Josh Birkholz

BWF analyst position open.  Sure, its mostly charts, graphs, forecasting, and predictive modeling on the surface.  But the impact is transformative.  I do this work because I care deeply about the nonprofit sector.  When nonprofits do well, we all benefit.  I only want colleagues who share my passion.  In exchange, you will get autonomy to excel at your job, opportunities to publish or speak about your work, and the respect of your colleagues and industry.  Did I also mention we’ll pay you for this?

DonorCast Senior Analyst

Description
Bentz Whaley Flessner, a leading fundraising consulting firm for over 20 years, provides quality advice for every step of the development process to educational institutions, academic medical centers, healthcare systems, and arts and cultural organizations—nationwide—with specialty counsel on advancement services, annual giving, prospect research, and analytics.

Bentz Whaley Flessner seeks a Senior Analyst to join the DonorCast team. Under the direction of the director of DonorCast, this person will:

• Conduct analysis of nonprofit constituent data to support prospecting, campaign preparations, program review, and constituent relationship management projects.

• Produce analysis reports using contemporary data-visualization techniques.

• Carry out predictive modeling methodologies in support of the DonorCast projects.

• Participate in the engineering of new analytics solutions, including but not limited to data mining, forecasting, simulation, segmentation, and market research strategies.

• Market the DonorCast products and implementation services of Bentz Whaley Flessner. 

Salary commensurate with qualifications and experience.

Qualifications

The following qualifications are required.

• Bachelor’s degree

• Demonstrated competence in statistics and data analysis

• Experience with SPSS, SAS, DataDesk, or equivalent statistics application

• Strong understanding of MS Office suite including Access, Excel, Word, and PowerPoint

• Solid oral and written communications skills

One or more of the following qualifications is preferred, but not required.

• A bachelors degree in statistics, economics, business, or related field

• Graduate-level degree in statistics, economics, business, or related field

• 3–5 years of experience in nonprofit fundraising, preferably in prospecting, prospect management, annual giving, or analytics

• Published or presented work on the topic of analytics as it pertains to nonprofit fundraising

To Apply:
Interested parties should submit a cover letter, resume, and three professional references to Alex Oftelie at aoftelie@bwf.com, or Bentz Whaley Flessner, 7251 Ohms Lane, Minneapolis, MN 55439. Applications will be reviewed upon receipt with a deadline of December 16th, 2011.

Click here for a PDF of the Description

A few years ago I used to give a presentation on the combinatorics backpack concept and the potential in major gift cultivation cycle management.  I used supervised clustering with action steps as the predictors to determine the ideal steps/sequences respective of clusters for closing major gifts. 

Now that I finally found time to read my paper media (Wired is one of the few magazines I still like to hold in my hand), I saw this article on persuasion profiling. It gave me some new ideas I hope to explore.  Drop me a note if any of you have done some research in this area.  I would love to see it.

Welcome to the Brave New World of Persuasion Profiling

Welcome, [FIRST NAME], to the era of personalization. Amazon.com recommends books you might like, Netflix tailors your movie menu, and Google customizes your news. And in exchange for this friendly algorithmic assistance, targeted ads follow you wherever you navigate online.

Most of us have accepted this bargain, but it turns out that taste profiling is only the beginning. A technique called persuasion profiling is just around the corner, and it doesn’t just find content you might enjoy. It figures out how you think.

Today, most recommendation and targeting systems focus on the products: Commerce sites analyze our consumption patterns and use that info to figure out that, say, viewers of Iron Man also watch The Dark Knight. But new work by Dean Eckles, a doctoral student in communications at Stanford University, suggests there’s another factor that can be brought into play. Retailers could not only personalize which products are shown, they could personalize the way they’re pitched, too.

See the full article at Wired

I don’t do searches, but these three incredible positions opened up recently. If you want to make waves in this area, here is the water.  On behalf of clients and friends, I thought I’d share.

University of Chicago

I’ve been honored to work with them on their analytics strategy and in the production of several models.  This very data savvy organization has a fantastic position working for an impressive analytics thought-leader in Diana Joyce.

Director of Analytics: Manages and executes an integrated analytics program that includes survey research, data mining, predictive modeling, financial analysis, peer benchmarking, institutional research, metrics, and reporting to support successful fundraising and alumni relations strategies across the University. See the full description

Johns Hopkins

Obviously, Johns Hopkins would be a great place to see great fundraising first-hand and contribute to its success.  I saw this on the Fundraising Analytics Forum on LinkedIn

Data Analyst for Constituency Engagement: This position is responsible for ongoing analysis of Johns Hopkins constituent information obtained from a variety of sources, including alumni, friends and parents’ records, gift history/financial information, and demographic data. This position involves leveraging existing data to form fundamental questions and effectively interpret answers, identify, correct and/or report on discrepancies and trends. See the full description 

Stanford University

Shannon Cadile, cool manager, research mind, and perhaps most importantly, baseball afficianado, sent this to me this past week.  It would be tough to turn down this opportunity.

Director of Prospect Management and Analytics: Stanford University is seeking candidates for the director of Prospect Management and Analytics. The director reports to the senior director of Prospect Development and will be responsible for creating and managing the prospect management and data analytics function for the Office of Development (OOD). The director is an integral member of the Prospect Development team and will work closely with senior leaders in OOD to ensure that development officers are engaged in the most value-added activities, prospects are receiving the attention they need, and the university’s fundraising goals have a high probability of being achieved.  See the full description