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The image shows two hands outstretched, with block letters within them forming the word "give". Text reading "#GivingTuesday" appears to the right of the hands.
Fundraising, Donation Approach

A Simple Guide for a Productive Giving Tuesday – Part 2

by Jon Helder
November 4, 2024

Giving Tuesday is less than a month away but there is still time to pull together a compelling and productive campaign. Last time, in A Simple Guide to Productive Giving Tuesday – Part 1 we covered how to segment to your best target audience and provided tools to leverage your campaign. This time, we’ll lay out a simple communications plan by addressing campaign strategies, incentives, and a framework.

What will people be giving to and why does it matter now?
My old boss used to tell me, “Need is not a case; hope is not a strategy.” Your case for support must be more than just covering your organization’s financial needs. Your Giving Tuesday campaign should evoke two “I’s”: Immediacy (why donors need to give now), and Impact (what will result from my gift). If you can make a compelling, concise case for your general operating fund that covers both I’s, then feel free to do so.

Conversely, if your general fund is in good shape as you approach year end, you may want to raise money for special projects or capital assets like new computers for a school, new canoes for a camp, or winter coats for your rescue mission. These projects can provide prospective donors with an easy to understand, tangible outcome for the campaign.

A third option is to take an item from your general fund budget and “projectize” it by turning it into its own campaign. Your organization may already have a $10,000 technology budget but that doesn’t mean that you can’t raise funds for computers. Any funds raised for this campaign would be restricted to that budget line item but the net result to your general fund is the same.

How will you incentivize people to give?
One of the biggest negatives to Giving Tuesday is that thousands of nonprofits are simultaneously vying for donations at the same time. As a result, differentiation and incentives really matter. One of the most common ways to incentivize gifts is to offer a matching fund. While I don’t encourage you to send Giving Tuesday materials to your top donors who give in the last week of the year, donors in this group are keen to the idea of using their gift to incentivize others. Could you ask your board members to pledge a matching gift fund? Is there a champion donor that would love to see you maximize their gift in this way? Creating a matching fund can be as simple as asking some key donors to make their commitments early. If that isn’t an option, you could offer a promo mug or t-shirt for any donor that gives a certain amount or more (ala NPR or PBS). Such promotions can be a great way to on-ramp new donors.

Where should they give?
Does your donation software allow you to make a one-off campaign page (all the good ones do)? If you opt for your ministry’s main donation page, be sure to add something to make the website visit feel a bit more special like adding a banner, making the case for support relevant to the campaign, or highlighting the incentives. Follow through on your campaign importance and immediacy by making a landing page worth giving to.

Communication Calendar
Because Giving Tuesday falls only days after Thanksgiving, Black Friday, etc., your donors will have the holidays on their minds. As a result, communications need to be direct, frequent, and only start when the donors have the capacity to receive them. 

Purpose. First, remember that the purpose of your social media campaign is to bring awareness and anticipation for Giving Tuesday. Launch “Countdown to Giving Tuesday.” Starting on Friday, you can post mission-centric stories that convey the impact of your work while “counting down” to Giving Tuesday. Maybe you could have 4 ways that gifts impact your mission or the people you serve? Studies have shown that adding numerals to your subject lines/posts increase engagement (did the “4” above stand out to you?). However, if you need content for a post, you could mention the upcoming match or promo item associated with the campaign.

Emails. Your Giving Tuesday campaign can be done in as little as three emails (four if you include Thanksgiving). Sunday afternoon is a great time to reveal the campaign to your donors who might not be as engaged on social media. Use this time to tell them what Giving Tuesday is, how they can get involved, and why their giving matters. Perhaps counter-intuitively, include a “Give for Giving Tuesday Button” at the bottom of this email in case donors would like to give on Sunday as you hate to have willing donors needlessly wait till Tuesday to give to your campaign.  

Communications Framework. While the content for this table could easily become an entirely new article, this simple framework and suggested subject lines provide a good starting point for your campaign:

Remember, the goal is to have a simple, yet productive Giving Tuesday campaign. Taking care of the basics (communications, incentives, and updates to your website) and following this framework will maximize your efforts.

