What a difference a simple calculation can make. When I ask the question, “How many monthly donors do you have?” fundraisers typically know that number. But then when I ask how much they’re worth, fundraisers sometimes struggle to answer. Or they only look at the monthly gifts, so it doesn’t seem that powerful.
That’s why I created the Monthly_Donor_Annualizer. You can download it as excel. Here’s what it looks like:
Credit: Erica Waasdorp, A Direct Solution
You can use it in two ways:
- To calculate the total value of your monthly donors for the year
- To calculate what the amount of money is that you can spend to generate a new sustainer
Now, you may say: ”That’s great, but not all sustainers stay for a year.” I’ll argue on the other hand, many of them will stay for at least two years, five years and many even much longer than that. So annualizing is a good way to look at the total value, but I know some nonprofits that calculate two-year values or five-year values, especially those that use more expensive channels to generate new sustainers.
How much your monthly donors give is a combination of the way your monthly donors were acquired, their initial value and the efforts you put in to cultivate them, upgrade them and keep them during the year!
Retention is crucial, but yet so many nonprofits don’t realize its importance. That’s why a simple tracker can make a huge difference. I created the Monthly Donors At Risk Annualizer. If you look at that, you’ll see that it’s totally worth spending a bit of time and a few emails, letters and phone calls to keep them.
Credit: Erica Waasdorp, A Direct Solution
Yes, you can make it really complicated as some channels (like direct mail, email and telemarketing) retain at higher levels than face-to-face monthly donors for example, but a number of other variables, such as your number of donors, your number of email names, cultivation, retention, extra gift efforts, etc., all enter into the picture. Not to mention higher engagement in email, extra gift opportunities, legacy gifts and so on. Every monthly donor plan is tailored for your organization.
But you can use this Monthly_Donor_Annualizer as a way to keep it simple: Annualize the value of your monthly donors in everything you do, and you’ll know their power. And you’ll be even more excited to grow this group of really loyal donors.
First posted by NonProfitPro on June 16, 2020.
