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Sustainability measures and forecasting are a major part of nonprofit management, just like for any other organization. Steps taken today will help your nonprofit tomorrow, and the more accurately you can predict the future, the better you can allocate resources.

The key for your nonprofit is predictive analytics, which will not only help you anticipate how much you need to fundraise, but also point your team towards insights that will optimize your fundraising efforts. In this guide, we’ll explore predictive analytics, its application to major gifts, and its implications for your career.

What is Predictive Analytics?

How do you tell the future? You start by looking at the past. Through collecting and analyzing your nonprofit’s data, industry data, and other reputable sources (we refer to this process as data analytics), we can map out what to expect. 

Including predictive analytics, Deep Why Design’s guide to nonprofit data identifies four specific types of data analytics:

Predictive (as well as prescriptive) analytics is concerned with what could potentially happen in the future, helping your nonprofit make more informed decisions. Employing historic data, models (across the spectrum of simpler linear or logistic regression and time series to algorithms powered by machine learning) can forecast future opportunities and risks, giving your nonprofit a roadmap for your next move. 

The benefits of using predictive analytics for your nonprofit are far-reaching and can support every function of your organization, from marketing to donor stewardship to program effectiveness. We’ll dive into its impacts on major gifts in the next section.

Predictive Analytics & Major Gifts

Predictive analytics brings order to heavily data-intensive and time-consuming tasks, which is why it’s a great tool for major gift fundraising. Especially when using more advanced predictive analytics tools, you’ll empower your team with faster and more accurate insights.

Here are a few major gifts use cases for nonprofit predictive analytics:

• Prospect identification. Predictive modeling takes typical prospect research a step further. Informed by affinity markers, demographic data, and wealth indicators, models organize your list of potential major donors, prioritizing prospects based on likelihood of success.
• Campaign performance. Before launching a major gifts campaign, predictive models can suggest factors like suggested donation amount and when is the best time to run the campaign. Armed with these forecasts based on historical data, you can capture the most value from your efforts.
• Engagement activity. To steward your major donors well, predictive models can analyze frequency of giving, donation method, donation amount, and other factors to help you create personalized, data-driven engagement strategies for high-value donors.

To take action on most of these use cases, your nonprofit will need to procure a predictive modeling tool. Major gift predictive analytics is very specific to the nonprofit sector, so the tool you select should be designed specifically for nonprofits. Working with a data or technology consultant can help your nonprofit identify your priorities and choose the best fit for you, as well as potentially supporting your implementation process.

Remember, data is an integral part of major gift fundraising, but analytics tools and their insights will only get you so far. And that’s the value of predictive analytics: it optimizes the data component, both saving your team time and identifying better insights. Then, your team can devote more time and energy to what truly makes major gift fundraising a success, building lasting relationships with major donors. 

In addition to the specific prospect-related analytics, your nonprofit can employ predictive analytics to set overarching goals for your major gifts fundraising. This can be helpful for benchmarking and identifying wins, as well as gaps in current fundraising activities.

Predictive Analytics & Your Career

Many fundraisers don’t have training in predictive analytics, which isn’t a problem. Your nonprofit can still take advantage of its benefits, and all of your fundraising skills don’t go out the window, just because you don’t hold an advanced degree in statistics. Most nonprofits hire data and technology consultants to benefit from their training and expertise, or use a predictive analytics tool (likely both!). However, gaining familiarity with predictive analytics can boost your career. 

A few ideas for your professional development when it comes to predictive analytics include: 

• Advocate for sound nonprofit data management: The insights gained from data analytics are only as good as the inputs you provide. Ensure that you and your nonprofit are practicing good data management and hygiene, like regularly auditing your database to identify errors and gaps, removing duplicate entries, and instituting data privacy policies and safeguards to protect sensitive donor data.
• Recognize predictive analytics use cases: Being savvy enough to recognize opportunities for predictive analytics is half the battle. Determine how your nonprofit is using predictive analytics now, and research what other nonprofits are doing. This could be reading articles like this one, speaking to peers, or even bringing in a consultant to audit your processes. You’ll set yourself apart if you have enough fluency to make the case to leadership of how a process can be streamlined and improved through this process.
• Stay up to date on innovations: Particularly with AI, the capability of predictive analytics tools is changing daily. This is great news, and to not miss out, stay tuned in to the new developments in the field. You might regularly join industry webinars, subscribe to a nonprofit tech newsletter, or attend industry conferences to hear about best practices. 

As you pair your fundraising expertise with newfound analytics knowledge, document your wins. Keeping a record of how you’ve successfully used predictive analytics means you can demonstrate value to external stakeholders, as well as serving as a resource for internal team members.

Like any industry disruption, predictive analytics brings opportunity, not just on an organizational level, but also for your professional life. By leaning into data and tech skills, you can differentiate yourself and open new doors for your career.