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How high-quality data can supercharge fundraising
23 Jan 2024by Ioan Marc Jones
We look at Experian’s recent tip sheet to explore how high-quality data can improve your charity’s ability to generate funds in a difficult fundraising climate
The cost-of-living crisis has led to rising operational costs and increasing service user demands. On top of that, the cost-of-living crisis has led to a cost-of-giving crisis, with donors reducing the amount they can give, while inflationary pressures have further reduced existing donations. Fixed donations from just a few years ago are worth substantially less in 2024. In short, charities are having to achieve more with less.
To meet demand, the onus is on charities to maintain existing donors and retain new donors. Charities can achieve that by improving the way they use data. As explained in a recent tip sheet from Experian, charities can use accurate contact data to vastly improve targeted fundraising efforts. High-quality data can provide greater insights into the needs and wants of donors, drastically improving a charity’s fundraising potential.
Below we take a closer look at three ways your charity can use data to supercharge fundraising.
Use big data to perfect your fundraising
Accurate, complete, and up-to-date data can help charities build and maintain a strong and engaged donor base. Charities should aim to proactively enrich their data sets by including specific and helpful pieces of data, such as gaining insights on the best communication methods. Enriched data allows charities to effectively target people who are more likely to donate – and target them the right way.
Experian specialises in unlocking the power of data. In their tip sheet, Experian argue that charities should analyse data and segment donors into categories based on certain characteristics, such as:
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How you acquired them as donors
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Their donation size and frequency
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How often they engage with you
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The preferred method of donation
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Their preferred method of comms
It is vital that charity data remains high-quality. Charities should collect accurate data at the point of entry, cleanse data at regular intervals, and work hard to maintain the highest quality data. To achieve that objective, Experian suggest, charities simply need to implement the best possible solutions.
Cleanse data to maximise fundraising potential
Clean data provides so many benefits. It improves customer retention, increases donor acquisition, enhances decision-making, provides greater insight, facilitates data integration, and much more.
But ensuring data is clean is a constant task. According to Experian, for example, contact data degrades at a rate of 10–20% per year. The reason: lives change. People get married, move house, change jobs, update phone numbers or emails, and so on. Failure to update data results in negative consequences: waste of resources, blacklisting, and poor return on investment (ROI).
Cleansing data means identifying, removing, or amending data that is outdated, invalid, incomplete, duplicated, poorly formatted, or irrelevant under GDPR. By taking that simple step, charities can ensure they are approaching the right people at the right time, greatly increasing efficiency and ROI.
Charities can clean data manually, but that process can prove time-consuming, costly, and prone to error. A better option is automating the process through data cleansing software, which completes the task in a matter of minutes with much greater precision, ensuring your data is ready to use.
Onboard digital tools to optimise data
High-quality data, as explored above, drastically boosts fundraising potential. Charities can maximise the quality of their data by onboarding digital tools. Data validation solutions are great tools that check the validity and accuracy of your data, much like a data audit. The tools ensure the information in your system is correct, consistent, and up-to-date, and quickly work to reduce errors and inaccuracy.
Experian’s data validation tool, for example, performs a bulk cleanse of all existing data, and uses email, mobile, and address validation at point of capture to ensure that only valid data enters your system.
Data enrichment, as discussed above, provides charities with essential information to help them improve targeting, segmentation, and general outreach and comms. Data enrichment tools use third-party data to expand existing donor information and build a fuller profile of potential donors.
Experian’s solution, for example, works by verifying and cleansing existing data, as above, then enriching that data with providing missing donor information sourced from external data attributes.
Integrating data enrichment and validation tools is the best way for charities to maintain high-quality data. The data stored in a fundraising CRM defines a charity’s ability to understand, communicate with, and engage supporters. So it is vital that the data is accurate, up-to-date, and enriched.
Download the Experian data tip sheet
Ioan Marc Jones
Ioan Marc Jones
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