Results of The Data Agency’s data bursary for Maggie’s Cancer Caring Centres

Last year Maggie’s Cancer Caring Centres won a data bursary from The Data Agency to help them make better use of their data to enhance their fundraising.

 

This is the first in a series of case studies about Maggie’s as they explain how the bursary has helped them. Adam Bailey, Head of Fundraising Operations & Performance and Lisa Munden, Head of Central Fundraising at Maggie’s, talk about the charity's data-driven fundraising strategy following The Data Agency's involvement.

 

"Maggie’s Centres are for anyone with cancer. They are places where people are welcome whenever they need us – from just being diagnosed, or undergoing treatment, to posttreatment, recurrence, end of life or in bereavement. Our approach is designed to make the biggest difference personally at a scale that can make the biggest difference nationally.

 

"To increase the number of people we can reach, we need to increase both the number of Centres and the work each Centre does. Our ultimate goal is that every single person in the UK has access to a Maggie’s Centre".

 

 

In late 2012 Maggie’s received a bursary of £50,000 from The Data Agency for data management, data consultancy and data services.  The award came at a crucial turning point for the charity, complementing the changes they had already made to how they capture and store their supporter data following the implementation of a new supporter database.  

 

 

Adam Bailey, Head of Fundraising Operations & Performance at Maggie’s, said: "As a charity we recognised that in order to grow our fundraising and implement a Direct Marketing programme over the coming years we have to use and understand our data more effectively.  In doing so we believe we can offer our supporters the best possible experience and add value to it by taking them on a journey with Maggie’s through their fundraising. The Data Agency’s Charity Data Bursary will make a significant difference to our ability to raise more funds so that we can support more people in our Maggie’s Centres across the UK."

 

 

Like many charities, Maggie’s has had to contend with historic data capture and data management issues, which in some areas has resulted in concerns over the quality of the data. The knock-on effect of thisis that Maggie’s direct marketing has been limited and the lack of insight that they could derive from their data has meant that they were unable to maximise their fundraising products in line with their supporters needs.

 

"As a result, our supporter experience is not as rewarding as we know it can be  and our ability to develop supporter journeys in the way we would like to has been restricted" added Bailey. "But, we’re well on our way now thanks to the implementation of our data driven fundraising strategy and the massive boost of the bursary, which has accelerated the process exponentially. We’re all on board and ravenous for change.” 

 

Having migrated to a new database in Feb 2012 and with an entirely new Senior Fundraising Team who all support the vital role that data plays in fundraising today, addressing data quality was the first objective.  Maggie’s supporter database was screened using a selection of suppression and relocation files including The Bereavement Register®, GAS and a new combined suppression and relocation superfile called Qinetic from The Data Agency, which identifies home movers at individual level providing new occupier and forwarding address details.

 

To gain a better holistic view of how Maggie’s supporters interact with the charity and identify possible touch points across the database, The Data Agency split the supporters into individual segments based on the recency and supporter engagement.  This process identified that 12.2% of Maggie’s data required updating, an increase of 4.2% on the annual average for consumer data churn.  Additionally, 6,907 of Maggie’s lapsed supporter records were easily relocated during this initial clean-up, which has given the charity the opportunity to re-engage with their supporters over the coming months. 

 

 

With the data cleaned, the charity prepared to roll out their first sizeable Christmas DM Campaign since starting their data journey. “We’ve taken a massive leap forward since our 2011 Christmas DM campaign, which went out to only 2,500 supporters.  In contrast, our 2012 Christmas campaign went out to approximately 125,000 supporters,” said Bailey.  

 

Before running the pre-campaign cleanse, the data strategy was refined and supporters were segmented into 10 more targeted files according to the recency of their engagement with Maggie’s.  Interestingly, a total of 35,413 ‘unmailable’ records were matched and cleaned across Maggie’s database, which represents a saving of £12,040 on the Christmas campaign based on a combined pack and postage price of 34p. 

 

 

With added confidence in the data that will underpin their fundraising programme and some high value objectives in place, Lisa Munden, Maggie’s Head of Central Fundraising, is preparing to tackle the next phase of work, analysing their supporters.

 

 

“Our profiling work is moving ahead well. We have a file of 64,000 active supporters to look at as opposed to the 25,000 we had anticipated and we’re currently in the middle of building a full profile, to give us a complete picture of what our donors actually look like,” said Munden. 

 

“Our aim is to use this insight to better engage with our supporters across all levels. Future campaigns for the charity include Maggie’s Culture Crawl, Sponsor a day, centre updates and other fundraising activities so the team are going to have their work cut out".