Mid-Level Giving: What Are You Measuring?

About this time last year, I was excited to talk about the first Mid-Level Benchmarking Summit. I had the privilege of facilitating 16 organizations that came together to talk about the various aspects of mid-level giving—strategies, moves management and much more.

Well, last week, we had our second (officially annual) summit. This year, we had 18 organizations, and, while we focused on all key strategic areas, we paid special attention to the topic of metrics and how to measure success.

A couple of things to know:

1. Some organizations have developed interactive dashboards to track this data.
2. Some organizations are using reports directly out of their databases for performance measurement.
3. Every organization agreed that the below metrics were critical to tracking a mid-level giving program, the donors and the impact on other fundraising areas.

Critical Metrics for Mid-Level Giving

Constituent-associated metrics

• Annual number of mid-level donors
• Retention of mid-level donors (first year and multi-year)
• Annual worth for a mid-level donor

Annual upgrade/downgrade metrics

• The number and annual value of donors moving up into the mid-level giving program from the core program (lower than mid-level giving level)
• The number and annual value of donors moving up into the major giving program from the mid-level giving program
• The number and annual value of donors moving down from the major giving program into the mid-level giving program
• The number and annual value of donors moving down from the mid-level giving program into the core program
• If the mid-level giving program has levels within it: The number and annual value of donors moving up within the mid-level giving program levels
• If the mid-level giving program has levels within it: The number and annual value of donors moving down within the mid-level giving program levels

Revenue-associated metrics

• Annual gross and net revenue from mid-level donors
• CP$R for the mid-level giving program
• The number of major gifts closed (and the value of those gifts) from mid-level donors who moved up to major giving
• The number of planned giving commitments (and the value of those commitments) coming from the mid-level giving segment
• Return on investment trajectory over two to four years

Normally at this point in the blog I would say, “Now go look at your own mid-level giving reports and see how you stand”—but I’m betting most organizations are missing some of these metrics.

There is a lot here. If you are tracking at least 50 percent of these, you are headed in the right direction for sure. If you are missing most of these metrics and if mid-level giving is a priority, I highly recommend the tracking elements become a priority as well.

The 18 organizations that were present at the summit this year have a lot of great things happening, and those great things absolutely don’t happen without solid tracking and performance management.