Donor Analytics: Making the Most of Your Nonprofit’s Data

The nonprofit sector has long recognized the usefulness of data-driven decision-making, but it’s more critical now than ever. Between changing expectations from modern supporters, recent economic turbulence, and the rise of new technologies like fundraising artificial intelligence (AI), it’s increasingly important for your organization to collect the right data and incorporate it into your operations.

Donor analytics are among the most helpful data points to leverage in your nonprofit’s fundraising efforts, since they help you understand who is giving to your mission, how, and why. In this guide, we’ll cover everything you need to know about donor analytics, including:

• Donor Analytics FAQ
• Types of Donor Analytics & How to Use Them
• Additional Donor Analytics Best Practices

The more money you plan to ask donors for, the more you need to know about them to make a successful donation request that leads to long-term support. So, while we’ll discuss how to collect and apply analytics on all types of donors, these tips will be especially helpful for soliciting planned and major gifts. That being said, let’s get started!

Donor Analytics: Frequently Asked Questions

To clear up any confusion on this relatively broad term, we’ve answered some of the most common questions about donor analytics below.

What are donor analytics?

Donor analytics encompasses all aspects of collecting, organizing, interpreting, and drawing useful conclusions from information on your nonprofit’s supporters. The goal of this process is to understand donor behavior, preferences, and giving history so you can better plan and execute various fundraising efforts.

Why are nonprofit donor analytics important?

Think about how much data your nonprofit collects on its donors. Every time someone makes a gift, registers for an event, submits a volunteer application, buys merchandise, participates in advocacy activities, or even just signs up for your mailing list, new supporter data is created. And that information only covers what your donors do—it doesn’t really tell you who they are.

By systematically tracking and analyzing donor data, your nonprofit can experience benefits like:

• More targeted supporter engagement. When you have a better understanding of the various nuances and groups within your donor base, it’s easier to tailor your marketing messages and involvement opportunities to what they want to see.
• Increased fundraising efficiency. Donor cultivation, event planning, and campaign management can be costly, but if you know what your donors like and respond to, you can allocate your resources to achieve a greater return on your investment.
• Informed strategic planning. Beyond individual fundraising efforts, you can also develop realistic overarching goals that your donors will be excited about helping you achieve over the next five to ten years.
• Improved donor retention. According to Fundraising Report Card, the average donor retention rate in the nonprofit sector is just under 35%. Meeting or exceeding this benchmark is only possible if you leverage donor analytics.

While data doesn’t allow you to predict how donors will respond to new messages or initiatives with 100% accuracy, it does provide a stronger foundation for deepening their engagement over time and even identifying potential new donors with similar characteristics to current supporters.

What tools are necessary for donor data analysis?

Many of the software tools your nonprofit uses can contribute to a strong donor analytics strategy. As you start analyzing and applying donor data, make sure to leverage:

• Your donor database, which is a centralized location for collection and storage.
• Fundraising software that collects data on your various events and campaigns.
• A prospect research solution to find additional information on current and potential high-impact donors.
• Nonprofit AI tools for deeper analysis and more robust reporting.

Whenever possible, integrate these solutions so data transfers seamlessly between them. These integrations streamline time-consuming manual processes and reduce the risk of human error.

Types of Donor Analytics & How to Use Them

With all of the data your nonprofit collects on its donors, how do you determine what analytics are actually useful for your strategy? While every organization’s needs will be different, we’ve broken the most common donor analytics into the following five categories so you can review their applications and decide which ones you should focus on.

Demographic Analytics

Demographic analytics essentially tell you who your donors are. Some background information and basic qualities that fall into this category include:

• Age
• Gender
• Location
• Education
• Marital status
• Family status
• Employment
• Wealth

These data points lay the foundation for creating targeted campaigns and communications that resonate with your supporters. Let’s dive deeper into just a few of these points as examples:

• Age can correlate with supporters’ preferred communication channels—for instance, younger donors are more likely to be active on social media than older donors, who often prefer more traditional outreach methods like direct mail.
• Location may influence what volunteer opportunities and events supporters want to participate in, since the closer a donor lives to your facility, the easier it is for them to join in person.
• Employment data often provides insight into whether donors can take advantage of corporate giving opportunities like matching gifts or volunteer grants, which allow your nonprofit to generate additional funding and form community relationships.

