When your Annual Fund Board chair shares his glee over staying up until 3am developing a regression analysis to help your Goals Committee set the Annual Fund goals, you know you are at MIT. Fortunately, there is also basic math to help you figure out your fiscal year goals.

In this example, we’ll set goals for FY19.

Retention: # of FY18 donors who also gave in FY17/# of FY17 donors = FY18 retention rate. Multiply your retention rate by your FY18 total donor count and you’ll know how many donors you can expect to retain in FY19.

Reactivation: # of donors who gave in any of the past five fiscal years except FY17/# of FY17 donors = FY18 reactivation rate. Multiply your reactivation rate by the total of your FY18 donors to calculate the number of donors you can expect to reactivate in FY19.

Acquisition: How many were new donors in FY18? # of new donors in FY18/# of FY18 donors = acquisition rate. Multiply your acquisition rate by your total FY18 donors to calculate the number you can expect to acquire in FY19.

Add together your expected retained, reactivated and new donors to calculate your total projected donor goal.

NOTE on ADJUSTMENTS: If you look at the data for three or four years in a row, you will see your trends and know if you should expect to retain, reactivate or acquire more or less donors this year. If your percentage rates have been going up steadily, apply a higher percentage. If the percentages have been in decline and you don’t plan to do anything different, apply a slightly lower percentage.

For help with your data and annual giving needs and strategy, contact me. Theresa@TJLPartners.com 508-523-3893