Bat Conservation International’s appeals soar to new heights in helping end bat extinctions

Bat Conservation International is a US charity on a global mission to end bat extinctions worldwide. Based in Austin (Texas) they work with partner organizations around the world to help protect bat species and their ecosystems on a global scale and rely on their appeals program to fund research and conservation efforts.

Dataro partnered with Bat Conservation International to help their fundraising team increase net revenue in their direct mail appeals and improve fundraising efficiency. 

In the first campaign with Dataro, the charity increased appeal revenue against target (small increase on previous year revenue) by 160%, doubling the number of gifts while sending 2,300 fewer letters. The spring appeal generated an additional $48k in revenue with an incredible ROI of 490%.

Key results

• 41.8% increase in response rate with Dataro
• $48k in additional revenue with Dataro
• $5.3k saving in mail costs
• $65k net appeal revenue
• $100 lift in average gift size
• ROI over 490%

How we did it

The dedicated team at Bat Conservation International were motivated to use Dataro’s fundraising technology to generate more gifts through improved donor targeting. In this case, Dataro integrated with the charity’s CRM, Blackbaud’s Raiser’s Edge NXT.

Using machine learning, Dataro’s software generated propensity scores and ranks for all of Bat Conservation International’s active cash donors, providing a prediction of how likely each donor would be to donate to their spring appeal. Equally these propensities were used to identify donors to exclude based on their low likelihood to give at this time. This helped reduce mailing volume and costs.

Because predictive ranks and scores are automatically updated each week in the charity’s CRM, future campaign targeting will be based on the most current donor data and the data selection process will be equally as efficient.

Analysing the Results

Using Dataro’s ranks and scores to make their appeal selections, Bat Conservation International raised significantly more money from less outreach.

The spring appeal raised an additional $48k in appeal revenue (above their $30k target) from 2,300 less donors targeted, saving $5,300 in mail costs. The campaign delivered an impressive 41.8% increase in response rate and generated a net return of $65k – more than 3x their previous year’s campaign. Despite reaching out to fewer donors, more donors gave (+400) at a higher average gift (+$100) compared to previous year.

Click here to watch Bat Conservation International’s Amy Dana present their results.

What’s next

The team at Bat Conservation International continue to improve their appeal targeting with Dataro’s AI-powered donor predictions and deliver appeals that exceed income targets so they can end bat extinctions worldwide.

Dataro is proud to be supporting Bat Conservation International’s data-driven fundraising approach, which sets the example for how US-based fundraising teams can embrace new tools and achieve amazing results for their cause.

Takeaways

If you are using a segmentation approach for your direct mail appeals, you are missing out on gifts from donors in your database and wasting costs targeting donors who are highly unlikely to give. 

US charities and nonprofits can use Dataro’s machine learning to identify which existing donors in their database are most likely to give to their direct mail appeal. By targeting only those most likely to give, nonprofits can:

• Find more gifts from your existing donors 
• Increase campaign response rates
• Lift average gift size
• Reduce mail volume and costs
• Increase appeal ROI
• Raise more money

With prediction-based targeting Dataro will help you raise more from your existing donors, with less waste and effort.

Hear what they had to say about Dataro

We recently interviewed Amy Dana from Bat Conservation International in our Dataro User Group about her experience and results using Dataro. Watch the interview here.