Even though the use of predictive analytics hold so much value for businesses and nonprofits, the general problem with implementing them is that the knowledge of how to do so is not readily available. Many people struggle when trying to make sense of good analysis practices, choosing appropriate predictive models for a given situation, and understanding the underlying statistics. To fill this gap of knowledge and provide an easy way to learn and take advantage of predictive analytics, Vault Analytics will be releasing a new book on August 2.

It contains detailed chapters describing how to do good analysis, how to choose an appropriate predictive model for your situation, and how to make sure the statistics powering the model are set up right. This is all done and explained in the familiar environment of Excel 2007, so that it can benefit those who may not have access to more advanced predictive analytical packages such as SAS and SPSS.

If you’d like to download the first few chapters for free, or pre-order the book, you can do so here.

Otherwise, below I’ve copied a section from the book that I think is extremely valuable for anyone new to data analysis. It describes two of the most important fundamentals: Seeing the data in context, and segmentation.

Seeing the Data in Context

Understanding what the data are telling you within the context of the business situation being analyzed is extremely important. This will help you avoid making faulty conclusions and keep your analysis appropriate for the business question being answered. The best way to learn this fundamental is to see it in action, so we will take an example.

We will look at a type of direct mail campaign analysis. We want to know how many calls are expected to come into our call center after we execute the campaign. First, we take some historical data showing us the percentage of total calls coming in according to the number of days after starting a mail campaign, shown below.

After creating a scatter plot of the data, we try to fit a logarithmic regression line as a model, shown seen below.

Even though the R² tells us that the fit is good, the model may not be the best way to explain this data when the context and purpose of this analysis are considered. We want the model to be able to predict what percentage of total calls will come in from a mailing campaign so we can staff the call center. If I were to use the line above as the model, I would be predicting low values for incoming calls between about day 20 and 100, and high values thereafter. Because of this error, we would not be staffing the call center correctly.

To create a better model, I would consider the fact that, in this context, it is not necessary to fit a trend model to the entire data set. Consider the following model, which can be used to predict the percentage of total calls coming in between days 4 and 35 after the mailing campaign:

You will notice that this trend model does not contain the same high and low errors as the previous model did. Further, upon doing some calculations on the data in the spreadsheet, we know that anything before day 4 makes up for just 8% of all calls, and anything after day 35 makes up for just 15% of all calls. I have highlighted with a model the time period of the biggest growth to the call percentage, while summarizing the remaining percentages on either side. This will give just the right amount of information needed to staff the call center, while minimizing errors I would have made trying to fit a single trend model to the data.

The point here is to look at the data in the context of the purpose of the analysis. What are you going to use the predictive model for? Is it necessary to fit a model to the entire data set? How exact do you need to be with the prediction? What is the most important part of the data set to model? These and other questions are important to consider when performing analysis.

Segmentation

The second fundamental of analysis is the practice of segmenting the data. As with seeing the data in context, this is best described with an example. Consider the analysis presented below, which shows a linear regression model to predict how much someone will likely donate to your cause according to their age.

The fit of the model is extremely weak, and there seems to be no relationship between donation and age. However, this data was taken and aggregated from two different cities, Boston and New York. If we separate out the data according to those two cities (otherwise known as segmenting by them), we get the following when we run a regression analysis:

By segmenting the data first, we notice that there is, in fact, a relationship between donation and age, but that relationship differs depending on what city you are in.

It must be remembered that there is nothing foundational about social media – if you don’t understand the basic principles underpinning why social media works and how it fits into your fundamental funding strategy, then you’re making a lot of icing to smear just about everywhere but on top of the cake. Social media is the icing; a sound funding strategy is the cake.

First you need to define what your long-term funding strategy is, and then you can apply social media tactics to amplify that strategy. To help in this effort, I have summarized below some research done by the Standford Social Innovation Review, which identifies and defines 10 winning funding strategies being used by America’s leading nonprofits. I have added some ideas on how social media can be used to enhance such strategies.