If this article inspires you to launch a Giving Tuesday campaign this year, reach out to us and let us know how you did. What were your expectations vs. results? What did you learn from the experience? The Timothy Group is always excited to learn and share best practices, so we’d love to hear about your experience.

About the Author: Jonathan Helder, CFRE, ECRF, Consultant

With over a decade of proven fundraising experience and a love for data, Jonathan is blessed to serve nonprofits and help bolster their impact on the community. Jon enjoys helping ministries implement data-based strategies and tools to improve fundraising and organizational effectiveness. Jonathan has written articles as well as presented to local and national organizations including the Association of Fundraising Professionals (West Michigan), Do More Good, Nonprofit Hub and the Lakeshore Nonprofit Alliance.

The image shows two hands outstretched, with block letters within them forming the word "give". Text reading "#GivingTuesday" appears to the right of the hands.
Fundraising, Donation Approach

A Simple Guide for a Productive Giving Tuesday – Part 1

by Jon Helder
November 4, 2024

It’s that time of year again. Fundraising events are in full swing, year-end appeals are being drafted, and nonprofit professionals everywhere are working tirelessly to boost their year-end fundraising. In the midst of this chaos, a well-intentioned colleague or board member is usually bound to ask “So, what are your plans for Giving Tuesday?” No matter how you feel about Giving Tuesday, there is no question that its popularity is growing and simply ignoring it is likely to the detriment of your organization. However, engaging in a Giving Tuesday campaign doesn’t have to complicated, expensive, or disproportionately time consuming. In this article, we’ll discuss how to target the ideal audience and choose the best tools to leverage for your campaign. Next time, we’ll lay out a simple communications plan and ways your organization can incentivize donors to give.

The Audience

As my Marketing 101 professor always said, “it’s all about the who.” As with any fundraising/marketing communication, you must identify “who” you are targeting. When you understand “who,” you can customize and cater your communications content and mode to reach them. A great article about this topic is Donor Insights You Need to Know for Giving Tuesday. In short, the research shows that your Giving Tuesday donors are not your average year-end giver. The best strategy is to remove your top year-end donors from your Giving Tuesday campaign communications. You don’t want to encourage them to give a smaller amount than they would have given otherwise (aka “tipping”) or, at the very least, you don’t want to needlessly send them another solicitation.  Likewise, your Giving Tuesday crowd likely won’t respond as well to a highly personalized year end mailer if they have never given to you via check. It is more effective to treat each group as their own segment.

Here are some helpful suggestions on whom to include/exclude from your Giving Tuesday segment:

Include

  • Individuals who are active on your organization’s social media and email marketing platforms
  • Their average gift is $100 or less
  • Given to past online campaigns
  • Given via credit card or EFT

Exclude ***

  • History of giving in the last week of the calendar year
  • Individuals who have never given online (only check or cash) and whose average gift is $250+
  • Individuals who have given for the first time in the last month
  • Individuals who have given a gift of $250 or more in the last 2 months

The Tools

Now that you have your audience, the next step is to use your best internal tools to reach that group. In general, your tools or “mode of communication” tends to produce a parallel response. For example, paper mailers will produce paper responses (i.e., checks/cash in the mail). Digital tools, like social media and email marketing, tend to produce likes, shares, and hopefully, an online donation. Since Giving Tuesday is primarily celebrated digitally, your focus should be to raise online donations through digital tools:

Email Marketing (Mailchimp, Hubspot, Constant Contact, etc.)

