This article was first published as “Marianne’s Mining Minute” in the APRA Upstate New York chapter’s newsletter, 2010.
In fund-raising, what we are seeking are charitable gifts. When we model prospects, we hope to find those with certain giving levels. So we have to wonder if using giving variables as independent variables in any given model is valid.
There are two reasons to use giving variables in a prospect model. First, unlike any other part of a fund-raising shop, gift records are audited. That means that they are the cleanest and most consistent of all the data you would download. Second, past behavior often indicates future behavior – past giving can show the pattern of future giving.
Let’s take a look at a few variables related to giving that many modelers use.
- Loyalty variables include the number of years given in the past 5 or 10, the number of years giving consecutive to this year (consecutive years giving), and the number of years giving since the prospect became involved with your organization.
- Recency variables include last gift date and average giving over the last 5 years.
- Frequency variables include number of gifts and pledge payments over a period of time, percentage mix of new pledges vs. outright gifts, and whether a prospect has her gift deducted from a credit card on a monthly basis.
- Method variables include the campaign code, tender type, honorarium/memorial flag, or whether the prospect gave through a corporation rather than from personal funds.
- Movement variables include an up or down score (compare the number of years the prospect has increased giving vs. the number of years that he decreased or maintained giving) and a velocity measurement (giving this year divided by average giving over the previous 3 years).
- Time lapse variables include distance from record creation date to first gift date, distance from first membership date to first charitable gift date, distance from first gift date to highest gift date, and distance from first contact to first major gift date.
These are some of the ways that one can look at giving within a model of a major gifts level or a major gifts flag. Note that any model that tries to predict giving this year can not include independent variables that have giving this year in them. Be careful to distinguish the models. Feel free to try some of these variables out as a way of looking at current major gift donors as well: Is there a pattern?