We’ve learned from our customers that sometimes, just getting access to your database can be a challenge. We believe technology should serve you, not the other way around. To that end, we’ve unrolled a new set of features in EverTrue called Giving Intelligence.
Just like EverTrue gives your team easier access to your existing constituent data, Giving Intelligence does the same for the rich history of gifts for each constituent. The update includes a more powerful chart visualizing a constituent’s giving history as well as new search filters organized by giving patterns.
A Powerful Visualization of Giving History
Prospect researchers, gift officers, and annual fund leaders often spend time going from profile to profile, scanning giving history, looking for certain patterns.
- Who seems inclined to give more in this year’s annual fund?
- Where does this person give the most? Scholarships or athletics?
- How has their unrestricted giving changed since their first major gift?
Instead of scanning row after row of transactional data, you can now detect giving patterns right in EverTrue. In each constituent profile, Giving Intelligence visualizes the constituent’s giving history, first by annual total. You can then easily drill down to certain campaigns, funds, appeals, or types. These are all “Labels” in a drop-down menu.
It’s 2015. You shouldn’t have to ask your data team to make a special chart just to visualize a constituent’s gifts.
New ‘Giving Pattern’ Search Filters
It costs less to retain an existing donor than to acquire a new one. Said another way, existing donors are more likely to give again. If you can pull a list of last year’s donors, and this year’s donors, calculating your donor retention rate is straightforward.
If you’re having trouble with retention, you aren’t alone. To create this chart, we analyzed more than 500,000 constituents and donors at more than 30 EverTrue customers.
- Nearly half of consistent donors lapse each year. Yikes!
- The pool of consistent donors is not much larger than the pool of new donors—not surprising given how many of them lapse.
But now some good news: Within your pool of consistent donors are true diamonds in the rough, who have been giving more each year. They are basically waving their hands in the air saying they love you.
Finding these donors used to be tough: Pull reports for each year and do some painful analysis and cross-referencing to find these increasing donors. Or, mindlessly scan through profile after profile looking at gift history.
To save you time, we’ve added new EverTrue filters (under Giving Pattern) that will do the work for you. The four new filters—New, Consistent, Recently Lapsed, and Increasing— quickly categorize constituents by their giving behavior over time. Along with EverTrue’s existing LYBUNT and SYBUNT filters, these search options can help you find great prospects as you work to improve your donor retention rate.
Unlike LYBUNT and SYBUNT, these new filters use a rolling time window rather than fiscal year. This way they can capture the time of year a constituent usually gives.
New donors (“New”)
This filter surfaces constituents whose first gift occurred in the past year (rolling 365 days). Your goal is to prioritize the best new donors and make sure they give again.
Pro tip: Combine this with other filters to find constituents with capacity (real estate value and LinkedIn industry) and interest (Facebook engagement) who just gave for the first time. Then save the search and get notified about new donors who meet this criteria.
Consistent donors (“Consistent”)
Someone who has given for the past three years is saying they are solidly in your corner. If EverTrue helps you determine the donor has even greater capacity, or interest, why not arrange a visit or send the name to your prospect researcher for a deeper look?
Pro tip: Combine with the Unassigned and Largest Gift filters to find great major gift prospects.
Recently lapsed donors (“Recently Lapsed”)
Has someone given consistently three years ago, two years ago, but not yet this year? Is he or she past the usual time you would expect a gift? Reach out before it’s too late. It’s far easier to keep a donor than to find a new one.
Increasing donors (“Increasing”)
Discover constituents who have given a larger gift each year for the past three years. Are unassigned constituents giving more each year? Find them without having to open and read 500 profiles.
Note to EverTrue users: If you are excited about having this information at your fingertips, please contact your Customer Success Manager. We’ll need some additional data from your donor database to implement Giving Intelligence.