You have two canvassers recruiting recurring donors for your nonprofit: Jack and Diane. (Names changed to protect innocent and guilty alike; all statistics are real.)

Jack brought in 88 donors in your latest canvassing campaign. Diane brought in 72 donors. Traditionally, that’s how canvassers would be measured: Jack brought in 25% more donors; he is the better canvasser. Because you pay per donor, your canvassing agency is happier with Jack than with Diane.

Six months later, your organization looks at the donor retention rates by canvasser. Diane’s donors are retaining at a 95% rate. Jack’s donors are at 58%.

As an organization, you realize you paid your canvassing agency 25% more to get 25% fewer donors (at the six-month mark) from Jack. His donors will (extrapolating out some) have less than half the value of Diane’s donors in the long-term.

In short, Jack is a win for your agency and a loss for you. If you had your way, Jack would have been retrained, probably by Diane.

But at the time of acquisition, you didn’t know Jack.

How could you have spotted that Jack would be a face-to-face disaster? Well, demographic modelers would tell you to look at ages – younger donors are less likely to retain. But Jack only recruited 35% more people under 34 than Diane – hardly significant when you remember he recruited 25% more donors overall. Diane also recruited a few more women, but the difference in retention by gender was 69% for the women and 66% for the men. Also not a huge difference.

How about average gift? Hardly any difference.

The difference was in the donors’ commitment to the organization. On a 10-point scale, Diane’s donors were above an eight. Jack’s hovered around six. That difference in commitment explains a great deal. And it’s a piece of information this organization is collecting at time of acquisition.

They can model around it. They can train their canvassers from it. They can create a crystal ball that tells them who will pay back when and what they can do about it.

And, now that I’ve buried the lede sufficiently, here it is: this works for any acquisition strategy, not just face-to-face.

Replace Jack and Diane in the above story with the control and test acquisition packages. Or the control and test telemarketing scripts. Or search versus display advertising.

By measuring commitment at point of acquisition, you can determine what acquisition means are going to bring you the best donors and adjust on the fly.

In my younger and more foolish days, I switched to a premium-driven acquisition package in the mail because the cost-to-acquire was so much lower. It took well over a year to realize that the donors who were coming in the door weren’t retaining. Over a year of heading down, then paving, a path to nowhere.

So now, I’m proud to shout this from the rooftops: you can measure your acquisition strategy not just by cost, but by how donors will retain. All using commitment.