David M. Lawson and Jay Goulart, WOW! Institute

How do we know if a fundraising effort has been successful? You might say that’s an easy question because the answer is whether you reached or exceeded your dollar goal. The problem with this one-dimensional answer is that it can lead you to believe that all is well when in fact the truth is far different.

Have you ever reached your fundraising goal, but still found your organization cash-poor? Have you found yourself surprised when donors you thought for sure would come through again didn’t?

In uncertain times like we find ourselves in today we often discover the impact of things like donor perceptions, satisfaction, and happiness. As corporations have found, long-term success depends in no small part on their ability to measure the intangible reasons that create customer loyalty.

Look no further than General Motors to see what happens when you think that dollar-volume is how you measure your success. It took decades for GM to wake-up to the reality that consumers wanted reliability, style, and fuel economy. GM kept saying “look at how many cars we are selling” in the face of increasing dissatisfaction about those same cars.

In our world we are seeing long established non-profit organizations making this same mistake as they measure themselves by the total money raised rather than by what is important to their donors. What is the result of this bottom-line-only focus? A recently released study by Campbell Rinker, The Great American Donor Survey, found that only 13 percent of donors said their experience as a donor exceeded their expectations.

This should not surprise anyone. Donors could not care less about whether you reached your goal or not. What they want is to know that their dollars made the difference that they wanted to make. They want to know that organizations are using their money effectively.

If you are going to exceed your donors’ expectations you need to incorporate qualitative measurements that start to illuminate the intangible reasons you are succeeding, holding your own, or perhaps failing. An example for a group involved in advocacy would be to not just measure how many advocacy actions were taken, but to look at how people feel about the experience of using your advocacy tools; what they think of the effectiveness of your approach; or whether they are satisfied with the results.

An often-cited reason for not having qualitative measures is they are too subjective. People will say that dollars and activities are more accurate because they can be consistently measured over time. How can you trust qualitative data when people are often sharing their feelings and opinions?

The answer can be found in your own life. Think for a moment about your favorite restaurant, the one you would recommend to a friend without hesitation. What are your reasons?

• Because they need your business?
• The price of the food?
• Friends go there too?
• The convenience of the location?
• Because it was voted the best restaurant in town?
• The quality of the food?
• They have your favorite dish?
• The quality of service?
• The atmosphere?

Why might a donor support your organization with enthusiasm and not hesitate to tell a friend to do the same?

• Because you need the money?
• The ask amount?
• Because they have supported you before?
• Your mission matches their interests?
• Your low cost of fundraising?
• The effectiveness of your mission?
• The experience of giving to your organization?
• The stewardship they have received?

The answer to both questions is of course a combination of factors which are both quantitative and qualitative. The secret for measuring fundraising success is finding the right combination of quantitative and qualitative factors on which to focus.

Take a look at the fundraising effort you are working on right now. Ask yourself why someone would or would not support it. Perhaps it is an e-mail campaign that has a link to a video. The quantifiable measurements include how many people clicked on the link, followed by how many people who clicked on the link also subsequently donated. The qualitative measurement would be whether people who viewed the video liked it, or didn’t, and why. Remember that it is critical that you ask clear questions about why they liked it or why they didn’t. Your goal is to ascertain why people who liked the video followed with a specific behavior vs. why the people who did not like your video behaved the way they did.

As multi-channel fundraising becomes standard practice it is has become even more imperative that we measure intangibles because it turns out that people who support organizations in more than one channel are more likely to stop giving when something goes wrong. To bring it back to your own life again, think of your close friends and then think of people who you know more casually, perhaps through business. What is it about your close friends that causes you to keep them in your life? Is it the number of times they call you or the amount of money they loan you? I’m guessing it is a combination of things that are more feelings than facts while with your casual friends it may well be more quantitative including referrals they have given you or information they have provided or perhaps even money.

Now think of why friendships and relationships have ended and you will discover the biggest reason to measure qualitative intangible factors. Significant friendships and relationships often end because one or both parties fail to understand the underlying reasons they exist in the first place. It might be trust or a feeling of being treated unfairly, but in the end it does not come down to a number. The same is true of our best donors. They will stop supporting your organization not because of a number not being reached, but rather because they don’t feel valued, understood and/or appreciated. And all of these feelings could come from the simple problem of having an e-mail ask whether they want future correspondence sent via e-mail only and then receiving a direct-mail appeal a month later.

What are the rewards of focusing on the intangible reasons people support you? Your retention rate, and the corresponding life-time value, of your donors will dramatically increase. This will translate not only into top-line results, but more importantly to your mission, it will mean a much healthier bottom-line. Toyota is poised to become the number one automobile company in the world in no small part because of its ability to keep customers and they keep them by exceeding their expectations.

If there was a “Best Non-Profits to Give To”, and the winners were selected by measuring the experience of donors, where would your organization rank? It is time to move beyond the acquisition mind-set that created an environment where donors give in spite of, not because of, the experience. If you want a quantifiable goal, how about the majority of your donors having their expectations exceeded?