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CCS turns insights into actions, challenges into opportunities, and fundraising goals into mission impact.
CCS Fundraising is thrilled to share the tenth edition of Snapshot of Today’s Philanthropic Landscape. This report compiles and contextualizes research from across the field of philanthropy to help U.S. nonprofits wade through the available data and create informed fundraising strategies.
“For the past ten years, CCS has aggregated the latest research on the state of U.S. philanthropy in our Snapshot of Today’s Philanthropic Landscape report,” say the publication Co-Editors, Tom Kissane, Principal and Managing Director and Natalie Skinner, Senior Vice President. “It is heartening to see the resiliency of philanthropy reflected in this year’s edition, as Giving USA estimates that Americans gave a record-setting $471.44 billion in 2020. At the same time, we must recognize that this outpouring of generosity sits within a complex and turbulent landscape. It is more important than ever for nonprofit leaders and fundraisers to understand the philanthropic terrain and be diligent and intentional as they connect with donors. We are elated to share this tenth-edition report as a resource to help mission-driven organizations uncover philanthropic trends and develop data-informed fundraising strategies.”
The report discusses essential findings from across the field of philanthropic research, including:
Read the full report for more findings and insights on the data from CCS’s fundraising experts. To download a copy of Snapshot of Today’s Philanthropic Landscape, 10th Edition, click here.
[1] Giving USA Foundation, Giving USA: The Annual Report on Philanthropy for the Year 2020 (2021).
[2] Candid, “Philanthropic response to coronavirus (COVID-19)” (Accessed July 16, 2021) and “Funding for racial equity” (Accessed July 16, 2021).
[3] Blackbaud, Vital Signs, Part 3: How Major Donors Are Shaping Philanthropy (2020).
[4] The Chronicle of Philanthropy, “The Philanthropy 50” (2021).
[5] Dr. Russell James III, Cash is Not King in Fundraising: Results from 1 Million Nonprofit Tax Returns (2018).
[6] Blackbaud, Charitable Giving Report (2021).
For nonprofits, customer relationship management (CRM) databases are libraries of donor information that enable essential activities like contacting donors, accounting for financial history, and noting primary relationships with an institution.
Your database only functions as well as the staff managing it. Building human-backed processes and systems for CRM maintenance will help your nonprofit strengthen its library of institutional knowledge on donors and empower fundraisers with the information they need to succeed.
Fundraising is a team sport. Whether you’re a frontline fundraiser or a program manager, a culture of philanthropy is important for identifying long-term relationships that lead to larger gifts for your institution. Tracking relationships within a central database is key to this success, and wards against losing knowledge over time with the natural transition of staff to new roles and responsibilities.
Train your fundraising staff to:
In high-functioning development offices, all staff members have basic knowledge of how to use the database to do their specific jobs. Whether you’re a frontline fundraiser, development assistant, prospect researcher, events coordinator, or administrative support staff member, all have a role to play in keeping institutional knowledge up to date.
Ensure all staff members are aware of basic information the institution gathers from donors, what to do when they learn a donor’s name and information are incorrect, and how to search for donors and pertinent information within the database.
As the adage goes, what gets measured gets managed. Become familiar with the percentage of donors within your database for which you have incorrect emails and mailing addresses recorded. Create a plan to proactively improve the quality of data within your system.
Usually, some staff members are more technologically adept than others. And frontline fundraisers prioritize engaging donors more than data entry! But the good news is that baseline database skills can be acquired with intentional and targeted training. There are also batch data upload tools and tricks you can employ to help streamline data entry and save end-users’ time.
It is important to meet staff where they are and gradually build their capacity with continuous, ongoing training and informational refreshers. Tailor the training to cover reports the staff member would be accountable for inserting data into and/or need to utilize regularly. In addition, supply easy-to-use glossaries of terms and quick how-to documents to help staff recall learnings.
Is your organization considering how to build an effective fundraising data and reporting structure? Learn more about CCS’s Systems and Change Management services.
Oftentimes, nonprofits seek to resolve their database issues by buying a new CRM (customer relationship management) software subscription. Not all CRM problems are technical in nature, however, and the human element of data systems shouldn’t be ignored.
Before changing your donor database, carefully consider the problems your organization is attempting to solve and whether a new system is needed to remedy them. These five considerations can help your organization get to the root of its CRM issues and understand what it needs from the software.
Choosing the “right” CRM depends on knowing your organization’s needs. Your CRM selection is analogous to choosing a car—the required seats, gas mileage, horsepower, cargo size, and towing capacity depend on how you intend to use the vehicle.
