4 Fundraising Stats To Include In Your Annual Report

A guest post from Adam Weinger from Double the Donation.

As a nonprofit professional, you know that your annual report is one of the most important documents put out by your organization each year. When done well, it communicates your nonprofit’s impact on your community, shares progress toward goals, and provides a comprehensive view of how your organization is doing.

The most effective annual reports aren’t just made up of never-ending blocks of text, either. Many nonprofits are beginning to incorporate more engaging elements into their reports such as attention-grabbing images, heartfelt constituent stories, and powerful statistics.

In this guide, we’ll focus on the impact that fundraising statistics can have as well as explore a few examples of stats that you won’t want to leave out. We suggest including the following metrics in your annual report each year:

1. Gifts secured by type
2. Average gift size
3. Matching gift revenue
4. Donor retention rate

When creating a more modernized digital format, incorporating these fundraising stats can bring your annual report to the next level. Ready to find out how? Let’s get started!

1. Gifts secured by type

One of the first types of fundraising statistics you might look at is the number of gifts secured by type in the last year. This kind of data can help you see where your fundraising strategy is thriving and where there’s still room for improvement.

As you gather this information, consider the following types of donations:

• Major, mid-level, and small gifts: What you define as falling into each category of gift will vary depending on your organization, but it’s important to determine specific thresholds beforehand. For example, you might consider anything above $10,000 major, anything below $500 small, and anything in between to be mid-level. Then, you can use your detailed donor records to keep track of how many gifts fall into each category.
  
• Planned gifts: Planned gifts are typically major gifts that are arranged in the present to be collected at a later date⁠—typically upon the donor’s death. Since these donations are often coordinated through a donor’s will or trust, this type of giving can be logistically challenging but impactful nonetheless. However, it’s hard to tell when you’ll actually receive the promised funding, so it’s a good idea to report these gifts based on both the arrangements in the present as well as once they’ve been paid out.
• Recurring donations: Automatic recurring gifts are a nonprofit’s best friend as they can provide steady fundraising revenue throughout both peaks and lulls. Consider tracking the number of recurring donors each year as well as the total revenue collected through this channel.

And those are all examples of individual gifts! You can also track foundation and corporate funding such as grants, sponsorships, and more to get a broader look at your organization’s fundraising success.

If you notice a particular method that’s doing extremely well for your nonprofit, be sure to emphasize that in your annual report. If there’s a method that seems to be falling behind, on the other hand, you can know to revamp that strategy for the upcoming year.

2. Average gift size

Another fundraising metric you’ll want to include in a compelling annual report is your organization’s average gift size over the past year. To calculate this statistic, you just need to add up your total fundraising revenue for the year and divide by the number of gifts!

This is also an easy metric to look at year over year to get a quick snapshot of your nonprofit’s fundraising growth. Simply compare your average gift size of the current year with your average gift size of the previous year. If it’s larger, your fundraising capacity is likely increasing. If it’s smaller, there might be an underlying issue you need to address.

3. Matching gift revenue

According to statistics from Double the Donation, only 1.3% of individual contributions are matched through corporate giving programs at the average nonprofit, largely due to a lack of awareness surrounding these opportunities. 

Donations that do receive a corporate match, however, essentially go twice as far with little to no added time, money, or effort required from your organization. Thus, it’s an excellent fundraising strategy to highlight as you craft your annual report.

You can take a look at your matching gift statistics in a few different ways:

• Total revenue collected through matching gifts
• Percentage of eligible donations that received a match
• Number of match-eligible donors in your donor database

Regardless of the way you choose to frame your nonprofit’s matching gift revenue, these types of free donations look great to stakeholders. As such, emphasizing matching gift-related stats in your annual report is a surefire way to increase confidence in your organization’s fundraising strategy.

4. Donor retention rate

As you improve the donor journey and build strengthened relationships with supporters, they’re more likely to continue giving to your nonprofit time and time again. And as a fundraising professional, you surely know that securing repeat donors is significantly more cost-effective than constantly acquiring new ones. 

When you use your fundraising dollars effectively, it means more funding can go toward your mission⁠—which, of course, is a great thing to emphasize in your annual report. 

According to recent research, the average donor retention rate hovers around 45%. That means that for every 100 donors that give in one year, 45 will make a repeat gift the next.

To calculate your own retention rate, simply divide the number of repeat donors this year by the total number of donors who gave in the previous year. For example, if you had 500 donors give in 2020, and 250 of them return in 2021 to make a follow-up donation, your retention rate would be 50%—which is a bit higher than average!

An effective annual report should accurately reflect your nonprofit fundraising strategy and provide its readers with a solid understanding of your organization’s ongoing funding methods. Sometimes the simplest and most impactful way to communicate this information is through attention-grabbing statistics.

If you haven’t incorporated these fundraising stats into your previous years’ annual reports, don’t worry! Now you have the opportunity to grow and improve your reporting habits alongside your organization.

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Adam Weinger is the President of Double the Donation, the leading provider of tools to nonprofits to help them raise more money from corporate matching gift and volunteer grant programs.