Stay The Course Or Step Change Fundraising?
Yes, there are some ‘uncontrollables’ that will influence your fundraising success in 2014 — consumers’ confidence about their economic well-being, major breaking events/tragedies (political or natural), and of course the extent to which you laid proper groundwork (or failed to) in 2013.
Still, in no small part, your nonprofit’s fundraising performance in 2014 will be determined by the choices you make, starting right now in January.
Have you identified and ranked your biggest opportunities or most urgent needs for improvement? What innovations will be required to get the results you want?
Will you be looking to maximize net income this year, or invest in growth?
Will you be giving higher priority to improving retention or to boosting acquisition?
Are you planning to ‘stay the course’, tweaking here and there, satisfied with incremental gains? Or are you looking for a ‘step change’ in performance, which will require innovation and more substantial change in approach, priorities, organization-wide commitment, and even talent acquisition?
There’s no silver bullet answer for what’s best for your organization — given unique marketing opportunities, investment resources, organizational life stage — although as you’ve heard from Roger and me with insistence, you can’t go wrong improving retention!
But we can at least help you base your planning on the correct performance measures. Roger calls them ‘value metrics’ and explains them in detail here. They are:
- Number of New Donors Making Second Gift.
- Number of New Donors Retained Into the Second Year.
- Multiple Year Retention Rates.
- Lifetime Value of a Donor (LTV).
- Donor Commitment.
If you focus on improving your performance against these measures, you cannot go wrong. And you won’t get fired in 2014!
Tom
P.S. You can tell by this post’s title that Roger and I are hoping to see some Agitator readers set your sights on step-change in 2014. If that’s you’re goal, we’re in your corner … tell us what you have in mind.
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