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Answer client questions on industry trends

Discover details about how your clients (and their personnel) compare to their peers and understand specific subsegment insights

In this help article...

Cause IQ has the tools and features you need to quickly gain insights on market trends and compare your clients to a group of relevant organizations. This information helps Cause IQ customers provide clients services by updating clients on key changes in the market and answering client questions on how their financials compare to their peers. Cause IQ customers use:

  • The "Benchmark" tool to compare a client's quantitative details or compensation informartion to up to 250 organizations at once;
  • The multi-year export feature to download quantitative information from the past five years for organizations in bulk;
  • The "Analyze" tool to view summary trends on thousands of organizations at once; and
  • An organization's PDF one-pager and detailed Excel report to download information on a specific organization to share with their clients.

Compare clients to their peers with the Benchmark tool

Cause IQ's "Benchmark" tool allows you to generate custom reports that compare a client's quantitative details or executive compensation figures to up to 250 organizations at once. Cause IQ customers use these reports to discover insights on how their clients match up against relevant organizations and to help answer their clients' questions on changes and trends in the market. Here are the general steps:

  • Step 1

    Choose the organizations you want to compare your client to

    If you're looking to compare your client to organizations meeting specific criteria, create a new search to identify organizations in a specific target segment.

    If you're looking to see how your client stacks up against specific organizations, create a peer list. Either search for organizations and manually add them to a list or use Cause IQ's CSV upload tool to create a list of organizations.

    The CSV upload tool is part of Cause IQ's Data Enrichment Add-on. If you're interested in adding the tool to your subscription, contact the Cause IQ team from the orange chat widget at the bottom-right of the screen.

    Please note that your search segment or list must contain 250 or fewer organizations to use the "Benchmark" tool.

  • Step 2

    Access the "Benchmark" tool

    From the search interface, click the "Benchmark" tab to access the "Benchmark" tool.

    If you're benchmarking organizations in a list:

    1. Go to the "Lists" section on the left of your Dashboard
    2. Choose "Manual" or "Uploaded from CSV" as relevant
    3. Select the appropriate list's name
    4. Click "Benchmark organizations and personnel"

  • Step 3

    Choose your benchmark type

    In the "Benchmark Type" step, choose "Organization details" if you want to compare a client's quantitative values to a group of organizations. If you want to run an executive compensation analysis report, choose "Compensation of key personnel".

  • Step 4

    Select your client as the reference organization

    The "Benchmark against reference organization?" section of the "Benchmark type" step is where you can select your client as the baseline reference organization. Select "Search for reference organization" and find the appropriate client by Name or EIN.

    Please note that you can only add a client as a reference organization when doing an "Organization details" benchmark.

  • Step 5

    Select the fields you want to benchmark

    If you're running an "Organization details" benchmark, The "Fields & Analysis" step is where you choose the organization information you want to compare the benchmark group by. 

    If you're running a "Compensation of key personnel" benchmark, the "Fields & Analysis" step is where you select the types of personnel you want to include in your benchmark report by position levels and functions. Also, this is where you select the compensation fields you want to include in your report.

    If you don't want to include the names of the organizations and/or personnel in your report, select "Anonymize peer organizations" or "Anonymize peer personnel" respectively in the "Analysis options" section.

  • Step 6

    Generate and view your benchmark report

    In the "Fields & Analysis" step, select "Next: Generate report" and Cause IQ displays your benchmark report once it's done processing. 

    For "Organization details" reports, the benchmarked organizations are represented by both a line and histogram graph. The line graph shows the change (over the past five years) for the selected quantitative values and the histogram graph breaks down where the organizations fall by ranges. Your reference client organization is represented by a red line in both graphs. The bottom of the report includes a table that lists the benchmarked organizations and includes the most recent selected quantitative values.

    Cause IQ's "Compensation of key personnel" reports provide the location of the selected compensation fields (from the Form 990 or Schedule J), the number of personnel with the field filled out, the most recent average and median values, and the number of data points from each year. Additionally, the report includes graphs that show changes over time for the compensation values and the corresponding growth rate ranges by year. The bottom of the report includes a table with the names of the benchmarked personnel, their job title(s), the organization they work for, and the most recent values for the selected compensation fields. 

  • Step 7

    Download the benchmarked information to Excel

    You can download both "Organization details" and "Compensation of key personnel" benchmark reports to Excel by clicking "Download to Excel" at the top-right of the report. The file includes worksheets that display all the data points used to generate your custom benchmark report.

    Check out this linked article for more information on the downloaded "Organization details" reports and this linked article for more details on the downloaded "Compensation of key personnel" reports.

