Nonprofit professionals share insights into acquisition-list selection strategies.

By Alicia Orr Suman

And in all lists, three things matter the most. They are recency, recency, recency. This is the single most important variable. When people demonstrate a behavior (to buy or donate), they are most likely to repeat that behavior soon thereafter. The farther away from that you get time-wise, the less likely their repeating that behavior will be.