Canadian Donor Dashboard – 2020 Edition
Recently, Statistics Canada posted their yearly update to their lovely dataset: “Summary of charitable donors”. I really like it, because it gives you a stark perspective on the state of trackable charitable giving in Canada. I’ve been following it yearly and used this year’s update to refresh a dashboard that allows you to explore yearly trends in […]
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#GivingTuesday tweets that got noticed vs those that didn’t
Introduction Go on Twitter and search up the #GivingTuesday hashtag and you’ll find a never-ending torrent of tweets by non-profits trying to get the attention of digital passersby. Given how jam-packed the market is, and how short peoples’ attention spans are on Twitter, if there’s anything a non-profit can do to get even ONE like, […]
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2020: The year a wrecking ball came for Canada’s federal political parties
This is a story about fundraising, told with the benefit of open data from Elections Canada. As you probably guessed, it’s also a story motivated by COVID-19. As we know, the pandemic had its early roots in late 2019, but didn’t become a major public concern in Canada until early 2020. Before that, our federal political […]
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Dashboard Exploration of Charitable Giving and Presence of Children
I think it’s pretty much axiomatic that kids are expensive! However, how does that affect charitable giving? That’s the topic of this post. I was able to find an interesting dataset from Statistics Canada which was created based on charitable giving data from 2013 (I know, I know. It’s quite old at this point!). They […]
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You might be a major gift prospect if…
Apologies for invoking Jeff Foxworthy, but I assure you the rest of my blog post is quite serious! Over the course of my career, I’ve done a lot of major gift prospect models. After doing enough of them, I’ve noticed some commonalities in terms of the key question of what information you can use to […]
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Digital Roundtable on Prospect Research: Resources and Helpful Discussion Points
Today I had a really fun time hosting a digital roundtable on Prospect Research with a bunch of really bright professionals. During the spoken panel discussion, there was also a lively chat conversation as well! I wanted to provide a listing of what I thought were helpful resources and discussion points from that chat for […]
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From non-profit financial calamity to recovery – The 2008 recession told through data and personal experience
Introduction As many of you probably know, this story starts in the United States of America. In response to the recession of 2001, the US Federal Reserve had lowered interest rates in the hopes of stimulating a recovery of the economy. The decision makers certainly earned their keep, as the move motivated many to carry […]
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My favourite data in any non-profit data science project
This week I started a new data science contract for a post-secondary institution in the US. The idea is to build a major gift prospect model that predicts likelihood of a donor responding to a high level gift ask. I’ve done many of them over the years, and frankly, I still love them. Any time […]
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Guest Post by Estee Pierce – Prospect Research 101
Are you a non-profit executive wondering how to get started with the lengthy and important work of properly researching your most valuable major gift prospects? They say that knowledge is power, and certainly the power you need is the information about your prospects’ lives that can make the difference between getting that 6 figure donation […]
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Canadian Donor Dashboard – Pre-Pandemic Edition
Recently, Statistics Canada posted their yearly update to their lovely dataset: “Summary of charitable donors”. I really like it, because it gives you a stark perspective on the state of trackable charitable giving in Canada. I’ve been following it for the last few years and used this year’s update to refresh a dashboard that allows you to […]
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