I hope this information will first help you see with more clarity what the best foundational funding strategy for your organization is, and then see how social media can be applied to it. Looking at it in this order will help you focus your efforts, which leads to larger funding streams and better alignment of the funding to your organization’s structure and mission.

The 10 funding strategy types are defined below:

1. Heartfelt Connector

Strategy

-Focus on causes that resonate with the existing concerns of large numbers of people at all income levels and provide a structured way for these people to connect where none had previously existed
-Build explicit connections between volunteers through special fundraising events

Funding Source

Many individual donors

Examples

Make-a-Wish Foundation
Susan G. Komen Foundation – Does the ‘Race for the Cure’, consisting of 120 races a year and drawing over 1 million participants

Is this model right for you?

- Do we have a large cross section of people that has already shown that they will fund causes in this domain?
- Can we communicate what is compelling about our nonprofit in a simple and concise way?
- Does a natural avenue exist to attract and involve large numbers of volunteers?
- Do we have or can we develop capabilities to have broad outreach in even one geographic area?

Social Media Uses

This model naturally harnesses much of the power of social media marketing. Since you are already focusing on causes and concerns that a large number of people have, it has the potential to be shared and spread across many social media channels. Particular emphasis should be placed on using social media to promote large events, connect people, and spread success stories. YouTube is particularly effective at showing personal success stories that are connected back to your organization. Facebook pages are also a good option, as it helps connect people concerned in a way that did not before exist. All of these efforts should lead people to take an action, such as donating or attending an event your organization is putting on.

2. Beneficiary Builder

Strategy

-Charge a fee for services, but not enough to cover the cost of providing the service
-Get reimbursed for services provided to specific individuals, relying on people who have benefited from these services in the past

Funding Source

Many individual donors

Examples

Cleveland Clinic
Princeton University

Is this model right for you?

-Does our mission create an individual benefit that is also perceived as an important social good?
-Do individuals develop a deep loyalty to the organization in the course of receiving their individual benefit?
-Do we have the capabilities to reach out to the beneficiaries in a scalable fashion?

Social Media Uses

Here social media can be used very effectively to build and keep strong relationships with those who have benefited from your service and are now in a position to give back. Facebook pages, such as an alumni page, can be used to gather many potential donors and keep your organization top of mind as you provide news about your organization and opportunities they have to give something back. Creating social groups in other areas on the web (such as on Ning or LinkedIn) can also be effective. Monthly newsletters and email marketing is also particularly useful here, again, because you can stay top of mind and remind people of their opportunity to give back.

3. Member Motivator

Strategy

-Rely on individual donations from people who donate because the issue is integral to their everyday life and is something from which they draw a collective benefit

Funding Source

Many individual donors

Examples

Saddleback Church
National Wild Turkey Federation

Is this model right for you?

- Will our members feel that the actions of the organization are directly benefiting them, even if the benefit is shared collectively?
- Do we have the capabilities to involve and manage our members in fundraising activities?
- Can we commit to staying in tune with, and faithful to, our core membership, even if it means turning down funding opportunities and not pursuing activities that fail to resonate with our members?

Social Media Uses

Here again social media is very useful, and the idea is to create places where people who directly benefit from your nonprofits operations can gather, stay informed, interact, and know how to help and donate. They need to know what you are doing and how it affects them directly, and it needs to be easy for them to offer suggestions and take part in your work. Again, Facebook can be used for these means. Twitter is also very useful in this case, because it allows for the people that are interested in your very specific work to share what you are doing with their like-minded followers, as well as give feedback and ideas to your organization.

4. Big Bettor

Strategy

- Rely on major grants from a few individuals or foundations to fund their operations
- Often supported by one founder, someone who wants to fund a new approach for solving a large problem

Funding Source

Single or few individuals or foundations

Examples

Stanley Medical Research Institute
Conservation International -Their ability to identify locations around the world where protecting an area of land can have a significant effect on preserving global biodiversity helps attract donors willing to contribute large amounts of money so they can have an important and lasting impact on protecting Earth

Is this model right for you?

