ACLU Analytics in 2021: An Update (Part 2)

In Part 1, we shared a little about what our “Legal Analytics” team has been hard at work on, but our “Engagement Analytics” team has been busy too…

Helping our advocates and communicators understand the public

Our team doesn’t only do research on our issues; we also help the ACLU communicate better with the public. In the past year, we’ve built up an opinion research program that helps us understand where our work enjoys broad support, how we can build on that support to drive action; where we still need to do more to win hearts and minds, and what messages might help us do that. Qualitative (such as focus groups) and quantitative (such as polling) opinion research is informing how we fundraise, how we bring traditional and social media attention to our issues, and how we focus our advocacy.

Along the way, we’ve also learned lots of fun tidbits about our dear ACLU supporters. For example, did you know that ACLU supporters…

• Have less faith in their poker face than the general public?
• Are significantly more likely to say they have ever wanted to slap a politician? (Not surprising, I suppose.)
• Are more likely to abandon their shopping carts, compared to the national average?

Keeping the momentum of our supporters going strong

The work of the ACLU couldn’t be done without our supporters and donors. Often the unsung heroes of our team are the folks who work behind the scenes to build our data infrastructure, track the ACLU’s financial health, test and measure the impact of our fundraising strategies and tactics, and help our leadership make important strategic and operational decisions using data.

Much of what our team does is answer questions like “How valuable are our monthly subscription givers as compared to those who give to us more irregularly?” and “Which of them are likely to stop giving in the near future?”. Early versions of this kind of analysis have led to shifts in our supporter engagement strategy, as our monthly givers have especially strong staying power. They know the critical advocacy and legal work we do is accomplished over years, not just in the moment when they are first inspired to give. We are currently working on efforts to think about how to find one-time donors who can be persuaded of the value of a long-term investment in the ACLU, as well as donors likely to churn away from us, to communicate with them about how critical they are to ensuring that the ACLU work continues.

Another example of an area in which Analytics has had a profound impact on our operations is the robust testing program that we’ve built over the past two years. We have planted and learned from tests on our website, in our direct communications with donors (e.g., through email and mail), in our voter contact work, and also in more complex multiple-goal tests. The learnings from each test get us a bit closer to maximizing impact while minimizing cost as a non-profit. In the early stages of the program, our analysts partnered closely with our colleagues in other departments to ideate, design, execute, and analyze the tests, but over time, we’ve made progress toward our ultimate goal — firmly embedding testing in the culture of every team at the ACLU. Our friends on the Tech team, for example, now run most tests quite independently of us.

We believe this is something every non-profit organization can do to harness a piece of the power of data and analytics, however small their data team is. Although the scope of our engagement analytics work is larger than at most non-profit organizations (we also do more sophisticated analysis and modeling that might not be as useful for organizations with smaller footprints), designing a robust testing program can be a smaller lift with big payoffs.

Looking ahead…

Over the coming months, our team will continue our deep work in redistricting and voting rights, and look ahead to more analysis of racial disparities and policing, assess the impact of AI across a range of civil liberties issues, and help fight for the reproductive rights that are under attack in so many states. We will also continue to build out ever more robust data infrastructure to support the needs of an organization with millions of members and supporters.

For those who want to join in the fight, we are hiring! And to our community of ACLU supporters, thank you for your continued support.