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5 Summertime Tasks to Prepare for a Successful Fall Donation Drive

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With the new school year just around the corner, it’s important to begin preparing for your fall donation drive. But, you may be wondering where to start. Let’s explore where you can look for donors in your database and how you can use wealth screenings to find your next best prospect.

5 Tasks to Prepare for a Fall Donation Drive

1. Screen Your Giving Day Donors

As designated Giving Days have risen in popularity, many universities have been able to raise millions of dollars. They’ve also seen their number of donors double. Giving Days have other benefits- alumni and other members of your institution’s community are able to lend support from anywhere. Furthermore, they’re also given recognition among their community of gift givers.

So, to gear up for your fall donation drive, it’s important to screen your Giving Day donors. By conducting a wealth screening, you can see which donors have the greatest propensity and capacity to give. Donors who give during events like Giving Days may donate sporadically to your institution over time. But, they are still inclined to give. By reaching out early, and implementing effective engagement techniques, they’ll be more likely to donate during your fall donation drive. This is an even greater opportunity for your institution to cultivate donors who give again and again.

2. Screen Your Alumni

Alumni who had positive experiences at their alma mater are keen on giving back. They want to see incoming and returning students have an experience that was just as positive as theirs was.

So, when reaching out to alumni for your fall donation drive, it’s important to understand more about them. By taking the time to familiarize yourself with their interests and giving history, you can engage them in relevant ways. It’s important to ask yourself: who’s an active member of our institution’s alumni association/ Which alumni have given in the past? What do they do now? And do they have the propensity and capacity to give more? By conducting a wealth screening, you can get those answers and more. You can learn more about the wealth, lifestyle, affinities, and interests of alumni and uncover donors, hidden in your database. This can also help you personalize your outreach, and communicate with alumni about fundraisers that they’ll feel individually connected to.

For example, in 2014, the University of Maryland received a historic gift of $31M from former Computer Science Major and Oculus CEO, Brendan Iribe. Brendan attributed his love of virtual reality to the University of Maryland’s computer science department, which is what inspired him to give back.

3. Screen the Parents of Your Incoming Students

With incoming students arriving in just a few months, it’s important to screen your new students’ parents. Which families, of your incoming class, may have the greatest ability and willingness to give during your fall donation drive?

For most parents, if they have the ability to give, they’ll contribute as much as they can. They want to ensure that their son or daughter has all the resources necessary to be successful. Especially if members of your university’s incoming class are legacy students, their parents may be even more keen to give. They’ll want their child to have the best experience at an institution they feel personally connected to and invested in.

By the time your fall donation drive comes around, you can hold an event for parents. This is an opportunity to walk them through the campaigns you have in progress, and how these will transform their child’s college experience.

4. Screen Your Gala Attendees

During galas for your institution, attendees are keen on seeing what their gifts are being put towards. They want to know how their commitment to your campaign(s) is being transformed into tangible accomplishments. It is important to know which gala attendees have contributed substantially in the past. However, it’s even more important to find former attendees who have the ability to give more.

So, it’s important to understand (through screenings) where their values lie, and which projects they’re likely to invest in further. Then, during your fall donation drive, you can tailor your outreach in ways that keep your attendees motivated to keep giving.

5. Model Your Screening Files to Find More Potential Donors

You’ve screened all the donors hidden in your database who have the greatest propensity and capacity to give. Now what? How do you find new donors to give during your fall donation drive?

Using WealthEngine’s modeling solution, you can create a core donor persona. From there, you can find overlaps in demographic data, preferences, and giving history among your existing donors. This will help you understand potential donors you should be reaching out to. Essentially, you’re creating an impression of your ideal donor and then using those traits to find more people like them.

For example, one of WealthEngine’s clients, a large, private, research university in the midwest had a plan in place for fundraising at all levels. However, their biggest challenge was securing Major Gifts. By using WealthEngine’s modeling solution,  the team generated a model that automatically identified the top 10% of their donors. The gift capacities of these donors were in the $100,000 range, and over 200 members were identified as top prospects. This reduced their major gift donor lead time by 88%.

