Donor data is the information you collect about your supporters and prospects – who they are, what they care about, and how they give – so you can target, personalize, and optimize every fundraising touchpoint. Used well, donor data and donor analytics help you raise more money, retain more donors, and focus resources where they generate the highest return.

Did you know about this donor data:

• The average donor in the United States is 64 years old and donates to organizations twice a year?
• Female donors are more likely to contribute through influence from online media, while male donors are more influenced by emails.
• Female crowdfunding donors tend to be younger, have higher educational levels, and are most likely based in the Western U.S.

These statistics are available because nonprofits have consistently tracked and analyzed data for years. 

This guide covers why donor data matters, what to track, donor data management best practices, how to collect it, and practical donor data strategies to put it to work in your fundraising.

What is donor data?

Donor data is the structured record of a person’s relationship with your organization and other causes, including their contact details, demographics, giving history, interests, and engagement. It lives in your donor database for nonprofits (or CRM) and can come from donation forms, events, website analytics, donor lookup tools, and integrated fundraising software.​

Common donor data fields include:​

• Contact details (name, email, phone, address)
• Demographics (age, gender, location, education, employment)
• Giving history (amounts, frequency, recency, campaigns) and donation tracker fields
• Engagement (events attended, calls, texts, emails, volunteer activity)
• Affinities (causes supported, issues, programs, hobbies)
• Wealth and capacity indicators (real estate, business ties, major gifts)

When this information is organized in a fundraising database and surfaced through clear donor reports, it becomes much easier to act on.

Why is donor data important?

Donor data gives you evidence-based answers to key fundraising questions: who to ask, for how much, through which channel, and when. Instead of treating donors as a generic list, you can use donor analytics and donor search to build segments, personalize messages, and focus staff time on the highest-potential relationships.​

With strong donor data and disciplined donor data management you can:​

• Plan better events and appeals based on donor interests and behavior.
• Increase retention by sending relevant, timely communication.
• Grow average gift size through informed ask amounts and major gift targeting.
• Improve campaign ROI by doubling down on channels and segments that perform.

Here’s how donor data helps you:

What donor data to track?

To collect data of donors in the best way, you need to understand which data points are most likely to influence your decisions. While essential data points might vary from organization to organization, your fundraising database should include five essential information points. They are:

1. Demographic details
2. Wealth indicators
3. Nonprofit involvement
4. Political giving
5. Hobbies and interests

Demographic details

Demographic data is the basic personal information that helps you understand who your donors are and how to reach them.

Useful demographic fields in your donor database for nonprofits include:

• Name
• Location
• Gender
• Educational background
• Employment status
• Family
• Communication preferences
• Contact information such as phone number and email address

Paying attention to donor preferences enables you to personalize your conversations with donors, know their contact details, and cater to their communication needs – enhancing your overall communication strategy.

Wealth indicators

Wealth indicators are an essential part of any fundraising data management because they help you identify high-value donors. It allows a nonprofit to understand which donors to focus on and spend their energy in trying to nurture. 

A significant donation from one high-value donor can boost an organization’s annual funds for the year. 

Read Also: Major Gift Fundraising: The 9 Essential Steps To Guide You

Here’s what you should look for when wealth screening a prospective donor:

1. Real estate ownership
2. Business affiliations
3. Previous nonprofit contributions

Nonprofit involvement

A donor’s past nonprofit involvement is one of the strongest predictors of future giving. Good donor data management keeps this history clean and easy to interpret in your donor reports.​

Track in your fundraising database:

1. Donors’ engagement with your nonprofit: Are they aware of your nonprofit organization and its mission? If not, you can target them with awareness campaigns.
2. The recency of their last donation: If they’ve donated to an organization recently, they might be less likely to donate immediately.
3. The frequency of their donations: How frequently do they donate to organizations – are they monthly givers, or do they donate once a year?
4. Average donation amount: What is the money they typically donate? Do they donate large sums of money at once, or do they donate small amounts over the year? 

These data analytics will help you determine your nonprofit outreach strategies whenever you plan and execute a fundraising campaign.

