Lawrence Henze’s Whitepaper on Outstanding Implementation and ROI with Target Analytics!

You know what’s better than ego-boosting promotions of my own speaking engagements and papers... Ego-boosting promotion for my outstanding Target Analytics consulting colleagues!  I came across Lawrence Henze’s whitepaper (Lawrence is our Principal Consultant), on achieving Return-On-Investment (ROI) by investing in implementation of your Target Analytics services on our npEngage.com blogging site here at Blackbaud.  Here is a link to his blog entitled, “4 Ways Data and Analytics Can Help Nonprofits Achieve Positive ROI”, and here is a link to his whitepaper entitled, “Remarkably Outstanding Implementation: The Foundation for Positive ROI with Target Analytics.”

Of special note from Lawrence’s whitepaper/blog are couple items I wanted to highlight and that I’ve been discussing with clients lately during consulting:

• Here is a quote from the whitepaper: “One of the core reasons I love data analytics in the world of fundraising is that it can drive us to achieve positive ROI and help us to determine an appropriate return on investment for our organization. It can lead us to donors and prospects with the best giving potential, and lead us away from efforts solely justified by ‘the way we’ve always done it.’ And that will create positive ROI!”
  • I can’t tell you the times I’ve heard this from clients.  When I hear this, I make sure to re-iterate that now you’ve made an investment to help your organization identify prospects for future giving opportunities, so over the coming weeks, months, and years, this data is meant to help you rethink how you’ve assigned prospects in the past and work towards a prospect pipeline focused on your most likely and capable prospects across the entire spectrum of giving, investing in the right prospects for the right opportunity, program or initiative.  Many of the clients we work with take the opportunity to rebalance their gift officer portfolios by creating a data-driven reason for them to be there in the first place, and then continually assign and qualify newly identified prospects so that prospects don’t sit in portfolios because they’ve always been there and still haven’t responded or given a major gift to the organization.
• Lawrence gives examples that will help you demonstrate your ROI with your Target Analytics project, such as “The average principal gift increased by 52%” or “The number of annual leadership prospects increased by 411%.” 
  • I really like these types of examples, as they provide concrete numbers that affect your bottom line.  I have a client who raised the same amount from their annual fund mailings to a smaller group of top-scoring AGL & TGR prospects vs. sending to the entire population, saving them $2,000 per mailing X 6 mailings a year, which adds up to ~$12,000.  Those are real savings, and that is one application of their analytics project.  I found it quite interesting that later in his whitepaper, Lawrence states that utilizing AGL and TGR scores “can help you achieve immediate program results in the short term and translate to increased buy-in.”  BINGO!
• Another quote that stood out for me in the whitepaper was: “If you want to ensure that your advancement team is committed to implementation, secure their buy-in from the beginning.”
  • I can’t say enough how important this is when meeting with clients before, during and after consulting sessions.  Having leadership and team wide buy-in that the analytics WILL BE IMPLEMENTED is paramount to achieving success and ultimately a strong ROI.

Please take a few moments to read Lawrence’s blog and whitepaper, as they both provide important insights whether you are embarking on, in the midst of, or have already completed a Target Analytics project with our team.

If you are interested in learning more about the consulting services that Target Analytics has, please don’t hesitate to contact your Target Analytics Account Executive to discuss the variety of ways you can engage with someone who can help you and your colleagues understand the analytics, apply the results, and create a next steps implementation plan and timeline that is, as Lawrence puts it, “both feasible and challenging”.