Bat Conservation International is a US charity on a mission to prevent bat extinctions worldwide. Based in Austin (Texas), they collaborate with partner organisations globally to help protect bat species and their ecosystems on an international scale and rely on their appeals programme to fund research and conservation efforts.

Dataro partnered with Bat Conservation International to assist their fundraising team in increasing net revenue in their direct mail appeals and enhancing fundraising efficiency.

In the first campaign with Dataro, the charity increased appeal revenue against target (a small increase on the previous year's 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 utilise Dataro’s fundraising technology to generate more gifts through improved donor targeting. In this instance, 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. These propensities were also used to identify donors to exclude based on their low likelihood to give at this time, helping to 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, making the data selection process equally efficient.

Analysing the Results

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

The spring appeal raised an additional $48k in appeal revenue (above their $30k target) from 2,300 fewer 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 contributed (+400) at a higher average gift (+$100) compared to the 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 refine their appeal targeting with Dataro’s AI-powered donor predictions, delivering appeals that exceed income targets to help end bat extinctions globally.

Dataro is proud to be supporting Bat Conservation International’s data-driven fundraising approach, setting an example for how US-based fundraising teams can adopt new tools and achieve remarkable results for their cause.

Takeaways

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

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