(06-21-2016 11:37 AM)Lwflyrod Wrote:  

(06-21-2016 10:17 AM)ShadyP Wrote:  

(06-21-2016 10:10 AM)JMUTrippster Wrote:  

(06-19-2016 07:53 AM)DoubleDogDare Wrote:  

(06-18-2016 12:41 PM)HotHamandCheese84 Wrote:  It's odd to me that JMU was shocked. The goal was so embarrassingly low. 568 donors with all of our alumni? We have a history of celebrating alleged milestones that could have been reach by my old high school.

I haven't done much fundraising or goal setting in that environment but JMU makes it seem like the hardest thing in the world. The Duke Club hasn't hit their goal in at least 5 years and it took up to this past year just to hit I believe the 2012 goal. Giving Day goals were embarrassingly low and they kept setting these small incremental increased goals. I thought it was so they could call it a "success" no matter how much was raised but I just found this quote from a Breeze article.

Quote:Prior to Giving Day, the university’s goal was set at 568 gifts because the number spells “JMU” on a keypad. By 10 a.m., the goal had been reached and was then raised to 1,787 gifts: the same year that James Madison traveled to Philadelphia to help draft the Constitution. At 4:46 p.m., the goal was once again reached and the final revision was made to 2,016 gifts.

That's ummm a unique way to set measures of success.

As an alumni chapter leader and being pretty involved in promoting Giving Day and the lead up to it, we had no idea how it would be received. You can say what you want about "setting attainable goals so that it looks like a success" but the goal was participation, not an amount of money, so increasing the number of donors was the goal. When 7% of our increasingly growing alumni base gives back, there was no telling what kind of numbers we would see. It was a great day for JMU that should be celebrated as a success and built upon. You have to start somewhere and I think JMU did a great job building a foundation for this event in the future.

Agree, now for future events you have something to gauge off of. It is always tough to estimate for the first such event and the last thing you want to do is shoot yourself in the foot by setting too aggressive of a goal the first time out of the gate.

Participation is the KEY .... $$ numbers are always what we end up measuring but in reality # of donors is more important...cause if you do it right the goal is to get those donors on board and more of them even if its 5 or 10 bucks (just threw a # out there cause didnt wanna offend anyone) to start cause you want...VOLUME... over reasonable time with reasonable effort they will increase their amounts VOLUME will Lead to $$$, especially once they see how easy it is and there reason and value to their giving...thats when you can start to measure $$ ...but you have to have a database of willing donors first. The little donations add up over time along with frequent donations.... The Moats and other donations are nice and well appreciated but many cant give like that. But if you can start people in the donation mode and you can keep them growing then you will have success.
One thing that should be considered is identifying your donors and understanding what they do for a living and identifying their possible abilities for reasonable donation levels...and focus on ways to get them to be consistent or to their next level. thats how you can measure your successes.