Any database’s primary objective is to store and retrieve information. Before embarking on a crusade to switch your CRM, consider:
Your CRM software could be the equivalent of a high-powered sports car, fully loaded with all the bells and whistles, but your staff may lack a license to drive.
Before investing thousands of dollars into a new CRM, first determine if your institution has committed to and invested in ensuring that staff members can complete accurate and timely data entry. To assist with data entry training, be sure to create an established process and procedure for defining terms and using information for organization-wide and team-specific reporting. Finally, have a plan for ongoing data management, onboarding, and training for fundraising teams. Think through the plan for training users to obtain data and reports and have proactive working relationships with Advancement Services for additional support.
Nonprofits can have complex, multi-layered operations that use several software systems and flows of information. For instance, in healthcare, fundraising departments receive data from clinical software systems and other third-party sources.
When choosing a CRM, consider its ease of fit with your current infrastructure and workflows. How many additional steps are required to make these systems work together? What are the demands on staff time to migrate data from one system to another? For example, multiple payment processing systems may require staff to complete various intermediate validation steps to reconcile donor information, which slows down reporting efforts. Is the additional staff time or resourcing required worthwhile for the CRM under consideration?
In an ideal world, all users of a CRM have a common understanding of the terms used throughout the database. In the real world, terms have different meanings depending on the user.
As you consider a CRM switch, investigate if all departments and users of your CRM are on the same page. In the case of one of our clients, fund code and account code were used interchangeably in conversations within Advancement Services, which caused confusion when they requested information from Finance. By discussing and creating a dictionary for database terms, the two departments operated more efficiently.
Bad data in means bad data out. This is the rule of thumb for any information gathered, stored, and utilized for making reports and predictions.
Nonprofit organizations need processes and controls in place to determine what donor data or transactional data should be inserted into your system, by whom, when, and how. Creating processes for consistent, accurate, and timely data entry will help your organization identify revenue-generating activities and make the most of its fundraising and marketing efforts.
Is your organization considering how to build an effective fundraising data and reporting structure? CCS Fundraising can help. To learn more about our Systems services, contact Allison Willner, Vice President of Data Strategy, at systems@ccsfundraising.com.
CCS’s Senior Data Scientist John Sammis explains how your nonprofit can use predictive modeling to unearth new fundraising potential in your donor database.
Projecting fundraising revenue can always feel daunting, especially during economic and political uncertainty. CCS Fundraising is here to help you plan for 2024 and beyond with tactical guidance and a downloadable fundraising revenue forecast template.
Vice President Advancement, Ms. Foundation for Women
President, Northwestern Memorial Foundation at Northwestern Medicine
Chief Operating Officer, Homeboy Industries
Managing Director
In the last year, human services organizations have experienced an increase in philanthropic giving as a result of donors’ heightened awareness of the pandemic’s economic consequences and racial inequities faced by marginalized communities. Human services organizations, thanks to the influx in giving, were able to transform their work seemingly overnight to heroically meet drastic increases in demand for their support.
As organizations continue to deploy fundraising windfalls to meet ongoing heightened demand, many are revisiting their strategic plans with the goal of leveraging surplus funding to center the voices of their clients and more deeply address the root causes of the challenges facing their communities.
Contributions to the human services sector compromised 14% of all donations received by U.S. charities in 2020. According to the recently released Giving USA 2021 report, giving to human services organizations grew 9.7% in 2020, totaling $65.14 billion.[1] Adjusted for inflation, sector giving grew by 8.4% between 2019 and 2020. Contributions to human services in 2020 totaled the highest inflation-adjusted amount recorded to date. Not only are more people giving, but they are sustaining or increasing their level of support. A Fidelity Charitable survey found that 9 out of 10 donors maintained or increased their giving because of COVID-19, with 46% of respondents giving notably more than before.[2]
We have also witnessed an influx of leading philanthropists making transformational gifts within the human services sector. According to a recent study by Bank of America and the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, nearly 90% of affluent Americans gave to charity in 2020.[3] Human services organizations were a focus of MacKenzie Scott’s $5.7 billion in giving in 2020, including 42 food banks and 30 Meals on Wheels programs.[4] Jeff Bezos made a $100 million gift to Feeding America, the nation’s largest hunger relief organization, in addition to considerable philanthropy throughout the human services sector and beyond.[5] Charles and Helen Schwab and Joe Gebbia gave generous gifts to support people experiencing homelessness, with homelessness being the top cause among their total 2020 contributions of $65 million and $27 million, respectively.[6] These mega-gifts, alongside many others, demonstrate that donors recognize the critical role human services organizations have had in supporting our most vulnerable populations throughout the pandemic.
