$831k in Extra Funding Secured in One Year with AI Donor Predictions

A leading international nonprofit dedicated to improving the lives of people with disabilities in developing countries partnered with Dataro seeking better direct mail appeal returns.

This charity relies on the success of its direct mail appeal program to fund its important work and implements approximately 12 campaigns per year.

The charity used Dataro’s AI donor predictions to support its traditional segmentation approach and secured an extra $831,945 in donations in one year across its 12 monthly appeals. 

Without Dataro’s AI donor insights, almost $1 million dollars in vital funding would have remained unrealized.

Key results

Using Dataro’s AI donor propensity software to find the best direct mail donors for their monthly appeals, this nonprofit raised

• $831,945 in additional gross revenue in 12 months

How we did it

This nonprofit has been working with Dataro since 2020 to improve the efficiency of its appeals selection process and drive better fundraising outcomes. 

For two years, the nonprofit’s fundraising team tested Dataro’s AI-driven targeting approach alongside their own RFM segmentation (which was based on their own unique behavioral model).

The charity’s fundraising team suspected their traditional direct mail selection process was leading to missed gifts from ready-to-give donors and wasted outreach to donors who were not likely to give to a particular appeal. 

Using Machine Learning, Dataro’s Direct Mail propensity model was integrated into the charity’s Blackbaud CRM, generating propensity scores and ranks for all active cash donors. These were updated weekly in the charity’s CRM and used to make appeal selections.

To determine which targeting method was more effective at finding ready-to-give donors, the charity compared the ‘Dataro AI selections’ against the ‘segmentation selections’ to identify: 

1. Donors identified by Dataro only
2. Donors identified by both Dataro and the charity’s segmentation. method
3. Donors identified by segmentation only

By sending the campaign to all donors selected using either method, we could compare the results from the Dataro version of the campaign versus the charity’s segmentation version.

Analyzing the results

Across all 12 annual campaigns, Dataro’s AI donor predictions accurately identified donors who were missed in the charity’s selection process. 

These donors gave an additional $831,945 in donations (gross revenue).