What Does Your Big Sign Say?
To my tastes, Seth Godin is at his best when he’s at his briefest. Here’s a post of his from the weekend that says something hugely important in a few lines. [I could learn from that!]
The post is titled: Measure what you care about.
“It not always easy to measure what matters,” he says. And that’s when we start to look for ‘stand-ins’.
His point is illustrated by this passage: “Roses, chocolates and greeting cards are a stand-in for actual human emotions, a stand-in for caring and respect and love. But of course, it’s way easier to make the expense on chocolate go up than it is to actually care more.” And he gives a few other examples.
Do we measure minutes spent on a website, or conversions to action?
His caution: “The problem with stand-ins is that they’re almost always not quite right. The stand-in looks good at first, but then employees figure out how to game the system to make the stand-in number go up instead of the thing you’re actually trying to change.”
And finally: “The moment you start heavily investing in making a stand-in number increase, it’s worth taking a minute to look at the big sign hanging over your desk (you do have a big sign, right?) that says what you’re actually seeking to do, the change you’re working to make. Make that go up…”
So, fundraisers, what does the big sign over your desk say?
Hopefully something like: Retention. Lifetime value. Donor Commitment.
Hopefully not something like: Likes or Visits!
What you measure says it all.
Tom
One response to “What Does Your Big Sign Say?”
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Amen Tom and Seth! I am surprised in so many cases as to what is measured. In over 32 years of asking fundraisers what are their three most important reports I have only heard about anything to with donor retention less than 10 times!
Do you think that might equate to retention rates being below 50% for the vast majority of nonprofits engaged in fundraising?