential
• #33: In today's examples we found that by analyzing their prospect pool, this organization was able to increase their capacity under management and without closing additional gifts, increase their fundraising potential by $2MM.By analyzing ask amounts in relation to prospects capacity, they were able to encourage one major gift officer to adjust ask amounts to more closely reflect her prospects capacity, and increase potential by another $132,000. If the organization realizes even a small percentage of this $2.1MM potential, even 10%, they will gain an additional $210,000 in major gift revenue, yielding a return on investment of 740% based on a $25,000 investment in data and analytics.I hope you’ll agree that using data and analytics to enhance your fundraising can take your fundraising to the next level.
• #34: Please look for additional Building Strategy presentations from WealthEngine to learn how data can enhance your annual giving, events, and more.
• #35: And don’t forget to download the free “Growing Individual Gifts” Workbook, visit Prospect Research Resources.com and join the WealthEngine Institute today.
• #36: If you’d like to learn more about WealthEngineand how we can help you with your fundraising challenges, call or email us today!