The University of Georgia’s annual giving operations are extensive, covering various channels such as email, phone, mail, social media, and digital platforms. It consists of a hybrid centralized-decentralized model to support annual giving programs across its 13+ schools, colleges, and units. For more than 15 years, UGA has looked to insights from Blackbaud to better understand the drivers of annual giving, shape enduring strategies and initiatives, and boost fundraising and donor engagement efforts.

Executive Director of Annual Giving and Communications Heather Duiser explained that her team handles most annual giving solicitations, strategies, data, and analytics. “We use segmentation extensively to target our efforts and segment based on schools or colleges, donor behavior, leadership level giving, and affinity-based campaigns,” said Duiser. “We use the predictive analytics scores to augment our existing segmentation processes, refining our target audience lists and increasing ROI.”

One of the most essential predictions has been the direct mail likelihood score, which grades each constituent’s likelihood to give via direct mail on a scale of 0–1000. Additionally, a custom annual gift likelihood model developed by Blackbaud is employed to predict the likelihood of donations to appeals based on past giving data from their donor base. “By applying these predictive scores together, we reduced the audience size for our calendar year-end appeal by more than 50 percent year-over-year,” said Duiser. “The response rate was more than doubled and ROI increased by 19 percent.”

Boosting Leadership Annual Giving

Leadership annual giving is a significant part of UGA’s strategy, contributing to 75 percent of its annual giving revenue. They use various analytical scores to identify and prioritize prospects, helping them to effectively target and engage potential donors. UGA conducts two major leadership mailings each year for its Presidents Club, one in the fall and one in the spring. These mailings aim to renew existing leadership donors, upgrade current donors to higher giving levels, and attract new leadership donors. In conjunction with the direct mail likelihood and annual gift likelihood scores, the use of target gift range, a capacity-based model score that assigns one of twelve target giving ranges to each constituent, has been particularly beneficial in these efforts.

“By targeting non-donors or lower-level donors whose target gift range is more closely aligned with Presidents Club and who score highly across the other two predictors, we have quadrupled our response rate and increased the number of Presidents Club donors via direct mail by 910% year-over-year,” said Duiser. “This revenue is crucial for meeting our overall fundraising goals, so achieving outcomes like this is amazing.”

UGA’s leadership annual giving program is a well-structured, strategic initiative that plays a vital role in its fundraising efforts. “The use of Blackbaud’s advanced segmentation and scoring techniques has significantly enhanced our ability to identify and engage potential leadership donors,” Duiser added.

PRESIDENTS CLUB FY22 – FY23 MAILER

Exploring the Future of Analytics

UGA’s use of Blackbaud’s predictive analytics has helped improve their fundraising efforts, leading to higher ROI and stronger relationships with donors. Additionally, the university has experimented with various segmentation strategies, including affinity-based campaigns and personas. While they have not fully utilized personas for segmentation, Duiser’s team has brainstormed messaging based on persona insights and are considering incorporating them into future campaigns.

“We’ll continue to rely on Blackbaud’s analytics to prioritize prospects and make data-driven decisions,” said Duiser. “This includes using scores to identify the most promising prospects for leadership annual giving and other fundraising initiatives. I’m excited about the future possibilities.”