Here's a look at a Cause IQ's "Organization details" benchmark report and where you download the report to Excel:

Compare a client's organization details to peers

Here's a look at Cause IQ's "Compensation of key personnel" benchmark report and where you download the report to Excel:

Cause IQ's executive compensation analysis reports

Export multiple years of quantitative information in bulk

Cause IQ's multi-year export feature allows customers to download quantitative data for organizations from the past five years in bulk. Cause IQ customers use these reports to view how specific data points have changed over the years for relevant organizations. These reports give you the insights you need to inform your clients on industry trends and answer their questions on how their financial information compares to a segment or list of organizations.

  • Step 1

    Choose the organizations you want to get multiple years of information for

    Either create a new search for a desired target market, load a saved search, or open a list of specific organizations (created manually or with the CSV upload tool).

    Please note that Cause IQ's CSV upload tool is part of our Data Enrichment Add-on.

  • Step 2

    Access the "Export" tool

    Select the "Export" tab from the search interface to access the "Export" tool. 

    If you're exporting multiple years of information for organizations in a list:

    1. Go to the "Lists" section on the left of your Dashboard
    2. Select "Manual" or "Uploaded from CSV" as appropriate
    3. Choose the name of the list that contains the organizations you want to export
    4. Click "Export bulk report"
  • Step 3

    Tell Cause IQ you want to generate a multi-year export report

    In the "What" step of the export process, select "Multiple years of information, for the last five years" within the "Single or Multi-year Export" section.

    Please note that Cause IQ's multi-year export feature is only available when exporting "Organization details" directly to a "CSV spreadsheet file".

  • Step 4

    Choose the quantitative fields you want to include in your multi-year report

    In the "Columns" step, select the fields you want to add as column headers in your report.

  • Step 5

    Confirm your export details and generate your report

    In the "Confirm" step of the process, we suggest you review the information your CSV file will contain and check the amount of usage required to process your export (if applicable). Once you're ready to generate your report, click "create spreadsheet".

  • Step 6

    Download your multi-year report

    Once Cause IQ processes your export, you can download the CSV file directly in the website from the blue pop-up notification. Additionally, your file is available to download from your Dashboard and Cause IQ emails you the file.

    Your multi-year report contains a "Most recent" overview worksheet that shows the organizations' most recent quantitative data points and one worksheet per year that contains the selected field value for the corresponding year.

Here's an overview video that walks you through the multi-year export process:

View summary stats on relevant organizations

Cause IQ's "Analyze" tool automatically summarizes quantitative and qualitative information for relevant organizations at once. Cause IQ customers us the tool to view means, medians, and percentiles for quantitative fields and most common values for qualitative fields for thousands of organizations. Many Cause IQ customers view these summary stats and use the insights they gain to update their clients on market trends. With the "Anaylze" tool you can:

Here's a look at a Cause IQ analysis report and where you select to download the report to Excel:

means, medians, and percentiles for quantitative fields and most common values for qualitative fields

Cause IQ summarizes the quantitative fields in a histogram graph and provides the mean, median, sum total, and breaks down where the organizations fall by percentiles. The qualitative information is summarized in a list. Cause IQ displays the top ten values, and you can select "...view more" to see the top 30.

Here's a look at a Cause IQ analysis report downloaded to Excel:

Download your search analyze report to Excel

Cause IQ summarizes the organizations included in your analysis report and breaks down where the organizations fall with respect to the selected fields accordingly.

Download individual organization reports to share with clients

Cause IQ has two individual organization reports that customers generate to share with their clients. You can download an organization's PDF one-pager and their detailed Excel report directly from their profile page. To do so, navigate to the "Report downloads" section on the right of an organizations profile, and click "Download one-pager (PDF)" or "Download report (XLSX)" as appropriate. Cause IQ customers download these reports before clients meetings so they can share insights with their clients on how they compare to relevant organizations.

Cause IQ's PDF one-pager reports summarize high-level information on an organization (e.g., revenue sources, characteristics, and key performance indicators). The detailed Excel reports package all information that appears on an organization's profile into one file. The file contains the following worksheets:

  • Overview: Description, location, categories, key performance indicators
  • Financials: Line-item financials from Form 990, including information for the past five years (if available)
  • Personnel: Key staff and board members, including phone numbers, email addresses, and compensation information (if available)
  • Schedule J: Executive compensation information for certain officers, directors, key employees, and highest compensated employees (if available)
  • Related entities: Related tax-exempt organizations, private companies, transactions with them, and disregarded entities (if available)

Here's a look at where you download an organization's PDF one-pager and detailed Excel report:

Download an organization's PDF one-pager or detailed Excel report