College’s fundraisers look to power
of data intelligence and predictive modeling
while building on historic campaign

Q: What led you to consider adding data intelligence capabilities to your fundraising toolkit?

A: We entered a campaign from 2012 to 2018 that was wildly successful.
We had a goal of $75 million, and we raised over $90 million with 32 gifts of
$1 million or more. We didn’t know what we didn’t know at the start of that
campaign. We thought $75 million was going to be a major stretch for us.
We came out of that knowing we have a lot of willing major gift donors
in our database, and it got us thinking: “Since this campaign was so
successful, how are we going to be successful in the next campaign?”
Sometime within that earlier campaign, we started doing batch
screenings using Blackbaud’s ResearchPointTM to screen maybe 5,000
names at a time. But you wonder, which group do you run when you’re
only going to do 5,000 or even 10,000?
We asked ourselves: “How are we going to cultivate the next group of
donors? Are we going to do something that’s big and informative so
we can really know what we don’t know?” I think that’s what predictive
modeling tells you.

Q: What would you say to other fundraisers who are thinking about using modeling and prospect research in a comprehensive, big-picture way?

A: My husband’s a mathematician, and we both value data. These days,
we can know a lot of things about people, and when you pair public
information with behavior insights, it really is the perfect storm to
understand what someone may be thinking.
We always believe as major gift fundraisers that nothing is more valuable
than what your eyes and ears will see and hear. But we’re all limited in
time, in how many gift officers we have, and in resources. And with the
pandemic, it’s been more difficult to see donors.
I just don’t know in today’s world how you have a successful campaign
without having something similar to this. You are on the losing end by
not using analytics.
Are you willing to make this calculated risk—to try analytics and put
resources towards it—even if resources are thin? Or are you willing to let
another organization that is willing to take that risk take your donor by
knowing enough about them to speak their language and meet
their needs?

Q: While it’s still early in your journey with predictive modeling, have you already experienced some “wow” and “aha” moments?

A: When we got our preliminary scorecard back and shared it with our
vice president, we said, “Look at this scorecard. It says we have 10,000
people in our records that have the capacity to be major donors.”
You gotta know, “Who are these people?”
It was an aha moment to know that you have a lot of donors untouched.
I came from an institution that had more than 350,000 living alumni,
and I’m now at a place where there are around 24,000. When you are at a small institution, where a lot of people know a lot of people, you think
you know everything about the data. You’ve just lived it so much.
Also, when we implemented predictive insights, it was mainly for major
gift officers, and when the results came back we realized it’s going to be
a great tool for our annual fund gift officer, whose role is to move those
middle level gifts to a higher middle level and then to a major gift officer.
So that was an aha moment for us because it wasn’t a need we intended
to fill. But maybe it should have been, because when we think about
a comprehensive campaign that is going to be more successful than
the last campaign, we need to raise all donor levels, which can even be
harder at the lower end, because you’re asking someone to give their
living expenses philanthropically.

Q: What’s a key way these new tools will help you cultivate donors?

A: I don’t think I would be speaking out of turn to say that, for our gift
officers and prospect officers, the hardest part of the job is to figure out
how much money to ask for. If someone agrees to it right away, you’ve
probably not asked for enough. If someone is highly offended, you may
have asked for way too much. What’s something in the middle that’s a
starting point? How much is enough to ask? Blackbaud’s solutions give
us clear guidance on these questions, too.

Q: How does your Blackbaud consultant guide and support you?

A: Our consultant has made the process so much better. He absolutely
represents Blackbaud well. You know he’s working on a different level
than you are, and you are asking him the most basic questions, and he
has the ability to respond with integrity without patronizing. He just
has a good temperature for working with a group that could be on
all different levels, and he always will give us time. I’m a stewardship
person, not a systems person, and he guided me to a place of
complete understanding.

Q: Meredith College has used Blackbaud solutions for fundraising and managing your donor database for over 15 years. Did you consider using another company for data intelligence?

A: It would be very unlikely for us to use an outside company. In this job,
you get solicitations a million times a day with everything that people
say that they can do. We need to think about how we can improve, and
that’s most likely always going to be with technology that talks to our
system, and we’re going to stay in the same family. Overall, we are very
pleased using Blackbaud solutions.