If you want to be successful in 2016 you need to look in the rearview mirror.
After all, if you don’t know what worked for your organization in 2015 how will you know what to do this year?
One thing all nonprofits that grow year-over-year tend to have in common is that the track results. For every mailing they know how many were sent, what the cost was, how many gifts came back, what the net revenue was.
For every event they know the cost of the event, then number of people who attended, the amount raised, the average gift size, the number of new donors acquired.
Then they review the results, figure out where they could do better, and spend their fundraising budget accordingly. Fundraising data is the lifeblood of your future fundraising success.
If you didn’t track data in 2015, then now is the time to create systems for tracking your fundraising data in 2016. To see an example of a pro forma for tracking direct mail or email data, click here. Feel free to use this document or create something similar to meet all of your data tracking needs.
But the most important thing; track your results. Start as soon as you can.