Growing Donor Files: It's Time for a New Approach

You may be asking, “OK, that all sounds great, but how do we actually do this for fundraising?” Admittedly, talking about donor centricity is a lot easier than practicing it. But the opportunity is too big and the stakes too high not to take action.

Some numbers
A large national health charity worked with Merkle to build demographic clusters last year based on its donor file so every donor fell into one of four clusters. (In full disclosure, Jeff Regen heads up the nonprofit group at Merkle.) The clusters were built entirely using third-party data so prospects could be placed into clusters, too. The two largest and most important clusters we’ll call Traditional Retirees (retired, high-school grads/some college, not very Internet-active, low average gift but high retention) and Affluent Professionals (professionals in their 40s and 50s, higher incomes and house values, college grads, Internet-savvy, high average gifts, lower retention).