Is your nonprofit successful? The answer to this question often depends upon your individual definition of success, which is usually dependent upon your organisation’s specific mission and goals. Regardless of your objectives, however, every nonprofit should focus on advancing their mission to operate and grow at a sustainable level. The following tips can help you ensure that your nonprofit is on a sound financial footing as it advances your cause forward.

Conversion Rates vs. Followers on Social Media

Social media has become an indispensable tool for nonprofits looking for ways to get the word out about their cause and gain support for their service community. There are many tools that you can use to measure the success of your social media strategy, but one that you will want to pay attention to is conversion rate.

Your conversion rate is simply a measurement of how successful your messaging and campaigns have been at prompting your target audience to take a specific action. Even if your nonprofit has thousands of followers, these numbers matter very little if your supporters aren’t opening and sharing your messages or taking some other action, such as volunteering, donating or advocating for your cause. Conversion measurers how willing your audience is to act for your nonprofit, which is a better measurement of the actual support you have in your community.

Return on Investment for Fundraising Activities

Many nonprofits put an inordinate amount of time and energy into devising new fundraising campaigns and forget to ask themselves one important question: how much will this activity benefit my nonprofit? If it costs your nonprofit more money to host an event than you can reasonably expect to take in from donations, is it worth the effort?

While nonprofits aren’t expressly created to generate profits, they do need to avoid operating at a loss if they want to be able to grow and continuing operating into the long-term. This means that you must be able to calculate the total actual cost of a specific fundraising activity and take steps to ensure that the contributions that it will generate will be worth the cost.

Aim to Increase Your Donors, and Average Gift Size Year over Year

Two numbers that you want to try to increase from one year to the next is your number of donors, and, the average gift size. When these two numbers increase each year, your nonprofit has better protection from unexpected events, such as the loss of an individual key donor.

Emphasising greater donor engagement, and monthly giving programs, are two of the many ways that you can encourage greater donor loyalty. Use wealth-screening to learn more about your donors’ capacity to give, and combine it with a tiered program that illustrates how much more your organisation can do when your donors increase their average donation size.

Keeping a sharp eye on these performance metrics will help you spot weaknesses before they turn into full-blown problems that could derail your nonprofit’s growth and ability to make a difference. As your nonprofit’s performance increases in these areas, so will its success!