Top Key Performance Indicators Nonprofits Should Track In Their Fundraising, Marketing, and Database Management
Tim Sarrantonio
Generosity Experience Design | Empowering nonprofits to build a community of generosity
Welcome to my weekly LinkedIn newsletter! Connected Fundraising Weekly will be my way of providing easy-to-engage insights around donor behavior, fundraiser enablement, and technology. I hope you enjoy the content, and please share if you think someone would benefit from what I'm writing!
A question I'm continuing to hear from small organizations is not whether they should track data, but what data they should pay attention to. Fundraisers get that they need a database but it can be hard to know what to focus on.
Coming out of #AFPICON, there were a few sessions relating to this for both fundraising and marketing. A solid session was Ephraim Gopin's Out of Oz: Which Online Data Helps to Build Relationships...and Which to Simply Stop Tracking. In the session, he spoke about which metrics are useful for creating meaningful connections and then attacked vanity metrics, such as the number of likes on a social media post.
Inspired by that session as well as the steering committee meeting of the Fundraising Effectiveness Project, I wanted to outline some of the Key Performance Indicators that I think nonprofit organizations, especially smaller to midsized organizations looking to create sustainable revenue, should pay attention to:
Nonprofit Fundraising KPIs
Growth In Giving Rate: The net of gains and losses in giving from last year to this year, divided by the total value of gifts received last year. Nonprofits raise more money by investing more money in growth-oriented fundraising strategies that both increase gains and reduce losses.
Donor Retention Rate: Total number of donors who gave both this year and last year, divided by the number of donors who gave last year.
Your donor retention rate is the best way to speak to the health of your program because it measures how many people are sticking with your organization year after year.
Average Donation Size: Total amount of gifts divided by the total number of gifts.
Recurring or Repeat Donors: Number of donors who make more than one gift in a fiscal year.
Online vs. Offline Giving: Percentage of donors who make gifts online vs. offline
New Donor Acquisition Rate: Number of new donors in a year divided by total number of donors from the previous year.
Nonprofit Marketing KPIs:
Donation Page Conversion Rate: The number of unique visits to an online donation page divided by total donations processed by that page.
Appeal Conversion Rate: The number of appeals sent divided by the number of donations that can be attributed to that appeal.
Fundraising ROI: The amount of money spent annually on fundraising divided by the amount raised.
Email Subscribers: The number of people who subscribe to your mailing list.
Social Media Traffic: Website or blog traffic driven by social media platforms.
Nonprofit Database Management KPIs
Donor Participation Rate: The total number of donors in a year divided by the number of donors in the database at the end of that year.
Donors in Database: Total number of donors in the database, all-time. Must take into account households, individuals, and organizations.
Total Duplicate Accounts: Total number of matched duplicate records not merged / marked as unique.
These are some of the top ones I've flagged but there's deeper analysis once it comes to segments, appeals and campaigns, and other nuances.
What types of other KPIs should nonprofit staff pay attention to?
IMPORTANT
Unfortunately, many organizations look at data from a pure Profit / Loss standpoint on a quarterly or annual basis. When and where possible, ensure that you're doing at a minimum a year over year analysis if not a three to five year scan on all these KPIs.
Directeur Général d'exploitation et administratif
2yThank you for
When fundraising and marketing work in tandem it's a beautiful thing!
2yThanks for the shoutout Tim!
Account Executive @ Klue | Competitive Enablement for the Modern Enterprise
2yIf any Neon, RE NXT, or Salesforce NPSP users need an automated way of tracking ALL of these metrics month over month, I would be happy to show them how! I agree with T. Clay Buck, CFRE that donor lifetime value is an important one that most organizations don't track. Taking it a step further is to segment lifetime value by donor size. For example, you should know the lifetime value of a Monthly Donor, of a Mid Level Donor, and your Major Donors. How else can you justify putting resources into these categories if you don't know the expected outcome of donor acquisition?
Individual Giving Strategist and Keynote Speaker. "Philanthropy and Wealth are not synonyms, but donors are data and data is human."
2yThis is excellent, Tim Sarrantonio - a very good summary and a great primer for any fundraiser. I'd also add the importance of Lifetime Value of a Donor, which dovetails into Cost Per Dollar Raised (aka Fundraising ROI). Both tools that are excellent at measuring how effective fundraising investment is over the long-term.
We Honor Those Who Honor Others!
2yGreat content Tim Sarrantonio--- I would add that a non-profit is going to raise more money when they are intentional in investing in their donors. Too often the focus is the other way around...