Measuring the Productivity of Major Gifts Fundraisers

Measuring the Productivity of Major Gifts Fundraisers

By Tom Wilson Major Gifts Guru

Question -- How should we be measuring the productivity of major gifts officers without making them feel bad or under pressure?

In these days a little pressure is fine. But you’re right that it’s important to keep morale strong and everyone positive in these challenging fundraising times.

There’s a saying that you can’t manage people, you manage things and lead people.

You don’t motivate your staff, they motivate themselves. You can coach them and if necessary, replace them if they don’t perform.

Here are some coaching tools that I have found useful over the years. Add these to your yearly tracking systems in addition to any campaign or multi-year tracking you are doing.

1) Office objectives

• Major gifts club -- Goal for number of total members for this year with progress to date shown graphically. Use a bar chart thermometer with targets for each month based upon trend lines from previous years -- Renewal % of repeat donors – target and actual to date -- Renewal % of new donors – target and actual to date
• Corporate giving -- Outright gifts for the year, progress to date – use a bar chart thermometer with targets for each month -- Sponsorships (if applicable) -- In-kind gifts (if applicable – check this one out this year as it will be easier to keep relationships going with in-kind gifts if they have to say no to cash this year)
• Foundation grants -- What’s your target and what’s the thermometer of progress to date?

Each of these 3 areas should have a progress for the year with projected progress by month based on last year’s trending to show if you are ahead or behind for the year. 2009 will be a tricky year so do the best you can and use the tools below to track activity until dollars come in. Please note that some staff may be directly responsible for each of these areas. Have them work on the trending objectives and the formatting of the charts. These graphics should be on a one-page dashboard report for each board meeting and for all the staff to discuss at the beginning of each month (yes, all data updated monthly no later than 3 days after the beginning of the month).

Activity reports.

I like the “one a day plan” of one substantive donor contact per person per day. Face-to-face meetings are always best but an in-depth phone call may work (remember 55% of all communications are nonverbal so too many phone and email contacts aren’t good).

Contacts should be tracked weekly and reported monthly to the head of fundraising. Debrief each report at personal, weekly staff supervision meetings. Contacts don’t count unless there is a written report on file. These tracking sheets and contact reports are great coaching devices to determine next steps, when it’s time to close the gift, and to overcome any call reluctance that may be preventing the one-a-day plan to be fulfilled.

Realizing that sometimes one a day visits aren’t possible, it’s okay to average 20 per month with some days having no appointments and others 2 or 3 (when I was a university vice president my average was 15 a week, but then I’m a little crazy).

How much money did you raise this month?

You still have to ask this question of each major gift officer. There’s no value judgment except to say that over time, a major gift officer should meet the following expectations:

• Year 1 – raise salary and benefits (100% cost of fundraising)
• Year 2 – raise 3 times salary and benefits (33% cost of fundraising)
• Year 3 – raise 5 times salary and benefits (20% cost of fundraising)
• Year 4 – raise 7 times salary and benefits (14% cost of fundraising)

A star will do far better than this. Take into consideration the maturity of your program and distances traveled by your major gift officers to their prospects (if they travel 50% of the time, productivity can be cut by one-third to one-half). If your organization is unknown, productivity will be lower as major gift officers are explaining who you are before they can ask for a donor investment.

Celebrate victories and coach to success.

We want everyone to secure Winning Gifts, so celebrate the wins, console the “not yet” wins, and coach major gift officers to get out there and meet donors to secure gifts.

Let me know of ways that you track major gift officer productivity.

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