How to Use Donor Profiles to Raise More Money

How well do you know your donors? Are you appealing to their specific interests, communicating in ways they prefer, and recognizing them in ways they appreciate?

Join the Chronicle and two veterans of strategic marketing and communications for a session that will demonstrate how to apply sophisticated marketing techniques to your fundraising efforts.

You'll learn how to identify donor "personas," an approach that classifies donors according to their behavior, interests, and communication preferences, so you can tailor your appeals and pitches based on these characteristics.

Nancy Buzby, associate vice president of strategic marketing at the Environmental Defense Fund, will explain how to sort your donor data and augment it with interviews, surveys, and research to better understand what motivates your donors, how to inspire them to give, and how to attract new donors, too.

Colleen O'Grady, philanthropic strategist at the communications consulting firm Lipman Hearne, will give you an exclusive first look at the results of a new study of ultrawealthy donors and offer insights into their needs, desires, and motivations She'll describe five megadonor "archetypes" based on the mindsets, behavioral traits, values, and communication preferences of the ultrawealthy. She'll also explain how to use this information to attract big donors and share a tool for gleaning information from major donors to help shape future communications and attract more big donors.

Both Buzby and O'Grady will offer insights into how to apply personas to online marketing and fundraising and share real-world examples from nonprofits that tailored communications to donor groups.

What Will You Learn?

• How to interview donors to better understand their concerns, interests, and motivations for supporting your cause
• How to use the results of those interviews and other data to identify personal, professional, and philanthropic characteristics of donors
• How to tailor appeals to groups of donors based on their demographics, giving patterns, and communication preferences

Who Should Attend?

• Chief Development Officers
• Direct-response fundraisers and other development professionals
• Online marketers