Metrics, Friend Or Foe (Part One)

Phil's Careers Blog Metrics, Friend or Foe? (Part One) By Janice Boyle I as soon as heard a quote that has stuck with me over time. “What gets measured will get done, and what gets rewarded gets carried out well.” In my 20 years of fundraising I actually have had a lot of expertise with completely different metrics; some useful, some attention-grabbing however not terribly useful, and others that appear to drive all the incorrect behaviour. I’d like to start out with a story from early in my profession. While the exact details could also be different for you, it’s doubtless going to sound very familiar. It was my second fundraising position, and I was the new Director of Development and Communications. I was in a regional workplace and responsible for all fundraising with the exception of direct-mail. Direct-mail was dealt with out of our national office. Within the first few months I had successfully requested for and closed my first major present (hooray!). Coincidentally, we had also mailed o ut a current prospect marketing campaign. I was so excited with my first profitable gift and when I known as to thank him, he told me that he had a return envelope from our latest mailing and could be sending his donation to us shortly (oh, crap!). I instantly panicked. At that time, anything arriving in a enterprise reply envelope was thought-about junk mail. I was to ship it, unopened, to our national office and it counted towards the direct-mail goal. Anything despatched in an everyday envelope was counted in the direction of my targets. I’m a bit embarrassed to share what I did subsequent. For the subsequent week and a half I looked at each unsolicited mail envelope up towards a lamp to see if that specific envelope contained my first main reward. Using this less than scientific methodology, I did find that first major present, opened it domestically, and it did count towards my targets that year. I knew in my coronary heart of hearts that this was not significantly profession al behaviour. But one factor I even have come to appreciate about the human situation is that we reply to the incentives we are given. I want to go over a couple of of the most typical, properly intentioned, however in the end dangerous, fundraising metrics I even have seen over my profession. Number 1: The detailed fundraising price range Now bear with me for a minute, as a result of I respect this seems counterintuitive. Fundraising budgets are generally organized by fundraising methodology (special events, direct advertising, telemarketing, major gifts, deliberate giving, grants, and so forth.), donor kind (company, foundation, particular person), or payment methodology (on-line), sometimes a confusing mix of all three. These divisions are normally mirrored in employees structure and accountability. Let’s return to my first profitable main present. In the primary 12 months that donor paid with a personal examine. In his second year he gave a corporate check, and in his third yr he gave a household foundation examine. In three totally different years this gift confirmed up in three separate accounting lines; particular person giving, corporate giving, and basis giving. Each yr I budgeted this donor would give again and annually I guessed incorrectly how he can be giving. Consequently, the actual amount raised in comparison with what I had budgeted for in each of those classes was off. In the absence of being provided what fundraising metrics a board ought to be taking a look at to determine the efficacy of your fundraising campaigns, they look to the one piece of information they get all the time; the monetary statements. Now again, this was early in my profession, and I had not yet developed my philosophy of what metrics have been crucial. So rather than seeing the profitable renewal of a serious donor over the course of three years, the financial statements advised a narrative of my inability to appropriately price range. This brought on concern. And con cern causes conferences, reviews, presentations and dialogue. While I was able to explain the variances in each year, I realized that the amount of time spent both asking these questions and answering them advised me that we have been trying on the wrong info. Interestingly, in each of these years our general fundraising exceeded targets. Another variation on this theme is when you have one workers individual responsible for sure accounting strains, like direct-mail, and one other particular person responsible for other accounting traces, for example major gifts. In this example group cooperation is not encouraged, as a result of it’s not measured. What incentive does a serious items officer have in discussing a planned reward with a donor when that means the donor moves out of their portfolio and into someone else’s, no longer counting in the direction of their annual targets? What incentive does an annual giving manager have in upgrading their direct-mail donors when, at a spe cific threshold, say $500, that donor strikes to the portfolio of a serious items officer and can not be solicited by way of unsolicited mail? If the entire fundraising objectives/accountability are particular person, you will not have a culture of group work. There is a purpose it is considered unethical to be paid through commission as knowledgeable fundraiser. It promotes behaviour that will not take into accounts the lengthy-time period value of a donor to a company. And yet making use of this metric on this way measures a fundraiser’s effectiveness exactly the identical as fee-based mostly sales. A third variation on this theme is assigning a donor’s present to a selected accounting line primarily based on how much they are giving. At one point, I oversaw a telemarketing group. Our job was to renew, upgrade, and find new annual giving donors and our general focus was donors underneath $1,000. Every every so often we would have somebody on the cellphone who needed to offer $ 1,000 or extra. Would you be surprised to learn that this was not a trigger for celebration? Why wouldn’t or not it's, you might ask? Because when a donor passed the $999 threshold, they became a “major donor”, and their present would present within the “major items” accounting line, not telemarketing. We could not embody it in that night time’s complete for the amount we had efficiently raised (how we were measured), and so you possibly can imagine over the course of the year we had numerous $999 items. Is any of this sounding familiar? I hope that by sharing my (not at all times so proud) experiences with you, I may help present the link between metrics and behaviour. It is a powerful and infrequently overlooked relationship that drives the culture of many a fundraising division. Next time, I’ll talk about using gross income as the first fundraising metric. Janice Boylestarted her fundraising profession as a pupil caller for UBC’s annual fund. Her profession has sp anned the social services, schooling and healthcare sectors over the past 20 years in senior leadership roles. She is passionate about enhancing her local community, together with her specialties in non-profit management, supportive infrastructure, and group building. She was acknowledged in 2011 with the Association of Fundraising Professionals’ Outstanding Professional Fundraiser Award in addition to the Business in Vancouver’s forty Under 40 Outstanding Achievement Award in 2002. She may be contacted Post navigation Fill in your details beneath or click an icon to log in: You are commenting utilizing your WordPress.com account. (Log Out/ Change) You are commenting utilizing your Google account. (Log Out/ Change) You are commenting using your Twitter account. (Log Out/ Change) You are commenting using your Facebook account. (Log Out/ Change) Connecting to %s Notify me of new comments through email. Notify me of recent posts by way of email. Email Subscription Enter your email address to observe my NEW weblog and stay on prime of the latest career alternatives and fundraising information. Sign me up! Follow On Twitter Browse by Category Phil’s Careers Tweets Error: Twitter did not respond. Please wait a few minutes and refresh this web page.