Leading Nonprofit Achieved 12x Growth with Data-Driven Fundraising

Part One: The Challenge - Scaling Impact in a Changing Digital Landscape

A leading nonprofit organization dedicated to raising awareness about its cause uses investigative reports, online journalism, and the release of original, mission-driven content to influence public opinion and drive social change.

With one of the largest online audiences in its field, this organization reaches millions of individuals with content proven to shift perspectives and inspire action.

Managing a database of over one million email subscribers and more than 100,000 donors, the organization had partnered with a consulting firm for several years to accelerate its digital fundraising efforts, focusing on donor acquisition, cultivation, and program optimization.

Despite achieving consistent year-over-year growth, rising digital advertising costs and frequent algorithm changes on platforms like Facebook created new challenges for the team’s ability to target and engage new donors effectively.

Additionally, as their donor base grew, managing data across multiple systems became increasingly difficult, compounded by a recent data migration.

Although the nonprofit had been using a custom data visualization tool for several years, it was not user-friendly, and few team members were able to utilize it. The consulting firm primarily used the tool to identify opportunities for optimization.

Part Two: What Avid AI Made Possible

With Avid AI, the nonprofit found a seamless way to integrate its various systems (including CRM, marketing platforms, and ad networks) into a cohesive, data-driven donor engagement strategy.

Unlike their previous data tool, which required significant maintenance, Avid AI allowed for instant data mapping and report updates, enabling the data team to create insights in minutes rather than hours or days.

Easier Customization Leads to Cleaner Data

Within the first week of using Avid AI, the data team uncovered the source of more than one million dollars in unattributed revenue. What had taken years to address was resolved in just 15 minutes, thanks to Avid AI’s intuitive platform, correcting years of historical data.

Better Ad Targeting Leads to Better Results

The nonprofit had previously used integrations to create ad targeting lists, but Avid Pathways enabled them to sync more donor activity data for enhanced targeting and improved lookalike audience creation.

Using Pathways, the team built a lookalike audience based on donors who made a first gift of $100 or more, as well as audiences targeting lapsed donors and second-year donors for reactivation. This resulted in a remarkable 1,200% increase in donor conversions compared to traditional ad targeting.

Building on this success, the nonprofit plans to test additional retention and reactivation strategies and support its direct mail appeals with social media campaigns.

Better Campaign Segmentation

Prior to Avid AI, the team had to export and manually segment donor data for email campaigns. With Avid Pathways’ integration, donor segments are now updated automatically, improving email personalization and streamlining workflow automation.

This has allowed the organization to launch automated campaigns for second gifts and recurring donor upgrades, triggered by important donor milestones such as the anniversary of their first donation.

Better Campaign Segmentation

Prior to Avid AI, the team had to export and manually segment donor data for email campaigns. With Avid Pathways’ integration, donor segments are now updated automatically, improving email personalization and streamlining workflow automation.

This has allowed the organization to launch automated campaigns for second gifts and recurring donor upgrades, triggered by important donor milestones such as the anniversary of their first donation.

Part Three: The Result

Avid AI empowered the leading nonprofit to integrate its donor data across systems, achieve better cost-per-donor results, and implement automation that was previously unfeasible.

Thanks to Avid AI’s user-friendly interface, the entire team is now leveraging the platform’s reporting capabilities, fostering greater collaboration and driving more effective fundraising efforts.

Their data manager shared this about Avid AI:

“When we found that some gifts in our CRM appeared in an undefined channel in external reports, we used AVID to streamline the reporting process and accurately identify the source channel of those gifts—with just 15 minutes of work.”