Donor Giving In Tough Economic Times

In these difficult economic times, it is critical for fundraising organizations to focus their limited time and resources on those activities that have the greatest demonstrated impact on giving. To address this need we worked with one of the top fundraising organizations, the Federations of North America to determine which activities and perceptions had the greatest statistical impact on donor giving.

Using Data to Make Your Management Decisions and Focus Your Resources

We've all been in some variation of this situation before: your management team or board gathers for a meeting to make important decisions about where to allocate funds, invest professionals' time, or where to set tuition or fees. Very often, the decision is made using anecdotal information by the person in the room who carries the most weight. However, Measuring Success' experience working with hundreds of not for profit organizations reveals that most of the time, the instincts about where the problem lies are simply incorrect. It's natural after all, to make decisions based on anecdotes or stories coming from familiar or powerful people. So what's the alternative? Data-driven decision making.

How To Achieve Higher Survey Response Rates

In the past twelve months Measuring Success has conducted projects collecting nearly 20,000 survey responses from customers across almost 70 organizations. In a recent project, three of Measuring Success’ consultants spent the month of May on a whirlwind tour of schools across North America that participated in the 2009 Day School Peer Yardstick Parent Survey funded by PEJE: the Partnership for Excellence in Jewish Education. For that survey, on average 80% of parent households completed the survey; one school even achieved a 97% response rate. Before the survey, schools were very skeptical about achieving high response rates since in home-grown surveys few had exceeded 30% or 40% participation. In this Measuring Success e-newsletter, we will review a few of the keys to high response rates such as confidentiality, professional quality of survey instrument, length, and support on demand.

Value for the Dollar as a Driver of Participation

As many of our clients suffer losses in membership, enrollment, or donors, the conclusion tends to be that these losses are caused by increased customer price sensitivity in the economic downturn. As a result, many organizations decide that the answer is to cut costs, thereby enabling them to reduce the price to consumers. While reevaluating expenditures in order to run a tight ship is critical in a recession, it tends to mask the proverbial 800-pound-gorilla in the room, which is the problem of poor levels of perceived quality.

Tips for Maintaining Your Financial Sustainability in a Recession Economy

As direct-service organizations like yours start their 2009-2010 fiscal year facing one of the tightest financial budgets in memory, it is important to start planning now around some of the financial decisions you can take this year, next year, and beyond to guide your institution toward greater sustainability. Below you will find several of our “top pitfalls” to avoid a vicious cycle and move to a virtuous cycle of financial sustainability. These insights are drawn from analysis based on data gathered from over 250 independent schools, but apply to most direct-service organizations.

What Would Google Do? Leveraging Data Analytics to Grow Your Organization

What makes Google the omnipresent $21 billion leviathan company it has become? While its search engine and its application suite is impressive, Google’s key to success is its ability to mine data on customers that use its products for free. This data is used to put the right targeted ads in front of its customers for which advertising companies pay a hefty premium. This optimization requires a dedication to data tracking systems and analytics that explain consumer behavior and interests. And it’s not just Google. Despite the difficult economic times of the past few years, data analytics has ranked in companies’ top 3 areas for investment because, like Google, they recognize that the key to success is the ability to get smarter about their customers.

Many fundraising and nonprofit organizations in the recession appropriately feel pressure to spend their dollars on direct service delivery to those in need and severely limit investments in knowledge and capacity building let alone data analytics. However, non-profit organizations who are high performing forward thinkers recognize that even in these difficult times, it is critical to invest in data analytics in order to know your customers (both donors and service recipients) better. This newsletter is dedicated to exploring a few ways that nonprofits might learn from Google’s successful business model undergirded by data-driven decision making.

Decision-Making in Health Care: Lessons for the Non-Profit Sector

The health care industry is often considered the epitome of evidence-based decision-making. Yet a recent New York Times Magazine article, “Making Health Care Better,” suggests that our health care system’s soaring costs and mediocre patient outcomes are due, in large part, to the fact that – like many nonprofit organizations – doctors too often put aside the scientific method, and make decisions using intuition, not data.

As the article highlights, especially in times of financial constraints, it is increasingly important to adopt an organizational culture that prioritizes investment in high-quality analytics to guide decision-making. In this newsletter, we examine what our organizations can learn from some of the challenges the health care field faces in improving patient outcomes and controlling costs.

New Synagogue Business Models

With over 3000 synagogues in the United States touching more Jews than any other organization, many feel the synagogue is the most influential institution in Jewish life. Yet leaders of even some of the largest congregations are concerned that the current synagogue business model, largely unchanged for the past century, may not be sustainable financially or strategically in the 21st century. In 2009, Measuring Success was engaged by SYNERGY: UJA-Federation of New York and Synagogues Together for a pilot project that couples analytics tools with consulting services to help 6 pilot synagogues explore new alternatives to their current business and community building models.

The 7 Steps for Data-Driven Decision Making

Jane Katzman is a non-profit professional who operates differently. She was hired as the associate director of Cornelian because of her ability to connect with people and humanize the issues the organization promotes. While recognized as top talent in her field...

