Empathetic. Donor-centric. Sympathetic. Your marketing communications are "ticking" along as they should be. But, as we’re all painfully aware, the right-side of the brain just loves piping in to talk about numbers, figures, trends and goals.

Instead of telling that portion of the brain to buzz off (as I often do), use it to create the fourth and final piece of your online fundraising plan: The Numbers. Below, check out our tips for getting a jump on mapping what your numbers look like now and what you hope they look like later:

Budget Tips:

• Planning to raise money online? Of course you are! Why else would you be developing an online fundraising plan? Be sure to build into your budget what you plan to spend for donation processing. For instance, you can check out our own Custom Donate Now service–great value for a price that won’t eat up your budget.
• Fixing up your website? Be realistic about the features you need versus the features you want. Set up your budget ahead of time, and don’t be distracted by shiny objects: your website is a tool and a resource, not a fireworks show. Learn how to spend your website dollars wisely and read great tips from a real pro and Nonprofit 911 presenter.
• Thinking about advertising? If you’re considering developing banner ads or other paid online outreach, remember to keep in mind the various items you’re paying for: design, development and placement costs.
• Hiring extra help? You may be planning to use the talents of a copywriter for your website or consultant to help you out. Those folks often like to get paid–go figure. And in planning this line item, do some brainstorming about how you might cut costs: Maybe a graphic designer (could be a student) will donate time or a communications intern can develop testimonials for your website.

Tracking, Benchmarking, Reporting Tips:

• Custom DonateNow. Are you a CDN customer? If so, don’t forget to log into your account to check out your donor reports. You can even track your campaigns by evaluating the tracking codes for different DonateNow buttons on your site and in your emails.
• Email messaging. Determine an evaluation schedule for monitoring your e-communications. Will you track the number of donors (past and new) directly tied to your email communications? Monitor giving levels of donors receiving your emails versus those who are not.
• Website traffic. Sign up for Google Analytics to evaluate site traffic. Work language into your online fundraising plan about how you will determine which content is most appealing and how you will increase visibility of that content while simultaneously finding a way to tie in giving opportunities.
• Testing. Not happy with your fundraising results? Test out new ideas! Vary your email messaging and mix around your website a bit. Testing is a vital piece of the puzzle when working to improve your numbers!

Rebecca Ruby, Marketing Specialist, Network for Good & Editor of www.Fundraising123.org

Construction and maintenance of a database are essential elements, but, like almost anything, doing it wrong can have far-reaching consequences.

At the DM Days conference, Arthur Middleton Hughes, president and solutions architect of KnowledgeBase Marketing Inc., said that there are nine deadly mistakes made with databases that will ruin chances for success.

The nine mistakes are:

• Lack of a marketing strategy. A basic strategy rule is to put yourself in the customer’s shoes.
• Focus on price instead of service. Database marketing, not discounts, will build loyalty.
• Failure to use tests and controls. Database marketing is accountable and everything can be measured.
• Poor segment strategy. Think of status levels and marketing segments.
• Failure to link the database to the Web. Your site must have information available to customers/prospects when they use the Web.
• Building in-house. Marketing databases are unlike any other IT function.
• Treating all customers alike.  For example, loyal customers are more profitable then new or disloyal customers.
• Failure to develop a retention program. Every dollar spent on retention returns more than a dollar of acquisition.
• Lack of a forceful leader. Success requires directing the activities of many internal and external units. Database marketers must be leaders.

NonProfit Times Weekly, The Nonprofit Times

"Fifty million people changed their email address last year," says Eric Groves. "How many of those are on your email list right now?"

…Not happy with your answer to that one? Don’t worry: Groves says a little regular maintenance can keep your list hale and hearty. Here are some of his choices for list-cleaning best practices:

Analyze bounce backs. Investigate why messages bounce, and remove any addresses with a hard bounce from your list. Also identify and correct typos like .con instead of .com.

Manage unsubscribe requests. If your email marketing service doesn’t process unsubscribes automatically, make this a top priority.

Monitor your "reply to" inbox. Because spammers have been known to use unsubscribe functions to verify an address, some recipients prefer to make the request by email. Check your inbox for them.

Re-engage inactive subscribers. Design a campaign for those who haven’t opened your emails for the last six months. "If this doesn’t work," says Groves, "remove them. Clearly, they aren’t interested."