Learn How to Model and Screen Your Data to Secure Donations

Learn more about how modeling and screening could help you increase conversions.

See how to model your data →

See how to screen your data →

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What is Wealth Screening – and How to Use it to Generate More Money

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In this age of data driven marketing and fundraising, reaching wealthy people requires a very personalized strategy. Wealth screening can completely change your ability to generate more money. It enables you to pinpoint the best prospects with laser-precision accuracy.

Here’s how to use wealth screening to generate millions of dollars.

What is Wealth Screening?

Wealth screening is the process of applying wealth-related information to a list of contacts to understand their giving and spending capacity and propensity.

When you append your contact database with wealth attributes, you will know who within your list you should reach out to. You will also know how to spark their interest, and – most importantly – how to connect with their network to expand your reach.

How Wealth Screening Works

There’s a good chance that you have millionaires in your database of contacts already. Wealth screening overlays your existing database with additional information about wealth, interests and other useful insights.

This results are astonishing. In a matter of minutes, you get a highly curated list of targeted individuals that fit your buyer personas like a glove.

Not only is this a dramatic time savings, wealth screening also identifies which prospects you should pursue. This can save a lot of money in your outreach campaign budget. The two key components as you screen a contact for wealth are capacity and propensity. The best prospects have both components, not just one.

For example, let’s say that your nonprofit focuses on political advocacy. What if a rich prospect that you are targeting has never donated to a political candidate or cause? That means that they may not be the best prospect for you. They have the money, but not the intent. Going after them is a waste of your time and resources.

However, what if your target a prospect has a history of giving to politicians who align with your mission? More so, what if they have a net worth above $10 million? This wealthy individual has both the capacity and the intent to donate. The person with these characteristics is an ideal prospect for you.

You can drastically lower your cost to raise a dollar or generate a sale when take into account your prospects interests and spending or donation history. As a result, you can spend your precious time focusing on those most likely to generate the most for your organization.

How to Do a Wealth Screen

While there are a few vendors that provide wealth-related data, only WealthEngine’s data includes extensive profiles on 250 million Americans and is updated regularly.

Screening for wealth is a fairly straight forward process. You simply upload your list and select which attributes to apply. WealthEngine runs the screening and provides you with new information about your contacts. You can also reach out to WealthEngine’s support team for guidance.

You can also use WealthEngine’s API to connect with your customer relationship management (CRM) tool. Another option is to connect an online contact or donation form to the API. This way, anyone who fills out a form can be screened on the fly. This allows you to show each prospect different information on the subsequent web pages or alert you if they are a strong match.

Hidden Advantages of Wealth Screening

Doing a wealth screen can be a game changer for your organization.

Here’s another common use of using wealth screening. It’s quite likely that at least one of your best donors or customers is on the board of an organization. A wealth screen can reveal which boards or organizations they are involved with.

You can then quickly get a list of the other board members and run a wealth screen on them, too. You might find that there are some who match your ideal prospect profile. To bring in new qualified prospects into your pool, all you have to do is reach out to your current donor or customer. Ask them for a warm introduction to their fellow board members.

Wealth screening provides insights like this that allow you to connect to the right people well beyond your network.

Prospect Modeling: Going Beyond Basic Wealth Screening

Wealth screening can be taken to a much higher level. You can create a model of your ideal prospect profile to find new prospects who match. This is known as predictive prospecting.

Using the concept of look-alike modeling, WealthEngine data scientists create a profile of your best prospects. Next, they match it against WealthEngine’s database of 250 million contacts. This generates a list of brand new prospects that look just like your best ones. Finding new people you should talk to becomes easy when you use a look-alike model. It takes the guess work out of prospect research. By implementing this data-driven process, you save a tremendous amount of time and money in finding your next big donors or customers.

