Soapbox Engage Blog

Say your nonprofit had a successful year-end giving season that resulted in many small donations. Since that time, you’ve stayed engaged with those lower-level donors. And now, a few months later, you’re wondering, “How can I encourage these individuals to upgrade their giving to the next level?”

The answer lies in your nonprofit’s data analytics. Simply put, data analytics is the process of collecting donor data and analyzing it to discover insights that can help you take your fundraising efforts to the next level. Data analytics empowers your nonprofit to make informed decisions about all aspects of your fundraising strategy, including how to boost your donors’ mid-level giving.

However, if you’re new to relying on your donor data for fundraising insights, patterns, and trends, it can be tricky to know where to start, but with new technology, you can easily do this with the click of a button and the right know-how. In this post, we’ll give you a leg up by covering three ways you can use data analytics to increase mid-level giving:

1. Learn more about individual giving capacities.
2. Examine your donors’ communication preferences.
3. Create targeted donation appeals.

When you use data to get to know your donors and cater your fundraising efforts to their needs, you’ll be much more successful in securing the revenue you need to do more for your beneficiaries. Ready to dig into your data? Let’s begin.

Nonprofit Data Analytics: An Overview

First, it’s important to know a thing or two about nonprofit data analytics. Having a little background will help you put your data to work for your nonprofit in efficient and effective ways, whether you’re using it to inform your donation asks or to add depth to the content you create for your community.

According to GivingDNA, here are three different types of analytics that can help your nonprofit interpret and take action on its donor data:

• Descriptive data analytics uses both historic and current data to identify patterns and answer the question, “What happened?” For example, you could look at the average donation amount from a fundraising event and your budget to help you determine your cost per dollar raised (CPDR).


• Predictive data analytics helps you use your data to predict what could happen in the future based on what you already know about your donors. For instance, you could study donors’ communication preferences to determine how to market an upcoming campaign.


• Prescriptive data analytics is a little more complex—to use this type of analysis, you’ll need the help of an AI tool that can suggest the best course of action based on the data you feed it. You might use AI to examine donors’ giving histories and predict who is most likely to give in the near future, helping you target donors in your next marketing campaign.

Depending on what your organization needs to learn about its donors, you’ll likely need to use all three types of data analytics for different aspects of your strategy. In the case of low-level donors from your year-end giving campaign, for example, you might want to know more about how much they gave, how they gave, and what motivated that giving. So, you would use descriptive data analytics to find out “what happened.”

You could also use predictive data analytics to determine what donation amounts to ask for as you encourage donors to level up their giving, or even leverage prescriptive data analytics to ensure you’re reaching out to the most viable mid-level giving prospects.

Let’s take a deeper dive into the three ways you can use data analytics like these to boost mid-level giving.

1. Learn more about individual giving capacities.

To discover the donors that are ready to move up to mid-level giving, you need to spend some time examining their individual giving capacities. You can do so by engaging in wealth screening. This process is most often used for discovering major donors within your current donor pool, but can also be a great way to identify new mid-level donors.

According to Giving DNA’s wealth screening explainer, wealth screening involves examining donors’ wealth indicators, which are characteristics of current or prospective donors that indicate they have the financial capacity to give at a certain level.

These might include:

• Total income/net worth and discretionary income
• Political contributions
• Stock holdings
• Real estate ownership
• Business affiliations

You can make the process of finding donors with these indicators easy by using a wealth profiling tool.

In addition to looking at giving capacities, you should also take inspiration from a more comprehensive process: prospect research. Look into your donors’ affinity for your cause (their personal investment in your specific mission) and their propensity to give (their philanthropic habits). After all, just because someone is in the financial position to give a mid-level gift doesn’t mean that they necessarily will. Affinity, propensity, and capacity together can help you pinpoint the ideal donors who both care about your cause and will be able to say “Yes!” to a larger donation ask.

2. Examine your donors’ communication preferences.

Communication is what makes fundraising possible. After all, donors are more likely to give to a nonprofit they have a relationship with. So, before agreeing to contribute to your cause, your donors need to have a strong relationship with your organization, and you build that relationship through effective communication.