- Can we create a tangible and lasting solution to a major problem in a foreseeable time frame?
- Can we clearly articulate how we will use large-scale funding to achieve our goals?
- Are any of the wealthiest individuals or foundations interested in our issue and approach?

Social Media Uses

In this case social media is less useful in obtaining funding and revenues to sustain the organization. There may be opportunities to leverage it in the actual achievement of your nonprofit’s mission, depending on the type of work you are engaged in. Generally social media usage in this category is less effective than spending time and money elsewhere.

5. Public Provider

Strategy

- Work with government agencies to provide essential social services, such as housing, human services, and education, for which the government has previously defined and allocated funding
- This funding usually comes from reimbursement or Request for Proposals (RFPs)
- Funding is usually a mix of the federal, state, and local levels

Funding Source

Government

Examples

Success for All Foundation
TMC (Teaching and Mentoring Communities)

Is this model right for you?

- Is our organization a natural match with one or more large, preexisting government programs?
- Can we demonstrate that our organization will do a better job than our competitors?
- Are we willing to take the time to secure contract renewals on a regular basis?

Social Media Uses

Use social media to stay up to date on what the local, state, and federal agencies are spending their money on, what RFPs they are submitting, and any changes that may occur in their policy. You can set up RSS feeds, alerts, and filters so that you get instant updates on all of this information. Aside from this, your time is better spent writing proposals and contacting agencies than in social media.

6. Policy Innovator

Strategy

- Develop novel methods to address social issues that are not clearly compatible with existing government funding programs, and convince government funders to support these alternate methods because they are more effective and less expensive than existing programs

Funding Source

Government

Examples

Youth Villages
HELP USA

Is this model right for you?

- Do we provide an innovative approach that surpasses the status quo (in impact and cost) and is compelling enough to attract government funders, which tend to gravitate toward traditional solutions?
- Can we provide government funders with evidence that our program works?
- Are we willing and able to cultivate strong relationships with government decision makers who will advocate change?

Social Media Uses

Social Media should be used to monitor and track the area of interest that your nonprofit wants to service. By monitoring what other nonprofits are doing in the space, and what people in social channels are saying, your eyes will be opened to areas of potential innovation and improvement. Once again, the use of RSS feeds, filters, and alerts is useful in this application of social media.

7. Beneficiary Broker

Strategy

- Compete to provide government-funded or backed services to beneficiaries
- Receive administrative fees from the government

Funding Source

Governement

Examples

Iowa Student Loan Liquidity Corporation
Metropolitan Boston Housing Partnership

Is this model right for you?

- Can we demonstrate to the government our superior ability to connect benefit or voucher holders with benefits, such as successful placement rates and customer satisfaction feedback?
- Can we develop supplemental services that maximize the value of the benefit?
- Can we master the government regulations and requirements needed to be a provider of these benefits?
- Can we find ways to raise money to supplement the fees we receive from the benefits program?

Social Media Uses

Run the program in the same way a for-profit would run a social media campaign. You are essentially competing to offer a service to a customer base of people, and as a result, for-profit social media strategies especially apply to this case.

8. Resource Recycler

Strategy

- Collect in-kind donations from corporations and individuals, and then distribute these goods to needy recipients who could not have purchased them on the market (businesses are willing to donate the goods because otherwise they would go to waste)

Funding Source

Corporate Funding

Examples

AmeriCares Foundation
The Greater Boston Food Bank (distributes nearly 30 million pounds of food annually to more than 600 local organizations including food pantries, soup kitchens, day care centers, and homeless shelters, and receives goods from retailers, manufacturers, restaurants and hotels)

Is this model right for you?

- Are the products that we distribute likely to be donated on an ongoing basis?
- Can we develop the expertise to stay abreast of trends in the industries that donate products to us so that we can prepare for fluctuations in donations?
- Do we have a strategy for attracting the cash we’ll need to fund operations and overhead?

Social Media Uses

Here you may adopt a social media strategy that has a strong listening component on industry websites so that you can stay up to date on products and trends. It would also be wise to get donations flowing in order to cover overhead. For this, I would look to models 1-3 and use some of the same strategies.

