As a nonprofit professional, you likely interact with data daily. From managing your weekly volunteers to gathering donor communication preferences, your nonprofit needs to work with clean, complete data points to raise ...
What Is Wealth Screening and Why Should My Nonprofit Use It?
Imagine you’re a nonprofit university planning a capital campaign to build a new library. Knowing that most effective capital campaigns rely on large initial gifts, the university wants to raise approximately 50% to 70% of its campaign goal during the campaign’s “quiet phase” before moving to a broader public one.
However, the fundraisers are in a bind. Reaching out to everyone in their database would effectively push the campaign public before raising the necessary base funds. On the other hand, they don’t have the time or resources to manually go through each alumni profile in their database and decide who their wealthiest donors are.
Luckily, nonprofit wealth screening can help. This guide will explore the fundamentals of wealth screening for nonprofits, answering questions like:
- What Is A Wealth Screening?
- Why Should My Nonprofit Use Wealth Screening?
- What Are Wealth Screening Best Practices?
No matter your fundraising goals, a wealth screening can help you earn more. Let’s learn more about the process and how your nonprofit can get started.
What Is A Wealth Screening?
Wealth screening, a crucial element of the prospect research and fundraising process, helps nonprofits identify and target prospective and existing donors with the greatest capacity to give.
Nonprofit wealth screening tools leverage public record data, proprietary philanthropy databases, and data-driven algorithms to determine an individual’s potential for future giving based on a combination of their past information (such as giving history) and current assets.
What Is the Difference Between Wealth Screening and Prospect Research?
Wealth screening is an element of prospect research. While wealth screening focuses on financial information, prospect research also incorporates philanthropic information to determine a person’s willingness and capacity to give. If you want to narrow in on concrete information about a potential donor’s financial capacity to give, wealth screening is the right choice.
When conducting a wealth screening, there are the financial indicators that best predict a donor’s giving behavior:
Business affiliations. Wealth screening can reveal information about donors’ careers, employers, and salaries.
Stock ownership. Not only does stock ownership give you an idea of a donor’s relative wealth and ability to give, but it can also be a method of giving. As a registered 501(c)(3), you can accept donations of stocks and securities in addition to typical cash giving.
Home value. Real estate ownership can be an excellent indicator of wealth. In fact, homeowners with
Press Release: AlumniFinder Launches DonorModel, Fundraising Analytics Solution to Predict Promising Donors
Charleston, South Carolina [August 1, 2022] – AlumniFinder, which has supported the data-driven fundraising needs of higher-education and nonprofit communities since 2001, has launched a new fundraising analytics solution to identify an organization’s supporters that have the highest likelihood of donating.
Analyzing an organization’s existing database against a wide range of demographic and psychographic attributes, AlumniFinder’s DonorModel produces a scored model to determine which current non-donors, such as lapsed members or alumni, are most likely to give in the future, and which aren’t.
“AlumniFinder’s business model has always been to provide our clients with the highest quality data-related services,” says Jennifer Cole, Director of Sales for AlumniFinder. “We provide this level of service through our extensive partnerships and continued efforts to grow and remain a leader in this industry.
“After taking a hard look at our analytics offerings, we realized they needed a revamp to better align with our clients and their needs. We are very excited to release our new DonorModel solution, which will help our clients focus on only the contacts within their database that are most likely to donate, thereby eliminating wasted resources. I’m looking forward to seeing the benefits this service provides my clients!”
Because nonprofit organizations spend much of their limited marketing dollars on paper and postage for fundraising appeals, it is in an organization’s best interest to send appeals to those most likely to give. To provide this level of insight to its clients, DonorModel compares pertinent information about an organization’s past donors to its non-donors to determine which have the highest propensity to donate in the future. The list of non-donors, ranked from highest to lowest, is returned to the organization for use in its fundraising initiatives.
AlumniFinder’s DonorModel is now available for use by higher-education and nonprofit institutions. With a three-week turnaround time and a cost-effective price point for DonorModel, AlumniFinder is confident this solution will pay for itself during its clients’ first campaigns.
To learn more about DonorModel, view the Product Guide.
5 Keys to Engaging Millennial Donors
Millennials (typically defined as the generation born between 1981 and 1996) are the future of your nonprofit. As the largest living generation by population size with 72.1 million people in the U.S., Millennials are a diverse group of people who tend to strongly support social good causes.