Be careful not to let preconceived notions about various demographic groups introduce bias into your data analysis and application. However, demographic analytics can still make it more efficient and effective for your nonprofit to reach supporters who share similar characteristics.

Psychographic Analytics

Psychographics help your organization understand the “why” behind your donors’ behavior. A few of the psychological and social factors that might provide relevant insights for your nonprofit include:

• Hobbies
• Interests
• Values
• Lifestyles
• Opinions
• Pain points
• Motivations for supporting your mission

Individual data points in this category are also useful for shaping aspects of your fundraising initiatives—for example:

• Hobbies can help you decide what types of fundraising events appeal most to your target audience. For instance, donors who enjoy being physically active might prefer a 5K race over a gala, and supporters who like to shop may be more inclined to attend your gala if it also features a silent auction.
• Interests and values may shape what aspects of your mission you promote to certain supporters or what initiatives you ask them to designate their gifts for. If a university launches a capital campaign, different prospective donors would likely want to contribute if the goal was to build a new football stadium than if the school aimed to upgrade its science labs.
• Motivations for supporting your mission are most relevant to fundraising initiatives that directly target beneficiaries, like grateful patient programs at hospitals. However, they can also influence who you approach for testimonials to support your marketing efforts. A supporter who donates to an animal shelter just to feel like they’re doing a good thing and get a tax break won’t provide as compelling a testimonial as an adopter who gives back to the organization that rescued and rehabilitated their beloved pet.

Additionally, when combined with demographics, psychographic analytics can help you develop more thorough donor personas, which are fictional representations of certain donor segments that your team can reference as you develop communications targeted to those groups. 

Giving Analytics

Giving analytics show the history of a donor’s relationship with your nonprofit, at least from a financial perspective. Here are some examples of data points in this category:

• Average gift amount
• Donation frequency
• Recency of giving (i.e., date of last gift)
• Preferred contribution channel (online, cash/check, stocks, DAFs, etc.)
• Lifetime value (i.e., how much the donor is worth to your organization)

Giving analytics serve a few fundraising purposes, including helping you:

• Keep donors engaged at all stages of their journey with your organization.
• Identify supporters who could upgrade their contribution level.
• Find and re-engage lapsed donors.

Plus, the higher a donor’s average gift amount and lifetime value, the more important it is to keep them engaged long-term, since they tend to give a lot of money and would be very difficult to replace if you lost them.

Engagement Analytics

As you’ve likely noticed, donations aren’t the only way supporters can meaningfully engage with your nonprofit and further its mission. Engagement analytics examine data points related to non-monetary involvement with your organization, such as:

• Interactions with marketing materials (e.g., signing up for your email newsletter or following you on social media)
• Event attendance
• Volunteering
• Advocacy
• In-kind gifts of goods or services

Engagement analytics allow your nonprofit to more effectively secure the different types of support you need for your mission-related efforts to fully function. While demographics and psychographics provide a general idea of what events, volunteer opportunities, advocacy activities, and marketing content resonate with your supporter base, you’ll gain deeper insights if you collect concrete data on those specific initiatives. For example, if more people attended your 5K than your gala last year, that’s an even better sign to prioritize the former than analyzing donors’ hobbies.

Also, there may be times when donors can’t or don’t want to make monetary donations for various reasons. For instance, if someone’s financial situation changes or they’re having trouble seeing the tangible results of their contributions, they may be less likely to give. In those cases, using engagement analytics to strategically suggest other involvement opportunities can help you retain their support until they can or want to make another financial gift.

Predictive Analytics

Predictive analytics give your team an idea of supporters’ future behavior, which is especially useful for major donor fundraising. Cultivating high-impact donors is time- and resource-intensive, so leveraging predictive analytics to narrow down and prioritize your prospect list can help your team do more with less.

While there are many ways to approach predictive analytics, we at DonorSearch have designed our AI-powered predictive modeling tools (DonorSearch Ai and Enhanced CORE—more on these later!) to track and score donors based on six primary analytics, which are:

• Most Likely to Respond (MLR): Which donors will probably respond to outreach?
• Sustainer: Which donors are likely to make at least four gifts in the next year?
• Acquisition: Which non-donors will likely make a first gift?
• Retention: Which first-time donors will probably give again within the next year?
• Upgrade: Which existing donors may give at least $250 the next time they donate?
• Lifetime Value: Which donors might be among your nonprofit’s top 10% in lifetime giving?