Political giving

Political contributions can reveal donors who are comfortable giving larger gifts and supporting causes they believe in.​

By researching political giving via donor search and lookup tools, you can:​

• Identify ideologically aligned prospects already investing in advocacy or policy issues.
• Spot patterns in giving size and frequency that mirror charitable behavior.
• Expand your prospect list beyond your current supporter file.

Public political giving databases and specialized fundraising software can help you find and qualify these prospects, when appropriate for your mission and geography.

Read Also: Powerful Political Donor Lookup Tools to Grow Your Campaign

Hobbies and interests:

Another important data point that you can track is prospective donors’ hobbies and interests. They will give you an idea about activities your target audience is interested in, and you can design events around the same. 

Track in your donor database for nonprofits:

• Leisure activities (sports, arts, travel, dining, etc.)
• Causes and issues they mention online or in conversation
• Professional associations and community memberships

If many major donors love golf, theater, or wine, you can build events and experiences around those interests to deepen relationships and inspire generosity.​

Strategies to collect donor data

Knowing where to look to expand your fundraising database is essential. At the end of the donor data collection process, you need to have a relevant list that will convert prospective donors and give you a great return on your investment. Beyond data collection, you also need to actively plan and implement strategies to gain more data.

Here are a few great techniques to acquire relevant donor data:

1. Subscribe to a good donor management software 
2. View your previous donor data
3. Check your web traffic
4. Donation forms
5. Social network followers
6. SMS opt-in campaigns
7. Calling campaigns

Subscribe to a good donor management software

A good donor fundraising management software will help you streamline and manage your data efficiently by collecting and organizing it.

For example, through CallHub, one of the campaigns you can create is the peer-to-peer texting campaign. You can engage in two-way texting conversations with prospective donors and collect more information about their hobbies and interests, demographic details, etc. The best part? CallHub syncs with your database software (or CRM) so that all your data is organized and in one place.

Read Also: Our Picks For The Top 5 Best Donor Software for Nonprofits 

A good donor management software will help you collect data of the donors such as:

1. Their name, occupation status, marital status, location, age.
2. Communication preferences such as whether they prefer communicating via email, phone, texts.
3. How far along the nurturing funnel is each donor.

View your previous donor data

The most accessible place to look for donor data is to view your log of prior donations. Understand who donated to your cause previously, check if their information is logged correctly or if it needs to be updated, and create outreach campaigns to revive your relationship with these donors.

Since previous donors have already built enough trust to donate money to your organization once, they will more likely donate again if you put efforts into nurturing relationships with them.

Read Also: Donor Recognition: Best Practices to Nurture Donor Relationship 

Check your web traffic

A nonprofit organization’s website is a great place to gather data. You can do this in two ways:

1. Check web traffic to understand the demographic details of people visiting your website.
2. Use information people have entered on your contact forms to begin donor nurturing campaigns.

Individuals visiting your website are already interested in your cause. Through this collection method, you will know – 

1. Basic demographic details of visitors such as age, gender, location.
2. The platforms through which you are receiving web traffic.
3. The most common reason for which people fill in your contact forms.

You can leverage this data to reach out to donors for a more personalized experience.

Donation forms

An online donation form can help you do all the weight lifting when collecting donor data. You can display your donation forms on your website, which people can fill to display their intent to donate.

Donation forms not only help you collect basic information and understand a prospective donor’s intent to donate but can do so much more. Here’s what else you can know through a donation form:

1. Payment preferences
2. Typical donation amount
3. If it is a one-time, recurring, or repeat donation.
4. Contact information and preferences.

Read Also: The Essential Qualities of an Online Donation Form 

Social network followers

onlline platforms can help you with donor data in two ways:

1. Once you have the contact information of prospective donors, you can look them up on social media. This is called social discovery. You can look up the interests and hobbies of your donors, glean information about their marital status, family, etc.
2. The other way you can harness the power of online media is by reaching out to your existing followers and running campaigns to target them and involve them in the donor nurturing flow.

Read Also: A Quick Guide To Getting Started With Donor Prospect Research 

SMS opt-in campaigns

SMS opt-in campaigns allow prospective donors to opt in to your messaging services. With CallHub’s Text-to-join feature along with it, you can set up an automated text messaging campaign that nudges people to share their data with you. Here’s how it works:

Do you notice a shortcode number, 33339, to which the message has been sent? You can rent a shortcode number through CallHub that will uniquely represent your organization. Prospective donors can easily remember a short number and memorize your brand.

