Pareto Benchmarking report released

Seventy charities came together to share information to improve their fundraising. Many attended presentations of the data in Melbourne and Sydney this week and more will attend in Wellington on Monday and Auckland on Tuesday.

The photo was taken in Sydney with over 120 fundraisers gathered to find out what is happening to giving in Australia and New Zealand.

Most of what we learned was good news. More money from more people than ever before was donated to the 70 charities, and the majority of charities have enjoyed decent growth over the past two years.

Some top level notes from the session:

- online solicited donations still not significant source of donors or income

- swapping is fantastic, with no indicators of donor fatigue etc BUT
let's look at the long term impact

- direct mail acquired donors - the biggest growth area and we know it increased yet again in 2013. Band wagon is being jumped on!

- face to face still rules the roost for new automatics regular donors growing more than 10% from 2011-2012

- the five year value of non-face to face acquired regular givers is much, much more than face to face so charities should be prepared to accept much higher acquisition cost. A direct mail acquired donor will give an average of 51 times their initial monthly donation, where as an average face to face acquired donor would give 29 times their initial monthly donation.

- we knew credit card donors are better prospects for regular giving than cheque donors, but it turns out they are better bequest prospects too!

- nearly all contributions from a person who comes in as a regular giver will be their regular gifts

- nearly all contributions from a cash donor source will be cash, though over five years bequests and regular gifts add a significant portion

- for the first time we are seeing income directly related to the bequest 'pledge rates' - could be enough to start benchmarking that next year. Charities with higher pledge rates of bequests will make more bequest income

- biggest key to success in bequest pledges seems to be being Victorian! Top four were Australian charities based in that state. But really it is having a certain type of program - the 'one page legacy program' which relies on direct mail and phone to drive pledges. Type of charity is not necessarily key.

- second gift rates, payment type, average donations and more are useful - but ratios are really really useful

- older donors are better. Get the best response rates, retention and total giving. Except for face to face, forget younger donors; there are easier ways to help your beneficiaries

- your donors are almost certainly going to be giving to other charities. For example, 60% of all Australian donors who gave a gift in 2012 and were acquired by direct mail, gave to one of the other 53 charities! The figure was about 15% from face to face acquired regular givers.

Charts and more information to come after the New Zealand presentations next week.

Sean