These trends might sound familiar:
- Your new donor acquisition counts are flat.
- Your retention is slipping.
- So, your active donor counts are shrinking.
- However, you have seen big gains in average gift size.
- So overall, your revenue is flat.
This has been the general trend in fundraising for the past couple of years.
And it’s unsustainable. We all know at some point the decreases in active donor counts will be too much for average gift sizes to mitigate.
The question is at what point will your revenue fall?
Here’s a simple equation that will tell you: (-1*%∆R) > (1*%∆RPD)
• Where R = retention, and,
• Where RPD = revenue per active donor per year
In English, when your percentage loss in retention is greater than your percentage gain in revenue per donor, your revenue will fall.
To read Part II of our unsustainable trends blog posts, click here.
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