Measuring Impact

• Go beyond a mission statement and clearly outline what you are trying to accomplish through the services you offer
• Select the appropriate indicator or combination of indicators that determine whether or not the programs you fund align appropriately with your mission
• Obtain hard evidence of impact by obtaining baseline data and assessing at key stages
• Appropriately attribute results and market successes

Evaluations and Surveys

Measuring Success uses data-driven tools like customer surveys and financial models to frame clients’ decisions and enable a shift to fact based decision making. Many non profits, unfortunately tend to make decisions with very little data, using anecdotal observation, emotion, and influencers. This often leads to inconsistent and poor results. We generate observations and recommendations by directly soliciting stakeholder feedback to the status quo, determining causations and correlations, and teaching leadership to absorb the data and its strategic implications. Clients receive a customized report that details our analysis and findings with detailed, actionable recommendations for change.

• Identify areas in which interactions with donors are associated with larger gift increases
• Quantify perceptions of how well you are meeting the needs of donors in these areas
• Identify target segments of donors among whom you are performing better or worse
• Improve relationships and giving by communicating results and taking action

Building Data Competency

As a manager, you need to ensure your organization uses its limited time and resources to pursue the right issues. Our data shows that 80% of our anecdotal hypotheses about what are the problem or issues are not substantiated by the data, which means a lot of energy spent pursuing issues and making decisions that do not affect your organization’s success. Using proven techniques you can learn how to shift your organization from anecdotal to data-driven decision making and steer your organization to success.

In this workshop, you will improve your organization's ability to:

1. Frame issues
2. Hypothesize causes
3. Collect data
4. Analyze data
5. Interpret data
6. Make decisions
7. Communicate information

The 7 Steps to Data-Driven Decision Making gives professionals the tools they need to make them thoughtful evaluators and consumers of numerical thinking in their everyday work. Participants gain the skills to dig deeper through financial analysis and activity based costing, getting to the information they need to make better decisions and build strong organizations.

Predictive Models

• Work with us to develop a customized major donors predictive model that isolates key characteristics associated with increased gift giving.
• Prioritize cultivation efforts based on true financial capacity as influenced by type of wealth (liquid versus restricted), volatility of assets and perceived level of wealth among your mid-level donors.
• Increase the conversion rate of mid-level donors to major donors by enabling federation to identify the components of federation participation (affinities, interests, and passions) most closely associated with greatest potential to become a major donor.
• Reduce the time it takes to move someone from being a mid-level donor to a major donor by leveraging data on affinities, interests and passions to determine latent desire.

Strategic Financial Models

The Strategic Financial Modeling Tool enables organizations to get into a “flight simulator” to test the financial consequences of various inputs, strategies, and financial decisions played out over 5 years. Since finance drive changes in strategy, this tool enables organizations to dynamically generate various scenarios of their future finances under various strategies. In the simulator, organizations can perform if-then planning in real-time by simultaneously “pulling” on various levers and “pushing” various buttons. The tool allows leaders to address trade offs such as tuition fees, enrollment, financial aid awards, expenditures and fundraising. Leaders can position their organizations for stability and growth over multiple years by aligning their vision and mission with a plan for the resources the organization can raise and spend.

• Financial modeling will help your organization address the strategic challenges and trade-offs of market position, membership, value proposition, expenditures, tuition, financial aid, fundraising, and savings.
• Leaders can position their organizations for stability and growth over multiple years by aligning their vision and mission with a plan for the resources their organization is to raise and spend.
• Using our tools to model the scenarios you’ve been contemplating and to understand the strategic and financial sustainability of those options will help to inform your board and leaderships conversations with data and not anecdote or conjecture.