Learn more about analytics and research best practices, as well as real world examples and solutions for nonprofits.

RECENT POSTS

Dec 11, 2013

Unsustainable Trends

Annual TrendsThese 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.

First-half of 2025 Trends in Fundraising

I have four graphs that summarize what we are seeing across the fundraising arena. These come from our newest analytical report, The Single Largest Gift - Cohort Analysis (SLG-CA). I know, its name is a mouthful, but its insights are plentiful. Basically, the SLG-CA...

read more

Part IV: The Complexities of Implementation

This is our fourth blog on some things the nonprofit community should be thinking about regarding Artificial Intelligence (AI). Adopting new technologies is rarely straight forward. For example, remember your last CRM upgrade? How did that go? If you are like most...

read more

ARCHIVES

© 2025 Analytical Ones