Thanks to NonProfit Pro, I was pointed to an article in CIO describing the efforts of the American Cancer Society to develop a 360-degree view of its supporting individuals, be they relay-fundraisers, donors, caregivers and/or survivors.

The ‘and/or’ goes to the nub of the matter, as individuals relate to ACS in a variety of capacities at various times, which, from a data standpoint, has thwarted efforts to assemble comprehensive profiles of individuals’ complete relationship with the charity.

Granted, ACS might be bigger and more complex in this regard than most charities, but every nonprofit faces this challenge to some extent, especially as they encourage use of social media. And as consumers, donors are being trained by commercial marketers — like Amazon and Netflix — to be recognized when they interact with a company and be treated in a personalized manner. So nonprofits will need to step up their game to match higher expectations of their supporters.

I chuckled when I read this sentence in the CIO article, referring to the software being used by ACS: “The software collects and normalizes member data during and after registration, consolidating multiple identities and assembling clean digital dossiers of each member.” Only CIO-types would use language like this.

Don’t get me wrong, I admire how ACS is going at it. I would just urge nonprofits, after getting good data systems and IT advice, to make sure your donors and volunteers and other supporters have been brought to the party, so their actual user experience drives the design process and ensures a user-friendly outcome … both with respect to the online user experience and regarding privacy concerns.

Getting this right is well worth the candle.

Says ACS’s CIO Jay Ferro in the article:

“We think our product, in that we want to end cancer as a world health problem, is super compelling … But when we can marry it with social, mobile, data, cloud — I think we can attract and retain donors and constituents with the purpose of raising more money, finding more volunteers, serving more patients, funding more research and hopefully putting ourselves out of business sooner.”

Amen.

Tom

P.S. Jay Ferro will be describing ACS’s IT plans in a keynote address at the NonProfit Pro Leadership Conference, May 11, in Washington DC.