Measuring success outside of financial goals

Suzanne Jensen 2

How do you measure success of your fundraising efforts other than financials and solicitor performance?

Faith Murray

Response rate is one important metric besides financials. For direct mail, you would divide number of responders by number of pieces sent, and depending on the type of mailing, aim to get between a 1% - 9% response rate. For emails, you would calculate similarly but with a different percentage goal.


Development work reaches beyond mere fundraising to include other important activities such as communicating your message, building your brand, educating the community, engaging people, and then upgrading them by building loyalty. Aside from revenue and response, other important metrics are number of donors and overall retention - how many stay on from year to year. If your donor count is growing, you are doing well at communicating and reaching out to new people. If your average gift is increasing, you are doing a good job upgrading current donors. If your response percent increases, or if your number of volunteer hours increases, you are doing a good job of engaging people. You can even send out donor surveys to gauge their understanding of your mission, to see if you are doing a good job educating people. Lots of ways.