How Can Target Analytics Affluence Inform Your Annual Fund Efforts?

Target Analytics Affluence is one of our newest offerings, and the more I work with it the more I like it.

In the most basic sense, the data provide actionable insights that both identify your most promising prospects and explain how to engage them effectively.  If you haven’t explored it yet, this npENGAGE blog post, podcast, and webpage do a good job introducing the solution.

I am excited about Affluence because it’s applicability doesn’t start and stop with bigger gifts or just one type of gift. You can get a lot of mileage out of this data, and everyone in a development office can leverage it to be more efficient and effective.

Here’s an example.

As a former annual giving officer, I spent lots of time thinking about one question.  Would the people receiving my message find it compelling enough to provide much needed assistance?

As a TA client at the time, I had modeling data and that was great to help me figure out which people should receive messages—but I still scratched my head about the actual message itself.  Was anecdotal information and my “annual giving gut” enough to get it right?  I didn’t know.  As a recent client described it, I felt like I was throwing spaghetti at a wall and hoping some of it would stick.

Now annual giving and communications offices can use Donor Categories in Affluence (Philanthropists, Humanitarians, Casual Donors, Enigmas, and The Masses) for insights into the types of people who will receive their message and craft their approach.

So, let’s say I am putting together a mailing and learn my list is populated primarily with Philanthropists and Humanitarians. How might I act on that?  Using the Affluence definition, I know:

• Philanthropists want to spread success to the world. Optimists, they respond to positive-potential messaging. They seek mass scale improvements rather than on single cases.
• Giving until it hurts and relating to grass roots issues, Humanitarians are engaged by messages of need. They seek to help their fellow man instead of changing the world on a mass scale.

See some similarities?  How about some differences? Both Philanthropists and Humanitarians appear to engage readily and want to make a difference.  That said, Philanthropists might be best approached with a focus on the “macro” changes your donors are impacting, and for Humanitarians the message might be “micro” and describe how gifts impact individual people.

You could also consider The Masses.  These people have little means and no giving history, so they offer poor donor potential. They may respond to needs, yet maintaining their support will be problematic.  Knowing that, you could consider trimming your mailing lists or reduce your efforts to solicit these people, especially if you’ve approached them before and they haven’t responded.

That’s just one small example, but you get the idea.  Progress is a wonderful thing, isn’t it?

Has anyone started using Affluence data in this way?  If so, would you share insights in the comments section below?  Because the data are so new, your experiences will help other readers a lot.

And stay tuned for an upcoming blog post about using Affluence data in your planned giving efforts!  Katherine Swank—our genius at all things planned giving—has ideas you won’t want to miss.