Keep in mind that not everyone is receptive to the same types of communication. Think about your own family—your grandmother probably likes to catch up with you over a phone call, while your Gen Z little sister is happy to get a text or a Snapchat message from you. Even beyond generational differences, everyone has distinct communication preferences.

Use data analytics to learn about your donors’ communications preferences, and then conduct a communications audit to reflect on your current communication strategy and determine how you can improve so your messages resonate with your donors every time.

As you go through this process, pay attention to:

• The communication channels your donors prefer: Your nonprofit likely uses many channels to get the message out about its cause and campaigns. But some may be more worth your while than others. For example, you may find that a majority of your donors prefer to hear from you through direct mail and social media, and that text messages from your organization typically get ignored or forgotten about. Information like this can help you focus on the channels that will provide the most value to your organization and the individuals you’re reaching out to.


• What your donors want to hear about: Different donors will care about different aspects of your mission. Say your organization is focused on helping at-risk youth succeed in school. Some donors may be more passionate about your coding program for high-school-aged girls interested in STEM careers, while others might be most excited by your reading program for young learners. Study what your donors want to hear about, and then deliver relevant updates in your messages.


• How often your donors expect to hear from you: Are you reaching out to your donors too often, or too little? Strike a “just right” balance by finding out how often your donors expect and want to hear from your organization. Remember, too, that your messages should build on each other and not be repetitive. For instance, an email reminder to register for an event could be followed by an announcement about the event’s special guest star to help build excitement about the occasion.

To learn about your donors’ communication preferences, reference data like your email open rates, webpage click-through rates, social media data, and more. You can also seek out more qualitative data by surveying your supporters for their thoughts about your communication strategy.

While you won’t be able to tailor every single message to every single individual who cares about your cause, you can segment your donors by communication channel preference or content preference and get much closer to the bullseye than you would by sending the same message through the same channel to everyone!

3. Create targeted donation appeals.

When it comes time to issue an ask to a lower-level donor and invite them to give at a higher level, you need the right donation appeal. Your data can help you craft an appeal that resonates with your donor and makes them excited about making the donation.

Plus, personalizing your donation appeals can be extremely manageable if you know what to include. Here is some information from your donor data to include in your appeals:

• First name
• Giving history
• Interests
• Location
• Past involvement (volunteering, event attendance, etc.)

Essentially, what you’ll want to do is acknowledge your donors’ past support and its impact, ask them to contribute to an aspect of your cause that they care about, and end the appeal with a specific ask for a set donation amount. Here are a few examples:

• Hey Wendy! Thanks for participating in our recent peer-to-peer fundraiser. Because of your hard work, we were able to reach our fundraising goal of $15,000 which will go toward preserving black bear habitats in the United States. We’re currently seeking donations for our annual fund and would like to invite you to give $150 to help us continue to protect animals across the country.


• Hi Luis! We loved seeing you at last month’s gala and hope you had a wonderful time dancing the night away just like we did. Thanks to your generous donation of $50, we’ve been able to continue building our emergency fund for Boston’s families in need. Today we’re seeking donations to our financial literacy program, a six-week course that helps adults in need learn how to stabilize their financial situation. Would you be willing to contribute $100 to this program?


• Margot, thank you for taking part in the rally for Down Syndrome awareness. We’re pleased to share that because of the efforts of caring advocates like you, our state representatives are advancing our new bill to improve the lives of individuals in our community that have Down Syndrome. This month we’re focusing on raising money for our preschool program and would like to invite you to contribute $300 that will go toward boosting our extracurricular activities and remodeling our classrooms.

The details in each of these examples make the donation appeal more targeted and personalized, making donors feel seen as individuals who truly care about your work. Use the tidbits of information that will demonstrate to your supporters that you value them and want to invite them to become even more involved in your work.

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Collecting and analyzing your donor data is the key to improving your fundraising efforts. And when it comes to boosting mid-level giving, knowing some details about your donors can make all the difference in how you view their capacity to give, how you communicate with them, and how effectively you invite them to increase their giving. Now that you know how to leverage your data in this way, it’s time to get to work!