Focus On: Data Mining: Hope is Not A Strategy
Each donor is part of a cycle of giving — whether he is new, joined in the previous year or has lapsed, etc. By understanding the likely migration of each subset of donors and their response behavior, you can better calculate which are worth investing in and which are best left alone.
The objectives are simple: Offset the attrition of your most valuable donors — those who have given for two or more consecutive years — by acquiring new prospects, reactivating lapsed donors and renewing new or reactivated donors for two consecutive years. If you gain more multiyear active donors than you lose to attrition, your direct mail program should begin to grow again.
- Companies:
- Merkle|Domain
Greg Fox is vice president of nonprofit vertical strategy at Merkle. He joined the company in 2000 to establish a data-driven, strategic fundraising agency group. Fox is a 30-year veteran of direct response fundraising, with expertise in developing innovative fundraising marketing strategies and solutions. He has helped raise hundreds of millions of dollars for many of the largest and most respected fundraising brands in America, and while he has broad-based fundraising experience, he is highly regarded as a leader in the national health-charity sector. Prior to joining Merkle, Fox was a founding partner in TheraCom, a leading provider of full-service specialty pharmacy solutions and marketing strategies that served the healthcare and charitable industries. He also served as vice president of direct response fundraising at the National Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, where he started his career and created the organization’s first national direct response program. Fox is an industry thought-leader, frequent speaker at industry conferences and an active participant in the DMA nonprofit federation. He graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Va.
