How to Create a Donor Profile: Ultimate Nonprofit Guide
It’s no secret that building relationships with donors is essential to your nonprofit’s fundraising success. However, donor cultivation can take a long time (especially if you’re soliciting major gifts), and you’ll uncover countless pieces of information during that process. And data collection doesn’t end after donors make their first gifts—you’ll continue to interact with them and learn new tidbits as you steward them and retain their support.
Creating a thorough donor profile for every supporter is essential for tracking and using all of this information throughout your relationship with them. In this guide, you’ll learn all you need to know about these resources, including:
Let’s begin by ensuring we’re all on the same page about what exactly a donor profile is.
Donor Profiles: Frequently Asked Questions
What is a donor profile?
A donor profile is a digital resource that tracks key information about a current or prospective donor to your nonprofit. These profiles typically live in your organization’s donor database or constituent relationship management (CRM) system. You’ll collect the data in them by monitoring supporters’ interactions with your nonprofit, conducting prospect research, and directly communicating with donors.
Treat your donor profiles as living documents. While you’ll create new ones each time you identify prospects, your team should easily be able to add the information they learn as relationships develop. Then, once a supporter converts, continue to track their involvement with your nonprofit, since this information will help you keep them engaged long-term.
What is the difference between a donor profile and a donor persona?
The term “donor profile” is often confused with “donor persona,” and donor personas are sometimes even called “ideal donor profiles.” However, there is a critical difference between these two concepts: Donor profiles compile information about real, individual supporters, while donor personas are fictional representations of target audiences for marketing or fundraising campaigns.
The most effective donor personas are realistic, so your nonprofit’s actual donor profiles should inform its donor personas. Segment donors based on shared characteristics, identify additional trends within each segment, and combine those traits into a representation of your ideal supporter for a current initiative.
How can donor profiles benefit my nonprofit?
Besides informing donor persona creation, developing donor profiles allows your nonprofit to:
- Ensure a natural outreach process since you’ll have contact information, communication preferences, and personal interests that could make good conversation topics all stored in one place
- Strengthen your moves management system by tracking each interaction with a prospect, which allows your next move to build on the previous one.
- Make informed donation requests that donors will be receptive to based on their giving and engagement history.
- Recognize each donor in a way they’ll appreciate, then follow up with well-timed, tailored suggestions for continued involvement.
To convince a donor to give, you have to demonstrate that you see them as an individual who would want to join your organization’s community and become an integral part of furthering your mission. And existing supporters don’t want to feel like ATMs with legs, either. In both cases, you’ll be better equipped to show donors you value them if you have comprehensive profiles full of well-organized data to reference.
Elements to Include in a Donor Profile
To truly get to know your donors and prospects, you’ll need to look at many different types of data. Once you’re ready to start compiling profiles, organize your information into the seven sections discussed below and use our handy checklist to ensure you’ve included everything!
1. Donor Overview
This section is designed to quickly brief your team on an individual’s current status. This includes whether they’re an existing donor or new prospect and where they are in their donor journey.
These details should include the individual’s:
- Name
- Date of last interaction with your nonprofit
- Giving status (e.g., prospective donor, one-time donor, repeat donor)
- Recent interactions
- Next moves
Whenever someone on your team reaches out to a donor or receives a message from them, they should update the date of last interaction and add information to the summary of past interactions in their profile. Then, you can plan your next interaction and list that as the next move. These interactions are critical for building a real, lasting relationship with a donor, so being able to reference an overview of those interactions will help you continue to make efficient progress with them.
2. Basic Details
Basic or demographic details are essentially a donor’s personal and contact information. It’s essential that your team keeps these files accurate and up-to-date so you always know how to reach out to your donors and prospects. If there are gaps in the basic details sections of several profiles, data appending can help fill them.
In this section, you’ll include the following information about each donor:
- Full name
- Preferred name or nickname
- Pronouns
- Phone number
- Email address
- Mailing address
- Social media handles (LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, X, etc.)
- Preferred communication method
- Date of birth
Not only is this information important for getting in touch with a donor, but knowing it is the first step to showing you care about an individual. Addressing the donor by the correct name and pronouns, contacting them via a communication method they’ll respond to, and remembering their birthday are critical for starting your relationship with them on the right foot.
3. Personal History
As important as it is to know how to reach and address your donors, understanding them on a deeper level is key to building authentic connections with them and tailoring your donation requests. That understanding begins with knowing additional details about their personal history, including their:
- Alma mater(s)
- Degree(s)
- Connections to foundations
- Real estate holdings
- Public stock holdings
- Community involvement
- Hobbies, values, and interests
Some of these details will tell you whether a donor has the capacity to make a large monetary gift to your organization, and others will show if they have an affinity for your mission and work that would make them willing to do so. Rather than just inviting donors to give, you want to invite them to give to a cause that resonates with them and their values, as doing so will encourage further engagement and a longer, stronger relationship with your organization.
