Josh Birkholz
Posting on analytics, technology, visualizations, fundraising, and other unrelated things I find interesting like Doctor Who, sci fi wierdness, crazy new ideas, and interesting people.
Author of Fundraising Analytics
Principal at Bentz Whaley Flessner
Founder of the analytics group donorcast
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HAS EVERYONE SEEN THIS
NO
WELL THEN WATCH IT
#amymeetsabed -
This GameFly Commercial is too HILARIOUS!
A MUST WATCH!
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Game Of Thrones
i like games like this
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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 AnalystDescription
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.
Why Children’s Mercy Hospital’s annual giving program rules.
A great video from David Logan, director of annual programs and analytics on how they use predictive analytics for annual giving segmentation and prioritization.
Predicting Personal Behavior (Next Frontier in Credit Scores) from the Wall Street Journal
BY SCOTT THURM
Do you know your Medication Adherence Score?
Fair Isaac Co. thinks it does. The company that created the FICO credit score is branching into new territory, assembling disparate data in an effort to better understand a range of human behaviors.
The Medication Adherence Score is Fair Isaac’s latest innovation. It aims to gauge the likelihood that a person will take his prescribed medications. Though the company is mum about how it crunches numbers, the score is based partly on how long a person has lived at the same address and whether he owns a car.
“We know what you’re going to do tomorrow,” Mark Greene, Fair Isaac’s chief executive, told investors earlier this year.
What Happens When Everything’s Measured? | ReadWriteWeb
Anything that can be measured can be optimized, and sometimes that optimization can lead to competitive advantage in inefficient markets. That’s the lesson of the book and popular new movie Moneyball, about the Oakland A’s baseball team and its use of statistics to overcome the limitations of its budget. It’s a seductive proposition.
What if everything were run like that, though? What if measurement and optimization were the fundamental strategic approach brought to bear on all kinds of endeavors? That may be exactly what’s happening with the rise of what’s called The Internet of Things, the emerging network of web connected streets, buildings, sensors, objects and devices expected to dominate the Internet in coming decades. But the same approach is also being taken with regard to some of our most fundamental human activities: growing up, healing our bodies and spending time alone. Three examples in particular help shed some light on the good sides and the bad sides of a Web that would make all things measurable and subject to optimization.
Wald is a source of much statistical pleasure.
During WWII, statistician Abraham Wald was asked to help the British decide where to add armor to their bombers. After analyzing the records, he recommended adding more armor to the places where there was no damage!
This… Read the rest
Achieving zen-like state through analytics.
Maybe its just me, but conducting complex math is one of the most relaxing activities - followed closely by preparing datasets for predictive modeling. Apparently, others have stumbled upon the same relationship. “Analytics” and “restful” have a strong correlation in Google searches (r=.9880). Numbers don’t lie - just like the Internet.
a new initiative to make innovations in statistics, visualization and data-science more widely
on correlation vs causation:
