Learn more about analytics and research best practices, as well as real world examples and solutions for nonprofits.

Optimizing the Demise (Part 3)

In our continuing series on how to Optimize the Demise, here is an idea to encourage online giving:

Mail inexpensive postcards to donors (particularly ones who have a history of giving online or by bank check) with a simple message: Thanks for your past gifts to us online. Just a reminder that together we can still help people in need. So go online and make your gift today.

This idea won’t change the course of the direct mail trend. But it will buy you some time while we are all figuring out the next big thing.

And if you missed, the first two blog posts in this series, click here to read Part 1 and Part 2.

Echoes of the Dot-Com Bust

by Bill Jacobs | Dec 6, 2025

I asked the AI Microsoft’s AI tool Copilot to tell me about the dot.com bust of 25 years ago. If you are old enough to remember, the dot.com bust came right off the heels of the Y2K computer fears, the September 11 terrorist attacks and anthrax in snail-mail...

Micro-Sustainers to Lapsed Donors

by Bill Jacobs | Jul 29, 2025

Each fall, we here at Analytical Ones survey the trends in fundraising and come up with testing ideas for your fall campaigns. Last year, we recommended testing first class postage, to avoid the USPS’s SOP of delivering all nonprofit postage appeals on the same day....

Part VII: How Analytical Ones Will be Using AI

by Bill Jacobs | Jul 16, 2025

Over the past couple of weeks, I have written about some potential effects that AI will have on the nonprofit sector. Today, I’m going to end this series on how we as a company intend to use AI. There’s no doubt there is a certain “wow-factor” using AI. It’s like Star...