If you pursue contacts without knowing both their capacity and propensity, you waste your precious time and marketing budget. Wealth screening and modeling saves you time, money and can help generate millions of dollars in more revenue.

Speak to a WealthEngine consultant to see how wealth screening and modeling can help you find your next best prospect.

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Turn Your Event Participants into Donors

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As summer draws to an end and we prepare for fall, we are about to enter the season of “-Thons”.  Hosting a fundraising walk-a-thon, bike-a-thon, dance-a-thon, swim-a-thon, read-a-thon or other fundraising –thon can be a great way to build support for your cause, identify new prospects, build a relationship with new donors, and build your base of support. Whether you work for a charity, hospital, university, theater or advocacy organization, now is the time for development offices to create a plan for how to turn event participants into donors. Turning event participants into donors can be easily done, but requires careful communication and a moves management strategy.

Here are five steps to consider when planning your event to find new event participants, identify fresh prospects, and maximize your relationship with existing event participants:

1. Promote your event via social media to find new participants.

Don’t put on the same event for the same participants who are donating year after year! Find new constituents to invite using social media. By casting a wide net you will find prospects who are interested in your cause or activity and, with the proper follow through, they can be turned into donors.

Publicize your event on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. Be sure to include a call to action with every post, either a way to request more information or to register directly on your website.

Have your loyal supporters and advocates publicize your event for you to ensure it is being viewed by as many eyes as possible. By asking existing event supporters and past participants to share the event via their own social networks, they are giving your event a credible voice by publicly showing their support and also finding you new participants (and new potential donors!).

2.) Build out your invitation list and find new high potential prospects to participate.

As you build out your event invitation list, consider ways to expand your universe to include more high potential prospects. Be sure to leverage board relationships, and consider tools that will inform you of who in your board’s circle of friends might participate, as you work to strategically develop this list.  Consider new avenues to pursue as you market the event broadly, such as local interest groups and clubs.

Questions to ask yourself might include:

  • How do I find new constituents with high giving potential that might be interested in my event?
  • Which are the most capable prospects to invite to our event?
  • Who do our board and other VIPs know that may respond to a personal invitation to our event and who should ask for their participation?

3.) Screen event participants before and after your event.

It is important to review your event participant list both before and after your event. This ensures that you know the financial capacity of participants and that no wealthy prospects slip through the cracks.

As you get to know your list inside and out and identify the participants with the highest giving potential, develop a plan for your high potential prospects. Consider inviting them to pre- or post- event VIP activities, such as breakfasts or post-event celebrations. If the idea of planning an event around your event is too much for you, consider sending invitations for meetings or “grabbing coffee” a week or two after the event itself. Personal follow through with each high–potential prospect is a must to create ongoing engagement and to understand the individuals’ motivations and interests.

4.) Use metrics as you wrap up your event for the year.

Applying analytics to your event list for both segmentation and tracking is crucial as you wrap up the event and before you move on to your next big challenge – the ask. Metrics to consider include:

  • Event Return on Investment (ROI)
  • Cost to Raise a Dollar (CRD)
  • Cost per person for event
  • # of gifts received from event
  • % of giving from event
  • Dollars contributed from event
  • Average event gift size
  • Event cost

Be sure to segment your event list to determine who needs immediate follow up, based on his/her wealth profile. Follow steps in our Growing Individual Gifts workbook for best practices on how to set up a meeting to build a relationship with potential donors. Strike while the iron is hot to stay in touch and build a relationship.

5.) Once you know enough, make the ask!

Before asking your prospect for a substantial gift, there are a few questions you want to be sure are already answered:

  • What is this donor’s interest or passion and where does it align with our mission?
  • What is the project they will be most interested in funding?
  • What is the correct ask amount for this donor? This should be in harmony with the project or need you are seeking funding for, as well as the donor’s capacity to give.
  • Who should be involved in the solicitation? The president or CEO? A board member? A friend or colleague?
  • Is this the right time to ask? Should we wait until after the recession is over? After their pledge to the [insert charity] building fund is over? After their children are out of college?
  • Who else may be involved in the decision to give? A spouse? Other family members? Financial or tax advisors?
  • How does s/he want to be recognized for a gift? Knowing their stewardship desires before asking for the gift ensures you handle any gift negotiations appropriately, and also that you accomplish post-giving appreciation and recognition in the most meaningful way for the donor(s).

