What Is Growth in Giving? Plus, How to Use It to Support Organizational Sustainability
Growth in Giving is a high-level metric that allows your organization to understand the overall success of its fundraising program.
While many non-profit organizations are focused on raising money year-over-year and use this measurement to determine success, this fails to provide an analysis of historic performance and prevents accurate projections and “what-if scenarios.” For example, has your organization performed positively over the past 5 years? What would happen if you secured an additional $50 from your most loyal donors each year for the next 5 years?
Another factor that organizations must consider when analyzing their fundraising position and strategizing for the future is inflation. While typical methods of measurement fail to account for inflation, the Growth in Giving metric allows you to easily determine if your fundraising efforts are outpacing inflation. For example, while you may raise $100,000 more this year than last, if you’re not at least outpacing inflation, what implications does this have for your non-profit?
How to Calculate Your Growth in Giving Rate
Resources provided through the Fundraising Effectiveness Project allow you to find your organizations’ Growth in Giving rate, as well as review the global metric to determine how your non-profit compares with other organizations. Click here to download free templates to conduct your Fundraising Fitness Test and find your Growth in Giving rate.
3 Strategies to Improve Your Growth in Giving Metric
Growth in Giving provides the high-level overview required to make fundraising decisions. Once you understand your current Growth in Giving, you can implement various initiatives to increase your rate.
Ask Current Donors to Give More
Use personalized communications to connect with your donors, exemplify your organizational outcomes, and request a larger donation amount. Consistently increasing donations from existing donors year-over-year will not only increase your total funds raised but also improve your Growth in Giving Rate.
Bring in New Donors at a Higher Level
Design your donation levels and packages to attract first-time donors at a higher level. You can implement this by testing your donation webpage copy and recommended donations, restructuring the suggested donations on your print materials, and explaining the impact of donations near each fundraising level.
Start a Monthly Giving Program
People tend to give more when they can divide a gift over time; therefore, monthly giving programs are a great way to increase your organization’s Growth in Giving.
About the author
Michael J. Buckley, CFRE is a career fundraising professional and Founder and Managing Partner of The Killoe Group. His firm assists nonprofit organizations increase revenue, exposure and capacity through smart, data driven, successive decisions and effective planning. Mike’s experience and passion for the profession of fundraising have made him a sought-after speaker, consultant and presenter. The Killoe Group’s broad experiences include annual campaign audits and management, capital campaign leadership, feasibility studies, interim program leadership, board governance, strategic planning and capacity building.