Case Study: The Heritage Foundation achieves higher long-term donor value and retention with Convio Strategic Services

The Heritage Foundation - Customer Case Study

The Heritage Foundation, a public policy think tank founded in 1973, wanted to understand why some new donor groups—particularly those acquired online—performed better than others and whether engaging donors across multiple channels increased retention and long-term value. Their online and offline donor data lived in separate systems, making it difficult to analyze multi-channel influence internally.

Convio Strategic Services built a proprietary data warehouse, matched online and offline records, and analyzed donor behavior across channels. The analysis validated that multi-channel engagement boosts gift frequency, retention and lifetime value—dual-channel donors outperformed single-channel donors by more than 23%—with added-value findings that an offline-acquired donor who gives online is $23.16 more valuable over 12 months, and an online-acquired donor who gives offline is $15.50 more valuable.

The Heritage Foundation

Christie Fogarty

Associate Director, Memberships Programs