The description of a mid-level donor is different for every organization. One thing that’s universal is that the level is determined by the amount given or targeted to be donated. It all comes down to audience selection and having good intel on to what those audience members will respond.

A target audience is developed with demographics and there are some vital elements you need. Demographics includes hundreds of attributes, such as age, gender, education, and socioeconomic factors. Some cooperative databases have 500 or more datapoints on consumers and donors.

There are numerous steps to starting and growing a mid-level donor program. Those strides were discussed during the session “To Mid-level and Beyond: Real, Audience-First Donor Journeys,” during the Bridge To Integrated Marketing and Fundraising Conference in National Harbor, Maryland. Speakers were Margaret Chialastri, senior vice president of client success at Moore’s Edge Direct division, and Victoria Horcasitas director, direct response marketing at Shriners Children’s, also known as Shriners Hospitals for Children. 

Knowing how, where and how often a person gives provides insight into causes and benefits important to the potential donor. Financial and wealth indicators, such as income, net worth and credit worthiness help you determine a target’s propensity to give. Lifestyle and interests, opinions and activities impact also impact transactional and social preferences.

Through identity resolution you’ll know who to target as your mid-level — or even major donor – and all of the giving channels they use.

You need to build models to uncover opportunities to upgrade donors. Activate audience-first donor journeys and use machine learning to continuously optimize your most likely donors. Like anything else in fundraising, you need a measurement framework.

This approach found success. “Shriners Children’s Up and Comer modeled universe upgraded to mid or major giving at double the rate of non-modeled audiences,” Chialastri explained to the audience. “As a result, they doubled their number of new mid and major donors last year.”

The most critical milestone in the framework is the annual goal, such as revenue and donor retention. The next is objective and how you’ll measure overall success. It should include overall revenue irrespective of inbound channel, an increase in mid-level donor retention and an increase in planned giving hand-raisers. 

Next is audiences. Who are you communicating to and what actions do you want them to take? It could be an increase in major and mid-level upgrades, to develop a larger pipeline and Major / Mid – more upgrades, larger pipeline and cultivating planned giving for Boomers and engagement of Gen Z. 

Finally, there are channels and how you communicate. There should be a media mix model for impact and optimization. Ongoing tactical optimizations should be made throughout the year based on the campaign’s key performance indicators and fueled with integrated data. 

“This is truly an audience-led program. Shriners Children’s has transitioned to a more audience-led approach across their various donor groups,” Chialastri explained to the audience. “If you’re looking to start a transition into an audience-first lens, mid-level is a great place to start because the scale is manageable, but the impact is very large.”

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Source From Non Profit Times