Analytics for Fundraisers Using SPSS: A Beginner's Course
From Exploratory Statistics to Regression
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Donors to nonprofits increasingly suffer from solicitation fatigue when charities canvass them several times a year asking for gifts. With the advent of more personalized web pages and online advertising targeting their audience, charities must rethink communication channels, prospect segmenting, and engagement efforts. Additionally, gift officers have a larger need to work with the best prospects for cultivation and solicitation in an era where travel is more expensive and gift officer portfolios are being reduced in size to afford deeper cultivation. The tools needed to address these trends are under the analytics umbrella..
Using SPSS, you will work several exercises to build skills in visualization, data exploration, donor modeling, and prospect identification modeling. You'll watch theory and demonstration videos, then do analytics exercises. Once you finish the exercises and quizzes, you'll be able to estimate an ask amount for your prospect pool and identify prospects most likely to make a major gift.
Class outcomes include donor models that you will derive from your own prospect pool.
Your Instructor
Marianne Pelletier has over 30 years of experience in fundraising, with the majority in prospect research and prospecting. She is one of the first adopters of donor modeling and data mining techniques, and is now a world-renown leader on this segment of the research profession. Her prospect research experience began when she was a research analyst for Harvard and Lesley Universities. She later served as a department director for Carnegie Mellon University and Cornell University.
Pelletier’s career also includes running an annual giving program with average increased revenues of 27% per year and providing software consulting through the Datatel Corporation, teaching clients both how to use their new software and assisting them with better analysis and more efficient processing. She occasionally serves as a best practices consultant through CampusWorks.
A recipient of a lifetime achievement award from the New England Development Research Association and a Woman of the Year designation by the National Association of Professional Women, Pelletier has served as a volunteer for both election campaigns and social service agencies. She has served on the boards of the New England Development Research Association, the Upstate New York chapter of Apra, and has served as secretary for the Apra International board. She currently serves as a trustee for Habitat for Humanity of Tompkins County and the Finger Lakes chapter of AFP.
Pelletier is a graduate of Rockford University, and earned her MBA at Southern New Hampshire University. Her recent workbook, Building Your Analytics Shop: A Workbook for Nonprofits, was a finalist for the Terry McAdam Award in 2016.
Course Curriculum
Frequently Asked Questions
Get started! Being able to do donor modeling is becoming increasingly important to the professional toolkit for fundraising staff. We'll see you in the classroom!