The increase in philanthropic support provides a historic opportunity for organizations to strategically expand their vision and means of achieving their mission. What was once a moonshot idea may now be within reach because of unrestricted philanthropic support. Across the sector, organizations are deploying their funds in three overarching ways.
At the peak of the pandemic, the World Bank projected that global extreme poverty (living on less than $1.90 a day) would rise for the first time in over 20 years.[7] And as communities were reeling from the repercussions of the pandemic, human services organizations had to completely restructure their operations to meet safety measures whilst finding a way to significantly increase their outputs.
Increased levels of philanthropic support enabled organizations to create innovative solutions to meet the immediate and incredible needs of their communities. We have seen food banks across the nation feed millions more neighbors through first-of-its-kind drive-through distribution sites of prepackaged food. Partner organizations such as the Salvation Army were able to strengthen their efforts to break cycles of generational poverty by providing extraordinary utility assistance and access to shelter. The job of a human services organization is never complete, but as the pandemic created a heightened need, increases in philanthropic giving have been vital to providing critical services.
Human services organizations are often hyper-focused on the issue at hand, and for good reason! However, an increase in philanthropic support has enabled organizations to think strategically around investing for long-term success.
The influx of cash that many human services organizations have received enables them to ensure the longevity of their work through the creation of an endowment fund and reserves. Whether through the creation of a general endowment fund, endowing a specific need such as technology, or creating or expanding a “rainy day” fund, organizations can now apply surplus funding to sustain client services.
Organizations have also invested in their staff. Through the addition of a new development team member or impact officer, nonprofits can focus on retaining new donors and have the means to sustain their mission. Nonprofits in the human services sector now have a greater ability to ensure their work continues well into the future.
Some human services organizations that now have the funds to address immediate needs and build reserves are considering bold and visionary ideas. From expanding their scope of work to include wraparound services and/or advocacy, to streamlining processes to make services more readily available to their clients, human services organizations are exploring how they can make deeper inroads to addressing the root causes of their communities’ challenges. Additionally, many organizations are considering capital investments to achieve their work more effectively and efficiently and impact their community in a more meaningful way. An increase in philanthropy has allowed human services organizations to act on ideas they had previously dreamed about but did not have funding to realize.
As human services organizations strategize the most impactful way to deploy surpluses from fundraising windfalls, they are uniquely positioned to double down on efforts that empower the most vulnerable populations in their communities. This comes during a time when donors are asking, “How are you helping to solve the challenges facing the populations you serve?” Organizations are finding that amplifying the voices of their clients is a critical step to truly meeting the needs of their community and creating a deep and lasting impact. We are seeing human services organizations approach this work in three key ways:
Human services organizations are keenly focused on solving biosocial problems that impact people from an extensive range of socio-economic backgrounds. Thus, the needs of different communities can vary widely and present distinct factors that will inform how service organizations can deliver the most effective services. Organizations are meeting with community leaders in their service areas to learn more about the people they serve: their unique needs, hurdles they face in accessing support, and measures that can be taken to overcome them.
Some nonprofits have taken this work a step further by targeting their outreach to the most vulnerable populations, recognizing that socio-economic challenges disproportionately impact specific segments of their communities. These conversations and listening sessions inform how nonprofits can tailor their strategic plans to ensure funds are deployed in a highly intentional and impactful way.
Questions to consider when seeking to understand the challenges faced by the communities you serve:
- How can your organization engage in conversation to co-create solutions to issues facing your service areas?
- How can your organization prioritize the needs of the most vulnerable in your planning and realization of your mission?
No one organization can address every issue facing its community. Through complementary partnership, nonprofits, governments, and corporations can together create an incredible network of support that leverages the brain trust and skills of experts from different facets of human services work.
We have seen nonprofits who work to reduce food insecurity partner with local healthcare providers to tackle multiple social determinants of health at once. Financial guidance nonprofits, career training teams, social workers, and hunger relief organizations have combined forces under one roof to provide a one-stop shop for individuals experiencing poverty. Partnering with other organizations allows for increased impact, more amenable services to those you are serving, and providing a space for innovative ideas to come alive.
Questions to consider when looking to create or expand partnerships:
- What partnerships can be deepened or built to more deeply address the root causes of the challenges your clients are facing?
- How can partnerships create more accessible services for your clients?
