advizor-how-increase-your-annual-giving-revenue

Some Definitions• Lybunt: Current Donor // Gave in the last full FY in the last full FY • Non-Donor: Never gave and • Current Year Donor: Has given this FY... Are my donors giving more o

How to Increase Your Annual Giving Revenue by Sending

and Calling Less.

Today’s Presenter:

o President & CEO, ADVIZOR Solutions

o 15 Years in the Business Intelligence Sector

o Extensive data analytics experience

o and client strategy consulting experience

o B.A Physics from Dartmouth, Harvard MBA

o Well regarded by Gartner, Forrester, etc.

Why Annual Giving Matters

(aka engagement or affinity)…

Some Definitions

• Lybunt: Current Donor // Gave in the last full FY

in the last full FY

• Non-Donor: Never gave

and

• Current Year Donor: Has given this FY

Tactical: Focus & Timing

Top Line: Is This Good or Bad?

• Solid top line growth:

Solid Top Line … Eroding Base

• Solid top line growth:

• Two key sub-components:

in Gift Size

Result: Weak & Declining Participation

1 Participation Am I growing my donor base over time?

2 Donor stability Once I acquire a donor, how good of a

job am I doing at keeping him/her? When donors lapse do

I do a good job of getting them back?

3 Appeal yields Is my messaging connecting with my

constituents? Am I using the right media to reach them?

4 Touchpoints Am I soliciting with the right frequency?

5 Avg gift size trends Are my donors giving more

over time?

The Challenge

• Established Programs Most programs have been

running for some time Teams are used to looking at

things a certain way that may not highlight strategic

issues

• Tons of Data Untangling what worked and what didn’t can often be a challenging process

• Resistance to Change. Habits, patterns, and inertia

can get in the way Teams are used to the established programs Some team members can fear for their jobs

if, for example, less is sent

Let’s Look at Strategic Metrics

Participation Looks Pretty Good*

* This is a mature program with high participation %; other newer

programs will be substantially lower It’s the trend lines that we focus on.

But, collapsing rate

of re-acquisition

And, current year Non-Donor acquisition is terrible.

But What’s Really Going On?

Retention

is fine.

DONOR STABILITY

Very High % of Lapsed Donors

• Sybunt = 1.5x Lybunt (5,279 / 3,559; .4 to 7 is good)

• This is really high

• “The most expensive donor is the one that you lose”

A Better Example: Top Performer

Sybunt = 4x Lybunt (17.7 / 43.2)

Critical to Stop the Erosion

• The longer they lapse the harder to re-acquire

Recent Lapsed behave more like

Donors

Long Lapsed more

• How to fix: scour the data to find best practices

• Appeals that work

• Regional differences … etc.

Best Practice: Ohio

(Very Low % of Lapsed Donors)

Leverage Ohio as a best

practice What makes

Ohio different?

• Hold regional events

• Leverage famous person

• Frequent touchpoints after

events with attendees

• Focus messaging around

event themes

30%

Bad

Good

APPEAL YIELDS

Uneven Appeal Results

7 out of 34 Appeal Programs

Are Clearing Target 2% Yield

What makes them different??

More Personal

Letters.

Sent to known groups by class agents.

Focused message for reunion classes.

Focused message

medical professionals.

But Half (16) Yield <.1%;

They Total 276k Sends (33%)

General message to

everyone Heavy Email; light

on other media

TOUCHPOINTS

• Mostly by Email (Blue)

Under and Over Touching

Similar Profile for Non-Donor

and Long Lapsed

7 Best Appeals Touch Very Few People and do so Infrequently

7 Best Appeals Touch Very Few People and do so Infrequently

WHAT TO DO

Segment Non-Donors

Study non-donors who have been recently acquired Who are they? What

are their characteristics? Who else has similar characteristics??

For Graduates L5Y: Women, live

in New York City, have degrees of MACC, JD, PHARMD, CERT, BBA, or BSHP*

For Graduates older than L5Y: Married, live in Virginia, Texas, or New York City, have Professional Degrees such as JDs, MBAs, BBAs, event attendees*

Action Plan

(Example)

• Cut Back

o Do not solicit everybody

o Stop sending ineffective appeals

• Select Target Group(s )

o Segment Long Lapse & Non Donor pool based on characteristics of recently acquired donors, e.g.:

non-– For Graduates L5Y: women, live in New York City, have degrees of MACC, JD, PHARMD, CERT, BBA, or BSHP (weighted calculation using all of these factors)

– For Graduates older than L5Y: married, live in Virginia, Texas, or New York City, have Professional Degrees such as JDs, MBAs, BBAs, event attendees (weighted calculation using all of these factors)

o This group is ~130k, or 30% of the total 480k population

• Increase the frequency of Effective Appeals to Target Groups

o 7 Programs that have worked

o 6 to 12 touches per person per annum

• Use Message Themes that connect to Interest Areas

o Learn from degrees, events attended, newsletter clickthroughs, etc.

o Experiment

Northern Illinois Case Study

• Solicitation schedule wasn’t donor centric

• Treating all Sybunts the same

• Segmented Sybunts by number of years lapsed

• Mailed to far fewer people

• Predictive modeling on Non Donor pools

Northern Illinois Results

• Revenue up over 70% since 2012

• Average gift size up 60%

• All major mail solicitations were sent to less people

and made more money each of the last three fiscal years

• Acquired 17% more new donors in FY15 than FY14

• First time donor retention is up from 23% to 30%

• With Holiday Cards tripled the revenue in one year

while sending 5k less pieces (25% less)

Webinar on this case study at: www.AdvizorSolutions.com/resources/webinars

1 Participation Am I growing my donor base over time?

2 Donor stability Once I acquire a donor, how good of a

job am I doing at keeping him/her? When donors lapse do

I do a good job of getting them back?

3 Appeal yields Is my messaging connecting with my

constituents? Am I using the right media to reach them?

4 Touchpoints Am I soliciting with the right frequency?

5 Avg gift size trends Are my donors giving more

over time?

Discussion, Q&A

Follow-up: Doug.Cogswell@AdvizorSolutions.com

+1.630.971.5201 www.AdvizorSolutions.com

1 Annual Giving-> Using Existing Data to Segment Messaging & Improve Results (with Northern Illinois University)

2 Donor Retention, Acquisition, and Appeal Targeting