Database Marketing

To support a successful, donor-focused, relationship-based fundraising strategy, organizations should collect and analyze information on donors, prospects, past campaigns, public perception, peer organizations and best practices to create a broad and robust data framework from which to work.

The term "Big Data" gets tossed around an awful lot these days, no matter if you're talking the business sector or nonprofit fundraising sector. But "big data is really about the small data," said David Acup, managing director of interactive marketing and membership at the Environmental Defense Fund.

The term "Big Data" gets tossed around an awful lot these days, no matter if you're talking the business sector or nonprofit fundraising sector. But "big data is really about the small data," said David Acup, managing director of interactive marketing and membership at the Environmental Defense Fund.

If getting people to do what we went them to do was easy, there'd be no need for nonprofits.

Managing a donor database is difficult no matter the size of an organization or its donor base. However, when you are a large, international nonprofit organization, particularly one with chapters across the U.S. in addition to six international affiliates, managing data in a uniform, centralized fashion is even more complex. JDRF, the leading global organization funding type 1 diabetes research, is one of those large, international nonprofits handling data across different chapters spanning the globe.

With the help of WealthEngine, JDRF has cleaned up its big-data business processes and enhanced its fundraising. Here, Megan Martin, former director of data analysis at JDRF (now at American Cancer Society), and Sally Boucher, director of research at WealthEngine, share some data insights.

Learn how liberal arts institution Vassar College executed a crowdfunding campaign for its annual fund and how JDRF cleaned up its donor database management to enhance targeting and fundraising.

You hear it time and time again at conferences, in articles and books, during webinars, and in trainings — fundraising is all about relationships. And in this era of big data, there are few things more valuable for fundraisers than unearthing actionable data points that can help build stronger relationships with prospects and donors.

Listen to Russ Reid's Roger Hiyama discuss an important key performance indicator for any fundraiser's donor database, cover ratio, in this excerpt from the Engage Virtual Workshop, "Driving Donations With Data."

You know your donors and prospects are active on social media, and you know you should track donor data in this ever-evolving media. But how do you know what to look for and analyze when it comes to social-media data? On June 10, we'll host the Engage Virtual Workshop: Driving Donations With Data to help attendees come to better understand and work with their data gathering and usage.