Donor Research
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To: Raymond Burke, President of the Board of Directors
Kathy Lee, Director of Development
Allison Tanney, Fundraising Manager
Date: February 4, 2012
Subject: Donor Research
I have been hired to provide a recommendation for a market research strategy in order to enhance the Food for the Hungry organization. Considering this is a non-profit organization, it is important that money spent is minimal and effectively used. The direct mail approach that has been used previously is not working as well as it has in past years, so utilizing market research strategies are essential to bringing in the donations that are needed.
In speaking with all the key players, they find it important that we answer the following questions; what messages to use, how to reach current members more effectively, and the most important is how to find new member and how to target them.
The main type of study we will use is email surveys. Emails can be sent to past contributors for this organization, as well as lists of donators to other organizations and is very economical which meets the need of the organization. Lists can be purchased to those who have donated and kept to a very minimal cost. For past donors, the sample size that should be sent the link should be 5,000 people, where we may see about a 50% completed surveys returned for an optimum number. For the purchased list, as there are minimums, we should expect to email 50,000 email addresses. For this list if we hope to have a 20% return of completed surveys for an optimum number.
Before all data is in, a preliminary analysis can be done of the data to see the nature of the data that is being completed. Once the surveys have been completed the data needs to be organized and edited to make sure the data is all of high quality. The data can then be coded so that it all can be analyzed and can be given numerical values. Different statistical tabulations can be run in a program to show in charts results of the questions being asked. With these numerical values in place and charts available, the results can be then turned into answers to all of the key players questions that are easily understood, and converted into action plans.