Benchmarking – social media content engagement

Hubspot recently published their 2015 Social Media Benchmarks report.  It is a realistic guide for determining whether the content you are publishing on your social media channels is driving a level of engagement equivalent with others.  The great thing about this report is that the benchmarks are separated by industry and there is even a nonprofit cohort.

 

The key takeaway, according to Hubspot, is that posting content 2-3 times per week is optimal for the nonprofit sector audience.  Click on the image above to read the online article, or download the entire benchmarking report by clicking here.

Organizational analytics maturity – benchmark report

Another benchmark report comes to us from the International Institute for Analytics.  They assessed 33 major health care organizations on their institutional adoption of data analytics.  Overall, the participating organizations ranked low on the maturity adoption scale.

 

What was the number 1 stumbling block to success?  Establishing sound data competency practices.  Managing internal data quality, effective practices for integrating external data, and building consistent management and analysis practices for interacting with their data.

 

To download a copy of the report and read IIA’s assessment, click on the image above.

Your input needed – Annual Fundraising Analytics Survey

Bentz Whaley Flessner would like to invite you to participate in the DonorCast 2015 Fundraising Analytics Survey. This survey provides a comprehensive snapshot of the fundraising analytics profession and covers compensation, professional development, methodology, software, and institutional culture. We shared last year’s findings from BWF here on the APRA-GH blog as soon as they published it and we’ll do the same this year.

 

To enter the survey click here.  But please act fast – the survey closes May 6th.

 

2015 online giving benchmarks – how do you stack up??

The results are in.  A couple of months ago, M+R surveyed 84 participating organizations and compiled their online giving and email solicitation activities in a report as well as this handy infographic.

 

 

But the best part??  The results are interactive.  You can take an online survey to compare your own results to the benchmark.  Click on the image below to try it out!

 

 

 

Digital Adoption survey – share your input!

NTEN is partnering with Mobile Citizen to explore how organizations use online services and programs to help their constituents connect.

 

Click the NTEN logo to enter the survey 🙂

 

Predictive analytics benchmarking study

I read a white paper authored by Ventana Research in which they surveyed over 2,600 companies on their use, application and satisfaction with predictive analytics deployments.  While the paper is now over 2 years old, the insights are informative. You can get the white paper here.

 

Here are some of the study results:

• Revenue generating business areas are most apt to use predictive analytics:  sales and marketing functional areas.  These groups are analyzing customer data, marketing data, product data and financials.
• Resource availability is still a barrier to making progress with predictive analytics, particularly in smaller organizations.
• Adopted maturity shows big clusters at the bottom (entry point) and top (experienced users) with the rest scattered through the lifecycle.
• Predictive analysis implementations include revenue forecasting (for the purpose of maximizing profitability), market analysis (for the purpose of increasing market share), customer service and product mix predictions (for the purpose of cross-selling).  Social network analysis is gaining momentum.
• The organizations with the highest level of satisfaction are revising their models real-time, or at a minimum, daily.  The organizations with the least satisfaction update their models far less often.
• The skill-set distinction between developing analytics tools and using analytics tools is not well understood by management.  The staff who perform analysis generally reside in their business units, not in the IT department.
• Most organizations that have implemented analytics do not provide adequate training or consulting support to truly maximize the value of their investment.

Bookmark this – Optimizing organizational capacity

The Marguerite Casey Foundation offers a free self-assessment tool to review organizational capacity.  It is a classic maturity model tool, easy to use and free.

 

The self-guided assessment tool helps you determine where to focus your efforts in an overarching capacity improvement initiative.  The tool won’t tell you what you need to do to improve, but it will tell you the area(s) in your organization that need to most focus to achieve improvement.

The assessment guides you through the 4 dimensions of capacity measurement, shown above, and tabulates your responses to show a finished summary.  A review of the scores within each of the dimensions helps to clarify those functional or strategic areas that need the most attention.

Click on either of the images above to access this assessment tool.

 

Bookmark this – Assess your organization’s analytics maturity

The great folks at TDWI have created a free maturity model that you can use for self-assessment purposes to discover how far data analytics has progressed in your organization.

 

After you complete the online questionnaire, you’ll receive a series of scores to help you understand your analytics program’s maturity in 5 strategic areas:  organization, infrastructure, data management, analysis and governance.  You’ll also be able to compare your maturity scores with others who have responded to the questionnaire.

This is a great place to start if your organization’s 2015 strategy has highlighted analytics as a chief priority.

Contribute to M+R’s annual nonprofit benchmarking study

If your organization would like to participate in M+R’s nonprofit metrics benchmarking study, now in its 9th year, sign up!  Just click the image below to access their sign-up webpage.

Optimizing the online giving experience

With Giving Tuesday just around the corner, I took a look at an article by Frank Barry, one of the bloggers at Blackbaud’s npENGAGE site.  This article highlight 10 great ways to optimize the online giving experience on your website.

One of those ways is to understand traffic behavior.  What time of day do donors arrive?  Where did they originate?  How many complete a donation transaction?

 

Speaking of donation transactions, how many clicks does it take to make a gift on your website?  According to Blackbaud, 65% of organizations surveyed require at least 3 clicks.  Getting this down to one click is optimal.

 

To read the original article, click on either of the two diagrams above.