Smart data and analytics allow charities to track their fundraising income monthly, weekly, and even daily if necessary.
Key performance indicators linked to specific goals and objectives will provide visibility on data to increase performance and encourage your team to achieve both individual and organisational financial goals.
The following KPIs should be among those considered most important to your organisation as data will help you identify where you need to adjust campaigns and programs:
This is a figure that should rise steadily year upon year.
Donor retention rate
Building positive relationships with donors involves helping them achieve their self-actualisation goals so you must be aware of who is no longer donating, and why.
If 200 of 2000 donors stopped giving, that’s 10% fewer donors and the data provides an urgent need to review your retention processes. Perhaps you can review how you manage remove from mail requests, or perhaps look at the material you’re sending with direct mail campaigns.
Donations secured
Analyse the specific dollar amount brought in for a particular period and break it down further by campaign or program where necessary.
This metric is one which should increase year upon year and from program to program. Consistently declining data in this area is a red flag for your team and changes must be made to incorporate new or modify existing donor-focussed programs.
Growth rate and average donation amount
Spread you donor net wide to maintain a stable growth rate and determine which groups or individuals are giving more. Perhaps data shows a specific campaign appealed more to older givers, younger people identified with a particular drive, or an app made it easier to donate.
Analytics will tell you if fewer people are giving more, or more people are giving less.
Return on investment (ROI) of campaigns
Analysing figures during a campaign helps to keep it within budget, and checking the amount raised as a percentage of the outlay will help design future campaigns that maximise ROI.
Currently, trends show that online campaigns give the best ROI as the outgoings and resources are usually less than direct mail and receive a higher average donation.
Conversion rate
Using smart analytics, you can track percentage conversion rate of a campaign and can target the groups more likely to advocate your cause, increasing conversion rate and giving a better ROI.
Donors’ giving capacity
By using data available on stats such as previous donation history, average household income, age, education, and interests you can target your ask more precisely increasing the chance of a donor giving at their maximum capacity.
Donor lapse rate
Analytics will help determine why donors have lapsed, giving important insight into how you can better meet their needs to encourage them to give again. If a donor already has a relationship with a charity, it’s much cheaper and easier to re-engage with them rather than acquire them as a new donor, so this information is key.
Social media engagement
Analytics available from social media platforms will provide data on engagement such as likes, and followers, but that information doesn’t necessarily translate to income.
It can, however, help you understand your audience and the types of campaigns they respond to, so you can target future campaigns to meet their needs and encourage followers to become new donors.
EDM conversion rate
The delivery rate of your email campaigns lets you know what percentage are bouncing back, unsubscribed, opened, clicked through and how many are clicking the call to action links.
If the stats are high for the message being deleted before opening, then the subject line was not captivating; if it’s opened (and likely read) but no action is taken, then the call to action wasn’t sufficiently compelling.
Utilising this data as a KPI will help increase the conversion rate of campaigns to increase overall fundraising income.
Efficient systems can help fundraising teams analyse specific metrics to track results, so campaigns and processes can be adjusted to achieve individual and organisational goals.
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