Individual Donor Benchmark Report Reveals Secret Sauce for Effective Fundraising

This week I’m delighted to share a guest post & infographic from Heather Yandow of Third Space Studio about this year’s Individual Donor Benchmark Report.

Are you wondering how your fundraising program is really doing? How you compare to your peers? Where you could be raising even more money? The Individual Donor Benchmark Report is for you!

Each year the IDB Report examines individual donor fundraising data from small and mighty organizations – those with budgets under $2 million. There’s no other source of this kind of information on average gift, retention rate, online giving, recurring donations, and much more.

This year’s findings include:

• Organizations retain about 60% of their donors from year to year.
• About half of individual donor revenue comes from donors giving less than $1,000.
• Organizations raise 34% of their revenue from individuals.
• 1 out of every 5 individual donor dollars is raised online.
• 4 out of 10 board members are active in fundraising in any significant way.

The IDB Report also reveals the secret sauce for effective fundraising: having a fundraising plan. Organizations with a plan raise more, have more donors, and get better return on their fundraising investments.

You can see some of the highlights in the infographic below and get many more details, including breakdowns by organization size, in the full report, which you can download for free.

Click to download the full report.

About Our Guest Blogger: Heather Yandow brings more than a decade of experience as an outreach coordinator, coalition leader, project manager, and fundraiser to Third Space Studio and our clients. Heather’s nonprofit experience includes being a staff member, volunteer, and Board member. Her most recent staff position was as the director of development and communications for the NC Conservation Network. Heather has served on the Board of Directors of the beehive collective (a giving circle in Raleigh), Democracy NC, and ncyt: NC’s Network of Young Nonprofit Professionals. Heather earned a Bachelor’s of Science in Mathematics from UNC, and holds a Certificate in Nonprofit Management from Duke University.  Follow Heather on Twitter @3rdSpaceStudio.