Connecting Schools With Great Fundraising Ideas.

As with many people in this country, I have become very interested in the current presidential election coverage. I love the words that have crept into our vocabulary in recent months: “optics”, “3am phone call”, “crowdfunding”, and “Obamacans” to name just a few.

One term that has particularly caught my attention just recently is “data mining”. I get this image of a coal miner type of guy with a lantern attached to his hard hat and he’s digging feverishly through a mountain of zeros and ones.

Actually, this term has come up a few times when the media has talked about how Senator Barack Obama effectively uses his large gatherings as a chance to primarily collect email addresses from those in attendance. Later on, he is able to send messages to these folks and ask for money.
I’m not an expert, but I’m guessing there are other types of demographic information that is recorded during a data mining operation. Perhaps they are able to find out which societal issues are most important to each individual. Having this kind of knowledge gives them a valuable insight into their supporters, and they can individualize messages sent to people based on their particular interests or concerns.

I think it is important that we, as school fundraisers, remember to data mine our gatherings. Every time that parents come into the school for an event, we should be recording the names of those in attendance, requesting their email addresses, asking for their best phone numbers, and marking down the areas they like to volunteer in, etc. These events can be school carnivals, conferences, plays, auctions, field days, science fairs, field trips, etc.

There should also be a person placed in charge of your school’s data mining operation- both for setting it up and then for putting the results into a useable format. If you don’t have a point person take charge of this, it will, like most things, fall by the wayside. And the information that you could gather in this effort is too valuable to waste.

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