THE ULTIMATE HOW-TO-GUIDE FOR CONDUCTING NONPROFIT DONOR SURVEYS is FREE courtesy of MarketSmart
If you Google search “big data,” you’ll find nearly seven billion results. When it comes to “hot topics” in our industry, none may be more in the spotlight than data (okay, maybe artificial intelligence, or machine learning, but they’re all eerily similar).
Why is “big data” important? There are myriad articles that explain that.Instead, I’d like to reference a quote from the book Moneyball by Michael Lewis: “People … operate with beliefs and biases. To the extent that you can eliminate both and replace them with data, you gain a clear advantage.”
To put it bluntly, the organizations that are more able to leverage data in their decision making will survive (and thrive) better than their peers. In our sector, our focus is on relationship building. I don’t think anyone disagrees that relationships are the premise for all fundraising; however, data and relationship building don’t appear (on the surface) to go hand-in-hand.
This is why we conduct donor surveys.
