Hailing a Donor

As is often the case, we recently came across another data mining article that does not mention fundraising directly but that still provides useful parallels for where the industry is headed.

The following write-up discusses a free smartphone application that uses predictive algorithms to identify the most likely place to find a cab in New York City. To those who have spent time in NYC and also worked in the fundraising industry, you understand that finding an empty cab and finding a donor with capacity can be similarly difficult. While donors are not armed with GPS trackers, the tools we are developing aim to better identify likely donors in the traffic.

"Forget the so-called paper trail. Wherever you go these days, you're creating a path of digital data, thanks to GPS technology and an ever-expanding network of location-aware smartphones."

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