How Well Do You Know Your Donors?
With the constant pressure on governmental funding it is of increasing importance for institutions of Higher Education to tap into other sources of income. Luckily for the sector there have always been donors. People who are willing to give money, many times even without expecting anything in return for their gift. Other donors, however, are less altruistic and are motivated by gaining social status or other benefits. But regardless of the level of altruism involved, research shows that people are willing to donate larger amounts if the topic that they fund is closer to their heart. Therefore, it is relevant for institutions to know which topics are of interest for each individual constituent. The traditional way of finding this out is to simply ask them, but in today’s connected world it is also possible to learn a lot from your constituents by finding out what they tell about themselves on social media. Creating and maintaining a profile of their constituents in a CRM system and then try and automatically update this profile information by so called ‘social listening’ functionality as provided by most of the larger CRM software providers, is a very good idea for institutions of Higher Education who try and increase the funding from their donors. Especially when at the same time the goals for gifts are specified in detail, prospective donors can be targeted very directly. Today most people rather give for a specific program (e.g. the construction of a new gymnasium) then just to the university in general.
CRM FOR EDUCATION 