Insight in Fundraising Awards 2013celebrating excellence in data analysisan initiative of the Institute of Fundraising’s Insight in Fundraising SIG

Congratulations!

Hearty and much deserved congratulations to all our winners and finalists for the Insight in Fundraising Awards 2013.

Again, the quality and variety of entries was outstanding, and it is clear just how much high calibre use of data insight is taking place in the fundraising sector. It is a pleasure and an honour to be associated with an event that promotes, rewards and celebrates true best practice in this field.

It is also clear from the entries that it is not just the biggest charities that are embracing intelligent use of data to impact their fundraising strategies; we were again heartened this year by the range of charities and the number of teams that entered (double that of last year!), and by the incredible variety of the work presented. The dedication, passion and resolve held by each team is very clear from the standard and quality of the work that was entered.

The judging of the awards was no easy process as a result, so I thank our judging panel for giving their time and experience; for deliberating and cogitating long and hard in order to deliver final shortlists and ultimate

winners for each category. This year’s categories are different to last year’s and have been chosen to better reflect core areas where insight and analysis are making their mark and delivering tangible results.

I am also very proud to announce an exciting new award for Insight in Fundraising that is being drawn from this year’s entries and adopted by the Institute of Fundraising into its National Awards programme. This fantastic new award will be presented at the National Awards 2013, held during the IoF National Convention in July. The shortlist of finalists is announced this evening and highlighted in this booklet.

What better way to showcase the power of data analysis and its subsequent insight for helping charities in their fundraising and donor stewardship than through our awards; celebrating the best in outstanding, innovative work.

Paul SeabrookCommunications & Events, IoF Insight in Fundraising SIG committeeDirector & Co-Founder, fast.MAP

Message from the chair

Data insight is what makes fundraising great. Without it, how would we define the right audience, or time and target messages successfully? And, as our economy continues to flatline, the pressure on charities to exploit every organisational asset to meet fundraising targets remains intense. There are some great success stories out there that show just what can be achieved through the good use of supporter data and insight, but there is still more work to be done in educating, and encouraging charities of all sizes to embrace this vital discipline. This is why these awards are so important. The IoF Insight SIG is dedicated to promoting and encouraging the best practice use of insight and analysis in fundraising, and this year’s awards, in showcasing some of the very best successes of the past twelve months from a wide variety of charities, do just that.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank the awards team led by Paul Seabrook this year, the IoF Insight SIG committee and our judges, all of whom have worked extremely hard and dedicated much valuable time to make these second, annual Insight in Fundraising Awards 2013 happen. The IoF Insight SIG committee members are all volunteers, who devote much time and energy to furthering our aims of making a practical and sustainable difference in the charity sector through the intelligent and innovative use of insight and analysis. Our objective is to increase awareness of the role that these disciplines play in best practice fundraising, to increase both understanding and use among fundraisers. The Insight in Fundraising Awards play a key role in this, so I very much hope you are informed and inspired by the winning entries this year!

Janet SneddenChair, IoF Insight in Fundraising SIG committeeDirector, Metametrics

Antony Begley Managing Editor, Database Marketing

John Whitehead Supporter Planning & Insight Manager, WaterAid

Stuart McCoy Charity Data Consultant

Paul Seabrook Founder/Director, fast.MAP

Marie Sauvé-Rodd Deputy Fundraising Director, Barnardo’s

Jim Baggett Founder/Managing Director, Wood for Trees

Michael Docherty Head of Digital, Cancer Research UK

John Urpeth Founder, Boy on a Beach, & Research Consultant

Jonathan Moxham Database Marketing Manager, British Red Cross

Amanda Harris Deputy Managing Director, Response One

Chair

Judges

Our Sponsors

St Ives GroupSt Ives is a group of market-leading companies that combines capabilities to deliver the UK’s most diverse range of marketing solutions and book publishing services. We help our clients understand and influence consumer behaviour, and we believe that effective marketing requires a combination of innovation and execution. Innovation is informed from intelligent consumer and market insight; execution builds engagement across the optimal range of media channels.

OccamOccam helps its clients design, build and manage data driven marketing/customer engagement solutions to better understand, grow and engage with their customers. Its consultants possess a rare mixture of marketing, technology and data skills built over many years spent designing and building customer engagement solutions for clients to meet their brand experience and business growth objectives.

Response OneResponse One Ltd is one of the UK’s leading data driven marketing agencies. Our unique and market-leading data, digital and media solutions add value to every stage in the customer lifecycle. We provide integrated marketing services, including strategic data acquisition and planning, insight-driven customer management, online search and strategic direct and digital campaign expertise.

