Key Performance Indicators (KPI)

Key Performance Indicators, or KPIs, provide at-a-glance views of an aspect of an entity for a point in time against a certain goal value. This could be the total amount of gifts donated to a fund or the total number of registrants for an event.

Senior management requires information on the health of the organization. Key Performance Indicators are quantifiable measurements, agreed to beforehand, that reflect the critical success factors of an organization. A KPI is a single value that represents some measure of the operational status of an organization with regard to a certain topic, and that value is usually associated with a target or goal for the value so that the current value can be quantified vs. the goal.

Examples of KPIs might be:

• Number of gifts received this month

• Number of days to close a gift in the Major Giving pipeline

• Total amount given to a campaign

• Percentage of a goal reached for a campaign goal period

• Response rate on a given appeal

• Number of outstanding unacknowledged gifts

• Average number of days to acknowledge a gift

Those are just samples, but each one represents a single value that could be calculated and compared to an established goal.