Measuring Success

Benevon provides several instruments to help you measure your fundraising progress. You can use Next Step to gather much of the data that you need to fill out these forms - making your Benevon reporting experience easier and less time-consuming.

Form for Success (FFS)

Preparation

When you start the process of retrieving information from Next Step to complete your Form for Success, we recommend that you set up a new Query Category to store the queries that you will be customizing specifically for this year’s Form for Success. If you do this, you will be able to rerun the queries at a later time, and should expect to get the same results.

Note: If you are not yet familiar with the processes involved in customizing queries in eTapestry, now would be a great time to check out the on-line training and help that come with Next Step. For in-person assistance, contact the training group at eTapestry.

To complete the Form for Success, you will need to create two Multiple-Year Giving Society Member Queries, one for this year (after the Ask Event) and one for last year. The only difference between these queries will be the date range that you select.

Identifying the correct date range

A constituent is considered to be a member of the Multiple-Year Giving Society at a given date if he or she has given a Multiple-Year Giving Society pledge within the previous five years.

Since most organizations receive most of their Multiple-Year Giving Society donations at the Ask Event, we recommend that you use the date of the Ask Event as the end of your year.

To get the date range for This Year’s Multiple-Year Giving Society query, calculate the date 5 years prior to the beginning of the Form for Success date range as the Start Date. To be sure to capture any Ask Event gifts that may have been recorded after this year’s Ask Event, you may want to add a few weeks or a month to the end date of the Form for Success date range to get the End Date.

Creating the Query

To create the query, open the Form for Success Query Category that you created in step 1) and select New Query on the Tasks pane.

Modify the new query as follows:

  1. Select All Household Accounts in the Data Return Type field. This will make sure that all members of a household that have given a Multiple-Year Giving Society gift are included in the results.
  2. Select Defined Fields from the pull-down list in the Available Fields section. This will cause the list of Defined Fields to appear beneath the pull-down box.
  3. Click on Transaction UDF on the list of Defined Fields. This will cause the transaction defined fields to appear on the Criteria section of the page.
  4. Click the name of the field you use to identify which gifts are associated with the Multiple-Year Giving Society. Select all of the values associated with the Multiple-Year Giving Society levels.
  5. Select Date from the pull-down list in the Available Fields section. This will cause the list of available Dates to appear beneath the pull-down box.
  6. Click on Journal Entry Date on the list of Dates. This will cause the Journal Entry Date field to appear on the Criteria section of the page.
  7. Enter the Start Date and End Date that you calculated for this query into the Journal Entry Date range.

Select Preview from the pull-down menu on the Tasks pane, and click the Save And button to run the query.

The number of Multiple-Year constituent accounts identified by the query will be displayed at the top of the query results. Keep track of the number of constituents for each query – you will use that information to calculate several values on the Form for Success.

Start by making a copy of the query template Benevon Ask Events/ Ask Event yyyy/mm Gifts in the Query Category you made to store this information.

Modify the copy as follows:

  1. In the Criteria section, check the Approach used to designate your Ask Event. Be sure to uncheck the default option “Benevon Ask Event yyyy/mm”.
  2. Limit the results to Gifts and Pledges (not payments) by selecting the Journal option in the Available Fields pull-down and selecting Journal Entry Types. In the Criteria section, select all Gift and Pledge types that you use, but do not select Payment.

Select Preview from the pull-down on the Tasks section, and click on Save And to run the query. The number of constituents at this Ask Event will appear at the top of the query results.

Start by making a copy of the Ask Event Gift query that you created in step 3) in the Query Category you made to store this information.

Change the Data Return Type to All Household Accounts. This will ensure that all members of a donating household are included in the list.

Select Preview from the pull-down on the Tasks section, and click on Save And to run the query. The number of donors at this Ask Event will appear at the top of the query results.

