How AI-Driven Donor Scoring Helped a Food Bank Achieve a Leaner, Smarter, and More Efficient Direct Response Program

Challenge

A food bank wanted to evaluate whether TrueSense Marketing’s Giving Potential Scores (GPS) — an AI-driven donor scoring model — truly delivered better performance than traditional donor segmentation methods. The food bank wanted to mail smarter, reduce costs, and improve its overall program efficiency without sacrificing donor engagement or long-term value.

Solution

TrueSense analyzed 24 months’ worth of direct response campaigns where GPS was used to score and segment donor files weekly. Donors with higher GPS scores were prioritized for mailing, while lower-scoring donors were mailed less frequently. This scoring allowed the model to dynamically adjust strategy across seasons: mailing more during high-response windows such as year-end and less during low-response periods.

To deepen the analysis, we identified a peer food bank that used traditional RFM segmentation over the same time frame. We back-tested the other food bank’s files with GPS scores to enable a direct performance comparison.

Results

During the 24-month evaluation period, the food bank significantly reduced mail volume to low-value donor segments without negatively impacting overall net revenue. GPS’s dynamic scoring system adjusted mailing strategies in real time, increasing outreach during high-opportunity periods such as the year-end giving season and scaling back during lower-performing months.

In contrast, the peer food bank — using traditional RFM segmentation — mailed considerably more pieces, especially to donors identified by the GPS model as having low giving potential. This resulted in very little additional gross revenue from those segments, but it had substantial cost. The volume of additional mailings led to a net revenue loss of more than $120,000 because the cost to acquire those extra gifts outweighed the returns.

The food bank using our predictive modeling, by comparison, maintained a near-neutral net revenue position from its lower-value GPS bands, effectively covering costs while continuing to engage these donors at an appropriate, sustainable level. This not only preserved its budget but kept lower-tier donors in the pipeline, positioning them for future cultivation and long-term value growth.