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Jennifer Studebaker
Coordinator of Administration + Consulting

And oh boy, was it a good one! Erik Daubert, MBA, ACFRE and Chair of the Growth in Giving Initiative and the Fundraising Effectiveness Project came to Kansas City for Nonprofit Connect’s 501(c) Success National Speaker Series on September 11. Erik dived right in with the history, purpose, and goals of the Fundraising Fitness Test. This free tool was developed as part of the Fundraising Effectiveness Project in an effort to help nonprofits understand and evaluate the performance of their development efforts. Requiring only three fields from your database (Donor ID, Donation Amount and Donation Date), the pre-programmed Excel document calculates key performance metrics such as your donor retention, gains and losses, and donor dependency with the Pareto principle.

The Fundraising Effectiveness Project does have reports that you can benchmark your organization against. However, Erik advised that the best organization to compare yourself against is your own. The Fundraising Fitness Test allows you to do this by comparing year over year data, showing your growth in giving over time. The 6 year trend tab lets you to step back and see the impact that known events had on your organization’s giving. The arrival of a new CEO may spark an upward swing, while the loss of a Development Officer may have led to a shortfall from the previous year. This is the type of data that you can take to your Board to celebrate wins and highlight opportunities for growth.

Erik warmly welcomed up our guest panelists, the true heroes of the day! Megan Sturges Stanfield of Junior Achievement, Cindy Wissinger of St. Paul’s Episcopal Day School, and Laci Maltbie of Sherwood Autism Center braved the stage to share their own experiences taking the Fundraising Fitness Test. They were all surprised to learn how quickly they could complete the test and impressed at the value of the information they received. Laci did run into some roadblocks in getting the data extracted properly from her database, highlighting one challenge that other CEOs and Presidents may encounter. Cindy Wissinger noted that her first run at the test was skewed by their capital campaign donations, and she is looking forward seeing the results with only her annual fund donations. Megan was wowed by the ease of the test, and she could immediately see impact of development decisions her organization has been making over time. All panelists happily endorsed the Fundraising Fitness Test, and Jeffrey Byrne + Associates does as well!

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