The recent flap over the revision in Giving USA figures for 2008 and 2009 seems a more than a little silly and arcane to us.

As reported last week in The Chronicle of Philanthropy, the annual yearbook of charitable giving (revised) is now saying donations fell by higher percentages in 2009 than at any other time in the past five decades—down by 8% from $304 billion to $270 billion—even though last year the report said that donations in those two years had declined only slightly or held steady.

Fundraising must be the only multi-billion dollar industry in America that puts so much stock and expends so much angst in steering through the rearview mirror. We simply can’t imagine Apple or HP, Mattel or Intel debating sales figures from two years ago, rather than worrying about how 2011 will finish.

Of course historic data are important for researchers and policy makers, but matter little to practitioners … other than justifying performance to the board in terms of “Well, everyone else is down too.”

For those in the trenches there are three sets of numbers that are most important in the ‘here and now’… and probably in this order of importance:

1)    What do my own numbers look like up against my projections?

2)    How are we doing compared to our nearest competitors or others in the sector?

3)    What’s in store down the road for my sector and me?

One of the reasons we’re fans of Target Analytics National Index of Fundraising Performance and especially their more recent offline and online Index of Charitable Giving and Index of Online Giving is that they provide last month’s figures, not last year’s. And they let you see how groups in your sector are faring. Even better, their figures are based on actual giving, not econometric models.

But, even the Target Analytics Indices reflect the past, albeit a much more recent past than the historic Giving USA’s reports.

What about the future? Months ago we alerted Agitator readers to the Atlas of Giving which not only reports on giving-to-date, but forecasts the likely fundraising outcomes in future quarters.

For example in April, The Atlas reported that giving was up 8.1% in the first quarter of 2011, but forecast it would hit the skids beginning this month and end the year with only a 3.8% increase over 2010.

While it’s unlikely there will ever be a master database that collects timely giving information from 1.5 million nonprofits with accuracy, we sure applaud the efforts of the folks at Target Analytics to report the present, as well as the analysts at The Atlas of Giving, who are combining a view of the present and future. They’re using solid methodology like that used in other accepted national benchmarks, e.g. retail sales and national unemployment, that have long provided reliable estimates.

Because of its long history of continuity, Giving USA has an important role to play in research and policy, but for practitioners it’s wise to take a leaf from the history book of weather forecasting.

Until September 8, 1900, the National Weather Bureau mostly measured weather.  Everything changed on that fateful day when as many as 12,000 were killed in Galveston, Texas in a devastating hurricane—the largest loss of life to a natural disaster in U.S. history.

As a result, the National Weather Bureau changed its focus from measuring to forecasting, for the obvious reason that reliable forecasting would save lives — and as this spring’s tornadoes proved, it certainly has.

It’s time for our sector to start paying far more serious attention to understanding the present and forecasting the future, even while better measuring the past.

Roger and Tom

P.S.  In future posts we’ll to take a deeper dive into all this in an effort to explain more about indexing and forecasting and how to make the most of what’s out there in the market.