Wood for TreesWood for Trees provides an intelligent and proactive approach to data understanding. We place the focus firmly on insights, and what you can do with them. Our approach fits particularly well with the charity sector, where successful fundraising is hugely dependent on effective management of immense quantities of supporter data. Every project is different, but a common thread runs through each: the application of creative thinking to cold hard facts.

Datatech AnalyticsAt Datatech Analytics, our ethos that building informed and long-lasting relationships with clients and candidates is mutually beneficial is proven on a daily basis. Our in-depth market knowledge and superior sourcing abilities enable us to maintain high levels of accuracy and exceptional service quality. Datatech, part of the Evergreen Group, is recognised for our professionalism and commitment to delivery. We offer a variety of bespoke recruitment solutions for analytical professionals.

Headline Sponsor

Lateral GroupLateral Group works alongside charities to plan and implement effective, engaging and action orientated marketing communications. We think data – sourcing, builds, segmentation, modelling and individualisation. And we talk human – helping to create motivating, insight-driven creative for your supporters to promote committed giving, fundraising and behaviour change. We can help you make every connection count by managing the donor dialogue ‘end-to-end’, evaluating at every stage of the journey.

QbaseAn innovative data marketing solutions provider that specialises in the charity sector, Qbase has over 20 years’ experience in preparing highly refined, highly targeted marketing files. We use data cleaning, analysis and insight to help clients increase donations and reduce costs. We can help you to build an in-depth understanding of your supporters that will allow you to focus on those individuals most likely to engage with your charity.

SASSAS, the leader in business analytics, is the powerful success behind many public and private sector initiatives across the globe. SAS recognises that understanding the customer is key and that a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach does not deliver the desired results. Through innovative solutions, SAS helps customers at more than 60,000 sites improve performance and deliver value by making better decisions faster.

fast.MAPfast.MAP helps to enhance clients’ decision-making using real-time online, fast quantitative and qualitative research to deliver incisive market insights. We apply and develop new technology to provide outstanding value-for-money, using our team of experienced senior marketers with real-world experience of working on major consumer brands – incisive research to help clients make better business decisions and maximise ROI.

MetametricsMetametrics is a new breed of analytics agency that combines deep experience in brand marketing and econometrics with customer analysis and direct/digital marketing planning. Metametrics is uniquely placed to gain insight across the whole media landscape and has developed powerful proprietary Bayesian approaches to analytics and digital attribution modelling. Independent, impartial and innovative; we work with some of the world’s best known brands and have a strong background in the not-for-profit sector.

Media Sponsor

Database MarketingDatabase Marketing is the UK’s leading monthly magazine for data and insight driven marketers, published eleven times a year and with a hugely popular website www.dmarket.co.uk

Our Sponsors

Classic AnalysisWInneR sponsored by

ChallengeWith a potential shortfall of nearly £2.5 million predicted in its Raffle Programme at year-end 2012-2013, RNIB needed to take action to minimise this loss in income, while simultaneously managing the varied priorities of different fundraising teams, consolidating the various different approaches that already existed, and providing proof of success to non-analyst senior managers.

SolutionHistorically, raffle donors were offered two activities a year. Insight told RNIB that 83% of its raffle income came from supporters who had donated in the last 0-12 months: enabling it to confidently focus activities more narrowly.

Analysis then identified 8,000 of its most committed raffle donors to receive a third opportunity to play, and modelling allowed the charity to adapt direct mail segmentation techniques for the Raffle Programme. Donors had previously been selected by their activity in the last raffle, but as a result of this analysis, RNIB was able to make more sophisticated selections based on recency, frequency and the value of gifts given.

RNIB also used this technique to retrospectively analyse past campaigns, identifying donor-segments with ROI of 4 or more. Insight allowed it to test predictions with minimal risk and high potential.

The new selection methods identified an additional 70,000 existing rafflers to include in the Christmas 2012 Raffle. This raffle was the charity’s second highest grossing ever, with ROI increasing to over 6, with the average value of gift received increasing by more than £2.

ResultsRaffle engagement increased by 150%, with the resulting £1.5 million bridging the predicted gap and taking the total income for the Raffle Programme 2012-13 to around £8 million. In addition, using the new raffle segmentation techniques for the 2012 Christmas Raffle resulted in an incremental income of £568,000: an increase in ROI from 3.31 to 4.76 as well as an average gift increase from £24.37 to £26.21, making the campaign RNIB’s highest grossing Raffle since 2006, and its second highest ever.

