Welcome to Alford Group’s 2015 AFP International Conference Giveaway
Alford Analytics: What’s Your Number?
We are excited to be able to offer free insight on trends in giving within your organization at this year’s AFP International Conference on Fundraising.
The first 30 people to send donor data for analysis through Alford Analytics will have the opportunity for a 15 minute consultation with our consultants at the 2015 AFP International Fundraising Conference. We’ll get right down to what Your number is.
What is Alford Analytics?
Alford Analytics is a powerful data analysis tool, designed to identify trends and gaps in giving by assessing the philanthropic behavior of your donors. The process results in robust recommendations for addressing or leveraging the findings to increase both dollars and donors. Alford Analytics maps the donor journey – how your donors are acquired, how long they stay, when they peak, how and when they increase to major giving, and much more. With hundreds of indicators and giving metrics available, Alford Analytics can help to identify important considerations for major, annual, planned, corporate and foundation giving.
How to send us your data
Sending us your data may sound daunting, time consuming, and maybe even downright scary, but our process is quite simple. We’ve provided instructions below for querying, exporting and sending your donor data to our secure server. These universal instructions can be used in any donor database.
- Query or Run a Report from your Database for Constituents who:
- Gave a gift greater than or equal to $1
- Gift date equals (or between) the last three full fiscal years (don’t send partial years as it will skew results)
- Export the following Columns:
- Constituent ID
- Constituent Code (only one per constituent and group by Individual, Corporation, Estate, Foundation, Organization or Planned Giving)
- First Gift Date
- Total Giving for EACH of the last three fiscal years (Please export each year in a separate column, include pledge payments (no pledges), cash, recurring gifts, stock sold, soft credits, and in-kind [optional])
Once you’ve followed those instructions, email the excel 
spreadsheet and your organization’s major gift threshold (i.e. any gifts over $1,000) to Mary Hackett, Associate Vice President at Alford Group.
Want to send us your data but need help building the query or pulling the export? You can contact Mary for that too.
Have more questions?
Below, we’ve tried to answer some other questions you may have. Have other questions we didn’t think of? Contact us at any time at tpulse@alford.com or (206) 548-0451 x18.
- Are you giving away Alford Analytics for free?
- Yes and no. We are doing a drawing at the conference for one organization to win a full donor analysis from Alford Analytics, including recommendations for next steps based on findings. This giveaway to the first 30 participants will include five data points we believe will be relevant and valuable to your organization. We’ll include an analysis of your current revenue mix, evaluation of your gift pyramid, attrition rate and funds lost, retention rate and number of retained donors who decreased giving, including the amount. And we’ll show you how these data points have changed over the last few years.
- Is it safe to send you my organization’s donor data?
- Yes. The data we ask you to pull has no identifiers associated with it. The queries won’t pull names, street addresses, phone numbers or emails of your donors. Each record will have a unique identification number which you could use to trace back to an individual record in your database, but other than that numeric identifier, your donors’ personal information will not be available to us. Since there is no identifying information, your data will be secure during transmission via email.
- Once we receive your data, we only keep it on our secure servers and will never share it with anyone outside of our company or your organization.
- What will I receive in return?
- If you’re one of the first 30 to send your data, we will provide an infographic outlining trends within five different data points, plus the opportunity to schedule a 15 minute sit-down with our consultants during the conference (at our booth #520). We’ll go over the results with you and may have some suggestions on addressing or leveraging those trends.
- If you send us your data after the first 30 people, we will still provide you with an infographic outlining trends within the five different data points. Just stop by our booth for your infographic.
- When and how will the 15 minute sit-downs be scheduled?
- Once you’ve sent your data, we will contact you to schedule a time for you to visit our booth. Times will be available between 11:30 – 4:30 on Sunday, 9:00 – 5:00 on Monday, and 8:30 – 1:30 on Tuesday.