Fundraising Benchmarks

To help identify gaps in your organisation's fundraising effectiveness, it's valuable to understand how others perform. Under Benchmarking in Analysis, Fundraising dashboards, you can compare your donor pool and giving to that of other Blackbaud customers in your country.

Note: This functionality is only available for those in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, or New Zealand.

For apples-to-apples comparison, the metrics include the same types of records across all organisations. To further narrow the focus, use the filters to choose which sizes of organisations and calendar year to include.

Number-crunching

For consistent comparison across all organisations, the benchmarks include:

All donors, including those now marked as inactive or deceased
Calendar years only — not financial year
Cash-in-hand giving — not soft credits — through:
- One-time gifts
- Payments toward matching gifts, pledges, and recurring gifts
- Gifts of share and sold share

Filters

For focused comparison, such as to only organisations like yours, use the filters to determine the analysis to include.

Fundraising revenue — Choose the total cash-in-hand revenue — based on the last full calendar year — for the organisations to include.
Tip: Want to compare yourself to similar organisations but aren't sure of your fundraising revenue? Choose multiple ranges to include where your annual revenue might be.
Calendar year — Choose whether to compare performance for the current calendar year or one of the past five years.
- With the current year, identify areas to improve and adjust annual goals in real-time.
- With previous years, gauge year-over-year performance and determine areas to improve going forward.

Based on these benchmarks, you can determine which areas and donors to focus on to improve performance.

Tip: To view the Benchmarking dashboard in Reporting, select Add , Benchmarking, Open.

Retention rate

Under Donor acquisition & retention, you can compare how many of your organisation's constituents— as a percentage — gave during both the selected calendar year and its previous year. For example, you select the current year in the Calendar year filter and 1,000 constituents in total gave cash-in-hand giving last year; if 200 of them also gave a similar gift during the current year, your retention rate is 200/1000, or 20%.

Tip: If you're a brand-new organisation, a low retention rate is expected.

The Potential revenue total displays how much more you could raise if you increase to the next benchmark, based on the selected fundraising revenue.

Average — Your retention rate is higher than that of 50% of organisations.
Good — Your retention rate is higher than that of 70% of organisations.
Great — Your retention rate is higher than that of 90% of organisations.

Use this total to identify money you may be leaving on the table and where to focus your efforts. For the calculation behind the potential revenue, select its total.

To help increase retention, engage donors with personal interactions and suggest a recurring giving programme. If you already excel at retention, focus on donor acquisition and recapture to bring more into the fold.

Tip: If you have lower retention than acquisition, focus more on retention for an increased return on investment.

Tip: For deeper analysis, select a list or dashboard under Recommended links. To analyse retention during your financial year and configured revenue types, use the Retention dashboard. For more information, see Donor Acquisition and Retention.

Recapture rate

Under Donor acquisition & retention, you can compare how many of your organisation's constituents — as a percentage — gave during the selected calendar year and two-to-five calendar years prior. For example, you select the current year in the Calendar year filter and 800 donors in total gave cash-in-hand giving two-to-five years ago but not last year; if 100 of them returned with a similar gift during the current year, your recapture rate is 100/800, or 12.5%.

Tip: If you're a relatively new organisation, a low recapture rate is expected.

The Potential revenue total displays how much more you could raise if you increase to the next benchmark.

Average — Your recapture rate is higher than that of 50% of organisations.
Good — Your recapture rate is higher than that of 70% of organisations.
Great — Your recapture rate is higher than that of 90% of organisations.

Use this total to identify money you may be leaving on the table and where to focus your efforts. For the calculation behind the potential revenue, select its total.

To help recapture donors, engage them with personal interactions and suggest a recurring giving programme. If you already excel at retention, focus on donor acquisition and recapture to bring more into the fold.

Tip: For deeper analysis, select a list or dashboard under Recommended links. To analyse recapture during your financial year and configured revenue types, use the Recapture dashboard. For more information, see Donor Acquisition and Retention.

Acquisition rate

Under Donor acquisition & retention, you can compare how many of your organisation's constituents — as a percentage — gave for the first time during the selected calendar year. For example, you select the current year in the Calendar year filter and 1,000 donors in total gave cash-in-hand giving over the past five years; if 200 new donors (or returning donors, after a gap of over five years) gave a similar gift during current year, your acquisition rate is 200/(200+1000), or 16.6%.

Tip: If you have strong donor retention and total revenue, a low acquisition rate may be okay.

To help increase acquisition, share the value of your mission and the impact of giving. If you already excel at acquisition, maintain that effort while also focusing on donor retention and recapture, especially if retention is poor or you're a fairly new organisation.

Tip: If you have lower retention than acquisition, focus more on retention for an increased return on investment.

Tip: For deeper analysis, select a list or dashboard under Recommended links. To analyse acquisition during your financial year and configured revenue types, use the Acquisition dashboard. For more information, see Donor Acquisition and Retention.

Total revenue

Under Giving, you can compare how much your organisation raised through cash-in-hand giving during the selected calendar year.

The Potential revenue total displays how much more you could raise if you increase to the next benchmark.

Average — Your total revenue is higher than that of 50% of organisations.
Good — Your total revenue is higher than that of 70% of organisations.
Great — Your total revenue is higher than that of 90% of organisations.

Use this total to identify money you may be leaving on the table and where to focus your efforts. For the calculation behind the potential revenue, select its total.

To help increase revenue:

Focus on donor acquisition and retention to bring more into the fold.
Make sure to ask the right amount to avoid leaving money on the table.

Tip: For deeper analysis, select a list or dashboard under Recommended links. To analyse giving during your financial year or based on your configured revenue types, use the Overview dashboard. For more information, see Fundraising Analysis Overview.

Revenue per donor

Under Giving, you can compare how much a donor gives in total — on average — during the selected calendar year.

The Potential revenue total displays how much more you could raise if you increase to the next benchmark.

Average — Your revenue per donor is higher than that of 50% of organisations.
Good — Your revenue per donor is higher than that of 70% of organisations.
Great — Your revenue per donor is higher than that of 90% of organisations.

Use this total to identify money you may be leaving on the table and where to focus your efforts. For the calculation behind the potential revenue, select its total.

To help avoid leaving money on the table, research your constituents' capacity to give and make sure you ask for the right amount. If your donors already give more than others' on average, focus on donor acquisition and retention to bring more into the fold.

Recent and current donors

Under Giving, you can compare your organisation's overall donor pool in context of the selected calendar year.

Recent donors — How many constituents gave during the past five calendar years, including the selected calendar year.
Current donors — How may constituents gave during the selected calendar year.

Tip: If you're a relatively new organisation, a small donor pool is expected.

The Potential revenue total displays how much more you could raise if you increase to the next benchmark.

Average — You have more donors than 50% of organisations.
Good — You have more donors than 70% of organisations.
Great — You have more donors than 90% of organisations.

Use this total to identify money you may be leaving on the table and where to focus your efforts. For the calculation behind the potential revenue, select its total.

Note: To enable comparison, Benchmarking uses anonymised statistics aggregated across Blackbaud customers. Rest easy, no identifiable information — about your organisation or its constituents — is used.

Note: Since these benchmarks include specific gift types and calendar years, they likely differ from similar analytics elsewhere in Analysis, Fundraising dashboards, which use your configured revenue types and financial year.

Note: Don't see this feature? To enable apples-to-apples comparison, in the database view, your organisation's currency must be pound sterling and your country ISO name set to United Kingdom under International in Config. For more information, see Organisation Currency.