Donor giving series

This year I have re-introduced my previous business, Donations Management. Donations Management is established to help corporations, foundations and high-end donors manage their donations to create more meaningful and measurable impacts. GET RESULTS!!

For the next few weeks, I will be blogging about some areas for donors to think about before they make substantial investments. The intent of this series is to get donors and charities to think differently. My overall end goal is to have more end recipients succeed. There is no greater emotional experience, to me, than to see people achieving their goals.

Okay, let's begin. What exactly does impact mean? When we talk about impact, there seems to be a few ways of explaining it. I define impact as focusing on the end result so for the majority of donors that means financial impacts and client impacts . For this blog, we will focus on financial and client impacts.

How well did the charity manage a donor's gift? Did most of the money go towards programming? Financial impacts tend to focus on efficiency measures that try to answer those questions such as % of administrative and or fundraising costs relative to total expenses or to total fundraising dollars raised or programming costs per client. When donors assess the financial statements, they want to know if the charity invested in helping more end recipients succeed or did they help more internal staff get bonuses for their fundraising skills? That sounds cynical, but unfortunately, donors are watching as these fundraising costs are in many cases skyrocketing. Donors want to see more money going to programming. The more money going towards programming, the greater the potential for more clients to succeed. I say potential. This leads me to the next area of impact - client impact.

I think the most powerful area of measurement is that of client impact which can be measured in terms of effectiveness. To me, that is basically checking to see how many of the charity's clients succeeded or how many clients achieved what the charity promised they would achieve. That promise should be clearly defined within the mission. That promise can also be called an outcome depending upon how well you have defined it. I think measuring client impact is the most important area. As I have mentioned in other articles, I believe that the bottom-line for the non-profit sector is not financial solvency, although that is vital, but rather client success. For too long, charities have not had to be accountable for client success. That needs to change if communities want to truly see less poverty, better education, and higher quality health care.

Something to think about...

Labels: donor, donor giving, donor help, donor impact

posted by Brenda Northey @ 7:23 AM