The time here is FLYING by- how are we already more than halfway done with the summer? This week has been no exception in terms of diverse projects and interesting content at City Year Columbus. Although I worked remotely this week while the rest of staff was at Summer Academy, I was excited to see that I was making tangible progress on the work I had been tasked with.

One thing I found to be particularly surprising in the work that I did this week was the fulfillment I got from working with donor data. I typically would consider myself a “people person” who prefers working in groups and connecting with people instead of working with numbers. That being said, I thoroughly enjoyed gaining a sense of the donor landscape City Year Columbus works with through donation data. This week, it was my job to segment the data to clearly define different donor groups in a way which I saw to be fitting. To gain a better understanding of how individuals/households give to City Year, I organized giving first by frequency, then by amount within a frequency. This helped me to better visualize giving over time. Once the donors are officially sorted, these donors will be targeted differently in the overall donor marketing plan for the upcoming year based on giving frequency and amount.

Working with donor data this week helped me to reflect on the idea of a “data-driven narrative”, as mentioned by Dr. Melissa Crum in the last Columbus Fellows meeting. Not only does donor data help City Year Columbus internally develop a narrative to better understand the types of donors they are supported by, it also creates a compelling story to tell other donors about those who consistently give, and why they do so. This may incentivize first-time or less frequent donors to give more (and with more frequency) if they feel included in the donor story that City Year is creating from the data it collects. In the coming weeks, I hope to better develop my own understanding of nonprofit-donor relationships and help shape City Year’s story for donors across the board.