Data: if you put rubbish in, you get rubbish out.
Having good data is key to the success of any fundraising team, but the quirks of your organisation’s database system can take some unpicking. Last year we updated over 2800 records following a personal information update exercise. Although the data import put all the new email addresses and phone numbers in, what we had forgotten is that it wouldn’t delete the old ones! So much of the last week has been spent tidying up our data. Our giving week campaign is almost entirely digital so clean data and current email addresses are key.
I know that the key to success in a digital campaign is to personalise content as much as possible. This is going to mean segmenting our data. Knowing we have donors and non-donors, parents and alumni and 11 different boarding houses mean before we have done any real analysis we have 44 different segments. I will keep you posted on whether we manage to have different communications for all these groups.
Planning for what happens once the giving week is over is also on my mind. If we do recruit 200 new donors how do we inspire them to carry on giving in the future? Well, it starts with them having a positive experience this time around. One of the best bits of my job is thanking people so coming up with a good way to thank them is the first thing. Then we need to follow up a few months later with how their donation is making a difference. Then when we next do our telephone campaign we can get them to think about a regular gift. At the heart of all this will be good data.
