War Child Canada Drives Annual Giving with Powerful Predictive Modeling Segmentation Tools

A singular system that manages all of War Child Canada’s supporter relationships, Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge NXT has played an essential role in the nonprofit’s annual fundraising efforts.

“I see our CRM, Blackbaud Raiser’s Ege NXT, as the lifeblood of our organization,” said Sagar. “Most of what you need to fundraise is right there.”

To maximize the impact of their donor data, War Child uses Blackbaud’s ProspectPoint predictive modeling service to assign custom “likelihood to give” scores to the constituents in their database. Based on a scale of 0 to 1000, these scores allow War Child to segment their audience and focus on contacting those most likely to give to major gift, monthly or direct mail appeals.

With these appeals, the organization raised more in the fourth quarter of 2024 than it did in all of 2023, and Sagar attributes this to an increased emphasis on donor contacts, segmentation, and matching gifts. “The list management that we’re able to do by having a tool like Raiser’s Edge NXT and the ProspectPoint modeling has helped us immensely,” Sagar shared.

Targeted Calling Campaigns

Using model-driven segmentation to carve out their highest opportunity constituents, War Child leveraged a dedicated caller to contact lapsed donors by phone and try to recapture support. The organization had previously tried mailing all lapsed donors from a three-year period, but using Blackbaud’s model scores, the team targeted  individuals with a high likelihood to donate from the past five years with direct mail appeals and phone calls. In the fourth quarter of 2024, War Child went back ten years for the direct mail appeal.

The calling campaign was a huge success, recapturing 90 percent of the target audience. War Child also ran another calling campaign to upgrade under-giving major donors as identified by Blackbaud’s models, with a very ambitious budget, and ended 2024 at 125% of that goal. Together, these successful campaigns have given War Child a model to pursue additional strategic engagement efforts.

Navigating Challenging Times

In 2024, War Child Canada encountered a particularly challenging development: a Canadian postal workers strike that left the status of their planned fourth-quarter direct mail appeal in limbo. Once again, the Development team engaged Raiser’s Edge NXT to quickly pivot to an email-only strategy. This consisted of a series of three emails, one of which included an attached digital version of the planned direct mail.

Simultaneously, the team opted to replicate the emphasis on segmentation and donor contact that made them so successful the year prior. Using their predictive model scores and the list management capabilities of Raiser’s Edge NXT, they began calling on high likelihood donors and those with a history of giving via check.

The War Child team also took advantage of their access to a new Raiser’s Edge NXT tool called Prospect Insights, which uses predictive modeling and artificial intelligence to automatically generate prescriptive recommendations. According to Sagar, Prospect Insights provided War Child with an on-demand snapshot of prospects in need of attention. These recommendations also appeared on constituent records, allowing a caller to easily see essential predictions—including a target gift range—for every individual they contacted. “Prospect Insights has helped us gauge whether our asks are in the right ballpark or not,” said Sagar.  “We also found that many major donors were under-giving and many of them increased their gifts in 2024.”

Proactive Major Giving Engagement

For their major gift efforts, including a special appeal for their 25^th anniversary in 2024—the new Prospect Insights tool has been a gamechanger for War Child. The AI within the tool automatically screens new constituents added to Raiser’s Edge NXT, allowing the team to more quickly identify major gift prospects.

“I get a great snapshot just by looking at the constituent record without having to go do a lot of research,” Sagar said.

Within weeks of starting to use the tool, the War Child team found multiple unassigned major donor prospects and hundreds of active donors giving well below their predicted target gift range.

Prospect Insights provides prescriptive recommendations to create tasks and opportunities, which Sagar feels will help the team continue to optimize their stewardship and get the most out of their donor data