Hitting the Bullseye on Cause Marketing with Predictive Analytics – Case Study

The simple truth for most nonprofits is that many worthy causes are vying for attention from finite audiences. With more than 1.5 million nonprofits in the U.S. alone, successful nonprofits have less of their audiences’ attention and less of their time.¹ Most nonprofit leaders would agree that raising money continues to be their greatest challenge, especially when factoring in that “giving” has not returned to pre-recession levels. But the needs of a nonprofit remain — increasing their net income to fuel the resources to pursue their mission.

Imagine being able to identify loyal supporters, understand their means and level of charitable giving, and then personalize campaigns that present higher donor interactions and outcomes. This is precisely where applied predictive analytics can be a multiplier for higher returns. However, building and deploying predictive analytics is time-consuming, budget-breaking, and for the layperson, challenging to implement and maintain.

“There was no training needed. We took it right out of the box and into our Python workflow. We work with lots of vendors. And the best experience by far has been with DataRobot.”

— Brian Johnson, VP Product and Operations, DonorBureau

As a small company, DonorBureau was facing its own challenge: how to provide more effective and accurate predictive models to differentiate itself in a competitive market. Ideally, they would like to have a large team of data scientists on staff, but those are coveted positions that come at a premium.

Working with over 900 million mail transactions, 140 million donations, and over 40 million individuals, the predictive modeling demands were mounting. DonorBureau looked to DataRobot’s predictive analytics platform to fulfill this resource, ultimately surpassing expectations.

The Solution

Predictive analytics requires predictive modeling. Foregoing a large team of full-time data scientists and the drudgery of technology and coding, the company partnered with DataRobot who provided an automated, highly accurate, fast, and cost-effective AI solution, powered by Amazon Web Services (AWS).

Because of the powerful algorithms in the DataRobot AI Platform Single-Tenant SaaS offering, DonorBureau was able to automatically generate far more accurate models in a fraction of the time. The benefits were immediate and continuous. The team quickly experienced a 10% improvement in accuracy right out of the box, with no fine-tuning and a total cost of ownership amounting to just 25% of their previous expense.

Today, clients of DonorBureau are reaping the rewards of predictive analytics to consistently and accurately campaign with a deeper understanding of the science behind fundraising and cause marketing programs.

“The great thing about DataRobot is that the only thing now limiting the models we build is our imagination. There’s no simpler way to interact with data science than with DataRobot.”

— Brian Johnson, VP Product and Operations, DonorBureau