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Nonprofit Marketing Metrics for ROI: What to Track

Women sitting at conference table discussing their nonprofit's marketing metrics
Published February 11, 2025 Reading Time: 6 minutes

This blog was written in collaboration with Riley Young, Marketing Manager at NextAfter. Riley develops and shares data-driven resources to help nonprofits optimize their fundraising strategies and grow their digital donor base. 

Innovative nonprofit marketing is essential to building a fundraising program that fuels your nonprofit’s mission—for acquiring new supporters and retaining existing donors.

However, it’s impossible to build an effective marketing strategy without tracking and growing the right metrics.

Not sure where to start? We’ve outlined key marketing metrics to track. These leading indicators reveal whether your strategy is on course or needs adjustment, helping you cut costs and drive growth.

Annual online revenue

Annual online revenue directly reflects the effectiveness of your nonprofit organization’s digital fundraising efforts. Tracking this metric provides insight into how well your fundraising strategies resonate with supporters. 

By monitoring annual online revenue, you can allocate resources more effectively and adjust strategies to maximize your nonprofit fundraising potential. Plus, steady growth in online revenue not only supports immediate financial needs but also strengthens long-term sustainability, allowing you to continue your mission-driven work year over year without interruption.

There are three guiding metrics for calculating annual online revenue: traffic, conversion rate, and average gift

How to calculate: website traffic × donor conversion rate × average gift size

To calculate your estimated annual online revenue, use the same formula but substitute in average website traffic and average donor conversion rate.

Here’s how you figure out those three metrics:

Traffic

Google Analytics 4 is the most powerful tool for monitoring your nonprofit website’s’ engagement. It provides insights into key performance indicators (KPIs) like website traffic, user demographics, page views, bounce rates, and more.

This course will walk you through setting up Google Analytics 4 and help you navigate the most helpful reports.

Donor conversion rate

Your donor conversion rate tells you how many donation page visitors complete a donation. It’s a good indicator of whether your donation page clearly articulates why someone should support your cause.

How to calculate: (total donations ÷ page visitors) x 100

If your donation page conversion rate is low, here are two ways to optimize it:

  • Add clarity and specificity to your copy. Compassion International tested adding more specific language on its donate button and increased donations by 9.7%.
  • Add value proposition copy to reconfirm why a donation is necessary today. CaringBridge added value proposition copy to its page and increased donations by 28%.

Explore Classy from GoFundMe’s donation page checklist and NextAfter’s donation page guide for more ideas. 

Average gift

Tracking average gift size can be useful for measuring overall fundraising effectiveness, setting goals for future fundraising campaigns, and identifying donor engagement trends. 

How to calculate: (total donation revenue ÷ number of donations)

There are a few A/B tests you can run to boost average donation size:

  1. Test the suggested amounts in your gift array (if applicable).
  2. Show the impact of a specific gift amount. For example, “$30 provides meals for four families.”
  3. Use social proof to encourage donors to be more generous. For example, “Most donors give $50 or more. Will you join them?”

But remember, average gift size doesn’t tell the whole story. If you prioritize growing your recurring giving program, you may have a lower average gift size but bring in more revenue.

Social media and advocacy metrics

Social media plays a powerful role in your conversion funnel—from introducing potential donors to your nonprofit to securing their first gift and fostering long-term support. It’s a vital communication channel for raising awareness and engaging people in your mission.

With so much data available on social media, nonprofits must focus on the metrics that matter most: engagement and conversion rates.

Why and how to measure your engagement rate 

Measuring your organization’s engagement rate offers a more accurate reflection of your content’s relevance to the audience. 

Engagements include likes, shares, comments, and clicks, but not all hold the same value. Shares and comments signal deeper interaction and greater reach, making them more impactful than simple likes. Prioritize these high-value engagements and craft content that encourages them.

How to calculate: (total engagements ÷ total impressions) × 100 

For example, if 1,000 people see your post, and 50 engage with it, your rate is 5%. 

Why and how to measure your conversion rate 

Conversions track the number of people who complete your desired action, which varies by goal and campaign. Your objectives may shift based on the season or initiative. Some examples of relevant social media conversions include:

  • Registering for your nonprofit event
  • Making an online donation
  • Signing up to volunteer
  • Visiting your nonprofit’s website 
  • Subscribing to your email newsletter 

How to calculate: (conversions ÷ impressions) × 100

Calculating social media conversions typically requires insights from your website or customer relationship management software, where the conversion takes place. You can also establish UTM tracking codes, which allow you to customize a link with tags that explain a user’s origin. 