9. Market Maker

Strategy

- Generate revenues from fees or donations that are directly linked to your nonprofit’s activities
- Provide service in a space where, even though there is money to pay for the service, it would be unseemly or unlawful for a for-profit to do so.

Funding Source

Mix of funders

Examples

Trust for Public Land
American Kidney Fund

Is this model right for you?

- Is there a group of funders with financial interest in supporting our work?
- Are there legal or ethical reasons why it would be more appropriate for a nonprofit to deliver the services?
- Do we already have a trusted program and brand name?

Social Media Uses

Brand strength is a key aspect of this type of revenue model, as it involves a high level of trust and transparency. Social media tactics to increase brand awareness, transparency, and engagement should be used. Any type of content that is educational and that engages is especially useful, such as YouTube videos, Slideshare content, Flickr streams, Twitter, and Facebook.

10. Local Nationalizer

Strategy

- Create a national network of locally based operations
- Focus on issues (such as poor schools or children in need of adult role models) that are important to local communities across the country, and where government alone can’t solve the problem
– Most money is raised locally, often from individual or corporate donations and special events

Funding Source

Mix of funders

Examples

Big Brothers Big Sisters of America
Teach for America

Is this model right for you?

- Does our cause address an issue that local leaders consider a high priority, and is this issue compelling in communities across the country?
- Does expanding our organization into other communities fulfill our mission?
- Can we replicate our model in other communities?
- Are we committed to identifying and empowering high-performing leaders to run local branches of our organization in other communities?

Social Media Uses

Social media is highly effective for this model, because it has the power to connect communities across the nation so that they can learn from, interact with, and feed off each other’s successes. Although Facebook and Twitter can be effective, the customized social media experience (such as the creation of a Ning group) really shines. The power of sharing knowledge, successes, and what is working from each networked group can prove invaluable.

Conclusion

In some cases there will be between the various models presented. It is advised, however, to stick to just 1 or 2 of the models; research shows that nonprofits who are more focused in their efforts to access funding, rather that chasing every available opportunity, have greater success.

The ideas for using social media presented in this article are admittedly broad in perspective, and are meant to give the big picture of how a social media strategy can be used in each case rather than give a lot of details. If you’ve found this article useful and want to learn more, you can sign up for our upcoming training seminar, which will delve deeper into the details of implementing these social media strategies according to your specific funding model. The seminar is online, so it is not limited by location.
 
 
 
 

Measurement provides information. Having information lends itself to making good decisions. And in the nonprofit sector, the difference between making a good and a bad decision can have significant consequences.

If you are Teach for America, it could be the difference between a bright future and a life of ignorance for students living in low-income situations.

If you are the American Red Cross, it could be the difference between life and death for someone trying to survive the aftermath of a natural disaster.

And if your organization fails to make the correct decisions . . . you can fill in the blank.

As nonprofits, we have a responsibility to the community we serve, and therefore a moral obligation to make the best decisions possible. The great news is that the ability to make the best decisions is within each and every nonprofit organization’s reach – it just requires a little extra planning and effort. And it starts by measuring.

The Benefits of Measurement

Direction, velocity, and public accountability – these are the three impelling benefits for having a measurement program.

Direction

Direction is the most important, so it is listed first. If you’ve got your direction wrong, it’s going to mean a whole lot of wasted time, money, and resources – for little or no impact. Sometimes nonprofits get so caught up in getting work done that they never stop to take and look to see if that work is actually doing anything useful. It’s easy to get into the routine and coast along in lemming mode.

Measurement changes this. When you measure, you have a lens through which you can make sure your efforts are accomplishing the good that so desperately needs accomplishing. You can see course corrections that need to be taken clearly. You can wake up from the drone of the routine and start making real impact in a world that is constantly requiring us to redefine how we work.

Velocity

Velocity is next – once you get the direction right, the faster you move the faster you make an impact. And measurement is right there to prod you to ever greater efficiency – the statement is true that when people are held accountable for their work, the rate at which the work gets done increases.