Outside of direct mail, most organizations use some form of mass email communications to reach their community. Aside from being significantly cheaper, email marketing tools enable nonprofits to see the level of engagement from each contact which in turn allows nonprofits to focus content to the recipient. In fact, individuals who are the most engaged with your organizations email campaigns are likely your best prospects, your most committed donors, and your best audience for Giving Tuesday. Importantly, it has been shown that email marketing far out paces social media with regards to conversion rates (the number of donations that result per ask) and return on investment (dollar raised per dollar spent). In an ideal world, your Donor CRM would integrate with your email marketing software so that you could easily identify and pull out the “excluded” people above. If your CRM doesn’t, I would highly suggest running a list of your top YE donors from your CRM and simply tagging those individuals in your email marketing software. That will allow you to pull those profiles out of the campaign emails.

Social Media (Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Snackbuzz, etc.)

There are so many platforms these days that it can be hard to keep up. Case in point, when you read “Snackbuzz” above, did it spark a bit of terror in you? Don’t worry, I made that one up. ? Regardless, the constant steam of applications like LinkedIn, TikTok, Twitter, Snapchat, WhatsApp, etc. can cause many nonprofit professionals to throw their hands in the air in frustration. Although understandable, based on the number of millennials and older that use it (who also have greatest giving capacity) Facebook is currently the best social media site for your organization to invest its resources. If for some reason your mission lends well to visual imagery (schools, international organizations, animal shelters, etc.), Instagram can also be a worthwhile site for increasing engagement and awareness of the organization. While your Giving Tuesday campaign should include social media, social media is more important for promoting the campaign. Email Marketing will have a greater conversion rate.

Direct Mail?

While some organizations use direct mail as part of their Giving Tuesday campaign, I’m not convinced that the investment in time and resources for a specific Giving Tuesday mailing is worthwhile. You would be further ahead to use those resources for your year-end appeal that will reach everyone we “excluded” above. If you need some content for your fall newsletter, it would be fine to feature a “save the date” style announcement. However, it’s not too effective to seek a digital response from a paper-based communication.

Join us for our next article where we’ll share a quick and actionable Giving Tuesday campaign communications plan.

*** While you may not exclude these types of donors from your Giving Tuesday communications, one of these donors could provide a helpful boost to your campaign. More on that next time… 🙂

About the Author: Jonathan Helder, CFRE, ECRF, Consultant

With over a decade of proven fundraising experience and a love for data, Jonathan is blessed to serve nonprofits and help bolster their impact on the community. Jon enjoys helping ministries implement data-based strategies and tools to improve fundraising and organizational effectiveness. Jonathan has written articles as well as presented to local and national organizations including the Association of Fundraising Professionals (West Michigan), Do More Good, Nonprofit Hub and the Lakeshore Nonprofit Alliance.

Capital Campaigns, Client Impact, Fundraising, Major Donors

CRM

by Jon Helder
February 5, 2024

Thanks for joining me at my recent “Shopping for Donor Databases/CRMs” presentation!

Here are the slides from my Presentation: Choosing a CRM

Along with The Timothy Group, I am here to serve nonprofits like yours! Would you like to schedule a 30-min, no obligation meeting to talk about your ministry and your CRM Needs? Simply fill out the form below and I, or another Timothy Group team member, will reach out to you soon. Thanks!

About the Author: Jonathan Helder, CFRE, ECRF, Consultant

With over a decade of proven fundraising experience and a love for data, Jonathan is blessed to serve nonprofits and help bolster their impact on the community. Jon enjoys helping ministries implement data-based strategies and tools to improve fundraising and organizational effectiveness. Jonathan has written articles as well as presented to local and national organizations including the Association of Fundraising Professionals (West Michigan), Do More Good, Nonprofit Hub and the Lakeshore Nonprofit Alliance.

 

 

Development, Donor Relations, Fundraising

Successful Communications Start with Balance

by Jon Helder
July 25, 2023

Successful Communications Start with Balance
We’ve all heard these horror stories or experienced them ourselves. Nonprofits sending relentless email solicitations. Memorial gifts given online transition to an onslaught of mailers. The only mail you receive from your favorite nonprofit is solicitations. Obviously, none of us want to be that nonprofit. While there is certainly a case for nonprofits to make explicit appeals, with major nonprofits leveraging AI and algorithms to reach new donors, slapping together communications or just winging it won’t cut it anymore. To compete, your communications need to be targeted, compelling, and frequent. While it may seem overwhelming, ultimately, effective communications all come down to balance.

