Philanthropy Analytics: Forecasting, Investment, and the Board Dashboard
Multi-year forecasting, return on development investment, the dashboard an executive and a board can read, and the questions a leader should and should not ask the data to prove.
Through the Environment lens
The return-on-investment-by-horizon calculation matters for land and capital campaigns, which behave like the lesson's decade-long planned-giving horizon rather than an annual cycle, so a board that only sees one year's cost per dollar raised will undervalue a land trust's slow-building major-donor relationships. The analytics-policy worksheet's caution against purchased or scraped data is directly relevant given how much public advocacy data exists near environmental organizations, and the rule keeps it out of the donor model.
Continuing education
1.25 points
Leadership and Management · Current and Prospective Donor Research
Learning objectives
- Distinguish what development data can establish (retention, pipeline flow, cost and return by strategy) from what it cannot (why a person gave, what a person will do), and set the institution's analytic ambitions accordingly.
- Build a multi-year revenue forecast from the pipeline's pools and rates, with scenarios, and compute return on development investment by strategy over the horizon each strategy needs.
- Design an executive and board dashboard of a dozen measures that report relationships as well as revenue.
- Set the institution's rules for donor analytics: what will be modeled, what will not, and how predictions are used without replacing judgment or pressuring people.
Designed for CFRE continuing education. Not yet accepted; no CFRE points can be claimed.
Lessons
- 20 min
Video lesson
What the data can and cannot prove
II See · Leadership and Management
- 20 min
Field guide· PDF
Multi-year forecasting and return on development investment
III Discern · Leadership and Management
- 20 min
Template· DOCX
The executive philanthropy dashboard
II See · Leadership and Management
- 16 min
Worksheet· XLSX
The questions we will not ask the data: an analytics policy worksheet
II See · Ethics, Accountability and Professionalism
This is members-only material.
Members get every lesson, template, and worksheet in all eight tracks, plus the support to put them to work in your shop.
More in this stage
Boards, Teams & Leadership
The CDO Operating System
Leading philanthropy at the institutional level: CEO partnership, cross-functional influence, and the systems that scale past you.
Capital Campaigns
Campaign Strategy: Feasibility to Celebration
The full arc of a modern campaign: feasibility, goal-setting, phases, communications, and the ending that sets up the next one.
Fundamentals & Ethics
Culture of Philanthropy: Leading Across the Organization
When program staff, finance, and the front desk understand their role in fundraising, the work gets easier. Building that culture is executive work.