Knowing Bilbo raises more money

Photo: Bilbo, (c) Base Photographics

Pareto Fundraising is obsessed with data. We love it. In all of the forms it takes, especially:

1) Big picture, environmental data (who gives, how many people are there, how big are charities etc).

2) Analytical data (what your donors - or customers - do)
3) Personal data (information about your donors).

The third type, personal, is a lot of effort to collect. We know we should collect donor transaction history (purchase history), contact details and date of birth, but what else?

We collect tons. We get it in various ways, including surveys which are one of the best tools a charity can use. But I want to share a tiny snippet for you. One of our clients, The Lost Dogs' Home, captures as much information as it can, including the name of pets belonging to the charity.

I asked Paul Roberts, CEO of Pareto Phone and co-owner of all the Pareto group companies, if knowing pet name made any difference to whether someone would upgrade their regular gift.

In a remarkable show of the power of personalisation he sent me an amazing statistic.

After calling donors, who were already regular givers, Pareto Phone noticed that 44% of people they spoke to, who had never told The Lost Dogs' Home the name of their pet, upgraded. Pretty damn good!

But for those who had notified pet name a massive 63% of them upgraded!

Obviously, pet name won't be such an important identifier for most charities, but please think about what information you want from your donors, and why.

Sean Triner