Balance by Audience
As my Marketing 101 professor once taught me “It’s all about the who.” Or put another way, it’s all about the audience. Regrettably, nonprofits struggling with communications almost always lean on one audience segment: All contacts. However, do you really want to solicit your major year-end giver for a $50 Giving Tuesday gift? Likely not.

Certainly, balancing multiple audiences can feel daunting, but it doesn’t have to be. Perhaps you can break your contacts into 2 or 3 audiences (i.e., general audience, online/credit card givers, and major donors). Create a tag or group in your CRM so when you run mailing lists, these segments are easy to identify. Likewise, integrate your donor database with your email marketing software (i.e., Mailchimp) to keep these segments across your communications platforms. Lastly, when creating your communications calendar, look at the communication diet from each audience’s perspective. Is each segment getting a balanced dose of A/I/S from various methods (more on those below)?

Balance by Type: Appreciation, Inspiration/Information, Solicitation
We all know over soliciting is a great way to burn out a donor. But we all need to make the ask at some point. So, how much is too much? How do you strike the balance? Simple, by having a solid balance of AIS: Appreciation, Inspiration/Information, Solicitation. Some people have even referred to this as the giving cycle (inspire, ask, appreciate, repeat).

Solicitations should be clear, infrequent, and follow a long line of other interactions. One of my first fundraising mentors instructed me to “never make half asks.” So, what might that look like? Do you put a small envelope in every mailing? A donate button at the bottom of every email? Are all of your in-person events fundraisers? If so, your audience may feel less like a ministry partner and more like an ATM.

Case in point, instead of half-asking with every email, try to make your recurring emails more informational/inspirational filled with donor-centric appreciative language. Then, once a quarter, send an email with a direct appeal tying back to the messages you have been sharing over the last quarter. Not only will your open rates increase for all emails (after all, they aren’t all solicitations anymore), your appeals should have a much higher response rate as a result.

Balance by Method
Donors are busy, and so are you. Case in point: do you have any unopened emails from your favorite nonprofit? Obviously, this doesn’t make you or your donor a bad person. However, it does mean quarterly emails, once a month social posts, and two annual solicitation mailers will not be enough. Nonprofits have never had more ways to communicate with their donors, yet many nonprofits lean their communications towards what they like to see and what is easiest for them to produce.

Important note: You are not the audience, and your communications shouldn’t be planned around your, or your board members’, communications preferences. As such, it doesn’t matter if you “don’t like mail,” or your board member “doesn’t like weekly emails.” Please try to take yourself out of the picture entirely and do what you can to use multiple avenues to share your ministries stories and impact.

If you don’t know where to start, check out the sample calendar below. While digital communication certainly has its cost and convenience advantages, mail needs to play a major role in any nonprofit’s communications. Need proof? Run a list of your top 20 donors and see how much engagement they have with your emails. While most will have some engagement level, there is a good chance a healthy number of them don’t open any of your emails. The same could be said of social media efforts. So, if you only mail solicitations, your “mail-only donors” are going to think your organization does one thing: ask for money.

Although there is a seemingly un-ending list of communications platforms out there, I believe most nonprofits can effectively communicate with their audiences through email, direct mail, Facebook, and Instagram. And there are certainly cases for using LinkedIn,

Strike the Right Balance
To assist you with improving your communications (by balancing your Audiences, AIS, and Methods) we’ve provided this example calendar below. Effective communications don’t have to be complicated. If you find the right balance, you’ll improve engagement and, most importantly, how much you raise.

About the Author: Jonathan Helder, CFRE, ECRF, Consultant

With over a decade of proven fundraising experience and a love for data, Jonathan is blessed to serve nonprofits and help bolster their impact on the community. Jon enjoys helping ministries implement data-based strategies and tools to improve fundraising and organizational effectiveness. Jonathan has written articles as well as presented to local and national organizations including the Association of Fundraising Professionals (West Michigan), Do More Good, Nonprofit Hub and the Lakeshore Nonprofit Alliance.

