5 Fundraising Measurement Mistakes to Avoid in 2024

Digital fundraising and marketing are increasingly important. In fact, 63% of donors prefer to give online. But “online” isn’t just one place. There are landing pages, digital ads, social media posts, blog and video content, SMS, and email campaigns — and a donor or prospect can come to you from any of them. The only way to know if your fundraising and marketing programs are working is to measure your performance on each channel.

It's not easy, so we want to give you a roadmap. Let’s look at the most common mistakes fundraisers and marketers make as they measure — or don’t measure — their campaigns.

1. No Measurement Strategy or Plan

As you plan out your fundraising campaigns, you must also determine what you’re trying to achieve, whether it’s more dollars, donors, gifts, reach, names or a host of other targets. Think beyond higher revenue. For instance, your goal might be to reactivate lapsed donors in preparation for a larger campaign.

When you know what you want to measure, you can then put in the checks and balances to ensure that, at the end of the campaign, you determine which strategies and tactics worked and which ones didn’t.

Every time you add a new channel or campaign to your fundraising mix, make sure that you’ve thought out and documented exactly what key performance indicators you want to track — and that you have a way to not only track them, but also to push the results into your reporting platform.

And, it’s a good idea to revisit your measurement plan every year given changes in digital technology.

2. No Setup for Digital Channel Attribution

Neglecting to set up systems correctly can hinder accurate channel attribution. And how will you know where to invest if you can’t see revenue and engagement by each channel — email, social, advertising, SMS, website or other? You should ensure that your database or your “source of truth” is configured properly to track and attribute contributions effectively.

You do not want your database to label revenue simply as “online,” “digital” or “web” — aggregating all your digital revenue into one bucket with no visibility into the campaign, channel, timing or dollars specific to the campaign. That’s an outdated approach. 

Instead, set up appeal codes for every digital channel and every campaign so that you can see how they perform and have a historical record. Append tracking or source codes to the end of URLs you share with supporters that are native to your digital constitution relationship management (CRM) system (your donation form platform, for example) that passes campaign and revenue data back to your reporting source to ensure you can attribute revenue back to the appropriate channel and campaign. 

Every modern database has the capability to organize data by digital channel. The goal is to get as granular as possible using source coding or other tracking codes unique to your CRM.  

One helpful tactic is to create a master spreadsheet called a URL tracker sheet. You program the sheet so that when you input the appropriate information in each cell — base URL,  effort, channel, campaign name, date, tracking code, etc. — the sheet dynamically creates a new URL with tracking codes included. This makes it easy for all staff and partners to use and ensures all efforts are tracked.

Reminder: A process only works if everyone uses it. So your job is to educate all users who produce any digital assets to start tracking their efforts this way. 

Recognize also that, despite your best efforts to set up your attribution tracking with these best practices, we live in an omnichannel world where our supporters are interacting with many channels before they make a gift.  There is no such thing as 100% channel attribution if we just look at the last click conversion.

We must recognize that touches from other top-of-funnel channels are undoubtedly lifting and contributing to conversions in others. 

We have to learn to live with the tension of not having direct one-to-one channel attribution for results, while recognizing that the increased exposure to your brand and mission has driven more names, donors and/or revenue overall to your organization — and all are critical to future success.

3. No Data Integration Across Platforms

Tracking data across multiple digital channels could mean dozens of reports to maintain. Plus, as mentioned, a donor could travel across several channels before they make a gift. What was the journey, and which specific touch points made the difference?

To evaluate your campaign’s success and know where to spend your money next, it’s important that all these metrics sync in one place. You need a single source of truth, whether that’s your CRM or an integrated reporting platform.

This means you need to integrate and sync all of the data from your platforms so that they can “talk to each other” and share data. So, if a website visitor clicked from your website to a third-party donation form platform, you would see this as a single journey, not two separate ones.   

4. Setting Up Your Web Analytics Incorrectly

Web analytics serves a significant purpose. First, it’s a good backup should someone forget to put a source code on an email or in an ad. You’d still be able to see the revenue and the channel.

Web analytics also delivers insights that other platforms don’t, such as the conversion rate on a donation form or the number of views on your landing page video. In short, web analytics lets you see the whole picture.

Try these best practices:

• Make sure you’ve upgraded to the new Google Analytics 4 system. If you’re still on the previous system, you’re not getting any data past July 2023.
• Implement ecommerce tracking from your web pages to your forms. This will ensure you track the complete user journey.
• Put Google Tag Manager on your webpage and web forms. You can also use it to track pixels on your ad platforms so you can capture donor interactions.

5. Not Preparing for Changing Digital Landscape

The world of digital fundraising and marketing is ever-evolving, so your team must be prepared to keep up. You may not have control over the technical changes that platforms like Apple or Meta make, but you do have control over two key strategies that can drive success:

1. Make your case stand out with memorable and impactful creative. It’s critical that you tell your nonprofit’s story in a unique and compelling way. Dig deep and uncover the images, stories, and connections that will set your messaging apart.
2. Use the first-party data that’s in your CRM and other internal systems. It’s easier than ever to capture, store and retrieve specific points of information that help you personalize messaging. Lean into that to keep learning more about your donors so you can build relationships in a more personal and authentic way.

Getting your measurements in order is the significant first step in ensuring your fundraising and marketing efforts work. After all, you have access to more information than you think. Leverage it in a meaningful way to create the messaging and campaigns that will move your mission forward and draw more people to your cause.

The preceding post was provided by an individual unaffiliated with NonProfit PRO. The views expressed within do not directly reflect the thoughts or opinions of NonProfit PRO.