Storyboard:</i >Amnesty's solution was right there in database

The problem

Like many not-for-profit organisations, the New Zealand section of Amnesty International realised it was sitting on a powerful marketing resource it didn't know how to use properly - its 5000-record database of members and supporters.

Judging the results of specific Amnesty campaigns was straightforward - simply a matter of counting the money that came in from an appeal.

But building up a profile of who was supporting the organisation was not so easy. And that was information it could use to better target its limited marketing efforts.

The solution

Help came out of the blue and from the very database Amnesty knew it could be making better use of. The membership registration form asks members what skills and experiences they have that could be of use to the organisation. One member jotted down that he worked for Datamine - a company specialising in the extraction and analysis of customer database information.

Amnesty's approach to Datamine for help was met with enthusiasm. The company has a policy of doing some pro bono cause-related work and director Sally Carey was a long-time Amnesty supporter, having been a member of the organisation for 20 years.

The execution

Amnesty's development manager, John Shaw, said Datamine's analysis revealed how often people gave to the organisation's appeals, how much they gave, and painted a demographic profile of the typical Amnesty supporter.

The findings revealed that the top 20 per cent of members provide 62 per cent of Amnesty's income.

They also backed up anecdotal evidence that the organisation's main donation growth was coming from professionals with degrees aged 18 to 35 living mainly in Wellington.

The breakdown of which suburbs the most generous supporters were living in, combined with census area income data, has been used for subsequent campaign targeting.

Shaw said the confirmation of a strong Wellington bias in membership support gave Amnesty the confidence to launch a "direct dialogue" membership campaign, where the organisation's canvassers approached people in the street.

That approach had increased membership numbers and has been extended to Auckland.

The results

Amnesty has increased its mailing list from 5000 to 7000 names and has added new information fields to its database which it hopes will enable more detailed analysis.

It wants to identify donors who would be likely to give more if asked to do so.

Amnesty NZ

Datamine