ConclusionBringing the Raffle and Donor Development activities under one strategic umbrella enabled RNIB to cross-analyse past campaign results and apply similar learnings and techniques to different segments. This newly integrated approach directed by insight means that future campaigns can be more individually targeted whilst also allowing the appropriate cross-selling of fundraising.

Charity: RNIB

entry: Bridging the Gap: Building our Foundations on the Rock of Insight

“What the judges said: This entry is commendable for enabling the dissemination of insight across the whole organisation, and for making data more accessible and therefore usable to everyone within it.

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Despite the success of doorstep and street recruitment for British Red Cross, a sizable proportion of supporters recruited via these methods cancel their direct debit payments within the first year.

To tackle these attrition rates, British Red Cross developed and tested a new stewardship programme throughout 2012. The charity trialled a number of propositions using test and control groups, including new recruitment methods, different creatives for first and third payment packs, and varying the timing and channels used when sending out packs and thank you communications.

An analysis on the programme completed in 2012 showed that it had positively affected attrition, with thousands of regular givers remaining active.

Direct measurement of the stewardship programme in 2012 has resulted in a predicted worth of over £700k, and there is potential to improve the programme through systematic testing, data driven targeting, measurement and analysis.

Charity: British Red Cross

entry: 2012 Regular Giver Stewardship Programme

Classic AnalysisHIGHLy COMMenDeD

Charity: Alzheimer’s Society with Adroit Data & Insightentry: Strategic Data Use to Plan & Develop Legacy Income

While income from legacy fundraising had been steadily increasing over the past five years, Alzheimer’s Society identified an opportunity to improve the selection methodology used to find likely legacy donors.

Partnering with Adroit Data and Insight, the charity sought to identify donors most likely to leave a legacy, and to better understand and inform the supporter journey to prioritise who it communicated with about legacies.

Adroit developed a set of bespoke propensity models for different audiences. The project was a success: the initial use of the new models generated new pledges and a significant number of legacy interest responses as well as unprompted donations.

The model is now successfully generating new converts into the charity’s legacy programme by producing heat maps of where legacy best prospects are for event planning, and also for targeting local activity.

“ What the judges said:The impressive fine-tuning across multiple channels has increased retention and improved stewardship. This attempt to solve a challenge that all charities face with face-to-face fundraising shows hard work to achieve the answer in a different level of donor engagement.

”“ What the judges said:

This entry punches above its weight as a very serious piece of work with a robust model and amazing results despite being a small campaign. It shows good evidence of using insight and learnings to produce results the charity can use to inform its future strategy.

”

ChallengeUNICEF UK had been making a strong investment in developing and implementing its digital first strategy, putting digital in a more prominent position for driving donations and engagement. However, despite wide positivity and support there was a lack of context around digital for many of the charity’s staff. UNICEF UK needed to build general organisational knowledge, and to provide context around, and updates on, its development as a digital first organisation.

SolutionUNICEF UK built and distributed a set report, which identifies and explains trends in its performance, and which activities have been most effective and why. It has been specifically designed to make the information simple to understand, easily accessible, brief, and with the right depth of information within a restricted amount of space. Drawing data from a number of sources including Google Analytics, as well as the organisation’s transactional database, Facebook and Twitter, it also uses plugins for Excel, providing a familiar format for end users and allowing strong element of automation to ensure the report is not difficult to maintain and produce.

To ensure its effectiveness, UNICEF UK opened it up at design stage for opinions and feedback, which were incorporated into the finalised design. Because the aim was to use the reports very widely, particular attention was paid to making the style of the report appealing, using open, non-jargon language, graphs and colourscales. Once complete, the report was given a fairly limited release to allow for testing before wider publication.

ResultsThe report has been very well received. In combination with analytics training the report has massively shifted perceptions around UNICEF UK’s digital activity providing a much wider understanding of how key its digital channels are becoming.

Since launch the report has helped to change and build UNICEF UK’s work. It has started using more specialised versions for different teams and functions, giving them exactly what they need. It is now offering a way of benchmarking new activities and has picked up on special areas of interest that might otherwise have been missed such as the under performance of the information on Child Rights and the growing power of its celebrity supporters online.

ConclusionThe project has made a real difference to the rollout of analytics across the organisation, helping users to see the potential and relate it to themselves and their work. This has resulted in a growth in teams looking at what analytics can do for their team specifically.

