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AI Case Study

Special Olympics Missouri increases new donor retention with AI-enabled data analytics

Special Olympics technology has leveraged AI powered analytics to recover from declines in new donor retention. With Target Analytics® from Blackbaud the organisation has access to donors' information which helps them created effective and strategic direct marketing to attract them. This has resulted in 197% increase in individual donor gifts among other benefits for the organisation.

Industry

Public And Social Sector

Ngo

Project Overview

"To address the challenges of the economic downturn, Special Olympics staff turned to their database and donorCentrics benchmarking solutions from Target Analytics to uncover information about their donors in order to create effective direct marketing programs.

Through participation in donorCentrics benchmarking, the staff decided to put their resources into retaining those loyal constituents who had sustained them over the years while working on attracting and retaining new donors as well.

A key finding revealed through donorCentrics was that donors who made two gifts in a year were much more likely to renew their annual membership than donors who made only one gift in a year. In fact, when compared to donors who made one gift in the first year, the retention rate was nearly twice as high for those who made two gifts. To top that off, data revealed that revenue per donor nearly doubled for donors who made three or more gifts.

Armed with that valuable data, staff were able to focus their promotions and messaging to those donors who were most likely to give while maximizing valuable marketing resources."

Reported Results

By employing creative direct marketing messaging that encouraged multi-gift giving, the test package:

* Lifted response almost 30%
* 197% increase in individual donor gifts between $1,000 and $2,499
* 525% increase in individual donor gifts exceeding $2,500 from 2011 to 2016.
* Has raised $16 million, and it still has $2.1 million left to raise this year (2017)

Technology

AI-enabled data analytics: Target Analytics

Function

Marketing

Communications

Background

"Special Olympics International is a worldwide nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering individuals with intellectual disabilities to become physically fit, productive, and respected members of society through sports training and competition.

Special Olympics International and their fundraising consultant LW Robbins faced decreases in donor gifts and declines in new donor retention as a result of worldwide economic recession. To address these, Special Olympics staff turned to their database and donorCentrics benchmarking solutions from Blackbaud's Target Analytics® to uncover information about their donors in order to create effective direct marketing programs."

Benefits

Data

Data sets vary according to task. Examples include: history, inclinations, and loyalty patterns of donors.

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