School Alumni Say Character Development Drives Satisfaction More Than Quality of Education

Measuring Success, in partnership with the Independent School Association of the Central States and the Partnership for Excellence in Jewish Education, recently completed a pilot round of our new Alumni Analysis service with nine independent schools. Our goals were to develop a tool enabling schools to determine their impact on alumni, identify areas for improvement, strengthen connections to alumni, and update their alumni database.

The Journey Connector: Better Leveraging the Collective Impact of Organizations to Achieve a Lifelong Journey

Although a small minority of highly-empowered individuals will seek out, independently, a full and rich organizational and community life, the vast majority interact only sporadically with organized Jewish life. The Journey Connector is a transformative new initiative which uses data mining and predictive analytics to link the silos of the community. The Journey Connector seeks to connect individuals with program and connection opportunities in a way that is parallel to what Amazon has done in revolutionizing the way customers learn about books and other items of interest.

How Do you Change the Culture of Your Organization to be More Data-Driven?

We regularly espouse the importance of using data to make decisions. In fact, it’s the basis of our organization. Our client, who was trying to instill this culture in his organization, needed a go-to guide for getting his staff on board. He knew that by getting his organization to think in a data-driven way, he could improve its outcomes and effectiveness. We gave him a quick, easy-to-digest version of the 7 Steps. Now, we want to share this information with you.

How Do You Create a Data Driven Culture? Step 1: Framing the Issue

Last month we introduced you to the 7 Steps to Data Driven Decision Making. Here, we will share detailed insight into the critical first step, Framing the Issue, using examples from our clients’ experiences with the process.

Nonprofit employees do not need to be statisticians to effectively analyze data and make data-driven decisions. The biggest challenge organizations face is really taking enough time to clearly identify the issues they are trying to understand.When organizations do not adequately frame the problem, they usually collect the wrong data or incomplete sets of data. This leaves them confused as they try to make sense of their analysis and draw conclusions to enable decision making.

How Do You Create a Data Driven Culture? Step 2: Hypothesis Development

our 7 Steps to Data Driven Decision Making mirror the scientific process that we all learned in middle school. The key is to set up the “experiment” appropriately: clearly define the issue you are investigating, develop clear hypotheses about what may be going on, test the hypotheses and then draw conclusions from the analysis.

This second installment in our 7 Steps to Data Driven Decision Making series details the second step in the process, Hypothesis Development.

How Do You Create a Data Driven Culture? Step 3: Data Collection

Collecting the right data is much easier when you know what you are trying to test. That is why Step 1: Framing the Issue and Step 2: Hypothesis Development are essential preparation for effective data collection.

This third installment of our 7 Steps to Data-Driven Decision Making series describes effective data collection methods, with case study examples from our work with nonprofit organizations.

How Do You Create a Data Driven Culture? Step 4: Data Analysis

Many people cringe at the idea of data analysis. However, you don’t need to be a statistician to successfully analyze and interpret data. Basic statistical skills will usually suffice. In this fourth installment of our 7 Steps to Data-Driven Decision Making series, we list some of the basic skills you will need to analyze your data and how other organizations have used these skills to make data driven decisions.

How Do You Create a Data Driven Culture? Step 5: Data Interpretation

Over the last few months, our 7 Steps to Data-Driven Decision Making series has detailed four essential stages of the process: framing the issue, developing hypotheses, collecting data and analyzing data. In this installment, we will share our tips for Step 5: Data Interpretation

Data interpretation is straightforward for those who set up their “experiment” correctly in steps one through four. In this article, we use examples from our work with hundreds of nonprofits to show you how to use your data analysis to determine if your hypotheses are true and set the stage for data-driven decision making.

How Do You Create a Data Driven Culture? Step 6: Decision Making

After you analyze your data, you will find that there are many actions you could take. As always, though, time is limited and you cannot accomplish everything. Given this, it is essential to use your data to create a solid action plan that aligns with your organization’s vision and mission.

How Do You Create a Data Driven Culture? Step 7: Communication to Key Stakeholders

Once you have confirmed your hypothesis and developed an action plan, you must focus on communicating the results of your analysis to key stakeholders. Follow these steps to design a communication strategy for each stakeholder group.

Data-Driven Day Schools: Increasing Enrollment by Strengthening School Community

Recent trends in the day school market highlight the importance of word-of-mouth in raising awareness and increasing enrollment for schools. We determined the top four drivers of parents' likelihood to recommend the school, a strong proxy for parent satisfaction. Importantly, this measure also translates into word-of-mouth advertising for schools, an increasingly significant component of recruiting prospective parents.

Grapevine: Moving Nonprofits from Program-Centric to Customer-Centric

The “Age of Big Data” is upon us, transforming the way that all big companies connect and manage relationships with their customers. Large data sets and sophisticated algorithms allow companies like Amazon and Netflix to target offerings to you based on your unique interests and needs. Yet our non-profit community, which serves a more important mission of achieving identity transformation and societal change, lacks the platform and capacity to manage relationships with our participants from “womb to tomb.” Enter GrapeVine, a new engine for the non-profit community to address the its need to move into the Age of Big Data.