How does your nonprofit stack up?

Last month, M+R (a company specializing in supporting nonprofits) and the Salesforce Foundation hosted a webinar that broke down M+R’s annual Nonprofit Benchmark Study. M+R publishes this annual report to provide a temp check for nonprofit trends and processes. When they put this together, they’re using the information from all of their contacts and engagements throughout the year.

The data that informs this report is provided by 84 different nonprofits, and these organizations determine the segments and sectors of the report, so when you’re looking at the graphs and information provided, try to match your organization with the closest possible category.

The information provided in this benchmark helps you answer the questions: Am I tracking the right data for my industry? Am I on track with similar organizations? It should help with predicting constituent response, organizational output, and understanding what’s possible online. Of course, what you do with this data is up to you, but we hope this synopsis will help start some useful internal conversation.

Here are some high-view highlights:

Does your organization send fundraising emails?
If so, for every 1000 messages delivered, you likely raised about $40.

Does your organization raise money online?
If so, revenue is likely up 13% from last year. Online is a channel that’s growing faster than any other, and with increasing importance to your bottom line.

Do you use social media?
If so, for every 1000 email subscribers, you should have about 285 Facebook fans and 112 Twitter followers.

Do you have a website? (We sure hope so!)
If so, for every 1000 site visitors, you should gain 7.6 donors, which amounts to roughly $612.

Big Picture Trends

Online Fundraising Data

Online revenue is up 13% from last year—international is down 18%--probably due to large international aid efforts such as Typhoon Haiyan in The Philippines. We’ll probably see a similar spike this year from the response to earthquakes in Nepal.

Online gifts are also up 13% from last year, and is really what’s changing the online revenue.  The average gift size is down just slightly, but this indicates that since revenue and traffic is up,

The takeaway is that revenue is up and MORE (even if they’re slightly smaller) gifts are being made.

Change in Revenue by Type

Monthly giving is growing faster than one time giving, and a large portion of total growth is coming from monthly giving. (This resonates with what our client Team Rubicon experienced; they saw a 68% increase in recurring donors in 11 days by just changing “the ask” to emphasize the option of being a recurring donor.) Monthly giving makes up about 17% of all revenue, growing fast and bigger than ever before.

Email

Email list size grew by about 11% (which is slightly down from last year, except for environmental groups) and open rates are going up. This means that organizations are cleaning up their lists and being smarter about segmenting their emails. Overall, the open rate is about 14%.

Website Engagement

Visitor numbers are up about 11%, but revenue per visitor is down. People are seeing you, but they’re also seeing many other sites. You have to work harder to get them to convert.

So what does it all mean?

M+R says that their vision is of a nonprofit world where email is as critical as ever, but only a piece of what’s happening right now. Don’t abandon email, but do consider your own trends and make sure you are also spending time in the other places your donors are, whether it’s a LinkedIn group or a local association.   

What does that look like?

Developing a strategy that enables you to make the most of your time and resources is complicated, but invaluable. Hammering out a tight marketing and communications plan and seeking help in setting up email integration and marketing automation connect your efforts and make sure that potential donors aren’t slipping through the cracks when they should be deepening their connection with your organization.

And the most important thing…

Track everything: It’s more affordable to track everything than ever before. Make sure you are getting a return on your time and investments by choosing what metrics matter to your organization and making sure you have systems to track improvement. .

If you want to see where your organization falls in comparison with all of this data, you can benchmark yourself on M+R’s site. You can also access the full report on their blog.

Interested in going further with your communication strategy? Reach out to us to discuss how marketing automation can help.