Kali Righter

Written By: Kali Righter and Sarah Breece 

With nearly 31% of annual donations coming in December, crafting a strong appeal is essential for your nonprofit organization.

1. Step one is identifying the right story and writing impactful copy.
2. Step two is determining who you will be soliciting and how they will be asked.

Here are strategies to maximize the use of your donor database and wealth screening tools for this process.

In theory, we all know the importance of data when it comes to working efficiently and effectively. We’ve heard phrases like “data driven” and understand that to be good stewards of our work we should be using data as a regular part of our work.

Yet many nonprofits struggle to truly integrate data into their culture and in their decision-making processes. Here are some ideas on how you can more effectively integrate data into your organization:

The concept of being “data driven” has taken the nonprofit industry by storm. Data’s ability to be objective and serve as a tool to focus energy and attention can be transformative to nonprofit organizations. Using data well means you can be the best steward of your resources and increase your impact in whatever critical area you support.

Therefore, nonprofits often dive in to using data, and once they start it can be hard to stop. More and more “what if we had [insert metric]” scenarios come to mind and before you know it one “basic” dashboard contains over 30 metrics. Success, right?

We need to stop and recognize a core concept when it comes to working with metrics. Metrics in their simplest form are quantitative representations of your work.