Fundraising Metrics and Statistics : What to track

The success of fundraising for nonprofits is highly determined by the outcome of the fundraising campaign. You sure cannot measure the happiness and joy that the raised funds may have brought to a lot of individuals. However, there are certain fundraising metrics that you should keep a tab on, in order to do even better next time. 

1. Cost Per Dollar Raised (CPDR)

CDPR is an answer to a very simple question: did your organization make money, lose money or break even? This is a value of extreme importance, it helps you understand how each campaign has performed and also gives you a picture of your overall fundraising performance, including annual fundraising pursuits. The value is determined by dividing expenses by revenue for the given campaign or time period. The calculation will yield 1 if expenses and revenue are equal, it’s a break even. If revenue exceeds expenses resulting in a number less than 1, it indicates profit. On the contrary, if expenses are greater than revenue yielding a number greater than 1, it’s a loss for your organization for the given campaign. 

2. Donor Count

Number of new donors, lapsed donors and retained donors – all these must be considered while monitoring this number. In order to do this with ease, it is advisable for nonprofits to adopt a donor management software that will store all data efficiently. For instance, GiveCentral helps nonprofits and churches to track all numbers, all while protecting the privacy of donors. Good records of your numbers will help your organization start new-donor welcome series, communicate better with existing ones through different seasons and cycles. In order to limit your donor acquisition costs, your organization would ideally like to keep your donor retention rate as high as possible. 

3. Average Gift Size

This refers to the average donation amount in a donor group or campaign. When you divide the total amount received by the number of gifts, you will get the average gift size. This is an important metric when you’re fundraising for nonprofits as it is ideal for tracking on a recurring basis, it enables you to easily detect fluctuations in your gift size. It also helps in evaluating your major gift efforts. 

4. Conversion Rate

When you measure conversion rate, it helps your organization to thoroughly understand the giving preferences of your supporters and the success of your outreach attempts and methods. The goal action needs to be defined to measure conversion rate; what do you want your audience to do? You then divide the number of people who completed the goal action by the number of people who were presented with the opportunity to do the same. The goal action for a particular campaign could be to get people to click on the donate button or for another campaign, it could be to get more volunteers to sign up. 

5. Board member participation

Fundraising for nonprofits largely includes board members and their efforts. Board members have a lot of big responsibilities, some nonprofit organizations require board members to make personal donations annually. Finding board member participation rate is pretty simple – divide number of contributing board members by total number of board members and multiply by 100. This will show you how much your board members are investing in your nonprofit. 

Conclusion

Tracking metrics and statistics are a great way to ensure that you are well prepared to plan and execute better for your next fundraising campaign. As you do this, make sure that you’re avoiding different communication mistakes; constantly reach out in a heart warming manner and keep them coming for more!