5 Benefits Of Fundraising Analytics For Your Non-Profit

Data has long metamorphosed into the engine of the world.  While they have been very slow to catch up (which is kinda typical), even nonprofit organizations have transcended the traditional methods of growing and sustaining their donor network, to embracing the robust potentials of fundraising data. With the aid of fundraising analytics, nonprofit organizations can now explore previously unknown aspects of donor data to properly identify those individuals that are more likely to donate to them and create fundraising campaigns that target these people more clearly.

During the course of planning fundraising campaigns, you inevitably come across a large amount of data. But previously, there have been no patented pathways to collect, collate and analyze this data to make sense of it. Now, this is where fundraising data analytics come in. Fundraising analytics will help your organization better analyze your fundraising data. Certainly, this leads to better decision-making with the most effective strategies for a successful campaign. With fundraising nonprofits analytics, your organization will have an in-depth understanding of your donor network, and also help in appealing to individuals to expand your donor base.

But the problem of collecting and collating the data still remains. That is where Scraping Robot’s web scraping API comes in. In this article, we shall explore the fascinating world of fundraising data analytics as we understand the nitty-gritty of fundraising analytics, the different types of fundraising analytics for your campaign successes, and the benefits of data analytics to your fundraising campaigns. We’ll also look at how you can use a web scraping API to keep track of changes in the lifestyle of your donors and how to tailor your campaigns to match. If you already have familiar knowledge of fundraising analytics, you can use the table of contents to easily navigate the page and directly learn about the types and the most effective way to utilize nonprofit data analytics.

Table of Contents

What Can Fundraising Analytics Empower?

If you are going to convince someone to give you their hard-earned money, then you better know as much as you can and even more, about them. The last thing you want is to approach a sports-enthusiast to donate to a music-related charity. While there is a slight possibility that they might give, your time would be better spent approaching someone who already has a vested interest in music. Fundraising analytics is what keeps you from approaching Donald Trump to donate to a charity that helps immigrants (lol). So how exactly does fundraising analytics work?

What is Fundraising Data Analytics?

Fundraising Data Analytics exists for non-profit organizations to develop a process of exploring and expanding their donor base on the basis of the digital footprint created by potential donors. Previously, the non-profit game involved getting a respectable but slick-talking man or woman into a well-tailored suit and having them approach influential personalities for possible donations.

Back when every man considered it his sacred duty (notwithstanding his beliefs) to help the needy, this was a perfectly fine approach. The evolution in our belief system, however, has made it necessary to try your best to approach potential donors on common ground rather than just relying on their sense of duty.

But more generally, it is simply good business to learn as much as you can before approaching any individual for donations. This helps you streamline your fundraising campaigns to target only the most likely donors. Also, with fundraising analytics, you can identify those donors whose network is likely to result in even more donors for your organization. This is something that you can easily carry out with predictive fundraising analytics (more on that later). The process of data analysis for nonprofits reveals the best possible way to improve current and future fundraising campaigns, based on the information gained through data analytics.

Utilize resources

Take, for example, you have a donor that just died and his only son inherited all his net worth. But unlike the father, the son has zero interest in classical music, meaning he is less likely to donate to your organization. However, the father (due to his love for classical music) sent his son to an academy for classical music where he met a lot of friends from wealthy homes who actually love classical music. Traditionally, this information would not be easily accessible to you meaning you would give up on that particular stream of donations the moment the father died. However, with fundraising analytics, you can easily follow this relationship and identify new potential donors, using the link of your previous donor (now deceased) as an icebreaker to start new relationships. That is how valuable fundraising analytics can be to your organization. There are several hidden relationship links that can only be exposed with adequate analysis of available data.

Data analytics for nonprofits is a multi-dimensional solution that opens up endless possibilities that can be employed in every aspect of non-profit organizations. One major way nonprofit organizations use fundraising analytics is to understand their donor network, which enhances their physical and virtual fundraising campaigns’ ROI.

3 Types of Fundraising Data Analytics for Your Campaign Successes.

The aim of every fundraising campaign is to ensure a successful performance. Measuring fundraising performance majorly includes eight indicators such as growth rate, retention rate, and conversation rate, etc. Using fundraising analytics is the way forward for your campaigns because it helps convert your data to actionable information, with your donors as the focus. The 3 types of fundraising analytics for your organization’s database include:          

Descriptive Fundraising Analytics

Descriptive Fundraising Analytics is the most important part of your fundraising strategy. Descriptive analytics helps describe the behavior of donors and categorize your donors into groups based on their collaborations with non-profit organizations. This fundraising analytics focuses on the donor’s ability to donate and the possibility of receiving their donation towards your campaign. In other words, descriptive fundraising analytics gives insight into the wealth and philanthropic capacity of your potential donors, their habits (especially relating to charitable acts), and their interests. These analytics comprise specific metrics which include; Location, frequency of giving, Age range, Active channels of communication, and Preferred channels of donating. Basically, this is where you separate your donors based on their probability of giving to your organization.