When you know the answers to these questions in advance, you will be making a solicitation that is hard to say no to.

For more information on growing your development program, download Growing Individual Gifts: An Analytical Approach to Data-Driven Success. 

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Giving USA 2017 Proves Why Wealth Screening is Crucial for Your Sustainability

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Linda Garrison, CFRE, Senior Consultant, WealthEngine

Hot off the press, the newly released Giving USA 2017 draws a line in the philanthropic sand: Of the $390.5 billion given to philanthropy in 2016, nearly 88% of that came from individuals in the form of outright gifts, gifts from family foundations, and planned gifts.

The single largest factor in giving growth was an increase of $10.53 billion in giving by individuals.

That’s astounding.

And it’s exactly why your organization needs to immediately invest in – at the minimum – a wealth screening of your database.  You need to know who you have in there, and who your donors are who could afford to give you more. Without wealth intelligence, many of your best donors will fall by the wayside, perhaps wondering why you never asked them for a more significant investment.

Knowledge truly is power.

Additionally, Giving USA 2017 noted that giving to religion, education, human services, health, public-society benefit, arts/culture/humanities, international affairs and the environment or animal-related causes all experienced a significant uptick, with giving to religion showing a 32% increase. Education and human services received less than half that, with a 15% and 12% jump, respectively. Giving to foundations, including community foundations managing donor advised funds, as well as to family foundations, increased by 10%.

Each charitable subsector grew in 2016 except for giving to individuals, with growth rates ranging from 3% to 7%. Of note, environmental and animal-related causes experienced a 7.2% increase in giving, the largest gain of any philanthropic subsector.

Wealth screening is a core part of our business and now is the time to do it. Your organization can reap the rewards of growing philanthropy prior to the great wealth transfer between Boomers and Millennials.

Giving USA 2017 is produced collaboratively by the Giving USA Foundation™, a public service initiative of The Giving Institute, and The Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy.

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Top 3 Missed Opportunities to Utilize Wealth Screening for Advancement

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When preparing for a campaign, colleges and university advancement teams have a large number of prospects available to them including alumni, the parents of incoming students, etc. Conducting a wealth screening provides you with data and insights on these prospects that can, and should, be used in your campaign planning. All of this data, however, can become overwhelming and underutilized, resulting in missed opportunities.

Join WealthEngine and Heller Consulting on Tuesday, July 18th at 2:00PM ET for our webinar Top 3 Missed Opportunities to Utilize Wealth Screening for Advancement. We’ll discuss strategies you may not have thought of that can only benefit you and your campaign including:

  • Using your wealth screening to its fullest potential
  • Proper campaign planning so you get started on the right track
  • Ensuring your screening information is integrated into your CRM/DMS
  • How you can quickly take action to maximize opportunities
  • And more!

Register now for Top 3 Missed Opportunities to Utilize Wealth Screening for Advancement.

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Three Ways to Stimulate your Data Collection

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We all know the finest prospects are those who align themselves with your mission, have great wealth and donate – the perfect trifecta. However, when shopping for new prospects, how do you know who will meet this criteria? 

By using multiple data collection strategies, you create an efficient prospect pool. Using the tools available to you can maximize your gifts and streamline your campaign. In a WealthEngine survey, 92% of all organizations, responding, indicated they use some proactive research practices. This figure leapt to 100% among high-performing organizations; 65% of these high-performing organizations use all three of these techniques.

These three methods will help you gather new data and information about potential prospects: predictive modeling, peer screening, and wealth screening.  

