Watch the fundraising metrics that matter

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06 August 2013

Watch the fundraising metrics that matter

I always get asked, "What percentage of response should I be getting?"

I never have an answer, because that's one of those "How long is a piece of string?" questions. There's no simple, universally true answer that's at all meaningful.

Anyway, response percentage isn't one of the more important indicators you should be focusing on. The Agitator, reveals some that matter a lot more, at Focus On Fundraising Metrics That Really Matter. These are file-health numbers that help you understand whether you're growing or shrinking:

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).

Watch these numbers if you want to know what's really going on with your fundraising program.

Posted by Jeff Brooks on 06 August 2013 at 07:18 | Permalink

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The future of fundraising is not about social media, online video, or SEM. It's not about any technology, medium, or technique. It's about donors. If you need to raise funds from donors, you need to study them, respect them, and build everything you do around them. And the future? It's already here. More.

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Jeff Brooks has been serving the nonprofit community for more than 30 years and blogging about it since 2005. He considers fundraising the most noble of pursuits and hopes you'll join him in that opinion. You can reach him at jeff [at] jeff-brooks [dot] com. More.

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