The past year has placed much-needed emphasis on breaking down racial stereotypes to build inclusive and equitable access. At the heart of this reckoning is the need to honor the dignity of individuals who access support. Human services organizations are uniquely qualified to make progress on these priorities. One of the ways they are doing this is by assessing how clients experience their support. For some organizations, this has meant distributing fundraising surplus as grants to immigrant-led nonprofits to ensure the deployment of culturally relevant support and services. Other organizations that have a prominent seat at the figurative “table” – whether that be with a government, nonprofit alliance, or professional association – are creating an opportunity for immigrant and marginalized community leaders to ensure true representation. Respecting and creating agency for the people you serve fortifies relationships, increases trust, and deepens your mission and impact.
Questions to consider when exploring ways to create agency:
- Where can your organization focus on equity versus efficiency?
- What shifts can your organization make to be more amenable to the clients’ needs, in turn meeting them with dignity?
Increases in philanthropic support to human services organizations provide a historic opportunity for organizations to explore bold and visionary investments. With immediate operational needs and financial reserves addressed by spikes in fundraising, nonprofits should leverage their additional surplus to explore catalyst investments. Engage, partner, and empower the communities you serve to inform how your vision should be pursued and how impact can be measured. Donors trust your organizations to be the experts in your respective work. Your commitment to centering the voices of the communities you serve will instill further confidence and enthusiasm in those who support your mission.
[1] The Giving Institute, Giving USA 2021: The Annual Report on Philanthropy for the Year 2020
[2] Fidelity Charitable, “A Year Unlike Any Other: How Donors Plan to Approach Giving at 2020’s Year‐End”
[3] Bank of America, “Helping Your Neighbor: A Story of Generosity”
[4] The Chronicle of Philanthropy, “Jeff Bezos, MacKenzie Scott, and Michael Bloomberg Top List of America’s 50 Biggest Charity Donors” and Food Bank News, “42 Food Banks Prepare to Spend Mega Gifts from Philanthropist MacKenzie Scott”
[5] Feeding America, “Feeding America Responds To $100 Million Gift from Jeff Bezos In Support of Food Banks During COVID-19 Pandemic”
[6] The Chronicle of Philanthropy, “The Philanthropy 50”
[7] The World Bank, “COVID-19 to Add as Many as 150 Million Extreme Poor by 2021”
Throughout the past 18 months, the Catholic Church was challenged to respond to the realities of COVID-19 by adapting to a new way of communicating with constituents. A critical focus remains placed on continuing communication by leveraging available technology while maintaining or increasing our human empathy and connection.
Throughout the month of June, join CCS Fundraising and #iGiveCatholic for a three-part video series featuring engaging conversations with dioceses, parishes, and schools to hear firsthand how these organizations have navigated stewardship in a digital world.
Tune in for a series introduction featuring Cory Howat, President of #iGiveCatholic and Executive Director of the Catholic Community Foundation of the Archdiocese of New Orleans, and Brad Patterson, Senior Vice President at CCS Fundraising.
Throughout 2020, the Catholic Church was challenged to respond to the realities of COVID-19 by adapting to a new way of communicating with constituents. Tune in to see how Amy Ponson, Executive Director at The Catholic Foundation of South Louisiana, navigated 2020 and 2021. Thanks to Cory J. Howat from #iGiveCatholic and Brad Patterson from CCS Fundraising, our series hosts!
Join us for our final episode of Stewardship in a Digital World, a video series on Catholic fundraising strategy! This episode features Rick Carrico, Development Director St. Leo Catholic Church. Thanks to Cory J. Howat from #iGiveCatholic and Brad Patterson from CCS for hosting this special series!
The recent headlines surrounding an increased focus on reducing the cost of higher education through the Biden Administration’s American Families Plan, along with the launch of the Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund (HEERF), have spiked curiosity among institutional leaders on how this could affect their overall fundraising strategy and donor messaging.
Private philanthropy is, and will remain, a crucial component of higher education institutions’ funding mix as it helps ensure overall access, excellence, sustainability, and growth. Philanthropy has historically complemented and accelerated government funding, allowing institutions to focus private dollars on ensuring student success through investment in programs, buildings, and people to help build the workforce of the future.
For years, private philanthropy has decreased barriers to educational access through scholarship support. Philanthropy, however, is so much more than scholarship dollars; it is a pipeline to innovation that allows institutions to implement bold new approaches that accelerate contributions to the social, technological, and economic growth of their communities. This steady revenue stream into scholarships, buildings, programs, and people allows institutions to fulfill their mission, regardless of what state and federal funding provide. And to be sure, these amounts fluctuate so while it might appear that the system is flush today, tomorrow might present a dramatically different view.