Public Accountability

Lastly, we have public accountability, which is arguably one of the most powerful marketing and communications methods a nonprofit can use. By measuring the right things, you become transparent to the public eye; you can show in concrete terms the level of impact your organization is having for every donation dollar and every volunteer hour given. People like to know the difference they can make when they give their money and time – so make it real for them! Measure your impact, and tell them exactly what their donation did to help. Sponsors, donors, volunteers, advocates, and your community will LOVE you for this.

How to Measure

The number one rule for measurement in nonprofits is as follows:

Measure as few metrics as necessary to give you direction, velocity, and public accountability.

Let’s talk about how to set up a program that encompasses these three.

Organizational Mission

Measuring starts with your organizational mission – and more importantly, with the outcomes that will exist as a result of achieving that mission. Finding these outcomes is best done by picturing what they will look like when achieved.

If I was the Acumen Fund, for example, some of my outcomes may be “families able to sustain themselves through business” or “communities that are economically self-reliant.”

These form a picture of how the world will be when the mission is achieved. These tell us the direction we want to be going in.
Now we need to identify the critical success factors that need to be completed in order to achieve this outcome. What are the incremental steps? Taking the outcomes from the Acumen Fund, we might decide on the following for critical success factors:

1. Get families enrolled in business training program
2. Get families set up with their own business
3. Get families running the business on their own
4. Get successful families referring and training others in need

These can each be thought of as critical success factors that lead to the finish line, and they are useful to us because now instead of trying to tackle huge effort, we can look at each individual step on a more manageable level.

As a side note, you will notice that the critical success factors in the above example are sequential. This does not always have to be the case; many times the critical success factors, or incremental steps, work in tandem and are not necessarily in any specific order.

Using Critical Success Factors

These critical success factors should be used in two ways:

1. To show progress towards attaining the ultimate outcome
2. To find the most important factors in outcome achievement

Both of these are attained with the use of measurement. For the first use, you simply need some tracking measurements. For example, you could track “# of families enrolled in the training program” for the first success factor listed above. Then, depending on what you want to show, you can divide by any of several different dimensions to get good numbers for public accountability. For example:

Money Efficiency = # of families enrolled in the training program / dollar spent
Work Efficiency = # of families enrolled in the training program / volunteer hour
Time Efficiency = # of families enrolled in the training program / month

The second way to use these factors is by comparing them to the ultimate outcome achievement. For instance, if I notice that the measures for both the ultimate outcome and critical success factor 4 rise and fall with each other on a month by month basis, I can be relatively sure that #4 is indeed critical to my success. In this manner you can see which factors are more and less important, and where to spend the majority of your efforts.

Don’t forget to experiment with this! Try taking out some less important success factors and putting in some new ones. Keep iterating until you get a set of critical success factors that all have a high impact on the final outcome – then you can be sure you are focusing on the right things, and that you have the right direction for your efforts.

If you want to get really detailed with this kind of analysis (which I recommend if you want a well run nonprofit) then you can break down each one of your critical success factors into individual efforts tasks, and do the same kinds of measurement analysis. For Acumen, you might track the following ‘efforts’ for critical success factor 1:

1. Send people to villages and talk to them face to face to sign them up
2. Talk to other organizations who have information on eligible families for the program
3. Set up an information center at a local market place where eligible families may congregate

Velocity Measurement

Finally, let’s discuss velocity, or the rate at which work gets done in your organization. For this we will need to track the efforts of either a) individual workers or b) individual departments. The easiest way to do this is to assign some effort tasks (like the ones we just made for Acumen) to the individual or department, and then track the hours they spend doing the activity along with the resultant outcome they achieved. An example would be the following:

# families enrolled / hours spent visiting villages

This can be formatted for time, money, or whatever else you want them to be accountable for. As you measure this, you will find your highest and lowest performers; learn from the high ones, train the low ones.

