Jonathon Grapsas is preparing for next week's Institute of Fundraising National Convention, where fundraisers might be challenged about incentive-led direct marketing and data.

I’m looking forward to my annual pilgrimage back to the UK next week for the Institute of Fundraising Convention. It’s always fun to get back to see old friends and colleagues, as well as having a bit of a sticky beak at what’s happening on the side of the pond. 

I’m involved in a couple of sessions, on Monday I have the privilege of joining a bunch of  brilliant fundraisers talking about the controversial topic of incentive led direct marketing. It’s time to put your personal feelings and intuition aside and see what of the leading organisations are doing, including right here in the UK. It promises to be a titillating session.

On Tuesday I get to talk about my favorite topic, data. I’ll share some stuff that some of our clients have been up in Canada and Australia, with a particular focus on looking at how they’re growing their regular giving and legacy files (or the Canucks refer to these areas, monthly giving and planned gifts) through the clever use of digging deeper into their data.

I have to say that in both sessions, whilst I’ll be talking about some geeky data stuff, it’s more about the insights on the back of the data. I work on the logic that Data + Intelligence = Insights. That’s where the magic is, in understanding what the data is actually telling you. I’ll share examples of how data alone can be destructive and misleading but used correctly incredibly powerful.

Anyway, that’s it for now. More on Monday, hope to see you there.