The foundation of successful fundraising is still based on the trusting, authentic, and respectful relationships you build with your board, your community, and your donors. Below are some high-level insights and key messages to consider when conveying the gap in funding and the continued need for private philanthropic support.
The total cost of attending college today goes far beyond yearly tuition. In addition to the cost of classes, students must factor in textbooks and school supplies, housing, food, transportation, and personal expenses. Students working full or part-time jobs in addition to attending school also have to calculate the benefits and trade-offs of earning an income to meet their financial needs while earning a degree or certificate to pursue the career of their choice.
The headline benefit of many public and government funding proposals is free or subsidized tuition, seemingly removing the need for student scholarships at two and four-year institutions. Advancement offices will be well-served to remind donors that philanthropy amplifies the work that government funders hope to accomplish by addressing the wraparound support that students need to be successful inside and outside the classroom.
It is important to acknowledge that a student’s timeline to completion can vastly vary, as many are balancing work, a family, and other personal responsibilities. Since institutions know their students’ needs best, scholarship dollars can be redirected to the most vulnerable community members or those who fall outside of public funding parameters, such as community college students enrolled in workforce training programs. In many cases, unmet need will still be a major challenge facing college students even with free or reduced tuition.
For one CCS higher education partner, the cost of tuition is a fraction of the total cost analysis facing the 60,000+ student body at the community college. Innovative scholarship funds and programs have been developed in recent years to creatively lower students’ financial burdens and are growing rapidly as donors see that need and impact clearly align with helping students achieve their academic goals. While having government funding absorb tuition fees would be a significant benefit to the students, transferring savings to another financial priority still doesn’t resolve the average unmet need of over $9,200 annually.
Regardless of whether scholarship dollars are going to be as essential to future students as they have been to current and past students, the need to provide funding to stay up to date on emerging programming, technologies, and resources will remain crucial to ensure students are career ready and employable. Consider what the in-demand industries are in your region and what programs your institution has in place that directly funnel graduating students into these key industries. Are there programs that can and should be enhanced to better prepare graduating students for newly emerging industries? Continue to remind the donor about the role your institution plays in your community’s economic growth and share the success stories of your students.
People connect with stories, and donors are no exception. We also know that people give to people. With every opportunity you have to get in front of a donor, whether that be announcing a new program, providing impact updates, or simply saying thank you, the act of including an individual student’s journey at your institution brings an irreplaceable human element to your work. Encourage students to go beyond the standard background information and share the hopes and dreams that lie ahead for them! Everyone loves to feel inspired by the next generation and the work your institution is doing to make their big dreams a reality.
Federal and state dollars fluctuate every year, usually with strict policies or timelines in place for specific spending requirements. Private philanthropy ensures flexibility and consistent resources are available well after federal dollars are spent. In light of this, consider the following forward-thinking opportunities:
Philanthropy is here to stay. While ambitious public funding proposals to support higher education institutions evolve over the coming months, we must all remain focused on cultivating the private funding sources that will sustain our work. We must continue to meet students’ needs and help them achieve their goals.
At the same time, being proactive and flexible with your messaging is necessary. The heightened focus on student support through greater public resources puts higher education institutions in a positive spotlight but also requires institutions to be thoughtful about communicating the value of scholarship support and private support for higher education needs more broadly. Communicating the well-known value proposition of your institution’s mission will ensure its future long after public dollars are spent.
One year ago, CCS purposefully affirmed our commitment to racial justice and our efforts to foster a more inclusive and equitable world. The senseless killings of George Floyd and countless other Black lives ignited the desire to firmly stand in solidarity with our colleagues and communities of color. Systemic racism and discrimination have no place in our society. We actively condemn violence and aggression directed at anyone based on their race, nationality, religion, sexual orientation, disability, or gender.
Today, CCS remains dedicated and steadfast in pushing this commitment forward. While there are no words to describe the anguish and frustration as these injustices persist, CCS continues the work to create change both within the firm and beyond. We are a firm comprised of passionate, mission-driven people with a dedication to making the world a better place, and we recognized that this work needed to importantly start from within.
An important first step in advancing our commitment was creating our DEI Mission Statement to establish CCS’s core values. Through inclusive and challenging conversations amongst leadership and staff, CCS developed our guiding principles to hold ourselves accountable for creating a respectful, inclusive, and equitable company culture for all employees. Leadership listened, adjusted, and committed to growth to stimulate this cultural change.