How to Get Started

Now you have an overview of what a performance measurement program would entail, how to set it up, and what it can do for you. And you can get started right now! In fact, you probably should, before you forget everything you’ve read in this post. The great thing is, getting started doesn’t have to be hard.

Take your mission statement, and think of an outcome that the statement seeks to create. Then list one or two things you think might be critical success factors to achieve that outcome. Write down how you will measure those factors and the outcome, and then set up a schedule to do it. That’s it! You’re done.

All you have to do now is stay with this pilot measurement program until you’re comfortable with it, and then expand it a little. And then a little more. Then you’ll start to see some results. Then you’ll expand it a little more, and refine it. You’ll see more results. And so on.

Alright, now it’s your turn. How has measurement worked for you in your nonprofit? Any suggestions for us all?
]]> http://vaultanalytics.com/marketinganalytics/2010/05/measuring-your-way-to-better-nonprofit-management-and-marketing/feed/ 0 http://vaultanalytics.com/marketinganalytics/2010/04/seminar-outline-how-non-profits-can-use-measurement-analytics/ http://vaultanalytics.com/marketinganalytics/2010/04/seminar-outline-how-non-profits-can-use-measurement-analytics/#comments Tue, 27 Apr 2010 22:05:29 +0000 Curtis Seare http://vaultanalytics.com/marketinganalytics/?p=430 Vault Analytics is creating an free instructional seminar to help non-profits apply measurement analytics to their organization so that they will be able to increase their performance management and mission achievement.

This course is still in production, so please give us your feedback in the comments or by contacting us. We want to make the information as useful and relevant as possible, so please look over the outline and let us know what changes will best help you. You can see the outline by either video or text format below.

Training Objectives

Through this training, you will be able to:
• Identify the most effective way to allocate resources and efforts for mission fulfillment
• Show the impact of your NGO’s work in concrete and detailed terms
• Increase accountability of workers and efforts
• Identify hidden opportunities for innovation
• Create lasting social change and evangelism for your NGO’s mission

Course Outline:

Measurement

Principles of Incremental Measurement

Instead of only focusing on the end goal of an NGO’s mission, it is important to consider the entire path that leads to that goal. By identifying incremental steps and successes that must be accomplished along the road to mission fulfillment, it is possible to get a more granular look at the work that you are performing and what you are accomplishing. When each of these steps is broken down and measured in quantitative and qualitative ways, your organization will attain high levels of performance management, transparency, and strategy. This section teaches the best methods for identifying and measuring each of these incremental steps.

Principles of Outcome Sustainability Measurement

Once the end goal is achieved, it is important that regression back into an unfavorable state be minimized. Incremental measurement principles are used to identify the steps that cause regression after the social mission has been achieved. Next, ways to monitor and halt these causes are identified, and efforts are put into place to reduce recession. These efforts are also measured to assure they are effective. As regression is decreased, the social achievements that are attained become lasting, and fewer resources must be allocated into re-achieving the mission after a regression.

Setting up your Measurement Program

As with any undertaking, when implementing a measurement strategy it is important to achieve organizational buy in and facilitate easy communication and data collection techniques so that the program doesn’t fail. This section covers the best methods of setting up an action plan and mobilizing an organization to implement it. Practical issues such as how to collect the data and where to store it are also covered so that organizations will have a complete roadmap for measurement program implementation.

Analytics

Analysis Framework

The basics of how to think analytically and map data measurement back to mission critical goals is covered. After going over some simple steps, questions to ask, and things to look for when approaching an analysis, NGOs will have a template framework within which to work to make their analyses impactful and accurate.

Basic Principles of Analysis

It is important to understand some fundamentals in data analysis in order to guide your thinking and come to appropriate conclusions. Basics such as learning the difference between a dimension and a measure, how to do basic segmentation, how to use combination metrics and ratios, and how to look for trends and patterns are covered. With these principles in mind, basic analytical approaches such as visual analytics and descriptive statistics are covered, along with training on how to use the most common business tools available (such as Microsoft Excel) to accomplish these analyses. With this understanding, NGOs will be able to unlock their measurement data to discover insights that will target their efforts where they will be most effective.

