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Fundraising
buoyant but no room for complacency
By Sean Triner
 Recent research
shows that fundraising revenue continues to rise, but charities can
still improve by learning from others. Sean Triner reports.
The fundraising market remains buoyant according to recent
analysis of the 14 charities involved in the Pareto benchmarking
project. The top line findings show that fundraising revenue grew
by around 13% for the participating charities, from almost $160
million in 2005 to just over $180 million in 2006.
While this is encouraging for nonprofits in general, the lessons
learned from the analysis are helping some charities to modify
fundraising strategy and hopefully improve their results.
Regular Giving on the Up
Understanding where and how growth is occurring is important,
and regular giving continues to be one of the fundraising methods
seeing increases in income.
Total revenue from regular giving for the 14 charities increased
from $59.3 million in 2005 to $69.2 million in 2006, a 16.7%
increase. The average regular gift is still around $23 a month (it
has varied between $20.50 and $22.50 for the previous eight
years).
Understanding where growth is coming from has been a key insight
for Karen Miller, fundraising manager at The Benevolent
Society.
“The Benevolent Society is one of the oldest charities in
Australia, but we have had a solid base of government funding which
has meant we have not invested in some fundraising areas –
including regular giving,” she said.
“Even though our database is small [representing 0.2% of the
660,662 active donors in the benchmarking project] I was able to
use the evidence from benchmarking to support a case for investment
in regular giving. It can take a few years for regular giving
to be profitable – but the benchmarking helped me to see that it is
the single biggest growth driver from individual donors.”
Lost Dogs Tweak First-Time Donor Strategy
The Lost Dogs’ Home has also used the benchmarking data to
adjust its fundraising program. Its customer relations management
(CRM) strategy has been recognised as one of the best around.
However, after comparing its results with other charities, the
organisation saw an opportunity to make changes to the way it deals
with first-time donors.
“We could see we were doing really well against the others in
most of the key benchmarks – but the number of first-time donors
renewing with a second gift was 48%,” said Kate Hoelter,
fundraising manager at The Lost Dogs’ Home. “This was
pretty middle-of-the-road compared to the benchmarked group so we
introduced a ‘new donor’ engagement device and pack.”
“We’ve already had a 7.5% response rate to the “engagement
conversion” pack, which is just fabulous, and we are looking
forward to continuing this new practice.”
So while it seems that nonprofits are generally enjoying
increased revenue from fundraising, there are always opportunities
for further improvement – you just need to know where they are!
Sean Triner, Co-Founder and Director
Pareto Group of Companies:
Pareto Fundraising, Pareto Phone, Pareto Works
www.paretofundraising.com
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