Form one good habit. Set time aside after each campaign—or once a month—for analyzing data and tossing out bad addresses.

Good list hygiene pays off. "Your sparkling clean email list may shrink a bit, but will outperform your big, old, messy list any day," Groves concludes.

MarketingProfs. Click to read the article.

Some highlights from this session:

Why do some organizations raise 2x the money with the same staffing?

• Prospect potential – what is out there?
• Strategy – how do we tap into it?
• Execution – can we execute the strategies?

Three business processes of Fundraising:

• Base Development (DM)  - Goals:
  • Broaden participation
  • Raise unrestricted revenue
  • Teach giving behavior
  • Develop organizational loyalty
• Major gift Development – Goal:
  • Maximize philanthropic behavior & loyalty
• Prospect

Business Understanding:

• Objective of program
• Evaluation & deployment: projections

Data Understanding:

• Acquire new donors
• Engage non donor constituents
• Renew previous years donors
• Upgrade donors
• Move donors into the major gift pipeline

Laura Cox, Sr. Account Executive, Direct Media, Inc.

Empathetic. Donor-centric. Sympathetic. Your marketing communications are “ticking” along as they should be. But, as we’re all painfully aware, the right-side of the  brain just loves piping in to talk about numbers, figures, trends and goals.

Instead of telling that portion of the brain to buzz off (as I often do), use it to create the fourth and final piece of your online fundraising plan: The Numbers. Below, check out our tips for getting a jump on mapping what your numbers look like now and what you hope they look like later:

Budget Tips:

• Planning to raise money online? Of course you are! Why else would you be developing an online fundraising plan? Be sure to build into your budget what you plan to spend for donation processing. For instance, you can check out our own Custom DonateNow service–great value for a price that won’t eat up your budget.
• Fixing up your website? Be realistic about the features you need versus the features you want. Set up your budget ahead of time, and don’t be distracted by shiny objects: your website is a tool and a resource, not a fireworks show. Learn how to spend your website dollars wisely and read great tips from a real pro and Nonprofit 911 presenter.
• Thinking about advertising? If you’re considering developing banner ads or other paid online outreach, remember to keep in mind the various items you’re paying for: design, development and placement costs.
• Hiring extra help? You may be planning to use the talents of a copywriter for your website or consultant to help you out. Those folks often like to get paid–go figure. And in planning this line item, do some brainstorming about how you might cut costs: Maybe a graphic designer (could be a student) will donate time or a communications intern can develop testimonials for your website.

Tracking, Benchmarking, Reporting Tips:

• Custom DonateNow. Are you a CDN customer? If so, don’t forget to log into your account to check out your donor reports. You can even track your campaigns by evaluating the tracking codes for different DonateNow buttons on your site and in your emails.  
• Email messaging. Determine an evaluation schedule for monitoring your e-communications. Will you track the number of donors (past and new) directly tied to your email communications? Monitor giving levels of donors receiving your emails versus those who are not.
• Website traffic. Sign up for Google Analytics to evaluate site traffic. Work language into your online fundraising plan about how you will determine which content is most appealing and how you will increase visibility of that content while simultaneously finding a way to tie in giving opportunities.
• Testing. Not happy with your fundraising results? Test out new ideas! Vary your email messaging and mix around your website a bit. Testing is a vital piece of the puzzle when working to improve your numbers! 

Rebecca Ruby, Marketing Specialist, Network for Good

Fundraisers who want board members and upper management singing the praises of direct-response fundraising have to convert them.

In the session “Managing Up: Helping Your Board and Senior Management Become Direct Response Evangelists” co-presenter Bryan Terpstra, of L.W. Robbins Associates, said that fundraisers must change board members’ minds by speaking their language.

Read more from the FRS Conference Roundup.

Melissa Busch, Associate Senior Editor, FundRaising Success

Some highlights from this session:

Why do some organizations raise 2x the money with the same staffing?

• Prospect potential – what is out there?
• Strategy – how do we tap into it?
• Execution – can we execute the strategies?

