Secrets to building your annual giving donor community

04 Jan Secrets to building your annual giving donor community

Your organization is so incredibly fortunate to have loyal donors who give every year! Treat them well, and they are the key to your future fundraising success.

How do you measure the success of your annual giving community? Here are a few key metrics:

• Second Gift Conversion—# people who make a SECOND gift to your organization.
• Long term donor value—value of a donor over the lifetime of the relationship
• Donor Attrition—how many donors (# or %) are leaving every year? Opposite of acquisition.
• Recency—Frequency—Monetary—How recent was the donor’s gift, how frequently are they giving, and how much are they giving?
• # of years giving—how long have they been giving?
• Total # of gifts, and average gift size—good indicators of your community

Be sure to track these metrics year-over-year so that you’re measuring your success against your past year’s performance. You want to see this community of loyal donors growing through these metrics.

Tracking is just the beginning. Lean into these metrics to change your fundraising behaviour. What trends do you see? Is the average gift size growing, or getting smaller? Based on these metrics, what are you going to do differently? An enhanced stewardship plan? A legacy program mailout? An acquisition mailing? Think of these metrics as signs from your donors. What do they want you to see from the trends, and how can you meet their needs?

Metrics are irrelevant if they don’t change your #fundraising behavior. #fundraisingmojo ← Tweet this

I’ve got a one-page outline of key metrics that I track with my clients. You can download it here:

DOWNLOAD the Fundraising Metrics Guideline

I’m going to be diving into more metrics in this month’s blog posts. Be sure to sign up so you don’t miss any of our discussions about annual giving, events, major gifts and more.