Donor churn is the percentage of your donors who choose not to donate again. Donor churn is an important nonprofit metric to measure and take steps to reduce the number of donors who will not make a donation the following year.
According to the 2018 Fundraising Effectiveness Survey Report, The donor retention rate was 45.5 percent in 2017. That is, only 45.5 percent of 2016 donors made repeat gifts to participating nonprofits in 2017.
How would that affect your mission, if only 45.5% of donors made a repeat donation? How much time and effort would it take raise that difference from new donors?
Your organization’s churn rate is directly correlated with your organization’s Donor Retention Rate - the percentage of your donors who return to make another donation. There are several ways to measure churn; however, the most commonly used way to group donors who have “churned” or lapsed in their giving is LYBUNT and SYBUNT.
LYBUNT means donors who have given Last Year But Unfortunately Not This year. This refers specifically to donors who gave in the immediately preceding (last) calendar or fiscal year, but not in the current calendar or fiscal year.
SYBUNT means donors who have given Some Year But Unfortunately Not This year. This refers specifically to donors who gave in any preceding (some) calendar or fiscal year, but not in the currently calendar or fiscal year.
Also key to reducing churn and growing your fundraising efforts is identifying your new donors.
Benefits of Churn Analysis
Four Ways to Reduce Churn
How Can StratusLIVE 365 Help?
The six (6) native churn reports in StratusLIVE 365 empower your organization to perform your very own churn analysis throughout the year or campaign cycle as well as for end of year giving appeals. Additionally, all these reports are Extract reports so that you can take the results directly from the report and immediately take action to retain those donors via a letter, email or phone call appeal. You can also further personalize the donor communications by querying the system to determine the donors’ interests and communication preferences.