About Us
For nearly a decade, professional fundraisers have trusted DonorsBureau’s data scientists to lower costs and raise campaign yields.
2007
Matt Hafer became the CEO of a direct marketing
fundraising agency. The company excelled based on
its exceptional creative skill.
fundraising agency. The company excelled based on
its exceptional creative skill.
2009
Matt saw potential for even better performance in direct mail. Borrowing from his background in banking, Matt tried to build predictive models using advanced data science. Immediately, results improved. Prospecting ROI increased by 17%, and was netting positive income on average.
2011
DonorBureau was founded in 2011 by Matt Hafer and Brian Johnson. What started as a direct marketing agency, became a disruptor in the fundraising space and would change the way organizations raise money for years to come.
Leading up to the launch of Donor Bureau, the agency wrestled with a difficult strategic decision. The modeling idea had been borrowed from Matt’s background in the banking industry. Matt’s data collection and modeling efforts mirrored what credit bureaus did in the world of consumer lending – collect massive amounts of data, build predictive models, and use them to target audiences to optimize performance. When applied to the world of fundraising, the results were compelling.
Later Year
But there was a much more powerful version that existed, a true analog to the banking industry. By combining the data from many agencies and organizations, one could truly understand every individual donor – the same way credit bureaus work with virtually every bank and collect comprehensive data on borrowers.