Predictive Modeling
Predictive modeling is the creation of a model to predict the probability of an outcome.  It sounds complicated, but the truth is we use predictive modeling every day. Your email spam folder uses a model to predict if an incoming email is spam. Your FICO score (a commonly used credit score) is a predictive model. Your organization can use predictive models and analytics to:

  • Identify new prospects
  • Define optimal “ask” levels for next gifts
  • Develop inclination and/or affinity ratings
  • Segment constituents for multiple fundraising purposes and prioritize prospects within segments

Peer Screening
Peer screening is a technique that leverages your organization’s VIPs.  Your VIPs review lists of their peers to rate their ability to donate, their connection to the organization and their interest in its mission. A few of the potential benefits include:

  • Discover new prospects and feed the prospect pipeline
  • Qualify and quantify current capacity and inclination ratings
  • Educate and generate support among volunteers and stakeholders developing a “culture of philanthropy”
  • Create organization-wide buy-in for fundraising priorities among internal constituencies

Wealth Screening
Wealth screening is the practice of comparing a prospective list to one or more data sources. This information helps you:

  • Qualify ratings on prospects
  • Qualify lesser known prospects
  • Identify new prospects
  • Determine capacity and inclination ratings for all prospects

Wealth screening, peer screening and data modeling are three ways to help you build a winning fundraising strategy and find that perfect trifecta criteria in your donors and prospects. Check out our workbooks Growing Individual Gifts: An Analytical Approach to Data-Driven Success.

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The Art of Fundraising – 5 Best Fundraising Practices for an Arts & Culture Organization

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Donations are the livelihood of your organization.  And fundraising can be challenging.  It’s both an art and a science.  In order to unlock the best practices out there, you need to find out what is making fundraising and research campaigns successful and, frankly, what’s not.  Here are five best practices for successful fundraising:

  1.  Capture Ticketing Data to Identify Donor Potential
    Arts and Culture organizations have a unique pool of individuals – their ticket purchasers – who already demonstrate a genuine interest in the mission and work of their organization. These ticket buyers already contribute to your organization’s revenue stream and represent a natural prospect pool. Once these individuals have purchased tickets and walked through your doors, you are presented with a far greater advantage—they are engaged and interested in the offerings of your organization. Now they must be cultivated while their interest level is high.  ​High performing organizations usually have a strategy to harness the information collected during ticketing. Information can be captured through online ticket purchases, surveys, and visitor kiosks placed at entrances.
     
  2. Leverage Membership to Fuel Your Donor Pipeline
    Your donors like to feel involved with your organization.  The benefits of membership are to regularly engage people in the mission of your organization and then to encourage them to support it financially.  By paying quality attention to this membership group, your organization can get a lively pipeline of  donors ready to be nurtured and promoted to the next donation tier. Benefits could include: discounts, valet parking, special events, backstage tours, post-performance receptions, event privileges, gift store discounts, educational seminars, magazine subscriptions, and free admission. 
     
  3. Leverage Your Board to Build an Inner Circle
    While some organizations see active fundraising participation from their board and volunteers, others wish theirs were more active and involved.  The model board candidate has a circle of friends that show a similar giving capacity and inclination toward the Arts.  You want your board members to reach out to these friends and help the development team cultivate with a personal touch, ultimately strengthening your organization’s major gift pipeline.
     
  4. Invest in Screening
    Upgrading current donors and identifying new prospects are challenges for arts organizations.  Invest in a screening of your donors and prospects to determine who has the capacity, propensity, and affinity to donate to your organization.  Screening can help you fill in the gaps and deepen your data records so you can better segment and prioritize. 
     
  5. Manage Your Data Proactively
    The recording and updating of donor records is a must in successful fundraising.  Properly run Donor Management Systems (DMS) secure accurate and easy to follow-up results from research and wealth screenings. A well-managed DMS and solid implementation plan is indispensable. One of the most significant ways to increase the value of the data from your wealth screening is to integrate the results into your DMS. The DMS allows your team to compile information on all donors including their contact information, giving history, special event attendance, ticketing history and other interactions with the organization.