4. Familial Information
Gathering data on your donors’ families will be more helpful for some organizations than others. It’s particularly useful for universities, schools, and healthcare organizations with grateful patient programs, since multiple family members will likely be involved in their donation processes.
But even if your organization doesn’t fall into one of these categories, knowing about a donor’s family can make your communications with them more personal. Supporters’ families are likely important to them, so you should show that your nonprofit also cares about them.
Include the following familial data in your donor profiles:
- Marital status (single, married, domestic partner, divorced, widowed, etc.)
- Name of spouse or partner
- Spouse/partner’s philanthropic ties
- Spouse/partner’s professional affiliations
- Key details on children
- Key details on other relevant relatives
Besides providing additional conversation topics, bringing donors’ families into the cultivation process can encourage them to get their families involved with your work. If you talk to them about their children, for example, they might bring them to volunteer or attend an event. That way, you can plant seeds for the next generation to continue supporting your cause!
5. Professional Affiliations
A comprehensive professional affiliations section can help you gain a firmer understanding of a donor’s giving capacity and uncover potentially valuable connections. For instance, if one of your board members works for the same company as a prospect, you could ask that board member to introduce you to them.
Here are some key data points to include in this section:
- Employer
- Employer address
- Position
- Work email
- Work phone number
- Years with employer
- Relevant employment history
- Relevant business contacts
Additionally, professional affiliation information can indicate whether a donor’s employer offers corporate giving programs such as matching gifts or volunteer grants. If you know this information and discuss it with the donor, you can bring in even more revenue to fund your mission.
6. Organizational Connections
In this section, you can pinpoint exactly how an individual likes to engage with your mission and how strong their bonds with your specific cause and nonprofit are. For a brand-new prospect, this category might be completely blank, but you should revisit it as they begin to engage with your organization.
For existing supporters, this section should include:
- Date of last gift
- Amount of last gift
- Total number of donations
- Average gift size
- Lifetime value
- In-kind donations (i.e., contributions of goods and services)
- Board membership
- Volunteer service
- Event attendance
- Advocacy participation
Past giving and involvement are the strongest indicators of future giving, so tracking these details will make a huge difference when looking for candidates to upgrade their giving. Plus, you can use past experiences with your nonprofit to motivate donors to get involved again (e.g., sharing the impact of their last gift to encourage more donations, or reminding them how enjoyable a past event was to get them to attend your next event).
7. Philanthropic Ties
Although you have the strongest chance of securing a donation from someone who has already given to your organization, someone who has a history of engagement with other nonprofits (especially ones with similar missions to yours) also has great potential to support your cause.
Some pieces of information that are useful for this section include:
- Charitable giving elsewhere
- Board membership elsewhere
- Other non-donation involvement (volunteering, event attendance, etc.) elsewhere
Don’t be afraid to reach out to someone who actively supports another nonprofit! Many people are willing to support more than one organization at a time, especially when the cause is close to their hearts.
DonorSearch’s Donor Profile Tools
At DonorSearch, we strive to help nonprofits like yours understand their donors and build connections that lead to lasting support. We offer several top-of-the line solutions to help your nonprofit develop its donor profiles, including:
- A comprehensive prospect research database that contains more than one billion pieces of information about donors’ personal, professional, and philanthropic histories.
- A prospect generator platform (ProspectView Online 2) that turns prospect research data into actionable insights through customizable, AI-powered reporting.
- Predictive modeling solutions (DonorSearch Ai and Enhanced CORE) that identify trends in prospect research information and make data-backed recommendations about reaching out to those who are most likely to give.
- Integrations with more than 40 donor databases and fundraising tools that allow prospect research data to transfer into individual profiles automatically.
With an accuracy rate above 90%, DonorSearch is a trusted partner for more than 15,000 organizations of all shapes and sizes. Plus, as a recent addition to the EverTrue family, our solutions are well positioned to facilitate donor management and engagement throughout the entire lifecycle. But don’t just take our word for it—check out this video to learn how Taylor University leveraged DonorSearch and EverTrue to find major donors for its biggest capital campaign to date:
Final Thoughts
With fully fleshed-out donor profiles, your organization will have everything it needs to effectively cultivate relationships that lead to long-term engagement and giving. Plus, as you revisit and update your profiles regularly, they’ll serve as the source of truth for your team members to truly get to know current and prospective supporters.
For more information on donor profiles and tools for creating them, check out these resources:
- Donor Analytics: How to Make the Most of Donor Data. Dive deeper into the types of information donor profiles contain and how to apply this information.
- Nonprofit Donor Databases: Everything You Need to Know. Discover tips for choosing and maintaining the repository for your donor profiles: your donor database.
- 15+ Best Prospect Research Tools to Find High-Impact Donors. Explore your options for prospect research solutions to help you enrich the data in your donor profiles.
