Data mining and non-alumni NPOs

A year ago I wrote a blog post called Predictive modeling for non-university organizations, in which I suggested that non-profit organizations might look to for-profit enterprises to learn how to segment their databases more effectively, rather than institutions of higher education. I may not have come out and said it, but I was a bit tentative about whether serious data mining was even possible for non-profits: No alumni, no non-donor data, not enough data in general.

Well, that was a year ago, and I was wrong. Since then, I have worked with a large non-profit to build a predictive model that is every bit as good as one built from higher-ed alumni data. You can learn more about that experience, and what non-profits can do to get into predictive modeling, on Blackbaud’s Prospect Research Blog. I’ve written a guest post called Who says you need alumni? Check it out!