Best Practices: Looking Outside the Nonprofit Window

Where do you look for “best practices?” All too frequently in annual giving, we worry about what other institutions are doing. While I’m a huge believer that a lot of great tactics can be “borrowed” from one institution and implemented with slight tweaks at another, using this approach consistently fails to take into account that everyone’s donors and constituents are unique and what works at one institution may fail considerably at another. I’m a big believer in “looking outside” our industry for trends and statistics that can be used to influence annual giving strategy and maximize results. If you’re wondering why the marketing trends from other industries matter, it’s pretty simple…they want the attention of all consumers and the ones that are successful are changing the expectation of how your constituents want to be engaged and interact with your organization. This past week I ordered the DMA’s 2014 Statistical Fact Book and was reminded just how much analysis and research is available across multiple industries. A few of the trends from this year’s 286-page fact book that I thought were particularly interesting:

• 53% of marketers are increasing their marketing analytics budgets.
• Postcards continue to have the highest readership rate – 56% read by recipients.
• 86% of marketers regularly test subject lines to optimize open rates.
• More people reply to a courtesy – reply envelope versus a business-reply envelope.

Other industries are using consumer data, multichannel integration, and analytics to fuel their strategy and determine how they invest their budget to achieve the best return. They are making data driven decisions and testing constantly to achieve success. Imagine how much opportunity exists for both higher education fundraising and nonprofits if we just spend more time “looking outside” our industry. Is your organization using cross-industry research and trends to optimize your annual giving strategy?