Why Your Data Matters More Than Your Dollars
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Dennis Hoffman is the Founder and CEO of Engage USA, a leading company whose personalized caging and lockbox services meet your organization’s unique fundraising needs. In addition to serving as the Founder and CEO of Engage USA, Dennis owns District East, a retail store specializing in rare, local, and hard-to-find beers.
His businesses have been recognized multiple times on Inc. Magazine’s lists of the fastest-growing private companies. Dennis has been featured on Good Morning America, The Wall Street Journal, and has helped two United States Presidents run successful fundraisers. He is also a member of the Baltimore Chapter of the Entrepreneurs’ Organization and serves as the Global Recruitment Subcommittee Chair.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
The missing piece of data: money and response forms — and why that is a crucial piece of fundraising
Dennis Hoffman explains why bad data in means bad analytics out
How the evolution of technology has changed fundraising
Why Dennis is passionate about providing accurate data to clients
In this episode…
How can you get the most out of data and analytics for fundraising? What if there was a way to balance your database without losing time?
Using a traditional system of pen and paper costs valuable time. Dennis Hoffman knows how to limit mistakes and productively balance your database, without the weight and space of traditional methods. Are you ready to find a new tradition with advanced technology?
In this episode of Greater Returns: A Fundraising Podcast, Dennis Hoffman, a data geek and Founder and CEO of Engage USA, speaks with Rise25 Co-founder John Corcoran about connecting your data to your dollars. Dennis talks about the importance of effectively balancing your database, the accuracy of data, and the development of analytics tools for fundraising. Stay tuned!
Resources Mentioned in this episode
Dennis Hoffman’s email: dennis@engageusa.com
Sponsor for this episode...
This episode is brought to you by Engage USA.
At Engage USA, we maximize direct mail fundraising efforts for nonprofit and charitable organizations by streamlining processes, providing obsessively accurate data, and delivering personalized and transparent expert caging and commercial lockbox services.
We pride ourselves on being quick to respond to customers. Our systems capture, verify, and balance data in real-time, allowing us to provide our clients with obsessively accurate data and deposits within 24 hours. At Engage USA, we help nonprofits, charities, and political campaigns run more successful fundraising efforts.
So what are you waiting for?
Visit engageusa.com to learn more about our work or contact us today!
Episode Transcript:
Intro 0:00
Welcome to the Greater Returns podcast, where we talk about nonprofit fundraising, analytics and how to get better every day. Now, let's get started with the show.
Dennis Hoffman 0:13
Hi, Dennis Hoffman here. I'm the host of Greater Returns: A Fundraising Podcast where I talk with top nonprofit leaders about marketing, direct mail and analytics. I have John Corcoran here from Rise25. John has done 1000s of interviews with successful entrepreneurs, investors and CEOs. we flip the script again, and John will be interviewing me.
John Corcoran 0:35
Alright, Dennis, thanks for having me here. So in this episode, we're gonna be talking about why your data is much better than your dollars and more important than your dollars and we're going to explain what we mean by that once we get into it. But first, of course, this episode is brought to you by Engage USA. Engage USA a provides expert, caging and lockbox services to help organizations meet their unique fundraising needs. Their proprietary systems capture, verify and balance data in real time, allowing them to provide clients with obsessively accurate data and deposits within 24 hours, state national charities, advocacy organizations and political candidates count on and Engage USA to help their fundraising campaigns become more successful. So what are you waiting for? Visit engageUSA.com or email info@engageusa.com to learn more. All right, Dennis. So you know, when I hear the term lockbox services, and I imagine other people may be similar, I kind of picture this idea of rows and rows and rows of people opening mail, manually taking out checks, writing down the details or entering them into a computer. And then moving on to the next check. And you know it, I imagine that's the way that it went for eons. But it's much more high tech now. So tell us a little bit about the way that it has evolved and and the process and how it is different from the way that it used to be.
