Let’s take a look at three areas where nonprofits can drive increased fundraising efficiency: staff retention, donor qualification, and campaign planning.

By Chelsey Newmyer

What first comes to mind when you think about increasing your nonprofit’s fundraising efficiency?

Cutting expenses? Making bigger asks of more of your donors? Sending more emails and appeals to keep your mission on their minds?

These methods can work, but they shouldn’t be your first or only steps. 

Cutting expenses can soon become unsustainable. Asking more from larger segments of your donors will ultimately make your fundraising less efficient if you’re not asking the right donors. Otherwise, you’re just wasting time and potentially hurting relationships. Blasting your messages too frequently can also have the unintended consequence of making your audience tune you out.

The key to success lies in fundraising smarter, not just leaner or more aggressively, with an eye on the long-term sustainability of your strategies. Learning to do more with what you already have will grow your ability to drive impact into the future. 

Many nonprofits understand the value of sustainable fundraising streams like recurring giving programs, but how can you go further? What are some foundational ways to build efficiency into your efforts from the ground up? Let’s take a look at three fundamental ways to get started.

1. Minimize employee churn.

To make the most of your resources, start by preserving them. Any organization’s most important resources are the people who keep it running.

The average employee turnover rate for nonprofits hovers around 19%, consistently higher than for-profit companies. It’s a common problem battled by organizations of all sizes. Churn is also costly for nonprofits and can create major hurdles to growth. There are several reasons why internal churn can be so harmful:

• Churn creates new costs. Hiring new team members to replace those who leave takes time and money. Not to mention, there’s the opportunity cost to consider since new staff won’t operate as effectively right away.
• Churn decreases overall engagement and morale, leading to worse outcomes across the organization.
• Churn can harm your nonprofit’s relationships. Fundraising programs thrive on relationships with donors, businesses, and other partners. When experienced fundraisers leave, there’s a risk of losing all the valuable relationships they’ve built.

Altogether, these impacts can slow or derail your organization’s growth, making it harder to generate meaningful returns on your fundraising work. It can also become a harmful cycle if left unchecked, with remaining employees more likely to leave as well if they’re feeling burnt out from picking up the slack.

If fundraiser retention has been a challenge for your nonprofit, work to improve it before diving deeper into other fundraising efficiency improvements. Graham-Pelton’s guide to nonprofit staff retention outlines the essential elements of an effective strategy and 15 steps organizations can take to get started.

With a stable, engaged team ready to drive your mission forward, you’ll then be able to implement new changes that help them work more efficiently.

2. Refine your donor qualification process.

Prioritization is a key part of efficient fundraising. For nonprofit fundraising teams, this means focusing on your donor qualification strategies.

Qualification is the process of prioritizing your major donors and prospects for outreach based on how likely they are to give at the current moment. It relies on sets of criteria that either qualify or disqualify a prospect for outreach, for example:

• Qualified: Active donor, hasn’t been solicited in the last X months, proven giving capacity at the intended level, etc.
• Disqualified: No proven giving capacity, lapsed donor, or was recently solicited and declined to give, etc.

Qualification is used specifically for major giving. Relationships with major donors need to be thoughtfully grown over time—which is a time-intensive process—hence the increased need to effectively prioritize outreach. When a major gift is secured, it can represent a significant return on the investment of that time. By focusing your efforts on where it’s most likely to drive impact, you’ll increase the overall ROI of your efforts without cutting costs or making bigger asks.

If your nonprofit hasn’t refreshed its approach to qualification (or doesn’t yet have one), there are a few immediate steps you can take. 

First, review your data to learn more about the donors who’ve given large or major gifts. Find trends in their characteristics and in the cultivation and solicitation strategies you used to ask them for gifts—use these trends to establish updated qualification criteria. Using these criteria, take a first pass at generating a new prospect list. 

From there, keep refining your approach as you talk to donors, ask for gifts, and learn more about them. Just be sure to consistently revisit your prioritized prospect list to ensure it’s as fresh as possible based on your most recent (and well-maintained) data. This efficient approach makes it possible to present fully customized appeals to your donors and boost your chances of securing a gift.

3. Thoroughly plan ahead for your fundraising campaigns.

Like major gift fundraising, large-scale campaigns are time-intensive, but they can also deliver high ROIs.

Following capital campaign best practices can be incredibly efficient, despite these fundraising goals being among the highest your organization ever pursues. Focusing on major gifts and following a strategic order of solicitations allows you to pack a punch, securing large sums in a very targeted way.

But you’ll also need to ensure that your campaign plans are designed to be truly achievable. Goals need to strike the right balance of being ambitious but realistic. This will help maximize your ROI (while ensuring you’re not pursuing a goal that’s too high or leaving money on the table by aiming too low).

To set the perfect goal and minimize wasted time and effort during a major campaign, conduct a feasibility study early in the planning process. This can be done for any big initiative that will rely on major gifts, not just capital campaigns.

A feasibility study or planning study seeks the input of major donors, prospects, and stakeholders on your initial campaign plans and goals. Since these are the supporters who’ll ultimately help drive the campaign to success, the idea is to use their input to help shape your finalized goal and approach. It’s also a helpful way to secure early buy-in on your project by allowing key donors to become more closely involved.

If a large campaign is coming up for your organization, develop a case for support and begin mentioning the campaign to your donors so that it’s on their radar. Develop initial lists of who to include in your study and whose gifts would be essential for success based on your qualification process.

Once you’ve conducted a planning study and analyzed your findings, make adjustments to your plan as needed and move forward with your campaign. Look for ways to keep donors engaged with the project beyond just inviting them to a luncheon or grand finale gala. Have a plan in place early for thanking and recognizing donors. This will not only lead to a more successful campaign but also strengthen your relationships for more effective fundraising in the future.

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Increasing your efficiency shouldn’t mean trimming your operations down to the bare essentials or stretching your donor relationships to their limits. 

Instead, look for ways to do more with what you already have. Across all areas of your work, including internal management processes, donor stewardship, and campaign planning, you can drive greater impact by preserving your time and prioritizing your work.

Chelsey Newmyer is a Senior Consultant at Graham-Pelton. An analytical problem solver, Chelsey uses a data-driven approach fostered by her engineering background to conduct multipronged annual giving campaigns, manage leadership-level prospects and volunteers, and enhance cross-departmental relationships.