Are you re-evaluating how your organization measures fundraising success? Have you ever entered a new organization to start a prospect development program for the first time? If so, you may be wondering how your fundraising team is raising money and which metrics are easiest to implement.

We asked YOU!

Leading up to a presentation at Apra Prospect Development 2022, we polled the community to learn how our friends across the country are determining goals and using metrics to track progress in fundraising activities throughout the year. While the response pool for this survey primarily comprised higher education organizations, there are some commonalities and trends worth considering as we explore what may work best in our organization, or simply where to begin.

Who determines goals and metrics?

Most commonly, metrics are determined by the fundraising leader — and often with input from fundraisers — as we can see with the overlapping percentages below.

Survey Response: Who Determines Goals and Metrics

• Fundraising team leaders: 65%
• Prospect development team: 32%
• Prospect development team, with fundraiser input: 47%
• Performance data from years prior: 47%
• Industry standard data: 21%

In my experience, you’ll get greater buy-in from fundraisers and they’ll be more willing to meet their goals if they have input and understand the reasoning behind goal amounts. At my organization, we have had much better success and overall morale when basing goals on the actual data from years prior. This demonstrates what is achievable with our own fundraisers, rather than solely using an industry standard for metrics, such as meeting counts. The more relevant the number goal is to our own unique organization and performance, the more likely it will be respected and understood as a reasonable goal.

How are we tracking donor interactions?

Donor interactions are the bread and butter of a fundraiser’s day-to-day work. They are commonly tracked toward a goal to account for the work being done, to affect the success of solicitations and to move the overall relationship with a donor closer to the organization. As we can see below, some of our Apra colleagues are using a percent of the portfolio or multiple of donors (e.g. five interactions per donor, per year), and many are using an absolute number goal (e.g. 100 interactions/activities per year, per fundraiser).

Survey Response: Number of Donor Interactions Per Year, Per Fundraiser:

• 45% of respondents use an absolute number
  • 10% use a number based on stage
  • Of those who use an absolute number goal, 55% range between 100-200 interactions as the goal amount
• 25% use a percentage of total portfolio size
  • 64% of total portfolio size was the minimum for those who use this method
• 5% use a multiple of donors (e.g. five per donor)
• 10% used individually-based goals determined by the fundraiser’s manager
• 10% track donor interactions, but do not have a set goal or requirement
• 5% do not track donor interactions

What about significant interactions, like meetings?

All activities and methods of communication with donors are important to track, but some are much more substantial in helping move the relationship along or securing a gift. Many shops require fundraisers to track their donor visits (meetings) and include notes about what was discussed and next steps. This becomes critical information stored in your CRM or donor file to help a new portfolio manager, shared relationship owner or leadership learn where the fundraiser has left off with that donor.

Survey Response: Number of Donor Meetings Per Year, Per Fundraiser:

• 81% use an absolute number goal
  • Of this pool of respondents who have a goal around number of meetings, 76% set a goal between 100-150 meetings per year per fundraiser. Of course, this can vary depending on the size of portfolios and what is realistic at your organization.

Since the data is quite varied for both interactions and meetings, I will venture to say there is really no right or wrong answer when it comes to determining your goals for these activity metrics. Try something out and test it with your fundraisers to see what works, then adjust for the next year.

Are all meetings significant? Are there significant activities besides meetings?

There has also been a recent trend in tracking all significant activities, rather than just meetings, and my organization has been experimenting with this more inclusive method.

Since the start of the pandemic, our fundraisers have had a difficult time getting face-to-face meetings with donors. Increasingly, their substantial conversations about a donor’s philanthropic interest and propensity have occurred in the digital setting (via phone call, video call or email). Our fundraisers voiced their desire to include these types of digital interactions in their goal, so prospect development has helped implement this to test it in 2022. We have worked as a team to define what counts as a significant activity — essentially, one that significantly moves the relationship forward or determines a disqualification out of the portfolio. This has required clear communication and consistency. It is still a work in progress!

Qualification and Disqualification Metrics

Another key aspect of prospect development is managing the movement of prospects into and between portfolios as they are qualified. Tracking this information in your CRM is another great piece of knowledge for the organization to recall what has already been tried and why a prospect did not move forward with an opportunity in the past.

A disqualification is just as valuable to record and further helps prioritize the portfolio so the fundraiser can focus more of their time on the best prospects. Many organizations are tracking prospect qualifications and even have a goal around how many qualifications/disqualifications their fundraisers are determining each year.

Survey Response: Qualification Goals

• 83% of survey respondents had a goal number of qualifications
  • Goal numbers per fundraiser ranged from 10 to 90 qualifications per year
• 74% had a goal between 10 and 30

There was a wide range in qualification count goal reported in the survey. My speculation is that there may be some major and principal gift officers who have smaller portfolios and a smaller pool of prospects they are expected to qualify or disqualify per year. A mid-level or leadership giving fundraiser, on the other hand, may have a much larger portfolio and spend much more of their time qualifying/disqualifying prospects to move up into a major gift portfolio or stay with a more mass-outreach approach.

So, why are metrics important?

I set out to understand how our colleagues are using goals and metrics around fundraising activity because I see the importance of having activity data — it tells the story of the work happening throughout the year with donors. I also wanted to see how we as a profession are setting goals to motivate our teams.

While the responses were varied, it is clear that setting goals around donor interactions, meetings and qualifications are common. The goal amounts are probably best determined at the organizational or even individual level, since portfolio sizes and fundraiser roles can vary.

Having baseline data on how your fundraisers work can have tremendous impact on how your leadership sees the fundraising team’s work overall. It can also help your prospect development or analytics department understand what types of activities are having the biggest impact on dollars raised and why. Tracking activities in your CRM is also incredibly valuable institutional knowledge that will create efficiency when onboarding a new fundraiser or when portfolios shift, as well as when there are shared relationships with donors among multiple staff at your organization. Most importantly, having goals and visibility into progress toward reaching them will motivate your fundraisers to achieve their best work and be proud of all that went into reaching your revenue goals.

Help us broaden the data!

As we had a smaller than optimal survey response pool, I welcome further responses so we can show a broader picture of the metrics landscape in the future.

If you are interested in contributing to the survey regarding how you use metrics at your organization, please follow this link. You may also reach out to me with any questions or comments about the data and this topic in general at emily.maple@gtcuw.org. Thank you, and I look forward to connecting!