Some people love fundraising events. Some people aren’t fans. They bring people together, spark momentum, and produce a surge of revenue. But, they also require a lot of time and resources and don’t always produce a strong return. However, one thing we can all agree on is that fundraising events have their own set of metrics.
And since the Fundraising Report Card is all about fundraising metrics, let’s talk about the metrics of fundraising events.
What might surprise you is, the most important and valuable event fundraising metrics often don’t get tracked at all. They get overlooked and overshadowed by the popular ones.
So, let’s take a look first at the event metrics everyone talks about, and then we’ll reveal the ones you should be thinking about more.
Typical Fundraising Event Metrics
A fundraising event seems like an all-eggs-in-one-basket sort of affair. And if you only pay attention to these common metrics, that’s probably all it will be. Nevertheless, these are important to pay attention to.
Total Revenue
This is the most obvious one, and of course it matters. Fundraising events are all about the revenue. You spend a lot to run an event, and you need to make a lot to make it worth it.
Year to year, you can track how much you raise from events, and can easily pay attention to trends as the revenue fluctuates year to year.
Revenue from Raise the Paddle
The raise the paddle part of the event, also known as fund-a-need, happens when the emcee inspires the audience to make straight up cash gifts, with no auction item prizes. This part of the evening is critical because you only have a limited number of auction items, and not every attendee can win one.
This gives everyone the chance to contribute in a bigger way than they could with just the auction items.
Year to year, you can track not just total revenue from the raise the paddle portion of the event, but the number of gifts at each giving level.
Fund-a-Need Donation Ratio
This speaks more to the level of engagement of your fundraising event audience. You calculate this by taking the total number of people who give a raise-the-paddle gift, and divide it by the number of people at the event.
With 500 people attending, if 300 give at least one fund-a-need gift, that would be a 60% ratio. Again, tracking this ratio over the years gives you a good sense of the amount of enthusiasm generated from your event.
If you try out a new auctioneer and the ratio changes significantly from the norm, you’ll know something about whether you should bring that auctioneer back. Bad economy, technical troubles, food issues, things happening in the news – these and many other influences can affect fund-a-need participation rates.
Silent Auction Revenue and Per Item
Silent auctions take a lot of work, and you don’t make as much per item as the live auction. But it gives far more attendees the chance to participate and win, and thus makes the event more fun and desirable to attend.
Track your total silent auction revenue, and then calculate the revenue per item by dividing the total by the number of items.
Live Auction Revenue and Per Item
Likewise, tabulate the total revenue from the live auction, and then divide that by the number of items to get the revenue per item.
The live auction can fluctuate by tens of thousands of dollars depending on the desirability of the items, in addition to all the factors that can affect the fund-a-need.
Number of Attendees
Correlating total revenue and the revenue for the categories listed above with the number of attendees is a smart thing to do.
Let’s say you consistently attract 500 or more people to attend your events. But then for some reason this year you only reached 400. This will probably affect your revenue in the other categories. It’s important to track this because you wouldn’t want to blame things like auction item quality, the economy, or the auctioneer if the reason you made less money is simply because attendance was lower.
Number of New Attendees
Hopefully, your CRM or auction software allows you to track attendees from previous years. This means you can also see how many first-timers are coming each year. You’ll want this information later for the more important event fundraising metrics that no one talks about. We’re almost there.
But first-timers are good to track because, just like new donors, this is an indication of the lifeblood of your organization. It means word is getting out, people are excited, and new supporters are interested in checking out your cause.
Average Revenue Per Attendee
This simple metric gives an indication of the generosity of your attendees, and eliminates the variable of the actual attendance from skewing the data. Off that previous example, if you only brought in 400 people one year when you’re used to seeing 500, dividing total revenue by number of attendees will make it clear if you actually did better or worse – per attendee.
Because the reverse could happen too. You might have one year with an exceptionally large number of attendees. Maybe you have an especially intriguing speaker or performer that year. This metric will enable you to compare the success of events across multiple years, regardless of attendance.
Profit
Profit matters more than revenue. Profit equals revenue minus costs. You might make more revenue, but also spend more that year, and your profits might be lower. Consider profits when increasing your event budget. Can you make more money to justify the increase?
Cost to Revenue Ratio
Suppose you spent $50,000 to put on an event and it raises $250,000. Divide these numbers and you get the cost to revenue ratio, which would be 20% in this case.
Like revenue per attendee, this is a better metric for tracking the costs of your event than the raw cost number.
Sponsorship Dollars
Sponsorships indicate how much engagement you’re getting in the business and philanthropic community. Year to year, this figure can vary widely.
The Problem with ALL the Popular Event Fundraising Metrics
All the above metrics are useful and you should be tracking them. But they all have one problem in common. They speak only to the day of the event itself. This is how well we did this year.
But fundraising events don’t have to be solitary moments in the fundraising journey of your donors. And there are other metrics you can begin tracking that give a better picture of how much your fundraising events actually influence your overall revenue.
Once you know these metrics, you can begin viewing events as more than a one-time revenue surge. As they say in Casablanca, this could be the start of a beautiful friendship…
4 Oft-Ignored Fundraising Event Metrics
With that in mind, let’s look at the metrics too many organizations ignore.
New Donor Acquisition
You have first-time event attendees. But really, most of these are also going to be first-time donors. This is easy to track using donor ID numbers. Add everyone who gives at your event to your database. Any new numbers are newly acquired donors.
And after your event, you can begin communicating and following up with them via your other channels – mail, email, SMS, and online. Treat them like any other first-time donor, and you might just turn them into…
Repeat Donors
Yes – you can also track repeat donors that arise from your fundraising event. By combining the donor ID numbers with the date of donation, you can quickly find all the people who attended your event and gave.
During the ensuing year, you can track which of these donors give again. This is a valuable group of donors, because if you ever pause your live event, or are forced to stop it, these donors have proven that they will also give through other channels, and not just events.
Some event donors are just event donors. That’s how they like to participate. And that’s fine. But by tracking donors from your event throughout the year, you can turn some event donors into repeat and recurring donors.
One-Time vs Recurring Donors
Many event donors will only give once. They attend one fundraising event, participate, but then never return and never give through any other channels. These people are no different than any other one-time donor.
Other event donors, as just described, will turn into repeat donors – either at next year’s event, or through other channels. Either way, you want to track your ratio between one-time and recurring donors.
And you can do this every year, as well as at five different giving levels through the Fundraising Report Card (though at this time, you can’t isolate particular donor IDs with our tool).
If you gain a fresh infusion of new recurring donors from your event every year, this greatly increases the actual value of your event. The event donors who become recurring donors with high lifetime value make that one event’s return on investment far higher than it appeared to be on that day.
Donor Reactivation
Likewise, you might have former donors who lapsed and haven’t given for years. But then, one year, something clicks and they decide to re-engage by coming to your fundraising event. Tracking donor reactivation offers a way to include these people in your fundraising metrics.
The Main Takeaway
The main lesson of all this is simple:
Don’t treat your fundraising event as a solitary episode in your organization’s fundraising story.
This is a day when you can reactivate lapsed donors and initiate relationships with new donors that may last for years and years. By tracking the metrics that capture this data, you’ll get a fuller picture of how your fundraising events are benefitting your nonprofit’s overall revenue.
