FIA 2026: That’s A Wrap!
Last week the DCA Data Services team was privileged to attend the 2026 FIA Conference. We enjoyed catching up with our friends and industry colleagues, and were fortunate that this year’s event was held right next door in our beautiful home city of Melbourne.
The theme this year was ‘IMPACT AMPLIFIED,’ which was a call to celebrate the impact fundraisers already make and amplify it. It’s a particularly topical theme for DCA, because our work in the non-profit sector has always focused on building upon strong data foundations and helping charities achieve greater impact for their cause. For DCA, that usually means supplying a charity with business leaders’ contact details in the service of a specific campaign, providing database hygiene services like deduplication or the Australian Death Check, or handling more complex consolidations and migrations.
Unsurprisingly, there were plenty of sessions based around using data to drive lean, effective programs — ranging from massive community campaigns or corporate partnerships — which supported our perspective on this!
This year, the Data Services team shared a stand with our partner, Tedirex. Through our conversations with stand visitors there, we heard about the data concerns most impacting fundraisers today. We had many great conversations, but two trends emerged that stood out starkly this year:
- Fundraisers want to know how to achieve underlying data sufficiency. Whether it be for new machine learning systems or just making comms that much more consistent, fundraisers want to know how to make sure their data is clean, accurate and up-to-date.
- Fundraisers want to know how to leverage donor data to boost gifts in wills. Non-profit professionals know that a great deal of material support can be accrued through bequests, but they’re also aware that it can be challenging to undertake the long-term nurturing required to capitalise on these opportunities.
These conversations always offer our team valuable insights into what resources and services fundraisers most need to excel, and they also offer us the invaluable opportunity to offer our thoughts and learn from our industry colleagues face-to-face. But if we didn’t manage to catch you at the 2026 FIA conference this year, not to worry — you can always reach out to us for an obligation-free chat about your data.