Methods of Analytical Benchmarking

Benchmarking analysis is based on the idea that when progress is measured, it happens faster. It is important to understand how to choose quality, goal-impacting metrics to benchmark your performance. Methods of tracking, reporting, and communicating performance according to these metrics using the most common business tools is covered, including how to create Excel tracking dashboards and automate the updating process. When done effectively, benchmarking takes little time away from other activities, but provides precious intelligence so that work can be done smarter.

Presentation

Principles of Data Presentation

For measurement, data, and analytics to be truly effective, it is important to communicate the insights and findings from them to others. This is often difficult to do, but after learning a few key principles of data presentation it can become a systematic and repeatable process. By following this process of data presentation, NGOs will be able to use the insights they obtain from their data to enlighten people’s understanding and perceptions, causing positive change.

Principles of Promotion

Once the data presentation has the power to effect a change in other’s thinking, following principles of good promotion allows the change to get widespread attention. Here some basic principles of inbound marketing and multi-channel promotion are covered. These techniques are mainly used to help effect change in people who are outside of the NGO.

Again, we would very much appreciate your feedback so that we can make this course as useful to NGOs as we can; please either contact us or leave a comment. Thank you!

We’ve broken down the process of how to use analytics for NGOs into three categories, summarized below. We feel that it presents a systematic and practical approach to foster performance management and measurement in these organizations.

Measurement

The first hurdle that must be crossed is that of measurement, of taking the time and effort to measure work and progress and collect it in a database for further analysis and presentation. There are several reasons why it is important for an NGO to measure its efforts:

-Make sure time, effort, and money are being used where they need to be
-Gain ability to prove that you are accomplishing and fulfilling your social mission
-Gain ability to show that donor and sponsor funding is being used effectively

There are a few things to keep in mind when implementing a measurement strategy. First – it is important to not only measure the end goal, but also the incremental steps that lead up to that goal. Let’s say your organization’s mission is to decrease the number of diabetics within a specific demographic in your community. Measuring the % decrease in diabetes withing this population over a given time period is great, but it doesn’t tell the whole story. Ask yourself, what are the incremental steps leading up to the lowered diabetes rates? Perhaps one is the amount of exercise the average person in the demographic is getting on a daily basis. Perhaps another is the amount of sweets or fatty foods the average person is consuming per day. As you attack these issues that lead to diabetes, measure the improvement in these areas. Then people get the whole story of where your efforts have helped reduce each aspect of the larger problem – and you can find out which efforts are the most effective at getting rid of this problem.

Second – make sure and measure regression rates. Too often we stop the measurement once the problem is solved – once we have lowered the diabetes rate, in this case. But how many of those people, after we stopped working with them, have regressed into having diabetes? This is sometimes an alarmingly high number, and when regression rates are high, that means all the work we performed to lower the diabetes rate in the first place has gone to waste. If you see through measurement that the regression level is high, it’s time to implement some strategies and efforts into keeping the solution in place – that is, not losing ground once you’ve attained it. It’s often a lot easier to keep the problem gone than to go back and fix it again. This allows you to really fulfill your mission, in a lasting sense. It wastes less resources because you retain the ground you’ve gained. And donors and sponsors will be excited by the fact that you can show that your solution is a long lasting one.

Analytics

Once we have measurement strategies in place, now we have lots of data on our hands. Analytics is the process by which we extract useful intelligence from this data. There are many methods of doing this, whether it be through visual analysis techniques, statistics, predictive models, etc. (specific ways on how to do these types of analysis will be the topic of subsequent posts) Many people think that analytics is a task that is beyond their abilities, but many times even simple analysis will result in sufficient intelligence that you can use to do your work smarter.

