Hello, Does anyone have experience and/or success! with Blackbaud Analytics in researching your constituent database and identifying annual, major and planned giving donor prospects?

 I've been referred to Capital Development Services Raleigh, NC, Target America and Pen also---any input?

Thanks!

Darcy Law

We used Blackbaud Analytics for a year or two several years ago, and felt that we didn't get our money's worth.  However, we're in a very rural area with a lot of seasonal homeowners and it's difficult to target property values under those circumstances.  We also had a very small and relatively inexperienced staff at that point.  An exampe of one problem we ran into is that we have hundreds of records of employees and former employees who each had dozens of pay-cashes on their record.  Those constituents ended up being coded as high potential for a planned gift because we didn't know (or think) to screen them out.  I would analyze very carefully what it is that you want and what you don't want, and what Blackbaud is able to provide.  Best of luck,

Leslie

Why woudn't a former employee who was on payroll deduction be considered a planned giving prospect?

Some are.  But, when the employee giving program started years ago (before my time), payroll sent deductions every pay period, meaning there are some constituents who have 26 "gifts" on their record for just one year.  We find PG prospects by number of years as a consecutive donor, which is different than number of gifts.  We don't have the resources to steward the hundreds of employees/former employees who ended up with the PG prospect rating.

 Hi, Darcy.

 We used Blackbaud Analytics mid 2006.  Generally speaking, it helped us identify prospects quickly and assets we had not been aware of previous to the screening.  We found the customer service reps very helpful and learned a lot with the process.

We did have one negative with the information obtained, however.  The real estate value was identified several times for the same property.  This happened because refinancing was picked up in the screening but the downside was the formula used the property value for the same property every time a value was listed, which skewed the estimated wealth rating. We had to go into each record and clean up all of the real estate listings so that would not happen and then recalculate the estimated wealth.

Keep in mind this was done over 2 years ago and the process may well be much more accurate now. All in all it was a positive, helpful experience.

Good luck.

Dee Black

Darcy,

My husband Ken Meifert at the National Baseball Hall of Fame has had great success with analytics. We had it done a few years back before I was involved some I'm not sure how the models were built since I didn't have any input. I do know that I was never able to get our Director to actually use the data the way it was intended. We have used it as an additional piece of criteria in determining one level of major gift prospects.

Ken may have a video of one of his presentations on Blackbaud's website still

I do know that the advise other folks are giving you about helping determine the modeling used such as defining the parameters they would use when using wealthpoint or other search engines as well as other factors can do nothing but make you more successful.

I guess I should have mentioned I work in a Hospital system as opposed to a museum market like Ken - my answer may have read like we worked together... which we don't.