Dennis Hoffman 1:57
Actually, I don't know that that most places it is that different. When we started Engage, that's exactly what we had, we had it looked like it's like the school with rows of desks. And with tellers at the desks who opened the open the mail, they would handwrite on the response form, what the amount of the donation was put the checks in one basket and the donation forms another basket, when they got up to 100 of them, they grow it banned them and put it back slip on each one and send them their separate ways. And what would happen with that is, though, we would hurry up and get the money in the bank because like every nonprofit needs its money to do it to run its mission. I mean, if you're feeding hungry children, and the money gets in there two days faster, that can save lives. And so we would rush and get the donation in the bank as quickly as possible. And they would, that our client would then go and want his mission. And we would end the response for to go to data entry where they would enter all the information and send it to the updated clients database. What the the kind of missing piece there is the money and the response forms, they were really difficult to balance. In fact, you know, even as recently as last week, I talked to the prospective client who told us told me that they've never had their bank account balance to their, their, their database. Well, and unfortunately, if in that in that kind of traditional system, it's it's really hard Well, what would have to happen if when that database didn't match is some you have to go through and look and compare compare the response form to what was entered first to see if they could find them and stick there and if not go back and and look at the check records to find the to find if they could figure out what how those things didn't add up. The pieces were it was it was almost impossible to figure out how to make things balanced and most most organizations just accepted it accepted that it was never going to be exactly right and, and moved on. The huge problem with that is bad data in means bad analytics out. And if you have mistakes in your database, and you don't know what they are, you you don't know how big of an impact they're having. So the system we set up it it the pieces go together, the data and the deposit travel together until they balance and every piece has to we don't really have batches like traditionally, or boxes have had each piece balances and so when When we know that this cheque matches this data entry this, we then electronically deposit the cheque and send the data to the client to update the database or in the case of clients who will stay with us, we updated the database was here
John Corcoran 5:15
until What do you say to clients that come to you that, you know, are pushing for the money to be deposited faster, to convince them that they need to be of equal concern? Thinking about the data? Of course, getting the money deposited fast is important. But the data is important as well.
Dennis Hoffman 5:37
Yeah, to be honest, that doesn't really come up, because we have both done within the next business day. And so it's pretty rare that it's pretty rare that that anybody has experienced having a having the day to go, I mean, the donation going to the bank quicker than we do. But if I did, I would, I would question how they're going to how they're going to guarantee the accuracy of the data. And I, I'm sure there are ways to do that. But I, I don't know what they are. And I don't know if anybody's come up with a solution better than the one we've come up with.
John Corcoran 6:16
And it tell me what your clients reactions are like when they start seeing this new way of operating when they've been used to the rows and rows, the use of the old way, the way things are traditionally done. And seeing that now that these two can tie out.
Dennis Hoffman 6:32
It's john, actually, when you and I were talking earlier, you asked me how many people it would take to do what we do now. The the old way, and I did the math, and it would be over 1900 we had. And it the the systems that we use now allow us to, to go almost paperless. And the big question people ask when they come in the door is Hey, where's the paper? When we were 7%, the size we are today, in number of donations processed, we had 40,000 square feet of paper storage. And shockingly, we could find what people needed in that Florida ceiling, in this photo ceiling piles of paper. And we had a pretty amazing system. The system we have today, though. It's it's paperless paper last year, for the response format last year for about 14 hours until we know that just in case something happens, which really doesn't we never have to go back and find them. And we actually we and we keep that we keep the checks in in our Vault for 60 days. Again, really we do that just because it makes people feel better. Because it's because the next business day after the mail comes in, when it's balanced deposited, the data is correct. We know it's we know it's done.
John Corcoran 8:07
And what's interesting is that much like many businesses today, you shifted from more manual work manual labor to more knowledge work and your team can focus on kind of higher level activities that right like the the team that you had before was more. You know, as you said, opening the mail and document documenting it and now it's really allows you to be more capable and and to focus more on higher level type of strategy and activities.
Dennis Hoffman 8:42
When it's actually something I'm really proud of that we have, that we created jobs that pay better, that are more professional jobs. And when we first made this, we first made the switch was first of all making the switch we have people who've never used a computer before, who we were teaching to use computers and and it was, you know, it was really gratifying to see that.