I. Point of Entry Events

  1. Total Number of POEs your organization has held since the Ask Event FFS POE Guests
  2. Total Number of Ambassadors that brought ten people to a POE in the last 12 months. (This information can be found by running the Ambassador/POE Attendee Report, included in all Next Step databases created after September 2011. If your database does not contain this query, please contact your account executive to discuss a using a data service to create this query.)
  3. Total number of actual POE guests prior to the Ask Event FFS POE Guests

• Have you had a minimum of 1 POE per month?

• Number of POE guests your organization has each month FFS POE Guests

• Number and Percent of POE Guests who referred others to a POE FFS POE Referrals

• Number of months between most recent workshop and most recent Ask Event

• Total Number of POEs held between Ask Events FFS POE Guests

II. Follow-Up

  1. Number and percent of guests who received Follow-Up Calls (or received phone messages) FFS Follow-Up
  2. Do you have a sustainable tracking system used by everyone in the process to track all donor contacts?

• Average Number of days within which Follow-Up Calls are made after a POE FFS Follow-Up

III. Ask Event Guests

  1. Total actual Ask Event attendees FFS Ask Event Guests
  2. Number and percent of Ask Event guests who had attended prior POEs FFS Ask Event Guests

• Number and percent of expected guests who failed to attend Ask Event FFS Ask Event Guests

IV. Ask Event Table Captains

  1. Percent of Table Captains who have served as Ambassadors in the year prior to the Ask Event. (To find this information, run a compound query to find the cross over between the Table Captain Query, found in the Benevon Initial Contact category, and the Number of Ambassadors Query, found in the New Benevon Queries category. If your database does not contain this query, please contact your account executive to discuss a using a data service to create this query.)
  2. Number and percent of Table Captains who were staff members FFS Table Captain Staff

• Starting number/Final number of Table Captains and percent attrition FFS Table Captain Attrition

• Number and percent of Table Captains who attended a POE FFS Table Captain POE

• Number and percent of Table Captains who became Multiple Year Giving Society Members for the first time, or increased their existing pledge or renewed for five more years FFS Table Captain Donations

V. Ask Event Results (consolidated for this year)

  1. Number and percent of guests who made a financial contribution at Ask Event FFS Ask Event Pledges
  2. Number and percent of first time donors to the organization FFS First Time Donors
  3. Average gift from a guest who had attended a prior POE FFS Average Gift-Prior POE
  4. Average gift from a guest who had not attended a prior POE FFS Average Gift-No POE
  5. Multiple-Year Giving Society Members
    e.i-e.iv. Ask Event Donations by Giving Level
    e.v. Total number and percent of new first-time Multiple Year Giving Society Members (excluding leadership/challenge gift) FFS First Time MYGS Members
  6. Number, percent and total amount of all other gifts of < $1,000 x 5 years (including pledges) FFS Other Gifts
  7. SUBTOTAL OF ALL ASK EVENT $ RAISED (sum of $ values in V.e. and V.f.)

VI. Ask Event Sponsorship/Leadership/Challenge Gifts

  1. Dollar amount of event sponsorship FFS Sponsorship
  2. Dollar amount of challenge/leadership gift(s) pledged or received related to Ask Event (not previously counted in Ask Event results) FFS Major Gifts
  3. SUBTOTAL DOLLAR AMOUNT OF SPONSORSHIP AND MAJOR GIFTS (sum of values in VI.a. and VI.b.)

VII. Overall Ask Event Results

  1. Total dollars raised related to Ask Event (sum of V.g. and VI.c. above)

VIII. Major Gifts/Capital/Endowment

  1. $ amount of major gifts pledged or received (not previously counted in Ask Event Results) FFS Major Donations
  2. $ amount of capital gifts pledged or received (not previously counted in Ask Event Results) FFS Capital Donations
  3. $ amount of endowment gifts pledged or received (not previously counted in Ask Event Results) FFS Endowment Donations
  4. Subtotal: (sum of VIII.a-c. above)

IX. TOTAL $ RAISED FROM USE OF BENEVON MODEL THIS YEAR

(Sum of VII.a. and VIII.d above)

  1. Number and Percent increase in total dollars raised from individuals over the last year.

X. Cultivation

  1. Number of Free Feel-Good Cultivation Events you have each year
  2. Number and percent of Multiple-Year Giving Society Members who attended at least one Free Feel-Good Cultivation Event last year FFS FFGCE Attendance
  3. Number of in-person or phone cultivation contacts you had with each Multiple-Year Giving Society Member last year FFS MYGSD Contacts
  4. Do you have an annual cultivation/recognition plan that is being followed?

