Fundraising Effectiveness Survey

Many nonprofits may be too focused on how many new donors have been acquired without looking carefully at the number of lapsed donors. Do you know what your donor attrition rate is? How does your attrition rate compare with other organizations? Let’s find out.

The Association of Fundraising Professionals (AFP) has teamed up with the Urban Institute and other organizations to launch the Fundraising Effectiveness Project to help nonprofits evaluate and maximize annual giving.

A key element in the project was the Fundraising Effectiveness Survey, which involved collecting data from survey participants’ donor databases. The analysis of the pilot survey data from 275 participants indicate that giving at these organizations grew 10.6 percent from 2004 to 2005. What’s more interesting is that the growth is actually the net ratio of the gains (62.6 percent) minus losses in giving (51.9 percent). Indeed, maximizing annual giving involves acquiring and upgrading donors while implementing donor retention strategies.

The survey report’s appendix includes individual charts that compare ratios by organizational type, size, age, and region. The full-text of the FEP Pilot 2004-05 Survey Report is available at AFP’s web site.