 

 

Capital Campaigns, Development, Donor Relations, Fundraising, Uncategorized

Using Metrics to Boost Your Fundraising

by Jon Helder
January 5, 2023

Are you looking at a map or the rearview mirror?

As a fellow fundraiser, let me begin by giving you my congratulations on completing an unprecedented fundraising year. I hope you can spend some time in the next few weeks to take a break and carry out some much-deserved self-care. Be sure to take time to appreciate your team members who contributed to your organization’s fundraising success.

Although the end of a fiscal year can bring a sense of relief, the start of a new year can understandably cause anxiety. The beginning of the fundraising year often leads to fundraisers asking themselves some age-old questions: What initiatives are working? Should we eliminate the golf outing? How can I measure and track our overall fundraising program?

Sadly, often before fundraisers can start to address these questions, they are quickly distracted by the next fundraising initiative. So, most nonprofit fundraising plans aren’t supported by data, but rather stem from inertia and intuition. Thankfully, 2023 provides an opportunity to determine how to improve our fundraising efforts.

So, how successful was your organization’s fundraising last year?
You might answer this question with metrics like the amount raised, the number of new donors or the number of donations. While these basic figures can be informative from a year-over-year trend perspective, they do a poor job answering questions like: Why did these metrics change? What are the weaknesses in my fundraising plan? Where should we focus our efforts this new fundraising year?

I consider those basic metrics to be “rearview mirror” metrics as they only tell you what has happened in the past. “Rearview mirror” metrics don’t point your organization to where you would like to head. What you really need are metrics that provide you with a plan of action, or a map, to help bolster your fundraising efforts.

Map Metrics
Although the topic of fundraising metrics isn’t very sexy, the payoff from a data-based fundraising plan will be. Fifteen years ago, I worked for a healthcare consulting firm with the motto: “you can’t move it if you don’t measure it.” I believe the same is true with fundraising. You need a detailed analysis to make an actionable plan to improve your fundraising efforts. Luckily, you can achieve a thorough analysis with these 10 key data points from either your CRM or accounting software.

10 Key Data Points
To start, you will need to compile the following data points. For simplicity’s sake, assume all data points are for 2022 unless otherwise noted.

  • Actual Fundraising Expense (include your best guess of the salary costs associated with employee’s time spent fundraising)
  • Organizational Expenses
  • Number of Contributions Received
  • Number of Contributions Received
  • 2021 Total Number of Donors
  • 2022 Total Number of Donors
  • The Number of New Donors This Year in 2022 (i.e. gave in 2022, but not in 2021)
  • 2022 Number of Retained Donors (i.e. gave in both 2022 & 2021)
  • The Number of Lapsed Donors in 2022 (i.e. did not give in 2022 but did give in 2021)
  • 2022 Total Amount of Contributions from Top 5 Donors

Obviously, to determine trends over time, you will need to obtain this information for multiple years. However, much can be learned from analyzing even a single year and comparing yourself to industry benchmarks.

Map Worthy Metrics
Because they are easy to understand, simple to calculate, and they efficiently measure the key drivers of a productive fundraising plan, I consider these metrics to be “map worthy”. Many of these can be applied to separate fundraising initiatives. But this article will focus primarily on how they can be used to assess your overall fundraising program. Also, I’ve provided several great tools toward the end of this article to help you with this process.

Donor Retention Rate
2022 Number of Retained Donors/2021 Total Number of Donors

Without question, your donor retention rate is one of the most important fundraising metrics. It’s possible to increase your giving in years where you lose more donors than you retain. But, it’s nearly impossible for a nonprofit to survive prolonged episodes of poor donor retention.

The closer your retention rate is to 100%, the better.  Currently, the average nonprofit has a retention rate of about ~45% which means that nonprofits are losing more donors than they can retain.

