Fondo Semillas, a non-profit organization focused on supporting women in Mexico, wanted to understand their donors’ habits better. They already had a good understanding of who their donors were based on institutional knowledge and intuition but wanted to support this with hard data and understand what moves their donors to donate as well as how to better reach them. With this in mind, Untold Research designed an online survey going out to all their current and past donors. Once demographic, attitudinal, and behavioral data were collected and analyzed, three distinct profiles of donors emerged: passive, active, and promoters. As a result of the plethora of insights and a much deeper understanding of their donors, Fondo Semillas is now better equipped to engage them and continue their invaluable work.
This is just one example of the many ways non-profit organizations can benefit from conducting audience research. We often hear organizations say they know who their members, donors, or beneficiaries are because they have their contact information or demographic data is collected. However, when asked how they incorporate this data into their strategic plans, the answer is usually they don’t or they don’t know. The following example illustrates how to address this problem:
THE PROBLEM: Two common data challenges encountered by non-profits are either the non-profit collects some or no data at all or the non-profit collects a lot of data but doesn’t do anything significant with the data.
THE OBJECTIVE: Distinct audience profiles will reveal how demographics, attitudes, and behaviors relate to each other. This allows the organization to tailor their communications or overall strategic plan to better target and serve their audiences, be its members, supporters, donors, or beneficiaries.
THE METHOD: By conducting quantitative (surveys and analysis of existing data) and/or qualitative research (in-depth interviews and focus groups), the attitudes and behaviors of the target audience are explored, and commonalities, if any, can be identified to form distinct audience profiles, understand what resonates with each profile, and know how to best reach their audience.
THE RESULT: The set of distinct audience profiles and rich insights about the target audience can be used in tailored communications to increase engagement as well as strategic decision-making across the organization.
Like Fondo Semillas, other non-profit organizations can benefit from understanding their audiences as they can use this information to reach and communicate with them in more efficient and effective ways. Now that Fondo Semillas knows its donors are comprised of three distinct groups, they can use these profiles to target their communications more efficiently and continue to engage their donors. This is not, however, the only thing they can do with the study’s insights. The composition of these three profiles can help Fondo Semillas find others like those in the profiles within the general population to further explore their desire to donate to organizations like Fondo Semillas. A second phase of qualitative research would address this, with the aim being gathering data to know how to better attract new donors.