Donor Relationship Management

The discussion around Present Self/Future Self is not new nor hard to understand. But the discipline and insight to realize when we are collecting and/or relying on Present Self information is hard.

The opinions, thoughts and feelings of our prospects, supporters and donors exist whether we seek them or not; 100 percent of the risk lies in ignoring them.

To get a handle on what’s in store for 2015, NonProfit PRO rounded up some of the nonprofit industry’s finest, who were kind enough to share these 70 trends for this new year — everything from leadership to staffing to fundraising and more.

For some reason, fundraisers or their bosses often put too much weight on the opinion of an audience of one. Rather than thoughtfully considering it in light of the whole picture, the response is too often wholesale change.

If you can keep up-to-date and make sure your records are clean and have good information, it will help you and your organization cultivate, steward and solicit your donors in the proper way.

Budget management and budget cuts are never easy, but becoming stagnant and not trying to change is not the answer.

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.

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.