3 Critically Important Ways of Measuring Fundraising Success

The most obvious way of measuring fundraising success is dollars raised. However, when your boss and board only focus on dollars raised, they miss a huge piece of the picture — and that can have serious consequences.

Let’s take the example of a new Development Director named Sasha.

Sasha’s Story: Is She Doing a Great Job?

In her first year, Sasha asks 10 donors for major gifts. To keep things simple, let’s say Sasha asks each donor for $10,000. They all say “yes” and she raises $100,000 in major gifts.

The board is only interested in total dollars raised, so Sasha reports that she raised $100,000. Everyone is delighted!

The very next year, Sasha goes back to the same 10 donors and once again, she asks each one for $10,000. Nine of the ten donors say “no”. The one remaining donor decides to give $100,000 (thank goodness).

Sasha again reports to the board that she raised $100,000. Her board members walk away feeling confident that she’s done a great job.

There are several issues highlighted by this example. We’re going to look at the big three.

3 Critical Ways to Measure Fundraising Success

Let’s examine these three critical ways of measuring fundraising success highlighted by the story above.

1. Number of recurring donors

If the board in the example above had cared about repeat donors, they would have known they had a big issue on their hands. Measuring recurring donors (the number of donors who give from one year to the next) is an important indicator of a strong fundraising program.

2. Percentage of asks received

When you measure the percentage of asks received, it tells you several important things:

• If you get all the gifts you ask for (as Sasha did in the first year) you are not asking enough. Getting every gift you request indicates you’re only asking when you’re one hundred percent sure you’ll get the gift.
• On the other hand, if you only get one out of every ten gifts you ask for, you’re clearly not doing enough research and cultivation. You’re asking so aggressively that most people are saying no.

Ideally, you should be getting 70-80% of the gifts you ask for. If you ask for 10 gifts from individual donors, 7 or 8 of them should say ‘yes’ to some gift amount (not necessarily the whole gift you ask for). Similarly, you should get 70-80% of the total amount requested from all donors.

Again, if you ask ten donors for $10,000 each for a total of $100,000, and collectively they give you $75,000, you’re doing a great job.

3. Quality of stewardship

The fact that Sasha lost nine out of ten donors indicates a real stewardship problem. Stewardship is about how you treat a donor after they make a gift.

• Does the donor feel adequately thanked in proportion to the gift they made?
• Do they know how their gift was used?
• Do they feel they made a difference?

If so, it’s likely (although never guaranteed) that they’ll give again.

If you are asking in person (or virtually) in a one-on-one (not bulk solicitation) way, you should be thanking and stewarding in the same way.

Of course, you’ll send a personal thank you note, and probably have someone from your organization make a thank you call. In addition, you’ll want to plan a one-on-one follow up to let them know how their money was used and reiterate how much the contribution meant to the clients or cause.

Track Critical, Easy Indicators to Measure Your Success

There are lots of ways to measure fundraising success. These are only three. The important thing is to pick indicators that are critical to success and relatively easy to measure. You never want to prioritize measuring to an extreme degree so that it hampers your ability to go out and raise money.

How do you measure success? Let me know in the comments.