So why is donor retention such a big deal? According to preeminent fundraising scholar, Dr. Adrian Sargeant, a 10% improvement in donor retention rate can double the lifetime value of donors in your database. If you could only track one metric annually to monitor your fundraising, it should be donor retention.

Donor Attrition Rate
2022 Number of Lapsed Donors/2021 Total Number of Donors

In addition to using this formula, you can also calculate the donor attrition rate by subtracting the donor retention rate from 1. So, for example, if your retention rate last year was 55%, your attrition rate would be 45%. The closer your attrition rate is to 0%, the better.

Churn
2022 New Donors – 2022 Lapsed Donors

Churn is a great way to assess the net result of your donor retention and donor recruitment efforts. It helps you quickly identify whether your organization is experiencing a net inflow or outflow of donors. Often new donor counts and retention are measured separately and can feel disparate from each other. Churn eliminates any noise in the data, telling you if your active donor counts are heading in the right direction.

Donation Frequency
Number of 2022 donations / Number of 2022 Donors

Donor frequency helps distill how efficiently you’re increasing the number of donations per donor. The higher your frequency, the better. A large onslaught of single gifts would lower your frequency (a great problem for any nonprofit). But, a higher donation frequency means that your average donor is giving more frequently. For example, transitioning a large group of donors from an annual gift to monthly donations would drastically improve your donation frequency. There are two major reasons why that matters. One, the higher your frequency, the more likely your donations are evenly spread throughout the calendar year. Second, and perhaps more importantly, research shows that, on average, donors who give more than once a year give a greater amount each year, are more loyal to the organization, have higher retention rates, and as result, significantly improve your organization’s average Donor Lifetime Value.

Donor Lifetime Value (DLV)
Average Annual Gift / Attrition Rate

Perhaps self-explanatory, DLV shows the lifetime value of your average donor based on your Average Annual Gift. The Average Annual Gift is simply your Total amount of Contributions divided by the total number of donations. While there are multiple ways that DLV is calculated, most require you to calculate the average amount of time your donor is active with your organization (aka Donor Lifespan). As someone who has struggled through the process of calculating the average donor’s lifespan, I would recommend the above formula instead. In addition to being incredibly easy to calculate, I find it to be a perfectly adequate way to assess trends over time. Your goal is to always be increasing your DLV as that means you are retaining more donors and/or getting more donations per donor.

Lost Potential
Donor Lifetime Value x 2022 Number of Lapsed Donors

This number should be the core motivation for you to work on donor retention. If your DLV is $1000 and you lost 100 donors last year, the lifetime value of those donors would be $100,000. I
f you are looking for a bit of encouragement after calculating Lost Potential, I recommend calculating your Retained Value (DLV x # of your retained donors). Retained Value gives you a clear sense of the “true worth” of the active donors in your database.

Bonus Tip
As the old saying goes, “You’re likely to raise more money from existing donors than by acquiring new donors.” If you can determine the attrition rate of the average first-time donor vs. your retained donors, you will likely affirm the merits of this saying. Such data can be helpful to share with board members or bosses that are pushing for “more new donors” when you would rather prioritize untapped opportunities within your existing donor group.

Return on Investment (ROI)
(Total contributions – Fundraising Expenses)/ Fundraising Expenses

Cost to Raise a Dollar (CRD)
Fundraising Expenses / (Total contributions – Fundraising Expenses)

ROI and CRD help measure how efficiently your investments (aka fundraising expenses) lead to funds raised.  While ROI and CRD can be calculated to assess your overall fundraising program, these same metrics are excellent at assessing individual fundraising initiatives and trends over time. Most nonprofits assess their initiatives by net income (initiative revenue – initiative expenses). However, they may be surprised to learn that once staff time is included in the expenses, many of their initiatives have a negative ROI. Your goal with ROI is to be positive and the higher the number, the better.

CRD is a slightly more accessible way to communicate the success of your fundraising efforts and is simply the inverse of the ROI calculation. Basically, CRD is the amount you have to spend to raise $1. Your primary CRD goal is to be below $1. The lower your CRD, the better. Conversely, should your cost go above $1, you are losing money.

