Planned Giving Data Services

By Timothy D. Logan, ACFRE

When I talk with clients about planned giving, the question that I am asked most often, and the one that is the most important to answer for your program, is: which of my donors are the best planned giving prospects?

Think of your own planned giving marketing program. You know all the techniques to help you get your message to prospective planned giving donors. Are you relying on donors to “raise their hand?” What about those qualified planned giving prospects who stay just below your radar? What about those qualified planned giving prospects that don’t raise their hand.

When you consider analyzing your file for planned giving, you should consider two things: 1) identifying the most likely planned giving prospects; and 2) controlling your planned giving direct marketing costs.

Planned Giving File Analysis and Segmentation:

Many clients choose a data analysis package or a scoring service. In my opinion, using these services alone represents a “quick fix” Sound planned giving data analysis is built on three levels: giving analysis; enhanced data scoring; and segmentation.

Giving analysis: RuffaloCODY’s file analysis looks both at donor history and loyalty indicators to develop groups of planned giving prospects. Based on traditional direct response analysis, we start with an RFM matrix. (Recency, Frequency, Monetary amount) We focus on frequency of giving, the single most important gift history indicator for planned giving, to produce giving frequency trends. Donors are grouped and rated based on age and the number of gifts they have given over specific periods, (i.e. 7 gifts in the past 10 years).

At this stage we incorporate the art of Planned Giving donor segmentation: donor affinity indicators. Talking with our clients, we develop an understanding of the specific donor behaviors that clients feel indicate donor affinity. These may include: a particular school from which the donor graduated, attendance at program or sporting events, donations directed to a specific area, service on boards, committees, etc.

Enhanced data scoring: After using giving history to determine donor loyalty, we incorporate enhanced data scores (if available) to determine planned giving probability. These include wealth rating, age, gender, etc. Many of our clients use some of the more widely known wealth ratings, planned giving scores, or loyalty/passion indices, etc. which we use and incorporate into our file analysis and segmentation process.

The widely known ratings for wealth and scoring are designed for working with individual donors. The process described here will take these scores into consideration, if available, but, it is important to note that our process is designed to form calling pools or direct mail segments. These are groups of individuals who are more alike than different. Naturally, the ideal segment is a segment of one—think about being in a donor’s living room. Our process is an intermediate step in finding your ideal “segment of one.”

Segmentation: We combine giving results and enhanced data scores to develop two segmentation models: one is created based on gift type (Bequest, CGA, CRT, etc); the second is based on the prospect’s life stage.

  • By targeting the right message to the right audience, the gift type segments allow you to control costs when sending a mailing about a particular planned giving subject.
  • The life stage segments help you ensure that your planned giving marketing and educational messages are geared appropriately for your donors.

Using our strength in data interpretation, we are able to combine these three data strategies to create a dynamic, useful and highly effective tool for marketing planned gifts. You are able to select exactly the right audiences for planned giving direct mail or for donor qualification. Using any one of these strategies alone produces less than complete results.

Qualifying Donors

If you rely on data analysis alone, you run the (very likely) risk of missing important groups of potential planned giving donor prospects.

Combining the data analysis with our Planned Giving ID Qualification calls, we are able to identify those donors who fall within the best group for planned gifts: those within the high probability/high affinity group who also have an INTEREST in making a planned gift.

Once we talk with your donors we are able to move totally beyond the world of direct response and use psychographic factors to create Planned Giving Cluster Groups. Three examples of a cluster would be:

--Donors who indicated a concern about income who have requested CGA information;

--Donors who have left a charitable bequest for you but are not their own decision makers;

--Donors who have included you in their estate plans and are over age 80.

Defining these clusters, we help you better personalize your messages and steward your planned giving donors.

Timothy D. Logan, ACFRE

703-758-0970


Planned Giving Prospect Matrix