XI. Team and Board

  1. Do you have a targeted, measurable definition of sustainable funding you are aiming for?
  2. Have you added at least one board champion each year?
  3. Number of Non-staff members added to your team this year?
  4. Number of team members who have left the team this year
  5. Number and percent of board members who give money to the organization FFS Board Donations
  6. Number and percent of board members in the Multiple-Year Giving Society FFS Board MYGSD
  7. Are all your board members and new staff members trained in this model?

• Do you have a strong leadership team trained and coached in the next level of implementation each year?

• Do you have full support of the executive director?

• Do you have a succession plan to ensure the team will continue to implement the plan even as leadership changes?

XII. What else besides money did this process bring you?

  1. Board recommitted to the mission?
  2. Increased board passion and participation in the larger plan for sustainable funding?
  3. Staff recommitted to the mission?
  4. Increased community visibility?
  5. Other

• Number and percent of pledges paid off on time or early FFS Paid Off Pledges

• Number and percent of Multiple-Year Giving Society Members who paid off pledge early this year FFS MYGSD Early Payoff

• Number and percent of Multiple-Year Giving Society Members who increase/extend pledge FFS MYGSD Upgrade

• Number and percent of last year's Multiple-Year Giving Society Members who became this-year Table Captains FFS Last Year's MYGSD

• Number and percent of last year's Multiple-Year Giving Society Members invited to this year's Ask Event FFS Last Year's MYGSD

• Number and percent of last year's Multiple-Year Giving Society Members who attended this years Ask Event FFS Last Year's MYGSD

Sustainable Funding Scorecard

The Sustainable Funding Scorecard is a tool used as part of Benevon coaching to identify where your processes are strong, and where they require additional support.

You can use Next Step to gather the statistical information that you need to answer many of the questions on the Sustainable Funding Scorecard. In fact, once you have completed the Form for Success and have run the Next Step Event Analysis report for your Ask Event, you will have that information right at your fingertips.

Note: To determine whether the size of the Challenge or Leadership gift is increasing at each Ask Event, you will need to compare the Form for Success results over time.

Plan for Sustainable Funding

The Plan for Sustainable Funding displays the cumulative effects of fundraising on the long-term viability of your organization. This is a report that you will craft over many years, each year building on the information already collected in the previous years.

You can use Next Step to gather the information that you need to complete Part One of this document, the Annual Income section.

Ask Event Summary (Guests)

Line 1: Total Guests an Ask Event

The total number of guests who attended the Ask Event for each year can be pulled from Field III.a. of the Form for Success that you filled out for that year. Alternatively, you can run the Next Step Event Analysis report to get this information for each Ask Event. You will have to run the Next Step Event Analysis report multiple times - once for each Ask Event. Be sure to enter the total number of guests under the appropriate year on the Plan for Sustainable Funding.

Lines 2-4: New Multiple-Year Giving Society Members

Lines 2, 3, and 4 of the Annual Income section of the Plan for Sustainable Funding contain the number of new members at each level of your Multiple-Year Giving Society. The Donor Renewal Rates report will give you a breakdown by year of the number of new donors. In order to restrict the results to a specific level of the Multiple-Year Giving Society, you will launch the Donor Renewal Rates report based on a query that retrieves only donors at that level. DRR REPORT REQUIRES PURCHASE OF EXECUTIVE REPORTS.