Digital

Charity: UNICEF UK

entry: Digital Analytics Dashboard

sponsored byWInneR

“What the judges said:This is a brilliant dashboard that is truly useful, tailored to the organisation, and which provides management information to keep digital front of mind at the charity. Getting to grips with digital analysis can be a challenge and this is a great example of a success story that enables fundraisers to look at data in real time for meaningful information, with great potential for insight.

”

Photo: © UNICEF UK/Jonathan Waring

The Meningitis Trust gives away millions of credit card sized signs and symptoms cards that people can carry around with them, and data analytics showed that 80% of its web traffic was for meningitis information.

Monitoring trends and web analytics showed the charity that penetration and growth of mobile devices provided an opportunity to reach more people, so it created two specific mobile apps for the two largest platforms: iPhone and Android, and launched a signs and symptoms-focused mobile website.

As a result, The Meningitis Trust has seen a significant increase in mobile web visits. Overall, comparing January 2010 to January 2013 shows a 55% overall increase in traffic, mainly attributable to mobile. It received 46,000 extra mobile visits during January 2013, compared with January 2011, and has seen around 30,000 downloads of its Android and iPhone apps.

Oxfam set up an automated report allowing the whole organisation to see the results from their emails on demand, from their desktops, enabling end users to monitor and track results themselves, and allowing the Digital Communications team to dedicate their time and expertise to ensuring Oxfam maximises its use of email.

This has enabled Oxfam to learn more about how supporters engage with emails, which has impacted on selections, the types of emails Oxfam sends and the volumes sent, enabling users to plan future campaigns more effectively.

Oxfam is now able to remove supporters who haven’t opened an email over a certain amount of time, and to assess how email frequency affects unsubscribe and click through rates. The resulting data has also demonstrated the importance of welcome journeys, and provided a better understanding of supporter interaction with the charity, improving targeting.

Charity: Meningitis Trust

entry: Mobile Optimisation to Save Lives

DigitalHIGHLy COMMenDeD

Charity: Oxfam

entry: Email Reporting

What the judges said:With a third of all web traffic now mobile, a mobile-optimised website is a must, and it is encouraging to see that The Meningitis Trust has clocked the importance of this early on.

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What the judges said:Oxfam has gone the extra mile to create this reporting tool, with impressive integration of email data into the CRM system and much hard work going into improving the social experience for supporters.

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Photo: © Steve Simon

ChallengeAlthough cancer is the number one killer of British men, 85% of Cancer Research UK’s under-55s supporters are female. To address this gap, the charity needed to understand, engage and inspire young male audiences with a new, innovative fundraising initiative. Creating this required an insight-led approach focused on identifying this particular audience’s key needs and motivation.

SolutionWith the overall business objective of broadening its supporter base and generating a large revenue stream from a previously untapped audience, CRUK employed insight as a springboard for developing fundraising concepts that could drive this group to donate.

Qualitative research uncovered fresh insights to serve as the basis for idea generation. This revealed that in terms of fundraising, young men want something spontaneous, competitive, sociable, banter-rich, and easy, as well as a cheap and simple way to becoming healthier and fitter. Several ideas were developed with the four strongest built through collaboration with the key target audience during co-creation workshops.

As a result, CRUK created the Dryathlon, a sponsorship event with the proposition: “Challenge yourself and your friends to see who has the willpower to go dry for a month. Clear your head, feel fitter, save money and support the work of Cancer Research UK”.

Quantitative research was carried out to ensure that the idea, although aimed at men, would not be off-putting to CRUK’s heartland audience of women. A further round of qualitative research then informed the creative route,

looking at the tone of voice of the campaign, imagery and names for the proposition to ensure that this would become a talking point with audiences.

Clear recommendations from the research were for Dryathlon to be run in January for the duration of the month to maximise uptake, and for social media to be harnessed to increase awareness and improve the customer journey.

ResultsAiming at 5,000 participants as an initial target for the pilot, Dryathlon exceeded all expectations, securing 35,000 Dryathletes and amassing over £4m income in its inaugural year. It also delivered on attracting a younger male audience – more than half of all Dryathletes were male, with an average participant age of 36.

ConclusionFrom concept to delivery, Dryathlon pushed boundaries whilst remaining true to the core proposition, consumer insights, and business case objectives. CRUK delivered a campaign creative and tone of voice that struck a chord with the consumer, illustrating the importance of putting people at the heart of everythingCRUK does.

Charity: Cancer Research UKentry: Dryathlon

sponsored by

ResearchWInneR

What the judges said:This is an inspiring example of textbook grounded theory at work, displaying clear thinking and leading to a thoroughly tested engagement and fundraising product. CRUK took an under-represented group and built a product to fit it, starting from scratch to develop a product to engage young men: a traditionally difficult fundraising target, with an impressive first year performance.

