3 key fundraising operation metrics to track

Fundraisers are accustomed to tracking and reporting on progress toward financial goals. But do you track any metrics related to your own work? If you’re looking to get a better sense of your workload and fundraising operations, identify and start tracking some key pieces of information for yourself. Doing so may reveal opportunities to improve systems. It may also help you plan for time periods with a high volume of work. Need some ideas to get started?

Here are 3 key fundraising operation metrics to track:

How many gifts from last week have not yet been acknowledged?

Do you find that a high number of gifts are routinely not acknowledged in the week they are received? If so, it may be time to streamline your acknowledgments process. Or, perhaps your organization needs to allocate additional staff resources to accomplish this work. Little Green Light customers can quickly see any unacknowledged gifts by referring to the Unacknowledged Gifts queue in their account.
Note: You can pick a time period that suits your particular organization if a week doesn’t feel right for your operations.

How many one-to-one interactions have staff or board from your organization had with donors this month?

Building relationships is key to retaining donors and boosting support for your organization. And, tracking personal interactions will enable your organization to steward donors effectively. If you’re using Little Green Light, your organization can utilize contact reports to document these interactions. That way, you’ll be able to track how many contact reports are added in a specific time period. Do you find that few or none are added? That’s an indicator to prioritize those interactions and/or to get in the habit of documenting them in your organization’s donor management system.

How many gifts did you process last month?

This is an important fundraising operation metric. It gives insight into the volume of work that is required of your development office in a given time period. Use this information to plan your tasks strategically so you can complete other work before your time is dominated by gift processing. For example, if a grant application is due in the midst of that period, you can plan to focus on it early so the bulk of the work is done in advance.

Conclusion

Keeping an eye on key information related to your routine fundraising operations work will help you make necessary improvements in your systems and manage your time more effectively. And that in turn will help you fundraise more successfully.