Why generate fundraising reports? - Part Two

Fundraising reports can help you realise how much donor attrition or downgraded giving is costing your charity and motivate you to do something about it. In other words, fundraising reports that measure fundraising performance can enable you and others in your charity to find out how much money your charity is losing through donor attrition and gift downgrades. Also, to find out how many donors have stopped giving or are giving less than they did last year.  

A case study   


A recent analysis of a client’s donor files through our Fundraising Fitness Test revealed that in 2007 for every £5 received from renewing and new donors the charity lost £3 from lapsed and downgrading donors. This means that their net gain was only £2!  


We also noted that for every three donors that the charity was bringing in through new donor acquisition activities – two donors were leaving the charity taking with them valuable contributions they could have made. So, in reality the charity was only acquiring 1 rather than 3 donors and the real cost of acquisition (including the value of the lapsed donors) was much higher than the initial ROI of new donor acquisition activities.  


In my opinion, successful fundraisers are constantly measuring new donor acquisition efforts, as well as donor attrition and downgrades. In addition to this, they are doing something by way of donor reactivation and upgrading mailings to reduce the number of lapsed and downgrading donors.  


To find out how your charity can benefit from our Fundraising Fitness Test email:redina(at)mcconkey-johnston.co.uk