Reliable nonprofit AI and prospect research tools are critical for effective predictive analytics. Although no software can perfectly project donors’ future actions, the more robust your solutions are and the higher the quality of your data, the better you’ll be able to use these analytics to streamline major donor outreach and cultivation.

Additional Donor Analytics Best Practices

Now that you know what donor analytics to incorporate into your nonprofit’s strategy, here are a few additional tips to take your approach from good to great.

Keep Your Donor Data Clean & Up-to-Date

Donor analytics will be most helpful to your nonprofit if the data they’re based on is current and well-organized. To make this possible, practice good data hygiene, which involves:

• Regularly auditing your donor database to identify and remove ambiguous, inconsistent, or inaccurate information.
• Consistently formatting supporter profiles so key information on each current and potential donor is easily accessible.
• Standardizing various data entry procedures, from integration requirements to cleanup responsibilities to formatting of information like addresses and phone numbers.
• Adding and updating relevant data through recurring screenings or data appends.
• Implementing privacy and security measures like encryption, limited user permissions, and multi-factor authentication into your database.

Train your team on these data hygiene best practices to make sure anyone who needs to handle donor data in their roles can do so effectively.

Be Transparent With Donors

In a 2024 survey of nonprofit supporters, more than two-thirds of respondents said it was essential for them to trust the organizations they support. However, only one in five respondents said they highly trust nonprofits.

Transparency is vital for building the trust necessary to cultivate strong donor relationships. While you likely know that you should be transparent about your nonprofit’s accomplishments and financial situation, it’s also important to clearly let donors know how you’re collecting and using their data.

Communicate your donor analytics practices and policies to supporters. Since this information may be detailed, your website is a good place to do this, although you can also send out emails to direct supporters to your site to learn more. Also, include checkboxes on online forms where donors can opt out of having their data collected. Although you won’t have as much information to work with in your analysis, it’s more important to maintain supporters’ trust.

Work With Trusted Software Providers

As mentioned previously, the quality and reliability of your data collection and analysis tools greatly impact how well your team can leverage donor analytics. Among prospect research databases and nonprofit AI solutions, DonorSearch leads the market.

DonorSearch offers the largest philanthropic database in the world, which contains more than one billion data points, has new information added to it weekly, and boasts an accuracy rate above 90%. 

Plus, we don’t just make a wealth screening tool—we provide wealth and philanthropic screening that paints a complete picture of donors’ ability and willingness to give based on multiple analytics. And with more than 40 integration partners, including many popular CRMs and fundraising solutions, information transfers seamlessly from our database to yours.

DonorSearch is also a leader in nonprofit fundraising intelligence. Our AI offerings include:

• DonorSearch Ai: The most advanced machine learning solution for the nonprofit sector, which provides custom predictive analytics and modeling.
• Enhanced CORE: A lite version of DonorSearch Ai with set modeling capabilities and point-and-click visualization, perfect for nonprofit AI beginners.
• ProspectView Online 2: A prospect research assistant tool that uses generative AI to create individual prospect reports so you can reference key information on each donor at any time.

More than 13,000 nonprofits of all sizes and missions trust DonorSearch as a key piece of their donor analytics strategy. But don’t just take our word for it—check out this video to learn how the Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta Foundation has leveraged DonorSearch Ai to future-proof their major donor fundraising efforts!

Final Thoughts

Understanding and learning how to apply donor analytics to your nonprofit’s daily operations can work wonders for your fundraising efforts and supporter relationships. Use the tips in this guide to get started, adapt them to your organization’s needs and goals along the way, and make sure you have the right software in your toolkit (like DonorSearch’s prospect research and AI fundraising solutions!) to streamline your processes.

For more information on collecting and applying donor data, check out these resources:

• Prospect Research 101: A Crash Course for Nonprofits. Explore the basics and best practices of prospect research, as well as its relationship to donor analytics.
• Moves Management: How to Cultivate Donor Relationships. Dive deeper into effective ways to apply donor analytics at every stage of the donor management lifecycle.
• How to Create a Standout Nonprofit Annual Report + Template. Discover another process where donor analytics are applicable—the creation of your nonprofit’s annual report.