Whether you’re seeking to connect with alumni donors or start cultivating relationships with long-term supporters, the time to begin engaging Millennials is now. We’re going to review the five things you need to know about Millennial donors to connect with them effectively. Millennials tend to be:
- Socially conscious
- Brand loyal
- Tech-savvy
- Socially driven
- Adventurous
By understanding this generation’s unique blend of aspirations, backgrounds, and interests, you can create relevant messaging and social media engagement strategies that result in increased support for your mission.
At the end of this post, we’ll explore a few strategies for learning more about and connecting with your unique Millennial donor pool. You’ll be able to inform your overarching fundraising strategy with targeted insights into this important generation. Let’s take a closer look at each Millennial tendency.
1. Millennials tend to be socially conscious
Along with their younger Gen Z counterparts, Millennials are the most ethnically and racially diverse population in the U.S. Many of them embrace differences and are open-minded when it comes to social issues. For example, Millennials are much more likely than older adults to support same-sex marriage, with 74% voicing approval.
Millennials also tend to be highly environmentally conscious, with
33%
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The Essential Guide to Alumni Giving and Fundraising
Between small recurring gifts and large one-time donations, alumni giving often makes up the largest segments of university fundraising efforts. Who’s more motivated to donate to your university than the individuals who were once students themselves?
Keeping this in mind, this guide will review the current state of alumni giving, the best practices for engaging your alums, and the most effective ways to increase your alumni giving rates. We’ll also review the tools that make it easier to reach your fundraising goals. Here’s what to expect:
- Why is Alumni Giving Important?
- Exploring Alumni Giving Rates and Trends
- How Can Prospect Research Help Find Top Alumni Donors?
- Alumni Giving Best Practices
- 6 Helpful Alumni Giving Tools
As we walk through these steps, you’ll likely find yourself exploring the quantitative and qualitative information you have on your alums. Before making any programmatic decisions, however, plan to conduct an audit of your alumni database, remove outdated and duplicate information, and enhance your data with additional wealth and philanthropic indicators. Then, you can be confident that any changes you make will be based on the most accurate, thorough data possible.
Why Is Alumni Giving Important?
Alumni giving is important for two primary reasons: it offers crucial support to the important work your university does in educating the leaders of tomorrow and it’s a key indicator of your university’s financial health. In this section, we’ll cover how alumni donations tend to be directed and used by universities, plus the major benefits of developing an alumni giving program.
How Are Alumni Donations Used?
There isn’t just one type of student that graduates from your school. Likewise, you don’t have only one type of alum. Your graduates have gone on to be biologists and writers, farmers and professional athletes. In many cases, alums will direct their donations to a specific program or department that was meaningful to them during their studies. In fact, restricted gifts make up 93% of giving to universities.
Overall, alumni giving generally funds:
- Scholarships. If an alum received a specific scholarship or support during their time at your university, they’ll often want to “pass on” this opportunity to current and future students.
- Construction costs. Usually, alumni interest in funding construction projects piques after the kickoff period of a capital campaign to fund a specific project, such as a new science center with up-to-date technology or a state-of-the-art theater. Alums are particularly apt to give to buildings for which the name (e.g. the Alumni Hall) will acknowledge their contribution.
- Research projects. Funding faculty research can be attractive to your alumni, especially when it’s framed in the context of its impact on students and the broader community.
- Operational costs. While the day-to-day operations of running a university aren’t as sexy as new experimental research, they are just as important! Because of this, operational costs generally end up being funded by unrestricted donations.
By engaging the diversity of your alumni community, you’ll be able to attract and direct resources across your funding priorities.
What Are the Benefits of a Strong Alumni Giving Program?
Even though the majority of alumni gifts contain restrictions, they are still incredibly valuable to your university. So why exactly is it important to build a strong alumni giving program? A thriving program allows you to:
Access a broad range of support that adds up to make a big impact. Relying entirely on one income source can become a big problem if you suddenly lose that stream. Alumni giving helps you avoid that risk by diversifying your fundraising efforts across a large body of donors. Moreover, small gifts can really add up. For example, in a given year, an annual fund made up of $500,000 in small donations can have the same financial effect as
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TeammateFinder: Philip
AlumniFinder’s success starts with our talented team! Each month, we highlight someone from our company to show you the people behind AlumniFinder.
In our latest TeammateFinder, we speak to Philip Riffle.
What is your role at AlumniFinder?
I am AlumniFinder’s Associate Client Coordinator.
How long have you been a member of the AlumniFinder team?
I have been a member of the team for 8 years.
What are 3 words to describe AlumniFinder?
Comprehensive, Accurate, Teamwork
What do you most enjoy about your role?
I most enjoy problem-solving.
What are some of your hobbies?
I enjoy cooking, reading, and biking.
What
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