UGA Drives Giving with Donor-Centered Approach

The level of detail that donorCentrics provides in the Overall Performance Assessment (OPA) allows us to see movement between retention, reactivation, and acquisition efforts, which is very valuable. Previously, wetracked how many donors we had, and we knew the dollar amounts received, but we did not recognize loyalty as much. It was simply an analysis of alumni participation and solicitation performance each year.

In 2005, UGA was kicking off the Archway to Excellence Campaign, and we needed to know more about our alumni donors, how to speak to them in various ways, and recognize UGA connections based off their engagement.

Blackbaud’s donorCentrics also includes opportunities to participate in collaborative peer benchmarking sessions, and that’s where we have learned the most. In our conversations with other institutions, we’ve talked about successful strategies, challenges, and new ideas. And with the donorCentrics benchmarking dashboards, we can continue to follow the progress of those institutions and others like ours through the year.

Retention is one of those strong points that we look at immediately within the OPA. Who are those individuals that we retain from the prior year? The big, leaky bucket visual that we all have in annual giving is realized in the OPA. Each year, our goal is to retain more donors and advance those relationships.

Our Blackbaud consultant has a broad spectrum of expertise to share and is great at outlining various fundraising trends impacting us as well as other public and private universities. The OPA highlights these trends along with our actual metrics for the year, and that’s something that we always look at.

We do well against our peers in various areas. We also learn a lot from them, too, and it’s based off those trends that we consider new strategies like young alumni approaches, recurring gift opportunities, and leadership upgrades. Having the consultant’s insight helps us narrow the many ideas that emerge during our review.

Early on, we saw that alumni would make a first-time gift, and the second year, about half renewed. When a donor gave in that third year, they pretty much stayed as a donor continuously. We started thinking about that sequence and what we could do to encourage giving beyond that third year. We did not have a consecutive-giving program at that point in time, so we
developed the Third Pillar campaign tying it to The Arch, which has three pillars representing wisdom, justice, and moderation. I remember us using the white boards in UGA’s Miller Learning Center to draft the concept.

Using the Giving By Month report, we noticed December was a significant giving month for UGA’s fundraising program. Having this info and hearing from others within the benchmarking sessions, UGA initiated in 2018 an invoice/contribution card mailing with a suggested increase in giving for calendar year-end. The added mailing had a simple message and a good
visual. The first effort realized a 113% increase in the number of gifts and
a 138% increase in total dollars compared from the previous year’s fall
solicitations. In the second year, it maintained a similar percentage increase
for total dollars, while the number of gifts increased by 56%.

Our Advancement Services team gave a ballpark estimate that 30 to 40
work hours would be needed for each of the 10 or so sections within the OPA. It would be a major commitment of staff resources, and the data would be
limited to just UGA.

With donorCentrics, you look at your information, see how you compare with other higher education institutions, and receive guidance on next steps. And the OPA report covers every aspect of fundraising. It’s Grad Year, Gift Amount Level, Frequency in Giving … Those kinds of perspectives are really important for us to review and consider: Are we doing what we need to do to engage our alumni population to be supportive?

In annual giving, there’s transition in staffing and leadership after a
number of years, with some moving on to another part of an institution—or to another institution. Having the past Overall Performance Assessments
in our library to show, “Here’s the history of UGA,” when transitions take place
is also very valuable because you’ve got the data that provides perspective.
It’s very telling to review because during these past 15 years we’ve had two
recessions, two significant fundraising campaigns, and numerous special
initiatives. We’ve gone from 16,381 Annual Giving donors totaling $4 million
in fiscal year 2005 to 25,559 donors totaling $14 million in fiscal year 2020,
but again these reports tell us about so much more than totals of donors
and dollars. It’s been a good way to watch progress over the years.