John Corcoran 9:10
So looking back, Dennis, if you look back on what we're kind of a mile markers of the milestones that allowed you to operate the way that you do today. It sounds like it's a combination of much, much better strategy. tools like high speed scanners that's evolved technology that's evolved software. What are some of the big mile markers, as you look back over the last 20 years of the evolution the business that have, you know, led the evolution of the business to where you are today.
Dennis Hoffman 9:46
So we opened our first piece of mail in July of 2000. So 21 just but exactly 21 years ago, we rented a former Bank of America branch and My, the, the four partners who I started engaged with, and I sat and open the mouth with letter openers, those. And because we wanted to figure out the systems from the ground that we wanted to, to develop it, and we put in a bank branch because that seemed logical to us, what we were doing was was bank deposits. And we as a group moved into a moved into first to kind of regular office space and then into more warehouse space that could fit lots and lots of people in lots and lots of paper. Today, what we have is banks of letter extractors that, that literally cut the sides and the top off the letters and open them up, and then people take them out and check what has to be checked in Gotham onto a onto a high speed scanner. And once it goes in the scanner, things happen. In the they happen in ether they happen in the so we use OCR optical character recognition, I can't say those words very well to read the data and the people's names and addresses with the dollar amount we'd all we'd all the pieces that have to be read. And we have a system that requires tool verification. So if that data exactly matches what was on the clients list of people who they sent mail to, we know that we know what's right. If it matters, if the data that comes from the response for matches the check, we know it's right. If not, we send it we send in snippets, we send little bits of data as to protect privacy to a data entry person who enters what they see. So if we have to the person who enters your address is not going to necessarily ever enter your name. And that information, if that if that information that matches one of the matches are source, it is accepted. If not, it goes back to the it goes to a data entry person. So usually most pieces happen without a person seeing it again,
John Corcoran 12:12
wow, that's interesting to those all those extra layers you've added in, because you as you said, you're you're obsessed with data and accuracy of data. And, and you want to ensure that the data is accurate.
Dennis Hoffman 12:26
You know, if remember, Ivory soap, they said it was 99.98% better. And that's our data is that way, I mean, there's going to be an error from time to time. In fact, one of the things we always do is if somebody gives $1 or $100, a person looks at that, because 101 look like one Oh, and so we learned we learned from some horribly painful mistakes to to always have a always send that those images to a person to verify what it's supposed to be right. And so and every day we get we get a little bit better. But I feel I feel confident that our data is our data is, is as pure as is more pure than anybody else's out there.
John Corcoran 13:16
I'm sure I mean, from the level of experience that you have processing this, that example is a perfect example of how, you know someone outside of the industry maybe wouldn't think to check a donation of $1 or $100 to double check it but you know, it goes a long way towards ensuring that the data is accurate. Alright, Dennis, so final thoughts on this topic, which is connecting your data to your dollars any any other special insights or or aha moments or realizations that you've had that go into your process, which is critical for creating the accuracy of data.
Dennis Hoffman 13:58
So John, I'm a data geek. I love data I love I like it as raw form I like and i and i believe I'm really good at finding patterns and finances. And I also love analytics and the the incredible tools that that have been developed over the last Well, I mean, the last 50 years, but really over the last. Some, you know, the last 20 years has just been astounding how quickly our boated journalists has grown. But those analytics aren't really worth very much when the data is that accurate. That leaves us guessing. And it doesn't. It doesn't matter how much money we put into analytics if we were putting bad data into the into the system that we built. And that's why that's why we built what we did, because I am committed to having the cleanest data that I can possibly have.
John Corcoran 15:00
Yeah and what I think personally is fascinating is that it's there's no one easy solution because it does require requires great cutting edge software requires great cutting edge hardware, and it requires people and the combination of all those is what creates the the output that works. So Dennis, where can people go to connect with you reach out if they have any questions learn more about Engage USA.
Dennis Hoffman 15:27
Sure you can find us at www.engageusa.com or send me an email personally I'm dennis@engageusa.com
John Corcoran 15:39
alright Dennis Great, thanks so much. Thank you, John.
Outro 15:43
Thanks for listening to the Greater Returns podcast. We'll see you again next time and be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes.