Evaluating Your Individual Donor Program

Evaluation of your fundraising work is the only way you can tell, with certainty, if your efforts are working and what changes you need to make. Consider the following in crafting your evaluation plan:

Define Success. Measures might include raising a certain amount of money or having a certain percentage of your total budget come from donations. Examples of other measures include: the number of new donors, the number of events to hold, or getting the board involved in fundraising.

What to Evaluate. You can evaluate your fundraising on different levels. Consider the following:

• Donors and money raised (for example, how many donors did you get, how many are repeat donors from last year, how much did you raise, what did you do to keep in touch with your donors?).
• Board and staff roles in fundraising and record-keeping (for example, are board members involved in fundraising, did you increase the number of volunteers devoted to fundraising, what kind of record keeping system do you use to track donations, did you celebrate successes and identify challenges with the board, staff, and volunteers to help keep momentum on your work?).
• Specific strategies (for example, how much did you raise, from whom, what other ways did the activity benefit the agency?).

When to Evaluate, and Using the Results. Compile evaluation data annually. In order to make that feasible, you need to do the evaluation work when you are doing the actual work (that is, right after an event). You need to take a look at the results and figure out how you can use them in crafting your fundraising plan for the coming year (for example, events to use or not use, donors to focus on).

Adapted From: Evaluating Your Individual Donor Program, by Stephanie Roth. Grassroots Fundraising Journal. January/February 2004.