Compare this year's year-end appeal to last year's appeal to judge how effectively you are growing and retaining your donor base. You want several baseline reports, such as how much money was received last year, the average gift amount, and what percentage of your donors responded. Include whatever other metrics your board desires. These baseline reports are also great for any campaign measurement.
Last Year's Appeal Revenue
This report tells you how much money came in from last year's year-end appeal.
Create a transaction report.
In the Include section, click Add Filter.
Click Date. Choose Between. In the first field, enter the date you sent out the appeal letter. In the second field, enter a reasonable end date for when money stopped coming in for this appeal. Click OK.
Click And.
Click Appeal. Select last year's year-end appeal, and click OK.
Click And.
Click Type. Click Donation, Pledge Payment, and Recurring Donation Payment, and click OK. Your filters should look similar to the following picture.
The Amount column displays the total revenue from last year's appeal at the top of the report.
Save the report and name it "Last Year's Appeal Revenue."
Average Gift Amount
Growing gift amounts are a good sign that you're on the right track with your year-end appeal. Use the Last Year's Appeal Revenue report to calculate the average gift size:
Above the report results, the report shows how many individual gifts were made ("X transactions found"). The first entry in the Amount column displays the gift total.
Divide the gift total by the number of individual gifts to calculate your average gift amount.
Note: If you received many recurring donations, the average gift amount may skew down. Set a later end date for the report if you want to capture more of the recurring donation payments.
Percentage of Donors Responded
Compare two reports to figure out your success rate: a report that lists how many people received your appeal pieces and the Last Year's Appeal Revenue report. To find out how many people you contacted:
Create an interaction report.
In the Include section, click Add Filter.
Set the Subject filter to last year's year-end appeal. The subject is the name of the letter or Subject line of the email. If you sent multiple appeal pieces with different subjects, add each subject as another Or filter.
Set the Channel filter to how you sent out the appeal. Your filters should look similar to the following picture.
Click the Name column.
Click Group by This Column and then Collapse Group to One Row.
Save the report.
The total number of constituents who received something about your appeal last year is shown at the top of the report ("X groups found"). Make a note of the total number.
Find out how many people responded to the year-end appeal:
Open the Last Year's Appeal Revenue report.
Click the Name column.
Click Group by This Column and then Collapse Group to One Row.
"X groups found" tells you how many individuals responded to the appeal. Divide this number by the number of individuals who received a year-end appeal to find your response percentage.
Compare to This Year
Export these reports and save them. Then modify them with this year's dates when this year's appeal wraps up early next year.