As a firm, we also acknowledged that we have much to learn on this journey and made the decision to partner with professional consultants who have expertise in areas related to diversity, equity, and inclusion. We began our partnership with Nadia Jones of Culture Cipher, who led us through the development of firm-wide training and education, as well as guidance in the key early decisions on our DEI journey. CCS also partnered with Holistic to conduct interviews, small group conversations, and a firm-wide survey to understand key factors of job satisfaction, growth, and belonging. Additionally, Holistic underwent a deep analysis of our recruitment pipeline to help us understand opportunities for more inclusive practices from the moment a team member applies.
Resulting from these initial steps forward, CCS committed to taking specific, measurable actions in the areas of:
We have made important and necessary progress in this past year, but we recognize that this is an ongoing journey, and our work must persist.
We will continue to develop resources and assess our operational practices to foster advancement and a positive environment for all employees, regardless of race, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, parental status, national origin, different abilities, age, veteran status, or other invisible traits. We know that as a firm, we are only as valuable as our people, and that there is strength in diversity.
CCS commits to learn and grow through compassion, humility, and accountability as we partner with organizations across the nonprofit community and beyond.
Click the video below for our DEI Mission Statement from the CCS team.
You may already know that predictive modeling can unearth new major gift prospects. But how can it help us improve a major gift portfolio that is already assigned?
In essence, predictive modeling can help evaluate two factors that are key to fundraising success:
CCS uses these two factors to critically evaluate and optimize the makeup of our clients’ major gift portfolios.
A quality major gift portfolio contains prospects who have both capacity and affinity. This means that the prospects not only have the financial means to donate to charity, but also have an interest in giving to your organization specifically.
A nonprofit’s CRM data can reveal a lot about affinity. CCS uses this rich internal data to build predictive models, which leave us with a score that estimates how likely each donor is to give to your organization.
To estimate capacity, we conduct external wealth screening research. Each wealth screening service takes a slightly different approach to producing gift capacity estimates. In general, these services use assets, real estate, income, and public giving data to generate a value that estimates how much money a particular household can donate to all charities over a five-year period.
To visualize the quality of a portfolio, CCS often puts these affinity and capacity data points together to build a quadrant chart like the one below. Prospects who both score well on the predictive models and exhibit meaningful gift capacity fall in the upper right quadrant of the chart.
Illustrating the quality of a portfolio in this way brings up key questions, such as:
In addition to assessing your portfolio’s quality, you also want to assess your portfolio’s performance. A portfolio can contain the most ideal prospects and still not live up to its potential in terms of actual dollars raised.
We can estimate how well a portfolio is performing by using a metric called the capacity capture rate. The capacity capture rate is the ratio of a prospect’s last five years of giving to the minimum value of their estimated gift capacity range. In other words, the capacity capture rate estimates what percentage of a donor’s total giving capacity went to your organization.
The table below groups prospects into minimum estimated capacity ranges and computes the average (mean) and median capacity capture rate for each of these groups.
In the case of the client example above, we know there are outliers who unduly influence the average. When the average capacity capture rate is meaningfully different than the median capture rate, there is a good chance that there are some outliers. Removing the outliers can help us get a better sense of the underlying capture rate for the portfolio as a whole.
CCS typically sees an average capacity capture rate of 10% and a median capture rate of 1%. Values greater than that indicate a portfolio that is performing well. However, even if the overall numbers indicate good portfolio performance, digging a bit deeper can uncover more valuable information.
The chart above illustrates the capture rate ranges. This graph shows some key pieces of data that can help inform the segmentation and prioritization of the portfolio, including:
The chart below shows a segmentation we recommended to a recent client who was considering their portfolio’s quality and performance data.
Understanding the quality and performance of your gift portfolio enables making data-driven decisions to optimize that portfolio. It will allow you to identify some prospects that should be removed, others that need to be further researched or need new engagement strategies, and others where you will want to stay the course since the current strategy is working.
By optimizing major gift portfolios with predictive modeling, fundraising teams can ensure that their limited time and resources are being expended to yield the best results.
Learn how predictive modeling can help your organization reach its fundraising potential.
CCS’s Senior Data Scientist John Sammis explains how your nonprofit can use predictive modeling to unearth new fundraising potential in your donor database.
Learn how to perform an RFM analysis, the simplest tool to start narrowing your prospect list to your most impactful donors. This article contains background information and a video to lead you step-by-step into meaningful engagement.
