Wiland Blog

Nonprofits are always looking to make sure that their fundraising dollars are working as hard and as intelligently as possible. Ensuring that campaigns achieve peak performance is important for charitable organizations, even in the best of times. But this is especially true in today’s fundraising environment in which many nonprofits are feeling the pressures of rising mailing costs, supply chain issues, and other economic factors.

One strategy for ensuring that your fundraising dollars are producing the best possible results is donor optimization. This involves using data and predictive analytics to better understand your donors and then leveraging those insights to run more efficient, better-performing campaigns.

Even while talking about donor optimization, it should be noted that reaching high-value new donors remains paramount as well. That’s why we encourage fundraisers to continue and expand their acquisition programs, even when budgets are constrained, to ensure that cost reductions now don’t borrow against future revenue growth. Optimizing prospecting efforts alongside the optimization of existing donor relationships will help nonprofits maximize the long-term success of their fundraising efforts.

New Optimization Resource Available

Wiland recently created The Fundraiser’s Field Guide to Donor Optimization to help nonprofits determine their next steps to achieving peak donor optimization and more sustainable revenue growth. This guide is a timely, important resource, and you can download your copy here.

Here are three key takeaways from The Fundraiser’s Field Guide to Donor Optimization:

1. Better donor understanding leads to better fundraising results.
   The most powerful resource that a nonprofit has is its existing donor relationships. You work hard to establish trust, foster loyalty, and improve engagement with your donors, and donor optimization will help you do that even better. By gaining a more comprehensive understanding of the people who donate to your cause—their giving propensities, spending behaviors, and how they engage with organizations across multiple donation and spending categories—you can ensure that they experience ideal donor journeys with your organization.
2. There is a donor optimization solution out there for everyone.
   We believe that fundraisers should consider optimization as a strategy that they integrate into every campaign. There is a wide range of optimization solutions available, whether you are looking to model and score your entire donor file for better segmentation or to analyze lapsed donors for effective reactivation efforts. Data-driven optimization can also be used to identify potential major donors and determine the optimal ask amounts in your appeals. Through advanced predictive modeling techniques, the optimization possibilities are nearly endless.