Is Donor Acquisition Worth It?

With giving totals rising, many institutions are wondering if they should continue the difficult and costly work to acquire new donors. We’ve said before that this is a dangerous proposition, a perilous “head fake” that could end up destroying your future donor pipeline.

While donor acquisition is costly, does the return on boosting donor participation outweigh the cost? What are the average total giving values for new donors over the long-term? Is it really worth finding brand new donors in an age of mega-gifts?

To answer the question, we looked at the full donation data for all giving methods from 16 higher education institutions that participated in our RNL360 benchmarking program.