Benchmarking for Major Gifts (Part 1 of a series)

Benchmarking for Major Gifts (Part 1 of a series)

By Tom Wilson Major Gifts Guru

I just got back from the CASE VIII conference in Seattle. Gary Hubbell, a fellow consultant that I haven’t seen for 15 years, was there. He was presenting benchmarking material from his new book, Lessons from Benchmarking: Fast Forwarding the Maturity of the Fundraising Operation (Hubbell & Reinders).

Here are some points I gathered from his presentation. Future articles in this series will cover additional points and a quick review of the book.

• Use benchmarking not only for comparisons but for process review, and to identify best practices.
• Internal benchmarking allows you to measure yourself and your program over time: How are we doing at the end of calendar year 2009 compared to 2008? Fiscal year 2008 compared to fiscal year 2007?
• Process benchmarking – what are the steps we take in securing a major gift? In thanking the donor? How does our process compare to others? What lessons can we learn from others to improve our processes?
• Good benchmarking can show the way for more program investments.

For me a good example of program investment benchmarking would look like this. We have 500 prospects rated at $25,000 or more for our upcoming campaign. Benchmarking indicates each major gifts officer can handle 125 prospects (given no travel and no other internal duties). We have 2 major gift officers now. 3 more need to be hired for our campaign to move into high gear.

• Scorekeepers want to know we’re being effective.

When I facilitated a CEOs panel last June for the AHP Pacific regional conference the main question these hospital CEOs had was how to measure fundraising effectiveness.

• You don’t have to benchmark your entire program.

You can just compare and benchmark major gifts programs. Look at just your fellow higher education colleagues or you can look at all programs in your geographic area (as those are the folks you will be competing with for donors).

• Since best practices change over time, ongoing benchmarking keeps your team continuously learning.
• Data that drives process drives behavior. Benchmarking can lead to behavioral change.

There's lots of information here and more to come as we continue this review of benchmarking. This article was part 1. To see parts 2, 3, and 4 here:

• Benchmarking for Major Gifts (Part 2 of a series)
• Benchmarking Fundraising (Part 3 of a series)
• Benchmarking Fundraising (Part 4 of a series)

Permanent Link: Benchmarking for Major Gifts (Part 1 of a series)

http://majorgiftsguru.com/2009/02/benchmarking-for-major-gifts-part-1-of.html