Three business processes of Fundraising:

• Base Development (DM) - Goals:
• Broaden participation
• Raise unrestricted revenue
• Teach giving behavior
• Develop organizational loyalty
• Major gift Development – Goal:
• Maximize philanthropic behavior & loyalty
• Prospect

Business Understanding:

• Objective of program
• Evaluation & deployment: projections

Data Understanding:

• Acquire new donors
• Engage non donor constituents
• Renew previous years donors
• Upgrade donors
• Move donors into the major gift pipeline

Laura Cox, Sr. Account Executive, Direct Media, Inc.

Here are the hot points from this session, including a case study by American Heart Association.

What is modeling?

• Advanced statistical methods that analyze data which represent & predict future behavior

What can it do?

• Select donors on desired future outcome, not just prior reactions
• Help mail smarter & improve ROI
• Break down into populations & show which groups should be contacted more frequently

Co-op Database:

• Holistic view of philanthropy
• Each organizations history is used to influence the database
• Always make sure security & integrity are maintained

House file modeling:

• Combine co-op with organizations own RFM data
• Donors are scored & ranked from high to low
• Take information & mail to those who are higher – more likely to respond.
• Don’t mail as often to the lower deciles.
• Can identify donors who will upgrade significantly to larger gifts
• Look at age, length of residence, spending volume, # of adults in HH
• Then do thank you at point of acquisition via call or written letter

Mid Level Donor Cultivation Model:

• Group the more responsive donors & larger gift givers
• Treat that group differently to try & get a higher level gift

Sustainer Invitation Model:

• Identify those that are likely to become sustainers or pledge program donors

Acquisition Modeling:

• Zip level on upfront – applied pre merge/purge
• Household level model – applied post merge/purge

Warm Name Conversion Model:

• Gathered from walk, bike, gala or other special event
• People that are most likely to convert to ongoing DM Donors

Creating & Utilizing Profile Models – American Heart Association case study

The Dear Neighbor Program

• Volunteer based
• Mail letters to neighbors & collect donations

What is Profile Model?

• Analyzing a group that exhibits desired behavior & similarities
• Define objectives
• Define target group (i.e. $30+ volunteers)
• Analyze target group to create profile
• Average age, length of residence, income, interests, gender
• Apply model to desired universe & get tiered groups/buckets
• Validation
• Look at target group ($30+ volunteers) & see where they fall in bucket. They should fall in top tier.
• Application
• Let the model do the work

American Heart found that top tier prospects outperformed other prospects by 65%

Refresh models every 6 months – 1 year.

Laura Cox, Sr. Account Executive, Direct Media, Inc.

If an organization has made a commitment to a team approach, rather than a rigidly hierarchical one, the decision-making process can take on a far different look from one residing with one person.

The good thing about the team approach is that it can reflect decisions reflecting the contributions of many people. That can also be its downfall.

In his book Great Business Teams, Howard M. Guttman identifies certain steps that teams can take to ensure that their decisions are both as speedy and effective as possible.

The steps are:

• Identify the decisions that need to be made. The question is not who will make the decision but which key decisions the tam will be making.
• Identify decision subteams. Subteams become steering committees, based on the nature and type of decisions that must be made.
• Assign accountability. The individual who is responsible for driving closure should be process focused, able to depersonalize and able to see the big picture.
• Set objectives and timelines. Because not every subteam makes decisions but rather gathers facts, clarify how much authority it has and when it will present findings.
• Select the decision-making mode. There are three basic types: unilateral, consultative and consensus.
• Identify information sources. Learn who should be tapped for information.
• Determine the shelf life of the decision. Few decisions are forever. Set a postdecision review date.

NPT Weekly Update, NonProfit Times

Members of the Millennial generation are just as likely to open their wallets to charities as those born decades earlier, according to a report released in May by the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University.

The report, which analyzed generational giving trends by focusing on donors’ motivations for giving, types of causes supported and the amount donated, showed that young donors are as generous as those from older generations.

The study, funded by Campbell & Co., examined the giving habits of more than 10,000 people from five generations. Results show those born after 1981, known as the Millennial generation, are less likely to give and tend to give less when they do make a donation. However, it further revealed that this trend is associated with income, education level and religious affiliation rather than the time period during which they were born. All other factors being equal, the study showed, the average giving level of Millennials is about the same as that of other generations. Read More on FRS’s website.

Melissa Busch, associate senior editor, FundRaising Success