Data analytics is more important than ever to marketers, but charitable organizations, which have limited budgets and resources, are often left in the dark.
That’s why on Nov. 5 and 6, more than 50 Aimia employees donated their data analysis skills for the company’s third annual Data Philanthropy event, which provides analytical insights and recommendations to non-profits organizations.
This year’s two-day data marathon included four Toronto-based charities: Prostate Cancer Canada, Canada’s Ballet Jörgen, Enactus Canada, and the Stephen Lewis Foundation.
“We’re using analytics day to day to help marketers and companies make better decisions for running their businesses,” said Michael Poyser, vice-president of analytics at Aimia. “Clearly, charities have access to lots of data, but they typically do not have the resources internally to use that data. [The event] is really an extension of what we do in our day to day, but it’s helping some really great causes.”
Rocco Rossi, president of Prostate Cancer Canada, called the event a “spectacular gift of time and talent” that gave the organization information and tools that wouldn’t be possible otherwise.
“Donors by and large simply will not invest in capacity [building]. They want to see [their donations] go directly into programs that are specific to the cause, and rightfully so,” said Rossi. “But, it makes us a sector less efficient than we would be otherwise because we’re not able to invest and build business cases in the same way you would in the private sector.”
For Prostate Cancer Canada, the analysts found high-loyalty donors have given more than 10 times in a four-year period, and they share a similar profile. As a result, Prostate Cancer Canada will be able to better target supporters through fundraising and advocacy initiatives.
“It’s great to know the key attributes of some of the key segmentations of our donors,” said Rossi. “While we have an intuitive sense and an anecdotal sense, having the actual numbers crunched and put into categories that make sense should enable us to far better target our communications and our fundraising efforts.”
The Aimia team also supplied Prostate Cancer Canada with results on a number of marketing initiatives including raffles and email campaigns, which will help improve marketing ROI. For example, Prostate Cancer Canada recently launched its fourth annual Rock the Road car raffle in Ontario. “There’s some very specific advice around revenue optimization and timing of communication out to past purchasers and new segments that we can target,” said Rossi.
Poyser said all four charities saw insights they had never seen before, and they had different types of challenges. For example, while some wanted to find ways to increase donorship levels, student organization Enactus wanted to find out if its overall organization is making an impact.
According to Aimia, the analytics team was able to provide direct proof points of the charity’s mission—that the students it works with become stronger leaders and have better career progression than their counterparts. The team was able to combine Enactus Canada alumni career experience composite score and created a model to quantify career progression that showed Enactus Canada students do indeed, over the long term, perform better than the control group.
At the event, Aimia worked alongside students from three Ontario universities, as well as business partners from Fractal, SAS and IBM, among others.