Marketing channel conversion rate

Ideally, your organization uses a multichannel marketing strategy to reach supporters, as donors who give offline and online are over three times more valuable to your organization than those who only give offline. 

However, all channels aren’t equal, and they won’t produce the same return on investment. This is why it’s crucial to calculate conversion rates across channels such as social media platforms, direct mail, organic search, direct and referral traffic, and paid campaigns.

How to calculate: (number of donors converted from a particular marketing channel ÷  total amount of traffic brought in through the channel) × 100 

For example, you may discover that 50 of your 500 social media visitors convert into donors or subscribers. Therefore, your social media channel conversion rate would be 10%. At the same time, let’s say you ran an email marketing campaign that brought in 1,000 visitors, with 200 converting to donors⁠, equalling a 20% conversion rate.

Tracking marketing channel conversion rates will help you determine which channels drive more donors to your website or donation form, which will help you prioritize your spending.

Donor acquisition costs

Understanding donor acquisition costs will help you determine the profitability of your campaigns and make informed budgetary decisions. Your goal should be to optimize your campaigns for the lowest cost and highest return. 

How to calculate: (total marketing campaign spend ÷ total number of donors acquired)

Reducing donor acquisition costs will give you more room to test new donor acquisition strategies and scale your budget.

Website metrics

There are countless website metrics to measure marketing effectiveness, which can make diving into Google Analytics 4 overwhelming. While it offers valuable insights, navigating its vast data sets isn’t always intuitive.

 

Google Analytics 4 metrics help confirm everything runs smoothly. If page views are lower than expected or the bounce rate is high, you may need to fix or optimize something.

 

You can take an entire Google Analytics 4 course to dive as deeply as you desire into website metrics and how to use them. But for today, I’d like to share three website metrics you can use to determine where to optimize:

  • Page views
  • Average time on page
  • Conversion rate

When combined, these three website metrics are powerful tools for determining which pages on your site are ripe for testing new marketing and acquisition strategies. 

A page with high views and above-average time on page signals strong user engagement and effective marketing. However, if conversion rates are low, testing new acquisition and user interface (UI) strategies can help maximize value from these engaged visitors.

Conversely, a page with high time on page but low conversions might seem like a candidate for optimization. However, if traffic is low, investing time and budget may not be worthwhile—unless the page has strong growth potential and you’re ready to invest in search engine optimization and UI improvements.

Action item: Pull a report in Google Analytics 4 of your top-viewed pages. Then, use these three website metrics to zero in on where to focus your time to start optimizing your way toward greater conversions. This guide to optimizing organic traffic to your website is another great resource to explore. 

Donor lifetime value

Tracking donor lifetime value (LTV) is one of the most impactful things you can do to grow your nonprofit’s fundraising success. The way LTV changes by donor type will show you which donors are most valuable to your program and help you focus your efforts. 

For example, Classy’s The State of Modern Philanthropy report found that recurring donors are 9 times more valuable than one-time donors. So tailoring your marketing efforts to convert more one-time donors to recurring donors could lead to a monumental increase in revenue.

How to calculate: (lifespan x revenue per donor)

To calculate the lifespan, take one divided by the churn rate.

So if you had a churn rate of 65% with an average revenue per donor of $300, your lifetime donor value would be about $462.

Donor retention rates

Donor retention is the measure of donors who make more than one donation to your nonprofit.

How to calculate: (returning donors ÷ total donors in previous period) x 100

So let’s say you had 1,000 donors last year, and then this year, 600 of those donors gave again. That means your donor retention rate is 60%.

According to the Fundraising Effectiveness Project, overall donor retention rates hover between 40% and 45%. Our research has shown that nonprofits that embrace a digital-first approach to fundraising see an average overall retention rate of 53% across all channels.

Plus, retaining donors can be up to five times cheaper than acquiring new ones. It also will create stability for forecasting revenue and build donor affinity for your cause, which can lead to advocacy.

Here are three tips to retain more of your hard-earned donors:

  1. Welcome, thank, and confirm your new one-time and recurring donors within the first two days. 
  2. Show you care by greeting donors by their first name and using friendly copy in your outreach communications.
  3. Use surveys or reply-back requests to solicit feedback from specific target audiences and let them know you care about their input.

Track what matters with Classy

Classy makes it easier to track and analyze key nonprofit reporting metrics. One way is to add fields like lifetime value, transaction count, recurring plans, and last transaction date to your supporter report to gain deeper insights into donor behavior. With this data, you can measure retention rates, optimize your strategies, and strengthen supporter relationships—all in one place.

Copy editor: Ayanna Julien

People sitting at a desk evaluating their nonprofit marketing metrics

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