How To Create Your Donor List in Raiser’s Edge Database View
The time has come to generate your list using Dataro’s machine learning models. In this example, we’re going to assume a planned campaign size of 5,000 donors - check out your campaign size suggestions for your recommended campaign size.
While this example is specific to appeals, it's easy to do the same thing with our other propensities. Simply use the relevant "Dataro" field to filter for what you are looking for.
If you are pulling a list for Dataro's Mid-value module or Stewardship module, you can see guidelines for your donor list in the Mid-value donor report or Major donor report.
Learn more about how to campaign size suggestions are calculated here.
And learn more about the Mid-value donor and Major donor reports here.
Creating your Donor List
- In RE Database View, go to Query → New Query and select Constituents / Dynamic
- This creates a list of all your donors, which you then filter using Attributes/Specific Attributes. This is where Dataro’s propensity scores and ranks are stored.
- We’re creating a DM Appeal, so select ‘Dataro DM Appeal Rank’. In this example, we’re running an appeal to the 5,000 donors who are most likely to give. Using Dataro DM Appeal Rank, select everyone whose rank is less than or equal to 5,000.
- Sometimes a donor may be unlikely to give, but, if they do give, may give a larger gift. To try to capture these edge cases, we supplement our query with Dataro DM Appeal >$500 Rank. This should be 10% of the list size. So in this case we will also select everyone whose Dataro DM Appeal >$500 Rank is less than or equal to 500. HINT: Remember to use brackets if you're adding multiple Operators - see the bottom right hand corner of the screen.
- Now you can apply your normal exclusions, like removing donors with invalid addresses or who have opted out of DM communications. Here we have removed ‘Do Not Mail’ and ‘Do Not Solicit’. Of course, you will have others.
- Applying exclusions will likely reduce your list size below your target of 5,000. So we ‘top up’ the list by selecting the next highest ranked donors. In this case, if the number of donors after exclusions is less than our target list size, we can increase the list size by adjusting our query to include the best 7,000 Dataro DM Appeal Rank and best 700 to Dataro DM Appal >$500 Rank donors.
- Follow all your normal steps, like adding additional columns and exporting to Excel.
- Save this list, so you can use it as a template whenever you run a DM appeal.