Mining your summer

One of the many things that I try to get accomplished each summer is a data mining project. At the very least, I use this time to create a solicitation list for the phone program donor acquisition efforts. The most data challenged among us can do this with no more resources than a computer with excel, a complete list of every constituent who has a phone number (seems self explanatory but is a good reminder of the first step) an email and meets the source (alum, parent, friend) criteria for that effort.

Within that list get the following data fields:

Work phone

Spouse name

Job title

Children's names

ID number

Now you are simply going to do a basic sort on the fields (other than ID) and then replace each of the data points (anything that is not a null or empty) with the number 1. Then you are going to simply add up the total of those values for each of the IDs. Once you have the totals for each (=sum(cell1, cell2, cell3, cell4) highlight the column with the formulas, right click on the sheet and paste special, values right over the column of formulas.

With that done, you now have a really simple ranking for your non donors based upon information that you know if more likely than not self reported and whom you can contact via phone, mail and email.

Those records with the highest score are the most likely to give while those with lower scores are less likely to give. Start your phone program efforts with the highs, work your way toward the lows and don't worry about the folks who didn't make the list until you have exhausted these records.

There are of course many far more complicated ways and approaches for data mining but this is a simple immediate and free approach that will provide real and measurable results tomorrow.