Fundraiser Performance Management Guide: Raise More With Your Team

Research shows that 76% of employees say that a workplace would be more appealing if it offered additional skills training. This stat tells you how important it is to take professional development and performance management seriously in a nonprofit organization.

Additionally, by measuring the performance of your fundraisers, you can help your team members grow in their roles and help your organization raise more for its cause. 

This article will outline three main areas of fundraiser performance management and describe some evaluation methods to help you get started.

3 Key Components of Fundraiser Performance Management

1. Measure professional skills

When hiring for a fundraising position, you have to set clear expectations for the skills required for the job. These skills are typically broad professional competencies and abilities that define what success looks like in a particular role.

Below are some skills that apply to fundraising positions:

• Organization
• Communication
• Teamwork
• Time Management
• Leadership
• Relationship building
• Database management

After a candidate is hired, it’s important to track how they perform across each of the categories related to their job. Measuring these broad categories allows fundraisers to develop transferable skills for later in their careers. It also allows nonprofits to holistically understand the performance and professional progress of their fundraisers.

To measure a fundraiser’s performance in these areas, you can use a scale such as the one displayed below. During performance reviews, this scale can be used to track how fundraisers have been developing their skills and identify areas for improvement.

By clearly defining expectations for each role and communicating how fundraisers are progressing, nonprofits can develop a team that is always striving to do better.

2. Measure task progress

In order to understand how fundraisers are developing their professional skills, you need to focus on specific metrics. You can do this by tracking how often fundraisers complete tasks related to their role in real time. 

Below are some fundraising tasks you can use to evaluate fundraising performance:

• Discovery calls
• Cold calls 
• Appeals made
• Face-to-face visits
• Fundraising emails
• Stewardship emails
• Prospect profiles created
• Donor profiles updated
• Social media posts 
• Fundraising reports created
• Grant applications
• Campaigns started

These metrics will give you an idea of how fundraisers spend their time. Additionally, tracking these metrics will allow you to understand how fundraisers are developing their broad professional skills.

Also, consider investing in management technology that automatically analyzes metrics like employee engagement, cost per hire, turnover rates, and gender pay equality.

Software like OrgVue and ChartHop focus on HR analytics and provide powerful tools for any organization that wants to grow its team and create more impact. Additionally, you can get a CRM with built-in management features like Blackbaud Fundraiser Performance Management to have everything under one roof.

3. Measure fundraising outcomes

Measuring professional development and progress metrics on their own is not enough. Ultimately, you need to know how fundraisers are impacting the bottom line.

In other words, you need to understand how the completion of fundraising tasks translates to dollars raised.

Below are some metrics to track fundraising outcomes:

• Total amount raised
• Number of gifts closed 
• Average donation size
• Amount of time between gifts
• Social media revenue raised
• Campaign revenue raised
• Donor Lifetime Value 
• Average number of gifts per donor
• Average donor lifespan 
• Percentage of overall revenue raised

By understanding these metrics, you can clearly picture how effective someone is as a fundraiser.

It’s important to understand these metrics in the context of a fundraiser’s professional skill development and progress metrics to evaluate which skills and tasks translate to fundraising success.

By tracking a fundraiser’s professional skill development, task progress, and fundraising outcomes, you can gain a holistic understanding of how successful fundraisers are in their role. Use this fundraiser performance management framework to develop your team and raise more for your cause.