Fundraising as an arts organization poses its own set of challenges. Don’t let these challenges derail your fundraising. Use these tips to set your organization up for success.  

Do you have a story to share about successful fundraising in your arts organization? Share in the comments below.

 

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Meet the New WE Search

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Understanding the power and insights around the data WealthEngine uses to create our WealthGraph, consisting of 250 million individuals throughout the Nation, might be complex; however, it’s valuable to our clients.

Core to the products WealthEngine builds is our WealthGraph, comprised of: multiple data points, wealth analytics and social connections on individuals. This is what makes our platform unique.

WE Prospect, driven by the WealthGraph, enables users to build and construct custom queries of multiple attributes containing geographic, wealth, and interest data. Users are able to drill down and create a specific list based on their own defined parameters allowing greater precision.

Bottom line…It’s the full package.

We realize our customers want this same ability to target specific searches on individuals they know. Similar to finding and targeting a list of new individuals, our users need a more robust way to search within our platform.

This is what inspired us to provide a nationwide search empowering our users to uncover more, ascertain more, and most importantly, improve their experience.

So, that’s just what we did.

We took the power of WE Prospect and added it to Search.

What does this mean?

Users can now query based on:

  • Nationwide search – It’s no longer necessary to enter a city and/or state.
  • Additional geographic filters – Including radius and metropolitan area search.
  • Last name search – Ability to search just based on last name without a first name.

The part that makes our revised Search so powerful is the updates we’ve made to the backend technology enabling a user to conduct a nationwide query by last name in an average of a few seconds. It’s the same technology that powers WE Prospect allowing a user to get a list of California Democrats with a Net Worth of over $1 Million and an interest in skiing.

We’ve gone a step further to improve workflows for our customers, making it easier for them to find the correct profile and access the detailed data more quickly with:

  • Improved search results ordering – To bubble the best results to the top
  • One-click access to Research Details – Directly from search results

We’re excited about these enhancements to Search. Take a spin through our latest improvements to Search, we’d love to hear your feedback.

New to WealthEngine and want to see our new Search in action? Request a Demo.

As Director, Product Management, Elizabeth Schiffmann is responsible for working closely with our product development team while managing a portfolio of WealthEngine’s key products. With Elizabeth’s prior experience as Director of Customer Care at WealthEngine she understands our client’s needs and cares about the success of our clients. She brings experience from multiple roles within fundraising, customer support, marketing and product. This experience combined with her understanding of WE’s products enables her to help guide product and development decisions. And her work with Children’s National Health System and as a board member for Montgomery County Partners for Animal Well-Being (MCPAW) means that Elizabeth has a genuine understanding of the needs of non-profits. She’s a team player, but when she’s not working with the product development team on product improvements and requirements, Elizabeth enjoys challenging opponents on the tennis court with a wicked forehand.

 

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How WealthEngine Helps Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University Increase Average Gift Size

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When Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University (ERAU) was vetting vendors to help them optimize their fundraising, they were looking for the best value, the highest quality data and an experienced team of subject matter experts. After comparing their options, they decided to move forward with WealthEngine.

With only 2% of their alumni making annual gifts, ERAU needed to understand why they weren’t getting more engagement. They knew that the majority of annual gifts were coming from a small group of people but they did not have many insights. WealthEngine was able to validate this and help ERAU model their best donors and segment their list of alumni.

As a result, ERAU was able to increase their average gift size by 100% and decrease the cost per dollar raised by 50%.

In order to accomplish this, ERAU worked with WealthEngine by starting with a wealth screening and then building on this with a SmartSegment overlay and Likelihood to Give Model. By working with a dedicated WE consultant, the Annual Giving team was able to take the insights provided and turn them into actionable tactics.  Additionally, Embry-Riddle procured access to the FindWealth 8 platform for their extended fundraising team, as well.

Want to find out how WealthEngine can transform your fundraising team’s results, too? Request a demo now.