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The League Against Cruel Sports wanted to expand its supporter database to reduce its reliance on legacy income and find a way to get potential donors to engage with cold direct mail.

The League working with Other Ltd employed an insight tool called Preproven to pre-qualify cold creative. This included an online panel to test potential offline creative approaches, while a physiologist was also engaged to enhance the winning route further by concentrating on using language emotively.

The creative pre-testing initiative increased response by 45% over the previous control initiatives, while response to cold direct mail almost doubled from the same selection of lists, equating to approximately 2,200 more donors during 2012 as a direct result.

The League Against Cruel Sports also gained unique insight into the key drivers of prospects making a donation decision, revealing which demographic data cross breaks were most relevant to the charity.

Charity: League Against Cruel Sports with Other Ltd

entry: Cold Acquisition Campaign Using Online Pre-testing Insight

ResearchHIGHLy COMMenDeD

What the judges said:The League made very smart use of this online creative pre-testing model. The results derived from the creative that was ultimately chosen using this model demonstrate quite clearly that the model worked, and worked exceptionally well.

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ChallengeDatabase analysis had shown that “neighbourhood” effects drive the behaviour of Comic Relief supporters with friends and family often keen to add their support or donate when someone they know participates in fundraising for the charity.

Comic Relief wanted to bring more people into the brand by building on this infectious nature of its brand and proposition and with around 4m SMS mobile phone gifts received by the charity, it wanted to see whether using these records could help it achieve this objective.

However, SMS records gave Comic Relief no opportunity to understand who these text donors were or how best to understand their characteristics: not only could these records not be referenced to any other external data but no mobile phone operator publishes analysable directories. The real challenge therefore was to develop new techniques that identified “hot-spots” of predictable behaviour within a sequence of mobile phone numbers.

SolutionAs a result of its earlier analysis, Comic Relief had already developed techniques that enabled it to identify neighbourhood “hot-spots” using non-linear principles modified from other fields of analysis, including traffic control monitoring and a graphical pattern recognition called L1 minimisation. The charity modified and applied these techniques to mobile, and was able to yield segmentation value from a sequence of mobile phone numbers alone, enabling it to identify consistent behaviour within newly acquired contact numbers as a result.

ResultsComic Relief found that over 41% of the mobile phone sequence could be identified within predictable regions, categorising them into three different predictable segments: No Value, Low Value, and High Value, attributed according to the level of financial support given via SMS.

In addition, the analysis identified the Un-predictable segment: where regions of the phone sequence did not show any levels of consistency that allowed robust predictions. These characteristics can now be applied to predict the behaviour of newly acquired SMS messages to enable immediate follow-up.

ConclusionThis innovative approach has opened up a section of Comic Relief’s supporter base to intelligent engagement that was previously inaccessible and had to be given blanket treatment. It has also opened up SMS as a way of generating discriminated responses and supporter handling within the rapid timescales required with mobile, as well as allowing a flexible response to a dynamic, fast changing mobile population with increasingly short attention spans.

Charity: Comic Relief with DataTalk & Streetwise Analytics

entry: Identifying Fundraising Hot-spots in SMS Phone Numbers

sponsored by

InnovationWInneR

“ What the judges said: This was ultimately a rigorous and disciplined analytical approach that led to genuine innovation in a key fundraising channel. The project successfully created a new and innovative mass channel for Comic Relief by developing a novel way of generating discriminated responses and supporter handling within the rapid timescales required for successful operation.

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RNIB’s objective was to bring in robust insight to shape its fundraising decisions, and to use this to increase its fundraising base, improve average lifetime value of new and existing supporters, and more effectively manage its fundraising product portfolio.

The Insight Team created a new comprehensive briefing document, with clear and consistent procedures for requesting analysis. It then created a bespoke online wiki to share best practice, breaking down communication barriers between teams, and retaining corporate knowledge in a central repository.

Senior management and volunteer teams can successfully interpret the results of analysis for themselves. 256 new data-request briefs have been submitted since April 2012, with 94 articles of insight uploaded to the Insight wiki. Examples of recent insight successes include £1.5 million in additional income identified from the Raffle Programme.

The new insight has helped steer long-term strategy development from 2015 to 2019 by highlighting key areas of opportunity and in community and events.

Charity: RNIB

entry: Reframing Fundraising Insight - a Non-Analyst’s Wiki to Data Analysis

InnovationHIGHLy COMMenDeD

“ What the judges said: This entry is commendable for enabling the dissemination of insight across the whole organisation, and for making data more accessible and therefore usable to everyone within it.

