Fundraising is hard work. We are trying to make it easier. How?
- By helping your team build ideal donor profiles.
- By ensuring your team consistently acquires, retains, and upgrades all funding sources , using Key Performance Indicators and their associated benchmarks.
- By staffing up properly.
- Showing the difference between what the fundraising team is doing – and what the board thinks they’re doing
There’s plenty of good research on how, why, and when donors give, but not much on what the fundraising team is doing. That’s why we created the Leaky Bucket assessment – to see what fundraising professionals are (or are not) doing to be more successful. As it turns out, we’ve learned a lot from fundraising teams, and from senior leadership and the board. They don’t always agree on what’s happening, which is part of the problem.
So we are very happy to release the latest version of Fundraising Down the Drain: the Leaky Bucket Benchmarking Study of 2024!
We first launched the original version of the Leaky Bucket Assessment for Effective Fundraising back in 2011. It’s now called Leaky Bucket Lite, since later this month, we are releasing Leaky Bucket Pro (more on this in our next post).
This year’s benchmarking study covers nine disciplines that either help or hurt the fundraising team’s ability to do a great job. To our great regret, most of our 1,531 survey respondents scored somewhere between a C-minus and a D-plus.
If you haven’t completed the Leaky Bucket Lite yet, please go right ahead – it’s free, it only takes about five minutes. You’ll get your scores and recommendations immediately. And you will add to the growing database about this critical topic.
Even if you get a low score, have no fear! Now you know where you need to improve the way you manage your fundraising efforts.
And if you get a high score, we will be delighted. Up to now, only 3% of respondents have achieved the highest rank, Watertight.