Weโre happy to welcome our very own Carly Berna back to Ask a Responsive Fundraiser. This week, she tackles fundraising metrics, brand refreshing, and using AI in nonprofit work.
Be sure to check out past editions of Ask a Responsive Fundraiser and leave us a comment on LinkedIn so we can answer your questions!
Editorโs note: Carlyโs answers were edited for length and clarity. Watch the video to see her complete answers.
Dear Responsive Fundraiser: We put a lot of effort into our campaigns, but we aren’t sure what’s working and what isn’t. What metrics do you rely on to evaluate the success of a fundraising campaign? And how do you use those metrics to improve future efforts?
Carly Berna: I think that’s a great question. I know in the nonprofit space and the fundraising space, sometimes it feels like there’s so much data. Where do you even start? You could cut the data in so many different ways that it can seem like this campaign is doing great because we got a hundred people to click on it or terrible because no one actually donated.
So first, it’s important to start with, โWhat is the goal?โ Is it an engagement campaign or a it a brand campaign? Is it an Acquisition campaign? Are you trying to get new donors, or a cultivation campaign trying to get current donors to give?
From there, set the goals. I’m going to focus a little bit more on acquisition because I feel like it’s a little bit harder to figure out what the metrics are. Because when you do an acquisition campaign, sometimes the upfront metrics look terrible, and you’re like, โI’m never going to do this again.โ
But then, in the long run, it was a big mistake never to do it again. So, for an acquisition campaign, and again, this is acquiring new donors, whether it’s through digital media or a direct mail campaign or television or radio or whatever channel you’re using, you want to look at a few different metrics.
The first is an upfront ROI. What are you getting upfront? The cost versus the revenue, but you want to tie that to a long-term ROI. So if we want to break even within two years, which is a best practice when it comes to acquisition, we need, and I’m just making up numbers, a 0.3 ROI upfront. The reason that I’m making up numbers for the upfront is because it depends on your average gift. If your nonprofit gets a massive average gift upfront, you don’t need as many donors upfront. Or, if yours gets a smaller average gift, you need more. You need to look at your nonprofit specifically to do that.
And you kind of want to take this like class approach. If these donors came in in 2022, you can go back and look at the history. Now it’s been two years. What’s the ROI of that campaign? So you can get an idea of how long it took for it to break even, but the goal really is to look at both short term and long term, because if you’re only looking at short term and you’re like, โWe’re losing money.โ
You’re going to cut all of that acquisition and then your donors. You’re just not going to be able to fill in the gap as your donors continue to stop giving or your donor retention isn’t as high. Itโs so important to look at both upfront and long-term. I’m going to do like a shameless plug here.
Virtuous has a benchmark report that talks about the seven most important fundraising metrics and it goes through all of these. It explains them in detail, what their descriptions are, and how to actually calculate them. It also gives information on if this is a metric that you should focus on, what are some tactical ways for you to improve?
It’s a shameless plug, but it’s also super helpful and beneficial. And I wish I had something like that as a fundraiser because it’s just a great place to look and ask, โWhat should I be doing to improve this?โ
Dear Responsive Fundraiser: It’s time for our nonprofit to have a brand and messaging refresh. We want to attract more supporters with a fresher look and messaging, but we don’t want to lose existing donors. How do we do that without losing our identity or confusing our existing donors?
CB: I’m going to answer this question with a question. Why do you want to have a brand and messaging refresh?
I feel like sometimes we’re always looking for the new shiny thing. Like, if we just update our logo, everyone’s going to start giving to us because it’s going to be so cool. I would say before you even start doing a brand refresh, ask yourself why, but second, do a brand survey. Do a survey of your donors, even if you can’t afford to hire a research firm to do that, which I would highly recommend that you do. They can come up with questions that aren’t leading and ask your donors exactly how they feel about your brand. Honestly, you might be surprised.
In my old role, we did this, and we asked all sorts of questions. And we thought, โWow, they actually understand our brand better than we thought they did. Maybe we shouldn’t do this whole other brand refresh that we think we’re going to do.โ
You can do it low-fi as well by sending out a basic email survey to some of your donors just to get an idea of the answers to some of these questions. Or, call your major donors and ask them. Listen to your donors before you decide to do a brand refresh because they’re the ones who are going to respond to it.
Dear Responsive Fundraiser: Using AI is coming up more and more now. As a nonprofit, trust and community building are extremely important to us and using AI feels like a bit of a gray area. What should we avoid using AI for at our nonprofit and how can we ethically use it to enhance our donor experience?
CB: This is such a hot topic right now. You know, anything with AI we’re all interested in because we’re not exactly sure how to use it. This might sound obvious to some but not to others who aren’t as familiar with AI and how the tools work: Do not upload anything private to your nonprofit. So, don’t upload donor data even if you’re trying to figure out to calculate some numbers or get a a summary of the data.
Don’t upload your donor data. Don’t upload any donor names. Say you’re asking it, โCan you write this receipt copy for this specific donor?โ I wouldn’t upload any donor names or any proprietary information about your nonprofit, whatever that may be. If it’s something that you don’t want to get out to the public, don’t use AI for that case.
But there are a lot of great ways that nonprofits can use AI, especially with what I’ll call public information. If there’s information publicly, think on your website that you can upload into something like ChatGPT.
Maybe your CEO has written a book, and you want to take the book and write him a script so that he can do a short video about it, or you want to create 10 blogs out of this book. That’s a great way to use AI. The book is public so all that information is already out there. And now you’re hopefully writing a script in his voice. You’re writing the blogs in his voice. That would have taken a writer probably hours to do as they read it and try to write it.
The other thing that I think it’s super helpful forโand this is so technicalโis if you’re working in Excel or you’re working in website development or something, and you run into a technical problem like a formula not working or a line of code keeps breaking. Ask AI. They will answer it much faster than you, even if you Google it. It’s a great source for that.
I also feel like it’s kind of like my brainstorming assistant. If I can’t think of an idea for something, or I just need some fodder, I ask it a question using public information. Like, โThis is the type of organization I work at and we want to create engaging email content. What do you think?โ It could give you 10 answers you hate, and you can just ask it to give you 10 more.
Maybe there’s something in there that you can grab and that would be a great idea. It’s just helpful for a handful of those things. But again, ensure you’re keeping your donor and sensitive data private.
Related: The Future of Grantseeking: Using AI to Save Time and Win More Funding
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