The Nonprofit Technology Conference is just one week away! And if you’re going to be there, don’t miss our session on the 2013 eNonprofit Benchmarks Study. It will have adventure, excitement, thrills, and chills — and an in-depth look at the key numbers and trends affecting online fundraising and advocacy. Mostly that last part.
We’ll be in Marquette I on Friday, 4/12 from 1:30 – 3:00pm for the 2013 eNonprofit Benchmarks session. If for some inexplicable reason you have to miss the best session of 13NTC, definitely join my colleagues Michael Ward and Madeline Stanionis right afterward in the hallway outside the Grande Ballroom, where they’ll be serving up serving up root beer floats! Root beer floats and data!
If you won’t be at NTC this year, all is not lost. You can still join the online Benchmarks webinar on April 23rd for another chance to dive deeper into the numbers and the stories behind the numbers. Either way, here’s how you can get the most out of the discussion.
1. Download the report.
It just takes a few seconds at https://e-benchmarksstudy.com and as always, the report is completely free.
2. Read the report.
This takes a bit longer. After all, the report has 44 pages (but a lot of that is pretty charts!) The thing is, there’s a lot of detail in here — detail that we probably won’t get into at the NTC session or webinar unless you ask about it specifically. So read through the whole study, and take notes if necessary. It’s okay if your copy gets messy. We’ll give you a nice, clean, printed copy of the report at NTC.
3. Set your own benchmarks!
Remember, the most important benchmarks are your own benchmarks. Here are some standard metrics to pull that can tell a broad story about the health of your program — especially when you compare them to the benchmarks in our study.
- Average open rate, click-through rate, and response rate for your advocacy, fundraising, and newsletter emails
- Percentage email list growth for 2012
- Average online gift (for extra credit, pull one-time and monthly!)
- Portion of online revenue that comes from your monthly giving program
- The ratio of your email list size to your Facebook fans, Twitter followers, and mobile subscribers
4. Ask questions! Speculate!
As you read through the report and pull your own benchmarks, you’re likely to have questions just like people did in 2012. Or maybe you have brilliant theories about why we saw certain trends in the industry. We welcome it all!
If you want to be sure we’re prepared to answer your questions at our next session, post them here or tweet us @MRCampaigns.