This presentation will show how to use benchmarking results to improve. How does benchmarking help you to improve? By comparison with like organisations, with averages and “best result” benchmarks, and new ideas. Benchmarking has other valuable uses too (like education, making an investment case).

Benchmarking results are useful only where they can be applied to bring about improvements or to confirm that present practices are effective.  We’ll use examples from the Australian Major Gifts Benchmarking Study to illustrate – and dive into The Baker Institute as a case study

We’ll cover positive findings about the Institute’s major gifts program, and potential “problem” findings which prompted the question “does this problem actually matter?” A key theme here is: context matters!

Finally, we’ll give real-life examples where the Institute did improve its practices in response to benchmarking findings.

We will also share some useful overall major gifts statistics from the whole 2021 Study which provide a useful starting point for comparison. Examples: definitions of major donors, retention rates, sources of new prospects, typical time from identification to solicitation, average gift sizes for different methods of major gifts fundraising, and sector differences.

Although about major gifts, the presentation will help conference participants think more generally about how to use benchmarking for any fundraising practices.