Line 5: Total New Multiple-Year Giving Society Members

Calculate the Total New Multiple-Year Giving Society Members for each year by adding up the values from lines 2 through 4 that appear in the column for the same year.

Line 6: Total Cumulative Multiple-Year Giving Society Members

Calculate the Total Cumulative New Multiple-Year Giving Society Members for each year by adding the value in line 5 for this year to the value in line 6 for the previous year. For the first year, the value in line 6 will be the same as the value in line 5

Ask Event Summary ($ in thousands)

Line 7: Total Multiple-Year Pledges from This Year’s Ask Event

To retrieve the total number of Multiple-Year Pledges from a specific Ask Event, modify the query Benevon Form for Success/Ask Event Multi-Year to use the Approach specific to the desired Ask Event, and to limit the Giving Levels to your Multiple-Year giving levels.

Income: Multiple –Year and Single-Year Giving Summary ($ in thousands)

Lines 8 - 12: Multiple-Year Giving Society Summary by Year

Use the modified version of query Benevon Form for Success/Ask Event Multi-Year that you created for line 7 as input to the Donor Cash Projection report. In the criteria tile, set Number of Years to the value that you need to complete the form for the current year.

To update last year’s estimates of previous year donations, modify the query above to use the Approach specific to the Ask Event during previous years and use that as input to the Donor Cash Projection report.

Line 13: Total Multiple-Year Giving Society Pledges (≥ $1K x 5)

Calculate the Total Multiple-Year Giving Society Pledges (≥ $1K x 5) for each year by adding up the values from lines 8 through 12 in the column for the same year.

Line 14: Other Multiple-Year Pledges (< $1K x 5)

Create a query to select all Journal Entries having the Approach for that year’s Ask Event and Giving Level equal to whatever Giving Level you use to specify multiple-year pledges that are too small to be part of the Multiple-Year Giving Society.

Line 15: Single Year Ask Event Gifts

Create a query to select all Journal Entries having the Approach for that year’s Ask Event and Giving Level equal to whatever Giving Level you use to specify Single Year Ask Event Gifts.

Line 16: Challenge/Leadership/Major Gifts

The total number of Challenge/Leadership/Major Gifts for each year can be pulled from Field VI.b. of the Form for Success that you filled out for that year. Alternatively, you can obtain this information by creating a query to select all Journal Entries having Date during the given year and Giving Levels equal to whatever Giving Levels you use to specify Challenge, Leadership and Major Gifts.

Line 17: Total Pledges/Gifts Received from Ask Events

Calculate the Total Pledges/Gifts Received from Ask Events for each year by adding up the values from lines 13 through 16 in the column for the same year.

Income: Other Sources ($ in thousands)

Line 18: Annual Direct Mail Campaign

Create a query to select all Journal Entries having Date during the given year and Approach equal to whatever Approach you use to specify Direct Mail Campaign.

Line 19: Special Events

Create a query to select all Journal Entries having Date during the given year and Approach equal to whatever Approach you use to specify Special Events.

Line 20: Grants (Corporate, Foundation, United Way)

Create a query to select all Journal Entries having Date during the given year and Approach(s) equal to whatever Approaches you use to specify Grants.

Line 21: Total – Other Fundraising Sources

Calculate the Total of Other Fundraising Sources for each year by adding up the values from lines 18 through 20 in the column for the same year.

Line 22: Total Current-Year Unrestricted Funds Received (including pledges paid this year)

Create queries that capture the journal entries for each year to be tracked on the report. If the report years correspond to calendar years or fiscal years, you can simply use the queries under the Constituent Journal Entry date category to select the appropriate journal entries for the last five years. Then run the Fund Activity Report against each of those queries to retrieve the total received amount for that year, broken down by fund.

Treasure Map Interviews

The Treasure Map Interview is an important part of the Benevon Know Thy Donor program. As you conduct a Treasure Map Interview, you will want to capture the responses provided by the constituent in Next Step, so that you and others in your organization can refer to them in the future.

