Canadians are a generous people. With over 80,000 charities all trying to raise money, the average Canadian donor supports 14 causes according to a 2003 survey by Mal Warwick & Associates.

But in today’s tight economy, this crowded landscape creates daunting challenges for nonprofits seeking to identify new donors and craft more compelling fundraising appeals. They need to spend their money wisely and not waste direct mail resources on people who are not likely to respond.

Know your prospects even before meeting them

A series of new products from Environics Analytics offers the fundraising community better intelligence about current donors. One product, PRIZM C2, is an update of the company’s segmentation system that classifies all Canadians into one of 66 lifestyle types—with names like Furs & Philanthropy, Grey Pride, Les Chics and Young Digerati. Reflecting the diversity of Canadian society, PRIZM C2 features 15 francophone segments and 13 multicultural ones.

         

Based on demographics and psychographic values, each PRIZM C2 type is linked to neighbourhood-level information that profiles donors by their leisure activities, media use, shopping preferences and, most important, donation behaviour. Knowing only the six-digit postal code of a potential donor, a fundraiser can determine that the prospect likes to watch CBC Newsworld, attends professional soccer games and donates more than $200 annually to medical foundations—all insights (gleaned without infringing on personal privacy) that can help increase the success rate of a fundraising campaign.

Your donors may not be so typical

One recent beneficiary of a PRIZM-based marketing analysis was the Cancer Research Society. Conventional wisdom in the fundraising business holds that the average donor is a 65-year-old woman with middle to low income and modest education, according to CRS direct marketing senior advisor Gilles Roy. But when the CRS analyzed the transactional data of 180,000 donors and classified them by PRIZM codes, the organization found three types of contributors, including a decidedly upscale segment called Educated Urbanites.

Those donors are middle-aged, have children, own their homes and report an average income of nearly $100,000—up in the stratosphere compared to the “typical” donor. And an analysis of this group’s values found that they like connecting with people, believe that all environmental phenomena are interrelated and want to have control over their lives. “They were unlike anyone we’d normally mailed with lists of our typical donors,” Roy recalls.

CRS launched a direct marketing campaign, targeting lists and locations with its three groups and mailing over 600,000 pieces using three different letters. Among English-speaking prospects, revenue per name increased by 19.2% and generated 13.5% more donors. For French-speaking prospects, revenue per name jumped by 68.6% and the number of donors increased by nearly 59%. “The first thing I found was an improvement in our ability to raise money by selecting better lists and geographic areas for our donor prospecting,” says Roy. “The improvement was tremendous.”

Data show diversity and population shifts

PRIZM C2 includes demographic data from the 2006 Census, newly released Social Values data from Environics Research and EA’s 2009 Demographic Estimates and Projections database. It reflects recent demographic changes that highlight the complexity of the Canadian populace. For instance, the wealthiest segment, Cosmopolitan Elite, has shifted from a traditionally older, urban group to a somewhat younger segment as a result of middle-aged families moving to ritzy neighbourhoods like Rosedale in Toronto and Mount Royal in Calgary. Today there are more Cosmopolitan Elite families in Calgary than Vancouver—a fact worth noting by fundraisers seeking only the wealthiest of Canada’s affluent.

The increasing diversity of Canada’s population, now 20% foreign-born, is reflected in PRIZM C2, and the system also illustrates the diversity within ethnic groups. For example, over 1.2 million South Asians live in Canada, their number having increased between the last two censuses at a rate seven times faster than that of the general population.

But not all members of this group live alike. The PRIZM C2 type known as #21 South Asian Society (young, upper-middle-class South Asian families) is home to about a quarter of Canada's South Asian population. Another 50% live in above-average concentrations in 16 other segments—ranging in socioeconomic status from wealthy #3 to downscale #64—with significant concentrations in #11 Pets & PCs (large upscale suburban families) and #46 Newcomers Rising (young, downscale city immigrants). Fundraisers looking to reach South Asians need to understand the diversity within the community in order to develop different messages and strategies to reach their best prospects.

Specialized tools for wealth analysis, smaller charities

Another new product, WealthScapes, helps nonprofits better determine the wealth of prospective donors. Developed from an array of financial, wealth, credit, taxfiler and real estate data, WealthScapes is essentially a balance sheet of assets and liabilities for every neighbourhood in Canada. Fundraisers can use it to help understand the fiscal situation of potential contributors. Those prospects with extensive real estate holdings or hefty stock portfolios may be receptive to appeals that discuss charitable donations of appreciated property or even bequests. In other neighbourhoods, appeals that feature various levels of donations—such as for singles, couples, students or families—may prove more effective.

If all of these options sound too advanced for a small fundraising operation, EA has also launched a new, easy-to-use, online micromarketing tool called Envision that makes advanced marketing analytics affordable. Designed to use both client data and a variety of marketing databases, Envision features a suite of “one-click business applications” for donor insights and media strategies. With its simple point-and-click interface, Envision allows users to create custom maps, donor profiles and executive summary reports along with rankings for markets, behaviours and products. Fundraisers and nonprofits can classify their best donors, find the most promising prospects and develop marketing campaigns at the national, regional and local levels.

And because Envision was developed specifically for the Canadian marketplace by veteran research analysts, modelling statisticians and marketing professionals from Canada, it’s designed to help fundraisers speak the language of their prospective donors—both literally and figuratively.