10 Metrics to Track Your Fundraising Campaign Success

Measure your fundraising to succeed.

Nonprofits often follow rules regarding fundraising appeals to maximize their success. For example, industry experts will tell you that personalization is key to stewarding donor relationships. And storytelling is a surefire way to tug at your audience’s heartstrings. However, the most reliable source of information about what works for your nonprofit’s audience is your own data.

Measuring the effectiveness of fundraising campaigns is essential for nonprofits. It will help you understand the strategies that work, optimize future efforts, and ensure proper allocation of resources. Knowing which metrics to track is essential to understanding whether a campaign met its goals, how to plan future campaigns to achieve the greatest success, and optimizing strategies to ensure future campaigns are efficient and effective. 

So, let’s review the essential metrics your nonprofit should follow to track its fundraising success and optimize future campaigns!

1. Core Financial Metrics

Tracking financial data is critical for nonprofits. It helps to ensure responsible fund management. It supports compliance regulations. And it provides a detailed and accurate financial report to donors and grantors. Internally, accurate financial data tracking informs organizational decisions and ensures proper allocation of funds to channels and strategic initiatives that are successfully fueling the mission. 

Core financial metrics include:

• Total funds raised: This refers to the aggregate amount of all financial resources. That means monetary donations and in-kind gifts that the nonprofit organization receives during a specific period. It shows the overall success of a campaign in generating revenue to support the nonprofit’s mission.
• Average donation size: This fundraising metric shows the typical amount donated by a donor within a specific time period or campaign. It’s calculated by dividing the total revenue by the total number of donations. Average donation size can help evaluate donor giving patterns and optimize ask strategies.
• Fundraising return on investment (ROI): This measures the efficiency of fundraising efforts by comparing the money raised to each dollar that was spent. This metric helps measure the cost-effectiveness of the campaign. 

Your fundraising software should automatically gather much of this data for you through its built-in reporting and analytics features. Consider using a platform that offers customized reporting capabilities. Then your team can view its data in the way that makes the most sense to you.

2. Donor Engagement Metrics

Every nonprofit leader knows that fundraising isn’t just about collecting cash from your supporters. It’s about connecting with donors over a shared passion and working together to further your mission.

Tracking donor engagement is crucial for nonprofits to help them understand their engagement efforts’ effectiveness and identify improvement areas. Some channels may show greater engagement than others, and nonprofits need to adjust their efforts and resources to optimize the outreach that follows. 

Donor engagement metrics include:

• Donor retention rate: Your nonprofit’s donor retention rate represents the percentage of your donors who give again. According to CharityEngine, a high retention rate indicates strong donor relationships and sustainable fundraising efforts. A low retention rate suggests your donor engagement and stewardship efforts could be improved.
• Conversion rate: A conversion rate measures the percentage of visitors who have taken a desired action. This metric assesses how successful your website or campaign is at converting interest into action. 
• Email opens and click-through rates (CTR): Email open rates measure the percentage of recipients who open an email. Click-through rates measure the percentage of recipients who click on a link within an email. These metrics indicate how engaging your emails are and can help fine-tune messaging for the future. 
• Social media engagement rate: Social media engagement rate measures how actively an audience is interacting and resonating with your content on a social media platform.

Engagement metrics can look different for each nonprofit. Metrics that may be essential to track for one organization may not be necessary for another. For example, some organizations may diligently track performance metrics for events, such as event registration and attendance. Others may not host events at all as part of their fundraising strategy. Evaluating donor engagement efforts is critical to determine which metrics are the most valuable to track. Plus, it can provide contextual data about donors to best understand what drives their engagement and support for your mission. 

3. Long-Term Impact Metrics

Long-term impact metrics measure the long-term effects that a nonprofit organization’s efforts have on the mission it serves. These metrics focus on lasting outcomes, such as improved literacy rates, increased community health, and overall societal improvements.

Long-term impact metrics include:

• Monthly giving sign-ups: Assessing donor participation after your nonprofit implements a sustained giving program is critical to determining whether your marketing was successful. The more donors who commit to recurring giving, the more sustainable revenue your nonprofit receives.
• Donor lifetime value (DLV): Donor lifetime value estimates the total revenue a donor is predicted to generate for an organization throughout their entire relationship. This helps predict the overall financial impact each donor will have and makes informed decisions about fundraising strategies. 
• Campaign reach vs. goal: Campaign reach refers to the number of individuals who have seen a specific marketing message or advertisement at least once. A campaign goal is the desired outcome or objective that an organization hopes to achieve through its marketing efforts.

By using data to look beyond your present fundraising efforts and ahead toward the long-term impact they’ll have on your mission, you can develop strategies to secure donors’ lasting support.

Understanding ways to optimize your fundraising strategies to appeal to your donors is crucial. Suppose an email campaign reaches a broad audience and has high open rates, but few clicks and overall engagement. The best way to improve and refine your campaign moving forward would be to try different messaging that appeals more to your donors. 

A data-driven approach to fundraising is crucial. You’ll want to measure key metrics such as donor engagement, campaign performance, and return on investment of fundraising efforts. Analyze this data and refine your strategies based on these metrics. Then your organization can maximize its fundraising efforts and focus on creating positive change for the missions you serve.

Philip Schmitz

Phil Schmitz is the founder and CEO of CharityEngine, a complete fundraising platform powering some of the nation’s largest nonprofits and associations. Phil has developed patent-pending anti-fraud tools and industry-leading recurring payment technology that allows nonprofits to retain more sustainer revenue than the industry average; clients have raised nearly $5 billion using these tools. Phil’s passion for leveraging technology to empower nonprofits is supported by more than 20 years of experience in building successful technology and e-commerce companies.