Predictive Fundraising Analytics

Predictive Fundraising Analytics are analytics that identifies the patterns or trends in your organizations’ past campaigns. Most times, sticking to the same routine will cause a decline in your success rate. Predictive Fundraising Analytics help evaluate the data already collected about your donors, find patterns in these data and then, use them to predict the future behavior of your potential donors. Fundraising KPIs are used to assess these patterns and they include; Donation growth, Fundraising Return On Investment (ROI), Average gift size growth, and Percentage of online donations.

Prescriptive Fundraising Analytics

Prescriptive Fundraising Analytics help non-profit organizations address the alterations in strategy and measure the possible outcomes from the change of strategy. Prescriptive Analytics provides a clearer view of trends than predictive analytics. They determine the possible future outcomes or results from a strategy change and also use measurements to assist organizations in making healthy decisions. Prescriptive fundraising analytics offer prescriptive metrics for every strategic option, for your organization to select the one with the most favorable outcome. For potential campaign problems, prescriptive analytics provides solutions such as; An advocacy campaign or placing a recurrent donation button on your donation page.

Benefits of Analytics for Nonprofits

Now, let’s look at what exactly fundraising data analytics does for your business.

1. Uncovers blind spots in making intelligent decisions: This is a general benefit of data analytics but it is even more relevant for nonprofits. The more data you have about your potential donors, the easier it is to avoid blind spots and pitfalls that could lead to a donor being offended rather than impressed. And the faster you can connect with your donors, the faster you can get them to commit to your cause. Connecting with them means knowing what they care about and fundraising analytics is how you know that.
2. Budgeting and forecasting future outcomes of campaigns: More than getting donations, you have to prepare for when you might not be able to get donations. Depending on their preferences, your donors might have periods where they are more willing to give than other periods. Proper budgeting allows you to plan both your spending and your fundraising campaigns to target these periods while staying lean and efficient at other periods. Also, you can predict the outcome of future campaigns and outline a plan for moving your organization forward based on these predictions (with reasonable precautions).
3. Improves Fundraising efficiency: This one is quite straightforward. The more data you have and the better you can analyze it, the more efficient your campaigns become. As we said earlier, rather than approach a football-enthusiast about musical donations, you can eliminate all the extra baggage and focus solely on campaigning to those potential donors that have a high probability of donating. This helps you to save time, effort, money, and all other resources.
4. Increases Fundraising revenue and performance: Following from the last point, the more efficient your campaign, the higher your campaign ROI. If previously, you spent $2 per potential donor and were making 5 dollars on every ten dollars you spent, by reducing your target market to only the most likely of donors, you spend less and make more. You get better campaign numbers too.
5. Helps nonprofits maximize their resources and retain donors: Just like any other business, a repeat customer is the best. With fundraising analytics, you can turn what would have been a one-time donor into a repeat donor by upselling them with better appeals to their charitable nature. A proper analysis of donor data can reveal to you which donors have a history of one-time donations and which ones tend to donate repeatedly. This way, you can use different strokes for different folks and get the most out of your donors without losing them.

Using Scraping Robot for Nonprofit Data Analytics

Now, we get to a crossroads. We know why we need fundraising analytics and we know the different types of data analytics for nonprofits. But can you do data analytics without data? No, which is why you need a data collection that will not only help you collect and collate data but also feed it directly into your technologies for data analysis. That is where Scraping Robot’s API comes in. A web scraping API combines web scraping capabilities with API functions allowing it to scrape data from the internet (like a normal web scraping bot) and then communicate that data to another API or software (like a normal API). Essentially, what we have done is combine two pieces of software to give you the ability to scrape publicly available data from any website on the internet and then feed it directly into your analytics software with minimal manual input from you.

With Scraping Robot’s API, you can learn more about your potential donors, more than ever. You can keep track of their hobbies, track new relationships and generally keep in touch with their reality, to identify the proper point to get in contact with them. Our API can integrate with any of your analytics software and feed data directly into your processes. We have proper documentation on our API for easy use and you can get started completely on your own without a developer. Check out our API page for more details on how to get started.

Final Thoughts

As a nonprofit organization, employing fundraising analytics tactics is your official welcome to the 21st century. It is also how you make use of the thousands of datasets you encounter daily to craft better approaches to getting more donations. Using our scraping API, you get all the data you need at your fingertips when you need it.

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Saheed Opeyemi