Learn more about analytics and research best practices, as well as real world examples and solutions for nonprofits.

The Beauty of Small Data

Is CRM the nonprofit solution?

Everyone is talking about nonprofit organizations needing to buy CRM systems so they can be just like the Obama campaign and mine BIG data to make huge breakthroughs.

But I am not so sure.

I hesitate to sound like the great Jeff Brooks’ Future of Fundraising Now blog and criticize anything new in fundraising, but . . .

The aging promise of CRM has always been making insights from your data easy. But I have yet to see it. Rather than being a user friendly tool for nonprofits, CRM becomes the angry tyrant that everyone must satisfy. Much more time and resources are spent on the multi-step data processes then on mining the data for actionable insights.

And that’s just not right.

For now, I could not recommend moving forward with CRM. Rather than spending all that money on a data system, invest into some analysts to mine the data you already have. Your ROI on investing in analysts over infrastructure will be far, far better.

Part VI: The Environmental Impact of AI

by Bill Jacobs | Jul 14, 2025

Up to this point in our AI blog series, I have been discussing (some might say ragging on) the practical implementational challenges of AI in the nonprofit sector. In today’s blog, I’m shifting the focus on a more global issue: Is using AI environmentally sustainable?...

Understanding Donor Trends with the Single-Largest Gift Cohort Analysis (SLG-CA)

by Bill Jacobs | Jul 7, 2025

In my last blog, First-half of 2025 Trends in Fundraising, I discussed the fundraising trend of fewer donors on file, but those that remain giving more. Since the pandemic, we have seen a greater proportion of an organization’s revenue come from major donors. To...

First-half of 2025 Trends in Fundraising

by Bill Jacobs | Jul 2, 2025

I have four graphs that summarize what we are seeing across the fundraising arena. These come from our newest analytical report, The Single Largest Gift - Cohort Analysis (SLG-CA). I know, its name is a mouthful, but its insights are plentiful. Basically, the SLG-CA...