When you start the Treasure Map Interview with a constituent, you should also start a new Contact in the constituent's journal. We suggest that you enter a title for this Contact that will make it obvious that this is a Treasure Map Interview, for example "Treasure Map Interview'. Make sure that the date is set to the date of the interview.

If any constituents do not already have an account in Next Step, you will need to create one. For more information on creating a new account see the topic Adding an Account under the online help section Accounts.

When you create a new Contact, you will see a list of User Defined Field tiles under the main contact tile.

Click on the one labeled Benevon Treasure Map Interview Questions to see a list of all of the Treasure Map Interview questions recommended by Benevon.

Click on the question as you ask it. A field will open up for you to enter the constituent’s response.

You can use the Notes field on the top tile to contain any constituent comments or other information that is not related to one of the Treasure Map Interview questions.

When the interview is over, be sure to save the Contact record!

Next Ten Asks

The Next Ten Asks report (also called Next Steps to a Yes) is an important tool to help Benevon clients develop strong relationships with potential major donors. It is quite easy and convenient to use Next Step to track the information that goes into those reports, and to generate the reports themselves as needed. Just be sure to follow these steps.

1: Identify People to Ask

The first activity in the Next Ten Asks procedure is identifying the prospects that will be approached about making a major gift to the organization.

When these individuals have been identified, update Next Step as follows:

  1. Make sure that there are constituent accounts in Next Step for each of the prospects. If there are not, create the missing accounts.
  2. Create a Custom Account Query in the Benevon Next Steps to a Yes query category that links the prospects to this round of the Next Ten Asks process. This will allow you to easily identify these individuals as a group.

2: Determine How to Approach Each Constituent

Once the Next Ten Asks prospects have been named, you must identify the first contact that the organization plans to make with each of them to help bring him or her to decide to make a major gift. You should store this planned contact in Next Step.

For each identified contact, create a new Contact in the prospect's Next Step journal.

Be sure to follow these guidelines:

  1. The date for each contact should be set to roughly the date you intend to perform the contact. You can always go back and re-schedule!
  2. The contact method for each of these Contacts must be set to the value 'Benevon Next Steps to a Yes'
  3. Fill out the Benevon UDF “Number of Next Step” to place the step in the correct order within the approach process.
  4. If this is the first Next Steps to a Yes contact that you have added to this account, fill out the Benevon UDF Asking For ($ Amount) with the amount of the gift that you ultimately want to ask this prospect for. Note: If you enter the amount requested on all steps, the amount will be added too many times into the Total Amount Requested value that appears at the top of the report.

Don’t forget to save the Contact when you are done.

3: Follow the Plan

As each identified contact is completed, update the Journal Notes for that Contact with any pertinent information. Then you must identify the next contact that you will make with that prospect and add a new Contact in the prospect’s Next Step journal for that contact. Be sure to follow the first three guidelines above.

4: Generate the Next Ten Asks Report

To generate a printable copy of the current information in the Next 10 Asks format, all you have to do is follow these steps:

  1. Open the query category Benevon Next Steps to a Yes
  2. Make a copy of the query template Next Steps to a Yes for the current year. The new query might be named YYYY Next Steps to a Yes.
  3. Modify the copied query to pull information from the Custom Account Query you created in step 1b), instead of from Base:All Constituents. The modified query will retrieve all of the steps that you have recorded for all of your prospects.
  4. Open the Benevon report category, and run the report Next Ten Asks against the query from step 4c) above to format the information into a printable report. If you haven't already done so, you can save a few steps next time by checking the box 'Remember the query you choose for the next time you run this report?'

Select the delivery options that you want. When you select delivery option 'Display Report to Screen', you only have to double-click on an item on the report to open and update that contact record. Then click Submit, or Schedule for Off-Hours if you prefer.

Table Captain Guest List

You can use the Relationship Reporting feature of eTapestry to create a Table Captain Guest List report.