Individual giving and data-driven fundraising is getting more professional every year. Multi-year budgets, profitability analysis and annual plan monitoring are all crucial processes in a successful fundraising program. A number of charities are working with our planning tool Forward. The fundraising team at Leprastichting shares its experiences.

Why did Leprastichting choose Forward?

Femke Ruinaard, Head of Fundraising & Communication: “Each month we discuss the results of the past month in our data meeting and see whether we are still on track with our annual plan. We agree on where we are going to make adjustments. PowerBI and Salesforce provide insight in our data. We also worked a lot with Excel, for example for our multi-year budget. That was a huge job and not all relevant KPIs were reflected in it. Forward brings our needs together: understanding the long-term profitability of our fundraising. Our entire fundraising program in one overview. Clear insight in where we can improve our program. Looking ahead and optimizing based on our data, in order to make even more impact.”

You have to get to know, set up and use a new tool. The fundraising team shares her first experiences: Jessica de Gier (Database Marketeer), Bram Schreuder (Fundraiser Acquisition) and Mario Perria (Fundraiser Individual Giving).

Jessica: After the joint set-up day, the fundraisers themselves collected the data and we put it together in Forward: average gifts, retention rates, etc. By entering your own data you are getting to know the tool and definitions. We are now gathering a lot of insights about how our fundraising is going and the first things that we need to address are emerging. Next step is to make data-driven decisions based on out findings. The fundraisers have to get used to looking at this data and what the data tells you. But the discussions started right away.

Bram: I would advise other fundraisers who work with Forward to play with the input variables. And then see what small changes do to your results in the longer term. Always make sure you discuss the segments together and ask each other about how you arrived at these numbers. The learning curve is hidden in looking up the input variables, interpreting what rolls out and having a good discussion about it.

Jessica: We looked very much at the short term response to specific actions. But in Forward we are forced to look at the long term picture. We now look at how much a donor gives per year and how many donors give the following year. We try to answer questions like: How long do one-off and regular donors stay with you from the point of recruitment? How many additional gifts do those regular donors give? We also look much more at the regular income as a whole. And then again separately to our acquisition. In Forward we have divided the existing donors into different sub-segments, which has also given us a lot of insights!

Many of the variables we need to enter in Forward were not available and we had to look them up. But this immediately made me very enthusiastic, because these were things that we had not looked at before. This has already provided so much insight and information! Both the commissioning of Forward and the search for the figures we had to enter are just as valuable as the total planning that eventually rolls out.

Mario: At first I didn't realize that we would also be using Forward to keep track of the monthly numbers and monitor progress throughout the year. After all, we already had good insight through tools such as Salesforce and PowerBI. But now that the time has come, I see its added value compared to the previous method.

You do have to make time to properly investigate the questions you cannot answer. We then initially fill in an estimate to see what this would mean for the program. Finally, we look for the answer based on data analysis and adjust the plan where necessary. In this way you learn more and more about the buttons you can turn to arrive at a good business case.

Jessica: The work has been more than worth it in every way. Using Forward has already given us a lot of insights that we didn't have before. We now know which retention rates belong to the different segments. Not only for the first year, but also for the following years.

Now we can monitor our program. We have already had the first quarterly meeting and some segments did not go according to plan, now we arrive at a realistic latest estimate for the year every month, which the finance department likes very much, but which will also give us opportunities for adjustment. All in all I am very excited!

Bram: Forward provides insight into the number of donors, total income and investment, but not why these are the results. You have to take your time for that interpretation. The first quarterly session was therefore very valuable to look at the different programs in this way. This makes it very clear where risks and opportunities are.

Thank you Leprastichting for sharing your experiences!

Interested in what Forward can do for you? Request a demo!