Dependency Quotient (DQ)
Total Amount of Contributions from Top 5 Donors/ Total Organizational Expenses

It is always good for organizations to assess their overall dependency on their top donors. As you can see, the DQ determines the share of your overall organizational expenses that rely on your top 5 donors’ donations. Perhaps obvious, your goal is to decrease your dependency quotient over time as that means that you are diversifying your contribution sources.

Dependency Quotient vs. Cost to Raise a Dollar
The interplay between these two metrics can provide a lot of insight as to where you should focus your efforts in the year ahead. If you are doing things correctly, you should be moving from High to Low in both DQ & CRD.

As someone who is always happy to borrow great ideas, the content to create the following table is from a  great Bloomerang article: 3 Metrics to Help Measure Fundraising Effectiveness. The article also provides helpful real-life examples of how organizations can move in the right direction.

  High Cost to Raise a Dollar Low Cost to Raise a Dollar
High Dependency Quotient You are investing heavily in many different strategies but are still highly dependent on just a few sources of funding. This is common for organizations who rely on just one big event a year for the majority of their funds. You are likely receiving big donations from a handful of donors but are at risk if you lose just one donor. Do you have a safety net that would continue to fund your mission?
Low Dependency Quotient You are likely investing heavily in fundraising programs that provide a diverse group of funders, but you’re spending a lot to make that happen. Are you missing opportunities to go after major gifts? Keep up the good work! This is the ideal scenario.

Is your head spinning yet?
While this all may seem overwhelming, much of the math above could be accomplished by the average third grader. The only thing keeping you from obtaining a clearer picture of your organization’s fundraising is a bit of time and some elbow grease. Luckily, I am happy to report that there are several resources available to help calculate the metrics you need to guide your fundraising plan:

Free Resources from The Timothy Group
We have created a simple, yet effective spreadsheet that calculates all the above metrics by simply providing the top 10 data points above. The spreadsheet also produces 13 graphs & charts to provide visuals for your organization’s past fundraising trends which are great for copying and pasting into your next board fundraising report. Also, for those of you that are interested in assessing your fundraising initiatives at a more granular level, we’ve added a bonus Initiative ROI Cheat Sheet that will quickly show you where your organization is getting its biggest bang for the buck, and perhaps more importantly, which initiatives should be discontinued. If you are interested in obtaining the spreadsheet, download it free here:


Metric Tools


Fundraising Metrics Slides


Your current CRM
While not every CRM has amazing reporting functionality, most do calculate many of the above metrics. I suggest that you try diving into the CRM’s dashboards or searching one of the above metrics or data points in their help/resources section. 

FundraisingReportCard.com (FRC)

By simply importing your organization’s gift dates, gift amounts, and profile ID (most systems have an anonymized alphanumeric ID available), FRC will not only calculate many of the metrics above, but it also quickly produces beautiful graphs, trend lines, and segmentations that make analysis a snap. If you are lucky enough to be using Kindful or Little Green Light as your CRM, they have a very simple integration that will do all the heavy lifting for you. Even if you don’t use their dashboards, be sure to check out their benchmarks page as it provides nonprofit sector-specific benchmarks that instantly help you see how you are doing compared to your sector. 

Fundraising Effectiveness Project (FEP)

The Association for Fundraising Professionals has created a set of free downloadable spreadsheets that will help you calculate many of the top metrics. 

You can do this! (and we’re here to help)

With no obligation, I would be happy to provide 30 minutes of my time to help you through this process. Whether it be helping you obtain your key data points, using one of the above tools, or analyzing your results, The Timothy Group is here to help. We have worked with many nonprofits to assess their programs and I promise it will be worth the effort. Let’s leave intuition and inertia in the review mirror and make 2023 the year you implement a data-driven fundraising plan!

