Predicting Likely Donors During the Pandemic

In the early days of the COVID-19 Pandemic, as stores, businesses, and non-profit organizations had to shut down their operations, a local cultural non-profit launched an emergency fund. The world was reeling from pandemic closures and an unknown virus, and business and organizations around town were trying to divine how long they could maintain their payrolls and operations.

The organization had recently completed a capital campaign and was heistant to request donations from its full membership, given ‘donor fatique’ and the unknowns of the time. I worked closely with the development director and their donor data, looking at the previous five years of giving history, including annual drives, the capital campaign, and membership renewal levels in order to predict which donors would be more likely to give to this specific campaign so that they could target only those individuals.

Using predictive modeling and smart analytics, the organization targeted only select individuals with a history of supporting the organization and was able to raise 137% of its goal in less than two months, maintained ts payroll, and supported staff remotely until it was safe to resume normal operations, emerging even stronger than before the campaign.