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Team of the Year

RNLI’s Insight and Performance team was formed in early 2012 under the charity’s aim of changing its fundraising strategy to deliver a new long-term stability.

With this in mind, the team was given the mission of delivering timely and trusted intelligence, and working collaboratively to optimise awareness, engagement, cost and income. The objective was to redefine the RNLI’s audience. The team recognised this as an opportunity to deliver real impact, requiring both strategic and tactical teams around the RNLI to buy in to, understand and use insight rather than assumption when targeting campaigns.

As such, the team created a hypothesis: “The greater the depth of engagement a Supporter has, the greater their understanding. The greater their understanding, the higher their potential Lifetime Value”, and tested it using a combination of data analysis and market research to discover firstly what the data RNLI held could reveal, and then to prove the hypothesis and establish a deeper understanding of who its supporters were as people.

Key goals included: creating an engagement score that could be applied across the database and which took the RNLI beyond Recency, Frequency and Value, clustering data into engagement segments, creating a new segmentation matrix where a supporter could only appear in one place, and communicating the new segmentation across the RNLI, demonstrating its use at both a strategic and a tactical level.

The project was highly successful: the team reduced the number of supporter segments from approximately 200 to 30, and proved the engagement hypothesis. The project was also the first truly collaborative work between Data Analysis and Research teams under the umbrella of Insight and Performance.

This data has been used in the Christmas Appeal 2012 which delivered a 6% increase in response and income compared to previous years, and the charity’s propensity modelling is now more robust, meaning mailing numbers are reduced by 10% on average and saving the organisation an average £25,000 for every campaign.

In addition, a Regular Giving text to donate campaign was given the green light as a result of being able to prove the audience was there (as opposed to an assumption that they wouldn’t respond), and this improved understanding of new supporters now allows RNLI to adjust campaigns for the next phase, as opposed to having to wait for the next yearly planning cycle.

Charity: RNLI

Team: Insight and Performance Team

sponsored byWInneR

“What the judges said: This team has been very courageous in ‘making waves’ and bringing about cultural change at RnLI. The insight team really shook things up but they did so with the humility to challenge long established ways of doing things, the truths and the myths.

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With responsibility for raising the profile of data and insight within the NSPCC, the Individual Giving Campaign Planning and Targeting team adds value in every facet of the Individual Giving fundraising process and the supporter journey.

The team assists in the decision-making process for everything from budgets and reforecasts, selections, mailing volumes and target groups for campaigns, to acquisition activity, campaign time management, reporting, supporter insight, and even model building.

It has also developed the ability to understand future return from each acquisition channel, enabling the charity to allocate budget efficiently and set targets and KPIs, and it has carried out over 250 campaigns for various teams across the organisation. Each supporter journey is now carefully considered, dependent on the supporters’ first point of contact with the NSPCC.

The team now undertakes all data analysis development projects within the department in-house, and it continually instigates work to improve the efficiency and development of the other teams’ needs in fundraising and finance reporting.

Charity: NSPCC

Team: Individual Giving Campaign Planning and Targeting

Team of the Year

“What the judges said:The huge achievements of this small team in a short space of time is testament to their clear vision and their determination to reinforce data and insight’s position at the very heart of the charity’s campaign planning strategy.

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HIGHLy COMMenDeD

sponsored by

One of Battersea Dogs and Cats Home’s main aims is securing diverse and sustainable income streams, and this includes the recruitment of cold cash donors.

It wanted to test direct mail as a recruitment channel, but had limited historical mailing results, and a largely un-mined database. Response One was given the remit of analysing the charity’s existing supporter data, extracting maximum insights and applying these to a planning strategy for a test mailing to prove the effectiveness of direct mail acquisition.

Response One analysed and profiled the database of existing supporters to understand their demographics and lifestyle attributes, and created models upon which to base the core targeting strategy, built on profiles of known donors, enquirers, and re-homers.

Response One also identified that Battersea’s non-supporter database of enquirers held a significant volume of data that could potentially be a highly valuable source of data and insight that could further support the campaign. This data however held limited information so Response One used it to produce geo-demographic profiles using Experian’s MOSAIC segmentation, contacting selected segments from the Battersea non-supporter database who were most representative of typical charity donors.

A test mailing of 200,000 cold names and 28,000 names from the non-supporter database ensured the statistical validity of each cell, and a robust base for learnings. The campaign was mailed to 25 lists, each then split between two creative tests to ascertain if an incentivised pack would deliver the best ROI. Segments were based on the profiling and list selections generated by the charity’s targeting models.

