WealthEngine

WealthEngine’s 2012 higher education best practice report contains handy worksheets for tracking and calculating fundraising ROI in major gifts and annual fund.  You can also find a sample major gift prospect tracking form, which will show you what you can and should be tracking as you develop your prospect management system.

WealthEngine research shows 93% of higher education development offices use screening for prospecting and qualification – a practice that generates a significant return on investment.   Many of these institution leverage their screening results for multiple programs including major gifts, planned giving and annual fund.  Another way to get more from screening results is to integrate the data into a Donor Management System, which our research shows is done by only 61% of higher education institutions.  Integrating the data helps to ensure it is available when and wh

Higher education organizations are embracing predictive analytics, with 38% of surveyed higher education organizations doing some type of it – either in-house or with a consultant.  Another 17% are considering it within six months.  At present, 23% of higher education institutions have staff devoted (at least part-time) to analytics, while 8% of overall research time is devoted to analytics.  Key considerations to ensure successful analytics projects,  as defined by Marianne Pelletier, Director, Advancement Research & Data Support, include articulating the

The use of social media for fundraising and research activities in Higher Education is growing with 63% of survey respondents using it more than they did two years ago, with 36% using it as a resource daily or more frequently.  There is overwhelming agreement it is an ethical and useful approach.

In the webinar “Using Analytics For Better Decision Making,” Sally Boucher briefly described “Gap Analysis” as a step in the overall strategic planning process.  The main point was to explain that analytics is infused throughout the entire strategic planning process rather than being a single step in the process, or worse, residing completely outside the planning process.

Having been with WealthEngine for 12 years, there is much to reflect upon; creating the foundation of our search platform out of my home office, developing FindWealth Online with trusted staff who still arrive at our offices each day with fresh ideas, listening to and leveraging our client’s knowledge to share fundraising

Second Edition Introduces Two New Best Practices, Highlights Impact of Social Media and Shares 6 Case Studies Focused on Improving Fundraising Results.

Agilon’s ONE donor management system helps nonprofits manage their donors’ gifts, prospect records, relationships, honor rolls, event attendance, memberships, scholarships, and capital campaign gifts.

WealthEngine continues to build its collection of charitable donations each month including charitable gifts, Federal Election Contributions and State Political Donation records. The database is one of the largest, most current charitable donations databases in the country, with more than 54 million records. Remarkably, some giving data traces back to 1871, however, the majority of these records cover more recent years with a focus on larger, more meaningful donations that can help inform cultivation strategy and ask amounts.

We all know how it works: you research an individual or you screen a list of donors or prospects and your results are returned ready to go. How “ready to go” the results are is subjective depending on your organization’s needs and processes. In some cases, prospect researchers will begin the process of validating the data so each constituent can be segmented and moved into the appropriate donor or prospect category (major gift, annual giving, etc.).