Data makes the world of retail go round. It’s how you offer seamless customer experiences, stay organised, improve profits, and track trends. And for the third sector, data has completely changed it. Every charity will already be capturing a lot of valuable information about sales, donors, or beneficiaries.

But what’s most important is turning that into something you can use to push your charity forward. And to this day, some charities still aren’t making the most of what they collect on a daily basis. Let’s change that. Here’s a quick-fire round of six of the best ways to make use of your charity’s data.

Improving Gift Aid

Gift Aid is one of the main ways your charity could be missing out on revenue. If your staff and volunteers aren’t asking the right questions at drop-offs, that’s 25% of each donation you could be losing. And everything adds up. 

Luckily, donor data can help you compare Gift Aid and non-Gift Aid donations in a certain store or across many. And by monitoring this, individual store or regional managers can make quick proactive changes if a shop is underperforming. 

Sharing stories

41% of donors say a personal story from a beneficiary would influence their decision to donate. So why not inject some storytelling into your charity’s marketing efforts? 

You will no doubt have a bank of impactful data about who you’ve been able to help and how. And pulling a few eye-catching statistics and stories could be powerful at attracting new donors and customers. 

Adjusting pricing

You want to bring in as much revenue as possible for your cause. And increasing the prices of your stock is an effective way to do this. But equally, you don’t want increasing prices to negatively impact your sales figures. 

This is where sales data can help. It’ll help you visualise which specific items or product categories are selling the best in any given month or season. And it’s these in-demand items that can have their prices adjusted to secure even more money for your cause.

Optimising stock

We spoke about this last week, but it’s worth touching on here too. By keeping an eye on what’s selling and what’s not, you can avoid piles of overstock cluttering your sites. 

How quickly certain items are selling – for example, books or kitchen gadgets – will help inform how long you keep the stock in rotation. As well as which items might be better sent to other stores or sold online. 

Supporting your staff and volunteers

By monitoring the performance data of stores, area and regional managers can better divide their time and support. If certain stores are continually underperforming, they can quickly intervene. Offering the training and support needed to boost staff and volunteer confidence and get the store back on track.

Rather than splitting their time evenly, and leaving some stores struggling, data helps managers get a better understanding of where they’re needed most.

Improving customer experiences

84% of people say the experience provided by a business is as important as their product or service. Yet 53% of consumers feel brands fail to meet their experience standards. The retail landscape has a long way to go to provide the competitive, personalised experiences consumers want. But harnessing donor and customer data in new ways could help your charity get off on the right foot.

Data can help you simplify and streamline donor and customer experiences in-store, using stored contact information and Gift Aid declarations to save time at the till point. While past purchase or donation information can also help you send personalised, targeted communications. So between interactions, you’re still increasing loyalty and familiarity with your brand.

Your charity shops will naturally be accumulating a wealth of valuable data. Now it’s about using it in the right ways. These six examples will create a solid foundation for becoming a more data-driven charity.

CHARiotWeb puts all the data you need right at your fingertips. We’re an EPoS solution designed specifically for the third sector, and combine an easy-to-use till process with powerful data visualisation and reporting. To find out more, get in touch on 01204 706000.