In the world of nonprofit data management, we work really hard to smart code all of our interactions with our audience so that we can successfully report on them. However, we work in a relationship industry and that often requires detailed explanation, which, translated to data speak, is free text. And there is our conundrum.
Processing free text is the domain of artificial intelligence, a discipline that we nonprofit data scientists are learning now. The new processing program, Python, even has a package called Beautiful Soup which parses websites, the text within them, and the HTML tags marking any variety of content. The R program also has a package called SentimentAnalysis which assigns a sentiment to different words by using the package’s dictionary, called a lexicon. But we can do some of this analysis without an artificial intelligence program. Here are some steps to work your way into trying out text parsing, starting with the easy stuff and working toward the sophisticated stuff.
0 Comments
Every moment of down time in fundraising is a gift.
We often try to make up for low budgets by spending more time. However, at some point, we have to reduce the time that we spend on tasks in order to meet the increasing demands of our jobs. Or, at best, we need breathing room because no being – human or machine – can run at full speed continually. Here are 7 suggestions for using your January downtime (or any downtime you may find throughout the year) that you may have to reduce administrivia and free up time for better work. In our recent Water Cooler Chat, we talked about how to automate stewardship to some extent. We Staupellians are passionate about automation because it gives us time for creative work.
Traditionally, a variety of cultures and religions see this time of year as the time to reconnect with family and give gifts. Some countries also celebrate a Thanksgiving holiday, starting off a string of winter holidays that go through to January 6, which is traditionally Saint Distaff Day or the day that everyone returns to their spinning wheels (and distaffs). This month’s theme is “Scary Moments in Fundraising” (see our Water Cooler chat, here). I prefer to talk in optimistic terms, so writing a follow-up blog post rather puts me off. However, like it or not, we are living in scary times. Even if we are vaccinated, we are watching world leaders start wars and our national leaders pick snowball fights instead of governing. Watching these events leaves me feeling foolish that I continue talking about fundraising planning techniques. Is there a way forward, anyway?
I grew up in poverty. One of the lessons of poverty is this: If a resource appears, use it. The second is that anything can be a resource. I have used this scrapper skill set during my career, most recently during the 2009 economic crisis, where my team identified wealth still available and my organization shifted from major gift cultivation to making annual giving asks. Here are some ideas: (you knew that I would pivot back to optimism, right?) It’s October so your annual campaign is already in gear. However, after the rush of printing and stuffing, or segmenting and emailing, you may have a short time to review your strategy. Here are some thoughts that I have after having run a successful annual giving campaign (we averaged a 27% increase every year for 5 years)
|
Keep Informed
|