The data collected is automatically synced with your CRM, allowing efficient organization and management. CallHub’s platform enhances your communication strategy with advanced features like personalized messaging and engagement tracking, making sure your communication is timely and relevant.

Calling campaigns

You might have purchased a list of donors from a third-party vendor or looked up donor information using specific tools or social media. However, to gain an in-depth understanding of your donors, you can run a calling campaign using CallHub’s call center software.

With CallHub’s cloud-based calling solution, you can conduct phone surveys, build donor relations, solicit donations, automate follow-ups and track conversations by integrating CRMs like Salesforce, NationBuilder, and Blackbaud while you are collecting donor data.

After collecting donor data, it is time to leverage it to boost your fundraising, improve donor relations, and more. But what are ways in which you can leverage it? Let’s explore.

How do you leverage donor data?

Once you’ve collected and analyzed your data, you can begin using it to inform your decisions. We’ve listed a few ways in which you can use donor data.

1. Allocate your resources: Using the information you have learned through your donor data, you can:

• Understand which social media platforms to spend time and money on.
• Improve your website experience if you have high traffic.
• Run ad campaigns to target specific segments.
• Plan and budget for events depending on your donors’ interests.

Many monetary decisions that you would like to make, especially for donor nurturing, can be made through your donor data.

2. Improve donor communication: You can understand your donors’ communication preferences and subscribe to communication tools accordingly. You can run calling campaigns, texting campaigns, email outreach campaigns, and social media campaigns, depending on where most of your donors would like to interact with you.

3. Make optimum asks: Understanding the optimum donation amount you can ask is a great way to leverage donor data. Using wealth indicators and other metrics such as professional backgrounds, you can determine the donation amounts your donors might want to give.

4. Consider soliciting major gifts from high-value donors: You can plan for major gifts, recurring donations, monthly giving, and more through donor data. Determine which donors have the financial capacity to give in such a manner, build relationships over time, and make your asks.

Read Also: 6 Easy Steps to Craft the Perfect Major Donor Cultivation Plan 

How do you shortlist a great donor database tool?

With all the data you need to collect, clean, and analyze, you need a donor database tool that is up to the task. It needs to help you maintain all your data in one place, track previous conversations and consist of features that reduce the time you spend on administrative tasks.

Here are a few features to consider when looking for a donor database tool:

1. Helps communications: A great donor management tool also facilitates communication or seamlessly integrates with communication tools and stores a record of previous conversations. CallHub, for example, is a tool that allows you to communicate with donors through its calling and texting software, email features, and also integrates easily with CRM systems so that all your conversations are recorded safely.

2. List cleaning: Maintaining a clean list ensures you focus only on contacts likely to donate. It removes wrong numbers, unresponsive contacts, DNC-listed numbers, and other low-quality records. A good fundraising database or outreach software should make list cleaning and ongoing list maintenance easy.

3. List segmentation: List segmentation allows you to create segments of donors on your database based on certain standard criteria such as age, location, educational background, etc. It greatly helps you design and implement targeted outreach strategies. Looking for a software that enables list segmentation would be a good investment. 

4. Capacity for managing the size of your donor list: Some fundraising database tools charge by the number of contacts, while others use flat monthly subscriptions for their features. Pick a fundraising database that can handle your current list size, grow with you, and stay within budget.

5. Customer testimonials/reviews: Always check independent reviews and customer testimonials to see if a fundraising database is reliable, easy to use, and delivers the results it promises before subscribing.

What’s next?

An in-depth understanding of donor data is important to know why and how you can use donor data to benefit your nonprofit organization, make informed decisions and cater to your donors in a better manner. 

CallHub has a number of resources that can further help you on your quest to collect donor data.

Read our article How To Choose A Donor Management CRM That Fits You Best where we explore the best donor database management software for you.

Frequently asked questions on donor data

Shiksha Sharma

Shiksha Sharma is a Content Marketer with over 5 years of experience in the B2B SaaS industry. She has extensively written about software that helps organizations work easily. Her areas of research include politics, nonprofits, advocacy, and business.