Donor Centricity: How Do You Measure It?

2. New donor growth: This one is not so obvious, right? Well, let's look at it this way — being donor-centric is not about only focusing on what happens when the donors come to the organization. In fact, I would argue the reason you want to be donor-centric is to grow your position in the marketplace. You want to separate yourself in the competitive landscape within your nonprofit's subsector. This starts with how you appeal to the general marketplace and make your case for financial support. So, you must have metrics around new donor growth, which should include not just the quantity but the quality of the new donor by looking at initial value and longer-term value. It's also important to measure the improvement in these metrics from the pre-donor-centric strategy to make sure the strategy is working. Are your metrics actually changing from one campaign to another — one year to another?

3. Competitive metrics: Not that I'm ever going to say that every organization should be involved in benchmarking, but if you are really putting effort and energy behind being donor-centric, you should take time to compare yourself to other organizations. I mentioned it above in a general way, but the benchmark opportunities out there give you a way to compare your growth across your sector. This is a critical way of looking externally in an easy way. As a side note, I would pay close attention to what your direct competitors talk about at conferences and in meetings. If you know specific organizations are really pushing a donor-centric agenda, then you will want to compare your organization to that one in some of these key metrics (new to file growth, retention, etc..

4. Donor satisfaction: Yep, I said it. Of all the metrics I have seen and talked about over the years, this seems to be the one that gets the most "eye rolls." I'll be brief, but do not take that to mean it is unimportant. You need some way of understanding how people feel about your brand. This should not be confused with brand measurement or even brand clarity metrics (aided/unaided awareness, etc.). Becoming donor-centric is about making the marketing and fundraising relationship more about the donor and better for the donor. So, yes, you need to know if that is actually happening. Whether you want to look at loyalty metrics, satisfaction metrics or some other metric, they key is to actually ask donors for their personal opinions and then measure the change in those opinions over time.