If it is December, hopefully, your year-end-appeal is already yielding good results. We love direct mail campaigns. When a person reads a letter and decides to contribute – it is an excellent indicator of their true commitment to your cause. No one is twisting their arm to come to the fundraising party. They read the message and were moved to action. Simple.

But how do you measure success, not just of the appeal but of your whole fundraising effort?

While the return on investment (ROI) (in the case of an annual appeal, income minus staff time, printing, and postage) is an important measure of success, just like with your overall fundraising program, it is not the only measure of success. Because the donors themselves are a nonprofit’s life blood, you need to understand if you are acquiring and retaining enough donors to offset the natural attrition. In other words, is your donor base growing or shrinking?

A well-designed annual appeal is designed specifically around donor acquisition, donor retention, and donor reactivation. Hopefully your mailing list has been segmented and message customized to help these three objectives, which, when measured, make up your overall Donor File Growth Score (aka Growth Score)—a very important measure of your overall fundraising team’s success.

Here is a picture to help you understand a Donor File Growth Score:

The Growth Score evaluates the number of donors added to the file compared to the number of donors lapsing. If your Growth Score is more than 1, your donor file is growing. If it is less than 1, your file is shrinking.

The Growth Score is an important metric which is most easily understood by considering the Leaky Bucket Graphic, created by our friends at DonorTrends. In their own words, “DonorTrends is on a mission to educate, equip, and inspire fundraisers to use mathematics to elevate their marketing strategies. Providing actionable intelligence to enable nonprofit organizations of all sizes to focus on the right donors, at the right time, with the right message.” We think they are succeeding. DonorTrends’ software helps organizations with one quick upload.

With one quick upload, DonorTrends’ software has helped several of Growth for Good’s clients diagnose the fundraising pain points, including Children’s Rights, Behind the Book, to name a few.

As you evaluate your annual appeal, be sure to consider the big three: acquisition, retention, and reactivation. Then count your money!

“Katherine, on behalf of the South Orange Performing Arts Center I want to thank you for driving our record-breaking 4-year capital campaign and our annual fundraising gala. You gave us all the tools so we can implement on our own next time. You are big part of the reason why SOPAC has been voted the Best Small Performing Arts Center in New Jersey. I simply cannot recommend you enough!” – Paul Bartick, Board Chair, South Orange Performing Arts Center