KPIs out of Raiser's Edge 7

Jessica Smith 2

I know there are a bunch of fancy schmancy bells and whistles around KPIs in RE NXT, but we're still on Raiser's Edge 7. Has anyone else using RE7 successfully come up with good reports for their organization's KPIs? If so, would you be willing to share what KPIs you're reporting on and what you use to generate that data consistently?

Ryan Hyde

The most useful one that I use is called a Coverage Ratio, and it's something I hope to be talking about at BBCON this year (we'll see!). It's not my idea - plenty of donor analytics firms and consultants talk about it (just do a google search), but it's one I don't feel like I see utilized enough.


Essentially, a coverage ratio lets you know how healthy, in terms of donor volume, your donor pool is. The metaphor to use here is that of a leaky bucket: donors are always streaming out of the bucket, and we're trying to fill in the bucket as best as we can to make up for the loss. Ideally we want our bucket to remain just as full or to increase in volume year after year.


To calculate a coverage ratio, you need to know 3 numbers

1. # of new donors in a given year
2. # of reactivated donors in a year
3. # of lapsed donors in a year

To get these three numbers, you first have to define for yourself and your organization what a lapsed donor is. How long do they have to go between gifts to be considered lapsed? It's easiest to use a 12 month window, but at my org, we see tons of donors who often go 13-16 months between gifts. They're still active, but sometimes they just slip a little. So when I pull these numbers, I consider lapsed donors as donors who have gone 18 months between gifts. 


Once you've decided that number for yourself, it's time to pull the three numbers.

1. new donors are easy to calculate. You can query on them or run a new donor report. If you set your filters/criteria correctly, the numbers should match regardless of how you pull them. I might suggest writing a query AND using a report just to make sure your numbers do match, and if they don't, figure out why. It's a good opportunity to learn how to accurately pull data.
2. Calculating reactivated donors can be difficult. I use a query with three "cumulative number of gifs" criteria that look like this:
   1. Donors who gave in the last 18 months
   2. Who have also NOT given in the 18 months previous to this 18 months
   3. But who HAVE given some time prior to the 18 month period before THIS 18 month period
3. Calculating lapsed donors is easier than reactivated donors. Just say:
   1. Donor did not give in this time period
   2. Donor DID give in the time period before this time period (so in my case, they DID give in the 18 months prior to this 18 months)

Then you just do some simple math: (New + Reactivated) / Lapsed = Ratio


The ratio should be represented as a %, and ideally its at 100% or higher. 100% means you have maintained donor volume, where as anything above 100% means you've gained in donor volume. And thusly, anything below 100% means you've decreasd donor volume.


Once you have a system for doing this, you can reach back in time and calculate your ratio for any given year and chart your change over time.


The reason this is such a powerful tool (as opposed to just looking at and comparing total number of donors year after year), is that it suggests various fundraising strategies, like:

• How can I get more new donors? (and is it worth it to put more money into this?)
• How can I reactivate lapsed donors? (and since I have a query, I can target this group)
• How can I try to prevent donors from lapsing more effectively?

So that's why I like this metric: it's meaningful, it's easy to visualize, and it forces you to consider strategies that may never have occurred to you to begin with.

Daniel Bayer

I did something similar to Ryan (although not quite as fancy) for years. I created a MASSIVE Excel workbook that tracked new/lapsed/reactivated donors as well as donors in different constituencies and at certain giving amounts. It was a bear and I hated doing it.


Now, I use AFP's Growth-In-Giving report and I never hesitate to recommend it to anyone. All you have to do is pull out a list of gift amounts, dates, and constituent IDs (being careful about your soft credits), and paste them into the first page of their workbook (which you can find, along with other resources, here), then click the "run" button and wait for it to process. After a while, it fills in all sorts of KPIs, some of which are useful and some of which are not. It's a tremendous resource, and I often use it to cherry-pick interesting pieces of data for the weekly fundraising report that I send to our Board and department staff.

Catherine Han

Daniel Bayer:

I did something similar to Ryan (although not quite as fancy) for years. I created a MASSIVE Excel workbook that tracked new/lapsed/reactivated donors as well as donors in different constituencies and at certain giving amounts. It was a bear and I hated doing it.


Now, I use AFP's Growth-In-Giving report and I never hesitate to recommend it to anyone. All you have to do is pull out a list of gift amounts, dates, and constituent IDs (being careful about your soft credits), and paste them into the first page of their workbook (which you can find, along with other resources, here), then click the "run" button and wait for it to process. After a while, it fills in all sorts of KPIs, some of which are useful and some of which are not. It's a tremendous resource, and I often use it to cherry-pick interesting pieces of data for the weekly fundraising report that I send to our Board and department staff.

 

Hi Daniel:


What kind of fundraising reports do your sent to your department staff and board weekly and yearly? Can you share  some information?


Catherine