Bring an acquired capability into the product
EveryAction, a fundraising and engagement platform now part of Bonterra, had acquired DonorTrends. DonorTrends used machine learning to score an organization’s donor file: who was ready to give more, who might become a monthly donor, and which lapsed donors were most likely to come back.
DonorTrends was still a separate product that required fundraisers to upload their donor data by hand. My assignment was to bring its scores into the EveryAction fundraising platform, and to use that to introduce existing customers to a paid add-on.
The product director and general manager chose the initiative. I owned what came next: working out the real problem and what we should build to solve it, with a designer, an architect, a tech lead, the DonorTrends team, and my team of developers.
Start with a decision, not a score
A donor score is only useful when someone knows what to do with it. We needed to connect the models to decisions fundraisers already made: where to focus a campaign, and what a change in donor behavior could mean for revenue.
Working closely with my designer, I developed the idea of an interactive Fundraising Optimization Guide. Our inspiration was the New York Times rent-versus-buy calculator, which let people change assumptions and see the consequences.
The guide covered five opportunities: keeping more donors, upgrading them, growing a monthly giving program, bringing back lapsed donors, and finding planned givers. For each one, fundraisers could ask what effect a percentage performance change could have on their revenue.
Make the free experience useful and the paid one actionable
One guide, two levels of access
Without DonorTrends
Try what-if scenarios on your own donor history, and see how many of your donors each targeted list would include.
With DonorTrends
Run those lists and go straight to the campaign.
The commercial constraint shaped everything. We could show the value of DonorTrends, but we couldn’t give away the scores or the donor lists.
So we ran the models on every customer’s own donor file. A fundraiser without DonorTrends could see how many of their donors looked ready to upgrade, become monthly givers, or return, and what that could be worth. They couldn’t see who those donors were. One clear button led them to purchase the scores.
Customers who bought DonorTrends could go straight from the guide to the donor lists and segments they needed to run the campaign. We designed the guide as the place they’d come back to at the start of each campaign or planning cycle, while every customer still got a useful calculator whether they upgraded or not.
Ship the guide
We built and released the guide inside EveryAction right before I left for grad school. Years later, the guide is still a core part of the product.