Your organization has likely done a masterful job of cultivating strong funding relationships with a cadre of donors who value the fine work you do in the community. These donors have meaningful relationships with your leadership team and with your board members. In fact, they may socialize with your board members and executive director from time to time outside of the context of your organization. Or their spouses are on the board of another community organization together or know each other from their college days. Regardless, their support of your organization is primarily based on strong social and personal relationships and an emotional valuing of your cause.

It is very likely that you will persist with these donors in good times and to a lesser degree in bad times, but they will generally be around. However, they are a discrete and defined population and there is an entire group of prospective donors for whom your traditional message has fallen flat or have never reached in the first place. That is where performance measurement comes into play.

We are increasingly seeing our clients use data and clear demonstration of impact as the primary method to attracting new donors to the fray, while securing relations with their existing donor base. Prospective donors who may never have considered supporting your organization can be engaged by thoughtful and clear expression of outcomes and specific discussion of how well you are doing toward those outcomes. Your opportunity here is to concretely demonstrate why your organization is the best community resource to achieve a particular outcome.

So, take some time to clearly express your outcomes as a team, define your indicators of success, and collect and report data to mark your progress. Test out some results reports with your existing supporters, especially board members, and then start using it in foundation and individual donor conversations. The mere fact that you are holding yourself up to a higher standard of progress toward outcomes is sure to attract new support toward your cause. Best of luck!