I don’t use AI
When I browse my LinkedIn feed, these days, it seems like nearly every post is about Generative AI. So it’s perhaps a bit counter-cultural for me to admit that for my business projects, I don’t use it. When you opt to do a project through Donor Science Consulting, all project outputs are filtered through my approximately […]
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Charity: water – A charity that knows the value of a map
Today I was perusing the website of charity: water as I wanted to see what kind of data visualizations they used to communicate the impact of their work. I think I was expecting a lot more than I saw at first. On their page that tries to teach the website visitor about their work (see here if you’re […]
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When the COVID-Fundraising Drugs Wore Off
The year was 2020 and the world was waking up to the infinite scream we now know as COVID-19. At the time, when it was still new, there was a lot of fear (both healthy and not-so-healthy). How would we get through this? When would a vaccine come out? When would we get back to […]
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Canadian Donor Dashboard – 2022 Edition
So this thing happened in Canadian fundraising that I know has also been happening in US fundraising as well. It’s a thing which has been happening for over 20 years and was bound to get us in trouble sooner or later. Well, we’re now in trouble. The percent of taxfilers who reported any charitable donation […]
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“Most people are donating $100 right now” ????
As you should well be aware by now, I really do care about the non-profit industry. That’s why when I saw the below string of ask amounts on an online donation form, I got really bothered. I’ve looked at countless gift files, and I can tell you without the shadow of a doubt that in […]
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Stats are better than stories
Looking at the title to my blog post, you might be wondering about the rationale behind such blasphemous words. Let me try to explain. When it comes to capturing the hearts and minds of your donors during a particular fundraising campaign, stories do indeed reign supreme. We are all of us wired for a good […]
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When industry standard doesn’t make enough sense
Recently I was finishing off an online interactive dashboard for a client. In various reports in the dashboard, I wanted to use a statistical metric called a median in addition to using the average. The median of a dataset is always defined as the value that splits the data evenly into 2 groups, higher and lower. In fact, […]
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How to Win Campaigns and Influence People
Intro Every non-profit has to do it. Select or segment the right donors for the right purpose at the right time. You want to have the best chance at getting good results and not have to waste time and money in the process. This blog post will go through two methods of doing this, RFM […]
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Reflections of a Data Nerd on Business Development
It’s a new year, and I’m feeling the need to reflect on my past business development progress. When I started my business in 2017, I seriously thought that in order to get business all I had to do was mail people, email people, and call people – cold contacts, in other words. Many months and […]
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Lessons I’ve Learned Making 2 Online Dashboards
Intro Hands down, the biggest and most beneficial challenges I’ve taken on in my business has been when I was contracted by 2 different organizations to create interactive online fundraising campaign dashboards. Simply put, a dashboard is a method of displaying summary information to the viewer in such a way that it makes it easy […]
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