2 Which of your donors might be able to make larger donations?

Heres an example of how you can match information thats already in your
fundraising database, with free information available online, to increase your donor
revenues. It involves finding out how many of your donors live in each zip code, and
then looking up the median incomes and housing values in each of those zip codes,
information thats free and available online. Knowing which donors, and how many
of them live in the most promising zip codes, you adjust your fundraising appeals to
those donors.
Be aware that there are commercial services that will, for a price, help you identify
the most well-heeled among your donors. They do this by tapping the same kinds of
public information sources identified below, and by also using extensive, proprietary
national databases they build and maintain that contain information on wealthy
individuals.
On your own, you still can get a good idea, at no cost other than staff time, of which
of your current donors may be able to give more than they already are. The U.S.
Census regularly makes available, for free, median incomes and median home
values for each zip code. While this information is available for free on the
www.census.gov web site, its easier to find it on highly user-friendly web sites, such
as the one indicated below.
Heres how:
1. Have your CRM or fundraising database export a spreadsheet (e.g., in Excel
format) that contains the names, addresses, and zip codes of each of your
current and recent donors.
2. Use the data in this spreadsheet to generate a pivot table showing how many of
your donors live in each local zip code.
3. Create a new spreadsheet that looks like this, then copy and paste the pivot
tables results for numbers of donors living in each zip code, into the first two
columns:
Zip
code

Numb
er of
donor
s

Ran
k

Medi
an
incom
e

Ra
nk

Median
home/co
ndo
value

Ra
nk

Avera
ge
rank

4. Go to one of the many free web sites that provide census and other data for
each U.S. zip code, such as http://www.city-data.com/
5. In that web sites search window, enter, one after another, the zip codes where
your donors live. This will bring up 2013 (or most recent) median incomes and

median house/condo values for each of those zip codes. (You will need to scroll
down each zip codes results page to find these two figures).
6. In the spreadsheet you created in step (3), enter, in the columns indicated, for
each zip code, that zip codes median incomes and average house/condo values.
7. Now manually rank, in descending order, the values of the three characteristics
for each zip code: numbers of donors, median incomes, and median house/condo
home values. For each measure, best ranks (1s) should be assigned to the zip
with the highest number of donors, to the (possibly different) zip code with the
highest median income, and so on.
8. Compute for each zip code, in the rightmost column of the spreadsheet, the
average ranking for that zip code. When youre done, you should have a
(possibly longer) table that looks something like this:
Zip
code

1234
5
2345
6
3456
7
4567
8
5678
9

Num
ber
of
dono
rs

Ra
nk

87

32

44

12

71

Medi
an
inco
me
$87,5
00
$77,5
20
$56,8
90
$47,5
00
$95,4
20

Ra
nk

Median
home/co
ndo
value

Ra
nk

Aver
age
rank

$548,300

1.7

$457,305

3.3

$402,345

3.7

$357,890

5.0

$645,782

1.3

In this hypothetical example, the 56789 and 12345 zip codes have the best
average rankings (1.3 and 1.7, respectively). Together, these two zip codes
represent 87 + 71 = 158 of the nonprofits donors.
9. In your CRM or fundraising database, flag, and then generate a list of, all donors
living in your highest-ranked zip codes.
10.Adjust your fundraising appeals as needed to those individuals that appear to be
giving less than they otherwise might be able to.
Note: to obtain additional, publically-available, wealth-related information about
individual donors, you can look up the estimated values of those donors homes by
entering their street addresses, one after another, into the search window on the
home page of a free website, www.zillow.com. Note: while Zillows Zestimates of
market value are based upon statistical rather than professional estimates, they
nevertheless can provide useful, wealth-related information.