SAS Business Analytics underwrites self-service reporting at nonprofit

Compassion International uses business analytics to develop sponsorships helping children in need 

31 August 2010 -  Like many managers, Michael Lambert needed to accomplish more without spending more. The technology manager at nonprofit Compassion International figured that an increase in headcount was unlikely, so he considered how data analysts could offload routine but vital reports that consumed 80 percent of their time. He found SAS® Business Analytics.

Realising that many reports resembled each other, Lambert sought to provide internal users with self-service reporting capabilities. SAS Business Analytics frees his analysis team to concentrate on work that yields more intelligence and benefit to the 58-year-old child advocacy organisation.

“We spent too much time building and running reports. It made more sense to make the data directly available to our marketing team and let them set their own parameters,” said Lambert, Compassion’s US business intelligence and reporting manager. “That lets us focus on the other 20 percent of the reporting, where we see greater benefit for our mission.”

Compassion International’s operation in the US, one of 11 nations recruiting donors, manages a database of 600,000 sponsors who are matched one-to-one with children from three years old through college age. Other ministries in the 26 nations Compassion serves include: a Child AIDS Initiative, a Malaria Intervention and a Child Survival Programme for mothers and children up to age three.

All of these ministries rely on funding obtained from ongoing marketing programmes to both existing and prospective donors.

In addition to its individual sponsors, Compassion draws from major gift programmes, partnerships with supportive churches, musicians, events and other outbound campaigns. SAS enables Compassion to better target outreach, focusing on people most likely to respond. The organisation derives more valuable insight now that the marketing team can create many of its own reports, giving analysts time to dig deeper into the data and respond quickly to complex analysis requests.

Lambert noted that despite very limited technical skills among marketers, SAS offers numerous methods for them to pull reports. “With SAS we can make it as simple or as complex as they like. The user interface can even be a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet if they prefer,” he said.

The marketing team’s big question for Lambert following the rollout of self-service reporting: “Why didn’t we have this before?” For the future, Compassion is evaluating additional SAS capabilities including dashboards and even tighter donor targeting and modelling.

Lambert explained why Compassion continues to invest in SAS: “Our organisation’s president has a strong vision for our growth. The more we grow, the more children we can release from poverty. SAS technology helps us do that.”

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