Response One completely transformed the charity’s cold acquisition activity. This was its first test of incentivised direct mail, and the first test of using ‘tepid’ enquirer data from its non-supporter database. The campaign surpassed expectations, recruiting 10,897 new donors at a net cost per new donor of just £7.40 and raised £129k gross income: an ROI of 0.62.

Response One’s work has also saved the charity vital budget: two of the top five best performing lists were modelled data, validating the strength of the model and allowing future targeting to be less reliant on charity data lists, so minimising costs and improving ROI.

The campaign has proved direct mail is a successful and scaleable channel of cash donor acquisition. At the end of 2010 Battersea had an active cash donor file of approximately 10k individuals, in 2013 it has 55k cash supporters on its database as a direct result of this channel.

Supplier: Response One

Charity: Battersea Dogs and Cats Home

Supplier of the YearWInneR

“ What the judges said: It is a well-validated model with a very strong return to the organisation that leaves it with an ongoing strategy with which it can continue to grow its cash pool.

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Supplier of the Year

Last year’s winner, Wood for Trees has continued to build on its success over the past 12 months, acquiring several new charity clients with a focus on improving their understanding of data, and on empowering them to use it. This is a particularly important element of the Wood for Trees approach, which places great emphasis on mentoring.

During 2012 Wood for Trees also innovated in numerous fields, including forecasting, model building, and automated data preparation, with projects including a warm mailing prediction model for Parkinson’s UK, deployed in its September and Christmas 2012 mailing campaigns. This optimised mailing performance and activated 2,500+ dormant supporters, generating at least £36k in extra net income across the two.

In addition, a ‘tepid’ model to identify potential responders among those who hadn’t given for over five years for Blue Cross reactivated just under 1,000 supporters at an overall response rate of 3.1%.

Supplier: Wood for Trees

Charity: Various

HIGHLy COMMenDeD

“What the judges said: This entry shows a clear breadth of what they are doing across multiple clients with evidence of support for the sector, and clearly they are creating real value.

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Outstanding Contribution in Insightsponsored by

With effective application of data insight a challenge for many charitable organisations, data experts who understand how to get the most out of it and also proactively share their expertise as widely as possible are to be celebrated.

John Whitehead is such a person. Until recently the supporter planning and insight manager at WaterAid, and now sharing his expertise on a wider basis as a consultant, John Whitehead has worked in the charity sector for more than 15 years. Prior to joining WaterAid in 2005, he was direct marketing manager at Liveability, following six years at The National Trust as interim market research manager, and database marketing manager.

Before joining the charity sector, John cut his teeth in commercial marketing and advertising background, holding positions at Air Miles, Evans Hunt Scott, CACI, and Saatchi & Saatchi amongst others. John is also a founding member and fellow of the Institute of Direct Marketing and a member of the Institute of Fundraising.

Well-respected for his expertise and knowledge, John has proved invaluable to every organisation he has worked in. A man who appreciates the value of data and enjoys applying it to real world situations, John has become the corporate data knowledge repository for all of the organisations he has worked for, thanks to an encyclopaedic recall for data history and coding, as well as his understanding of, and ability to share, their implications for the organisation.

This depth of knowledge and understanding of data insight comes with pragmatism about how to apply it, an appreciation of its strengths and weaknesses and a passion and patience in educating others about how to use it.

John has frequently shared this experience within the wider analysis community, including the IoF Insight SIG, and his contribution, particularly towards the areas of lifetime value modelling and attrition, has been of huge benefit to fundraisers across the sector. He is fully deserving of this award for his role in raising the flag of insight up the fundraising flagpole.

John Whitehead

WInneR

IoF National Awards 2013

new Award for Best Use of InsightThe Institute of Fundraising has announced the launch of a new category into its National Awards programme this year in recognition of the importance of data insight in fundraising and donor stewardship.

The Best Use of Insight Award is a significant new addition for the Nationals, and is one in which the IoF Insight in Fundraising SIG plays a major role. The new IoF National Award is based on the Insight in Fundraising Awards in celebrating and rewarding the best examples of data insight in fundraising..

The Insight SIG is delighted to be partnering with the IoF to make this award happen, and to promote the use of intelligent data analysis across the fundraising sector.

