In this SSIR Summer Series program, you will:

  • Utilize data to enhance the giving experience and achieve fundraising goals.
  • Analyze past giving behavior to inform future fundraising strategies.
  • Balance the tradeoffs between higher and lower default donation amounts.
  • Discover the power of personalization for all nonprofits.

Do you ever wonder how to personalize and target donation appeals for better fundraising? In today’s tech environment, users have come to expect a personalized experience. Nonprofits must do more than ask for donations—they need to ask in the right way.

Join Stanford Social Innovation Review and Professor Susan Athey (Faculty Director of the Golub Capital Social Impact Lab at Stanford Graduate School of Business) for this Summer Series session. You will learn actionable strategies to target and personalize your donation appeals to the right potential donor at the right time. 

In this Summer Series session, social sector leaders will:

  • Uncover donor types using machine learning (which we will demonstrate by analyzing 600,000+ PayPal Giving Hub users).
  • Learn to identify donor types and target them with specific marketing strategies.
  • Explore A/B test results on default donation amounts to find the balance between attracting donors and raising more money.
  • Discover how to personalize ask strings to optimize donor acquisition and revenue.
  • Gain actionable insights into setting default donation amounts and personalizing ask strings.

Who will most benefit from this program?

  • Nonprofit professionals who lead fundraising, marketing, or donor engagement efforts for their organizations.
  • Development, marketing, and fundraising strategists working in the nonprofit sector.
  • Executive directors and board members of nonprofit organizations interested in improving their charitable-giving fundraising. 
  • Nonprofits with digital platforms for charitable giving fundraising and small development teams that want to leverage tech solutions.

Attendees will practice identifying different donor types based on giving history and potential targeting strategies for each type. Attendees will also learn about how the choice of default donation amounts in ask strings impacts potential donor behavior, as well as how to leverage that information to improve fundraising outcomes.

 

Program Features:

 Expert Speaker: This webinar was designed, facilitated, and presented by Susan Athey, an economics of technology professor at Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB). She has served on the faculty at MIT, Stanford, and Harvard. Her research covers digitization, marketplace design, causal machine learning, and the design of complex experiments. She is the founding director of the Golub Capital Social Impact Lab at Stanford GSB, and was a founding associate director of the Stanford Institute for Human Centered Artificial Intelligence. She served two years as chief economist at the U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division. 

Real-World Case Examples: In this program, we will use illustrative case studies uncovering donor types using machine learning (analysis of 600,000+ PayPal Giving Hub users).

 Who Should Join? This session is ideal for nonprofit professionals leading fundraising, marketing, or donor engagement, including development, marketing, and fundraising strategists. Executive directors and board members keen on enhancing their charitable-giving fundraising will also benefit. Additionally, nonprofits with digital platforms for charitable giving and small development teams aiming to leverage tech solutions are encouraged to attend.

 

dollar symbol Final Price for this Summer Series session: $49
This price includes access to the webinar recording and PDF slides until January 31, 2027.

If you have any questions about this program, email us at [email protected]. 

Presenters

  • Susan Athey
    Professor Susan Athey, Economics of Technology Professor at Stanford Graduate School of Business holds a PhD from Stanford and has served on the faculty at MIT, Stanford, and Harvard. Her research covers digitization, marketplace design, causal machine learning, and the design of complex experiments. She is the founding director of the Golub Capital Social Impact Lab at Stanford GSB, and was a founding associate director of the Stanford Institute for Human Centered Artificial Intelligence. She served two years as Chief Economist at the U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division. 
    Faculty Director,
    Golub Capital Social Impact Lab,
    Stanford Graduate School of Business
  • Moderator
    Aaron Bady
    Aaron Bady is editor at Stanford Social Innovation Review. Previously, he was an editor at Popula and The New Inquiry. His writing and interviews have appeared in publications including The Week, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The New Yorker, The New Republic, The Nation, and Pacific Standard. He has a bachelor’s degree in English from Ohio State and a PhD in literature from the University of California, Berkeley.
    Editor,
    Stanford Social Innovation Review