Measuring Success in Donor Development

Rebecca Graves and Owen Stearns

Merely comparing the total contributions received by different community foundations doesn’t take into account important variations in size and location. If community foundations are to learn from each other’s success, they must find ways to cancel out these distortions and create truly comparable performance data.

Our experience suggests that a new measure—per capita giving within the foundation’s service area—combined with a new goal-setting process can enable community foundations to better understand their own performance and highlight successful strategies.

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