Note: The above article is intended to provide quality actionable content for the reader. Jonathan Helder and the Timothy Group do not receive any compensation for the referral links to the article and/or fundraising tools listed above. 

About the Author: Jonathan Helder, CFRE, ECRF, Consultant

With over a decade of proven fundraising experience and a love for data, Jonathan is blessed to serve nonprofits and help bolster their impact on the community. Jon enjoys helping ministries implement data-based strategies and tools to improve fundraising and organizational effectiveness. Jonathan has written articles as well as presented to local and national organizations including the Association of Fundraising Professionals (West Michigan), Do More Good, Nonprofit Hub and the Lakeshore Nonprofit Alliance.

 

 

Client Impact, Donor Relations, Fundraising, Major Donors

Turning Data Into Donors

by Jon Helder
August 25, 2021

Jonathan Helder joins Timothy Group as our newest consultant. Jon is a numbers guy who understands fundraising metrics. You need a detailed analysis to make an actionable plan to improve your fundraising efforts. Luckily, you can achieve a thorough analysis with key data points from either your CRM or accounting software. Watch this lively conversation with Ron and Jon about this important topic!

Here are some tools talked about in the Webinar!

Turning Data into Donors 8.25 (PowerPoint Presentation)

Timothy Group Fundraising Metrics Tool (Excel Sheets)

Watch Ron Haas and Jonathan Helder as they talk about “Turning Data into Donors”

https://youtu.be/OfwthvVKFbs

Donor Relations, Major Donors

How Can Your Data Yield Better Year End Results?

by Jon Helder
August 20, 2021

Is your CRM ready to maximize your year end appeals?
As we come to the end of summer, nonprofit professionals like you are assuredly thinking about and planning for a busy and productive year end. For many, this planning includes hosting events, drafting year end solicitations, and crafting that perfect Christmas card. While those can be all important for engaging with donors during this crucial time, we believe that leveraging your nonprofit’s data will improve the performance of each of these initiatives.

Let’s look at your donor data.
How confident are you when pulling mailing lists? For a lot of nonprofits, this can be a significant pain point and is their least favorite task associated with mailings. However, even just a few hours of sorting and filtering data can help you identify 95% of the donor profiles that need updating. Do yourself a favor and pull your largest YE mailing list right now. Once you have it in a spreadsheet, highlight the data and click the “sort and filter button” in the home menu. This will allow you to sort and filter each column’s data. As you do this, highlight all of the errors you run across (i.e. “123 Main St” in the “State” field, “Apt. #1” is in the “Address 1” field) and update them in your donor database. Looking for duplicate profiles? Try sorting by street address, full names, or email address.  Once updated in the system, go ahead and rerun that list. However, this time submit it to a service like truencoa.com which will run your entire list through the USPS database and provide you with forwarding addresses as well as 9-digit zip-codes. Implementing any one of these strategies will save you postage and will ensure your mailings will be delivered as timely as possible.

Segment Your List.
Another way to boost your year end is through effective data segmentation. Perhaps your organization engages in a Giving Tuesday campaign and sends personalized hand signed Christmas cards to donors. You don’t have to be a seasoned marketing professional to realize that mailings for these two initiatives likely shouldn’t targeted the same audience. After all, do you really want your top donors to give a potentially smaller gift on Giving Tuesday when their large gifts have always come in the last week of the year? Likewise, sending handwritten notes to someone that only gives small online gifts might not be the best use of your staff’s time. This year, why don’t you try the following segmentation examples to maximize your efforts:

Christmas Card
•    Donors that give $500 or more 
•    Donors that give most of their support in the last 2-weeks of the year
•    Donors that gave more than 3 gifts in the last year
•    Donors that have given in the past via soft credit (i.e., donor advised fund)

Giving Tuesday Mailer
•    Donors that give less than $500 a year
•    Donors/Prospects that are highly engaged with your organization’s email marketing
•    Donors that have given online or by credit card in the past

Call us for a free 30 minute consultation for how you can improve your existing data and, more importantly, show how to leverage your data to make your year end the best it can be!

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