Strategy & Research

Donor Research

When your organization’s mission and your donor’s passions connect, you engage a long-term donor who tells friends and family about you. DickersonBakker Donor Research maps the path to connect with your donors’ passions.

If you want advice, ask for money. If you want money, ask for advice.

More and more nonprofits ask your donors for money every day. Few are asking for their opinion and advice. DickersonBakker Donor Research helps you grow giving by knowing what to say and how to say it.

When you understand your donors passions and interests, you can build strategic communications and engagement plans to grow giving, build donor retention and attract new donors. DickersonBakker Donor Research:

• Shows why donors decide to give at each stage of your organization’s relationship with them
• Discovers what it is about your ministry that connects with donors
• Increases donor response by testing if your message connects with and motivates donors to give
• Displays how trustworthy you are in the eyes of your donors

Are you ready to create a plan to grow your relationship and trust with your donors? Contact us today to put DickersonBakker Donor Research to work for you.

DonorCompass Wealth Screening

Wealth Screening saves you time by highlighting the highest potential donor prospects in your database.

You have limited time and people to speak with donors. You want to reach your top donors first. But what if you don’t know which donors are capable of giving larger gifts than they do now? DonorCompassSM saves you time by highlighting the highest potential prospects.

Here’s how it works: Send a spreadsheet of your donors’ names and addresses and DonorCompassSM searches 13 public databases, inspecting over 500 data points. In short order, you receive a report with an estimated giving capacity for each name.. You’ll also see key wealth indicators and identifying information for each donor you provide.

DonorCompass gives you realistic information. DonorCompassSM picks up common threads of giving behavior with artificial intelligence from over 300 million gift records and giving patterns. Simply, DonorCompassSM produces more refined and accurate data through leveraging ‘big data’. 

“There was a certain level of time wasted because I was chasing the wrong people. DonorCompassSM helps me decide which donors to put first priority straight out of the gate.” – Brian Yeager, General Manager, KTSY-FM

Contact DickersonBakker to put DonorCompass to work for you.

Strategic Planning

Strategic planning is a process by which you envision where you want your organization to be at some point in the future and then craft a plan for how you are going to get there. Using a twelve-step process, Dickerson-Bakker will help you craft a 3-5 year plan for your organization. Collaborating with your organization’s leaders, we will help you create a practical step-by-step plan to reach your goals.

This type of plan is for you if:

• You want a road map for the next 3-5 years
• You aren’t sure know how to take “next steps” toward your future vision
• You have competing ideas about the mission or future direction, and need to build consensus
• You have lots of good ideas, but can’t do them all
• You want to engage the advice and involvement of stakeholders who you will need to lean on to help fund your future state
• Your funders are requiring a strategic plan

Vibrancy Planning

Vibrancy Planning™ is less about charting a path to doing new things and more about becoming much better at doing what you do now. With our vibrancy planning, we will do a thorough assessment of your organization. Looking at your fundraising plan, human resource procedures, leadership, governance policies, etc., we will identify weak areas and construct a strategy to make your agency stronger and more sustainable.

This type of plan is for you if:

• You’re not quite sure what to do
• Your strategic plan is already in place but you are having a hard time making progress achieving it
• Your strategic plan is not required for funding
• There are significant and more immediate challenges that should be addressed prior to a 3-5 year plan
• You don’t want to invest significant group time in the session that a classic strategic plan requires

Executive Succession & Transition

Dickerson-Bakker will help your organization assess what kind of leader is desired, create a transition plan with your outgoing leader, be present during the interview process, and initiate any board development that needs to happen with the new leadership.

Planning Retreats

Sometimes you don’t need to go through a full planning process. A planning retreat can be held with the board and/or program staff to review and bring consensus on key initiatives, growth opportunities, and goals for the future.

Outcomes Analysis & Impact Reporting

• Designing and implementing outcomes-based evaluation tools and systems to help you better plan and report on the effectiveness of your donor-supported programs.
• Establishing and directing a regularly scheduled system for production and delivery of an annually updated set of impact reports in parallel with your case for support and major gift offer set.

Mergers, Acquisitions & Strategic Partnerships

Is your nonprofit be considering a merger or other form of alliance with another organization? Mergers, joint ventures, fiscal sponsorship arrangements, and virtual nonprofits are all examples of strategic opportunities that nonprofits are increasingly exploring in today’s environment. From assessing reasons and readiness, to finding a partner, to negotiating the best path forward, to budgeting and implementation, Dickerson-Bakker can guide you through the maze of options and help structure an alliance that works best for all involved.