One of the most important things to remember in doing analysis is the principle of segmentation. This means looking at the data in smaller pieces, rather than in aggregate. For instance, if you want to know who your most effective workers are, break down the data to show you the hours each worker put in, and the changes in the incremental metrics we discussed above that occurred as a result of their work. Maybe you want to know which types of donors consistently give high sums to support your work – break them down by demographics, or by income, or by age, or any other variables to get a view of what your ideal donor looks like. Then you can target more of these kinds of people in your donation campaigns.

Presentation

Not to be forgotten is the element of presentation. Once you have the data and all the analysis, you need to be able to present the intelligence you’ve found to others in a way that they understand, and in a way that will cause a change in their behavior. The intelligence from the analytics is there so that you can be more effective in your work; however, if no one understands it, nothing will change and it will be useless. There are a few easy guidelines to follow in presenting analytical information so that it sticks:

- Relate the numbers to something people understand (Just saying the number 416 can be somewhat abstract, but if you say instead “the number of people that fit in a Boeing 747″ the number becomes real and concrete)
- Only show the necessary elements of analysis to get your point across (many times you’ll have to go through a lot of analysis to get a few golden nuggets of intelligence, and our tendency is to want to show off all of the work we did to get there. The problem is, the process is not important to the people you are talking to. What’s important is the results and intelligence, so just focus on that.)
- Keep it simple (showing too many variables on a graph, or just plain too many graphs, causes more confusion that it does clarity)
- Relate the analysis back to what concerns your constituents (Your focus should always be on solving the problem, and the analysis is only important insofar as it helps you to do that. Focus on what solves the problem for the constituents)

Hopefully this small outline gives you a framework that you can use in thinking about how to implement analytics into your organization. In the coming posts we’ll be discussing more in depth how to do each of these three points.

What do you think? Is this information helpful?

Mobile marketing analytics news
The worlds largest mobile ad network, InMobi, has just announced new reporting and analytical tools that aim to increase marketing ROI for those pursuing mobile advertising. New abilities include advanced segmentation and filtering, and a better user interface. This move is an important one to watch for anyone wanting to reach a mobile audience.

Inbound Calls Analytics
AdTraka, a company that sells telephone conversion tracking systems, has come out with new analytical capabilities that allow companies to know which key-phrases are responsible for telephone inquiry generation. Now you will be able to know which campaigns are the most effective in generating inbound calls, allowing you to focus your efforts and cut unprofitable campaigns.

Google Tools

Full Referral URLs from Google Analytics
This article shows you how to use custom filters in Google Analytics so you can track full-referral URL’s. This way, instead of getting a broad picture of what domains are linking to you, you will be able to see specific pages.

URL Tracking
Free Google tool to create URLs that can be tracked so that you can measure your marketing campaigns

Onsite Targeting with Google Analytics
It appears that in the near future you will be able to serve up customized content to specific we visitors with the use of Google Analytics.

Articles

Find the 1% of visitors that count
Interesting study that found that 1% of site visitors generate 20% of all its traffic by sharing its content. Further, these 1% of influencers drive conversions on your site. Find and engage the 1%, and you indirectly engage everyone within that influencers social sphere.

Mobile Marketing of Social Media
Kevin Hillstrom suggests that too many people are talking about social media, while mobile marketing is being overlooked. This is unfortunate, as mobile marketing can be easily tracked and is going to be a huge way of advertising in the coming years.

But a story is so much better when other people get to contribute, adding their unique take on things. We set out to do just that. We wanted to use data to tell a story, but make it both accessible and interactive. We’ve taken a data set of metrics gathered across every county in the U.S. that can in some way be correlated with diabetes rates. The metrics have different effects according to the region or state counties are found in, so possible ways of looking at the data are endless.

The data visualizations can be found here.

We figure enough people looking at something like this can start to create big changes. Feel free to explore, interact, analyze, and gain insights. What does the data tell you? Share your thoughts/insights below.

To use the interactive features:

Moving the slider bar, the graph will automatically filter to give you only the ranges of money spent you specify

By clicking on one or several of the services in the first graph, the second will automatically filter to show you only those agencies and suppliers that bought and sold in that specific category.

Let us know if this interactive visualization is helpful, and what else you’d like to see in the comments!