“The Insight in Fundraising Awards were introduced by the IoF Insight SIG only last year and we were impressed by the quantity and, more importantly, the quality of the nominations received. In recognition of this and Insight’s fundamental contribution to the sector, we’re very pleased to acknowledge success in this area at the IoF National Awards also,” says Ruth Moore, Head of Training and Events at the Institute of Fundraising.

The new award will be presented at the IoF National Awards 2013 ceremony, which takes place during the Institute’s National Convention on 1st July. The shortlisted nominations are announced tonight at the Insight in Fundraising Awards 2013.

The Shortlist:RNIBEntry: Bridging the Gap - Building our Foundations on the Rock of InsightClassic data analysis and use of insight in this campaign solved the charity’s million-pound raffle problem, bringing in new raffle donors, increasing raffle engagement by 150%, and significantly increasing average gift size and ROI, while bringing in £1.5m towards addressing the predicted income gap in its 2012-13 year end raffle programme.

UNICEF UKEntry: Digital Analytics Dashboard UNICEF UK’s design and introduction of a set report which aimed to make information simple to understand, easily accessible, and with the right depth of information within a restricted amount of space, massively shifted perceptions around its digital activity and increased understanding of the role of digital channels in the organisation. The project made a real difference to its rollout of analytics across UNICEF UK, helping users to see the potential and to relate it to themselves and their work.

Cancer Research UKEntry: Dryathlon Despite cancer being the number one killer of British men, the majority of Cancer Research UK’s supporters were women. Valuable insight from current supporter profiling identified a gap and the Dryathlon campaign sought to bring in younger men, challenging them to avoid alcohol for a month, get fitter, and raise money for the charity. Initially targeting 5,000 participants, Dryathlon exceeded all expectations, securing 35,000 Dryathletes and amassing over £4m income in its inaugural year. In addition, over half of Dryathletes were male, with an average participant age of 36.

Comic Relief with DataTalk & Streetwise AnalyticsEntry: Identifying Fundraising Hot-spots in SMS Phone Numbers Comic Relief held around 4m mobile records as a result of SMS giving. It wanted to identify fundraising hotspots in these numbers that it could use to capitalise on the infectious quality of its brand that often sees supporters’ friends and family add their support too. It yielded segmentation value from a sequence of mobile phone numbers, letting it identify consistent behaviour within newly acquired numbers. This opened up a section of its supporter base to intelligent engagement that was previously inaccessible, and opened up SMS as a way of generating discriminated responses.

IoF Insight in Fundraising SIG

Focus The Institute of Fundraising’s Insight in Fundraising Special Interest Group (IoF Insight SIG) is dedicated to furthering the knowledge of all those tasked with analysis functions throughout the charity sector, and to making a practical and sustainable difference within fundraising.

Insight in fundraising has traditionally taken a back seat to the higher profile areas of fundraising, yet many of these functions rely on the information that analysts provide. In addition, information on the relevant techniques, developments, software and skills are often hard to come by and are in some cases non-existent. We aim to get this information and share it among our peers.

By regularly soliciting feedback from our growing membership, the IoF Insight SIG committee runs events covering a wide range of topics at all levels, from online analytics to fundraising-specific MS Excel techniques.

We believe that we can take insight in fundraising forward in expertise and raise it up the fundraising agenda.

Run by a committee of volunteers, the goals and guiding principles of the IoF Insight SIG are as follows:

Objectives• Tofurtherthedevelopmentofindividualswhoanalyseand interpret data for a living so that insight and understanding of donor and supporter behaviour are improved.• Tocreateopportunitiesforpeopletomeetasagroup,and discuss, share, network and learn from each other.• Tobuildawarenessofanalysisandanalysts.• Tocreateunderstandingoftheimportanceofanalysis (and analysts) and the impact that both can have.

Key principles• Practical• Forum• Bottom-linefocused• Mutualtrust(someconfidentialinformationwillbeshared)• Sales-free(strictguidanceforsuppliersandmembersingeneral)

Conference & events programmeWe hold regular informal networking meetings, mainly in London, always with an interesting presentation from a charity or a supplier (and a bar!).

A full day annual conference is held at the end of the autumn each year, tackling head-on some of the most pertinent issues around data analysis, the use of insight, skills and techniques. Notices of dates and venues for events are posted on our website.

TrainingThere is a full programme of training courses conducted throughout the year covering a variety of topics.

Join usMembership of the IoF Insight SIG is FRee

For more information

Visit our website: www.insightsig.org

Email: Liz@insightsig.org

Follow us on Twitter: @IOFInsight

Join our LinkedIn group: Institute of Fundraising – Insight SIG

IoF Insight in Fundraising SIG

www.insightsig.org

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