Donor Segmentation Ideas.

Alex Lovesey

Hi all, I'm currently looking at revaluating the segmentation of donors on our database to help make sure we're targetting the right people with the fundraising methods that apply to them best and I was wondering if anyone could share how they're currently doing it for your charities.


I work for a medium sized children's hospice charity in the UK, we currently segment based on location and how they first came in contact with us, through raffles or events etc. However I believe we are missing out on a lot of potential, we recently revamped our major donor strategy notcing that a large percentage of our income comes from major donors but before there was a smaller resource dedicated to them.


Any help and/or inspiriation would be great. If anyone else is planning on doing anything like this maybe we could work together and apply similar metrics. Hope to hear from you soon.

Alan Harrison

Alex Lovesey:

Hi all, I'm currently looking at revaluating the segmentation of donors on our database to help make sure we're targetting the right people with the fundraising methods that apply to them best and I was wondering if anyone could share how they're currently doing it for your charities.


I work for a medium sized children's hospice charity in the UK, we currently segment based on location and how they first came in contact with us, through raffles or events etc. However I believe we are missing out on a lot of potential, we recently revamped our major donor strategy notcing that a large percentage of our income comes from major donors but before there was a smaller resource dedicated to them.


Any help and/or inspiriation would be great. If anyone else is planning on doing anything like this maybe we could work together and apply similar metrics. Hope to hear from you soon.

I would say start by modeling the types of donor you already have on file by recencey, frequcey and monetary, then add in demographic and phsycographic information so you can model say 10 (sub in the amount you want to do) different types of donor that respond to different campaigns, then do some testing, model a type of donor you think will be attracted to your cause and use tools like Infutor to find a sample set of perhaps 5000 (made up number could be 500, or 50,0000 or 5000,000 depending on the size of your charity and the budget you have available), then select the same amount in the way you select for solicitation today. Then do a side by side comparison of response rate and value per donor, then rinse and repeat until you find the best types of segmentation with the best messaging that work for you. Once you have that you have your core set of campaigns that are your 'go to' after that you can do more edge case fancy stuff for testing without impeding your bread and butter. Also get a copy of 'Hidden Gold' by Harvey McKinnon read that and test some of those strategies for sustaining donors.  

Brianne Baird

Alex Lovesey:

Hi all, I'm currently looking at revaluating the segmentation of donors on our database to help make sure we're targetting the right people with the fundraising methods that apply to them best and I was wondering if anyone could share how they're currently doing it for your charities.


I work for a medium sized children's hospice charity in the UK, we currently segment based on location and how they first came in contact with us, through raffles or events etc. However I believe we are missing out on a lot of potential, we recently revamped our major donor strategy notcing that a large percentage of our income comes from major donors but before there was a smaller resource dedicated to them.


Any help and/or inspiriation would be great. If anyone else is planning on doing anything like this maybe we could work together and apply similar metrics. Hope to hear from you soon.

Hi Alex, I am actually starting a similar project- except we have no exisitng segmentation at all. I am starting from scratch and looking at a number of ways and best to do this. What database software are you using? We currently use Raiser's Edge and I will be integrating that with Research Point. It seems like Research Point is all about developing segments for donors that make the most sense for each individual type of organization. I work for a private high shcool in the Los Angeles area and we have over 13,000 records that have never been segmented, or even analyzed for giving potential. I think my first step is to do a wealth screening of my consitiuent base- have you done one of those before? If so how often? I plan on taking a few of the online training courses- they have one specifically on segmenting prospect records in Research Point if you happen to use it or might look into using it.