Student Research | Chicago Botanic Garden: Members Relationship Management Project

By Ethel Shiqi Zhang, Class of 2018

This excerpt is taken from an MSiA student research blog posting. Each month, students in our program submit original extracurricular research as part of our blog competition. The winner(s) are published to the MSiA Student Research Blog, our program website, and receive a chance to attend an analytics conference of their choice. Visit our blog to see more.

I. Client Overview

The Chicago Botanic Garden (the Garden) came into existence more than 40 years ago (1965), and it aims to be Urbs in Horto, meaning “city in a garden”.  In 2017, more than one million people visited the Garden’s 27 gardens and four natural areas.

The Garden has around 50,000 members as of 2017, making its membership base one of the largest of any U.S. botanic garden. Members of various ages, interests, and background participate in programs, take classes, and stroll the grounds year-round. At times, these members make donations to assist the Garden with achieving its mission.

II. Project Mission

With such a large membership base, the Garden is interested in leveraging a systematic analytical approach to derive some effective ways to engage its members and reinforce their connections with the garden.

With this goal in mind, the project team divided the project into two phases. Phase I focuses on exploratory data analysis which allows the Garden to understand the overall portfolio of its members. Phase II focuses on discovering the natural groupings of the members in order to target efforts towards donors who donate in different patterns.

Figure 1. Project Timeline

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McCormick News Article