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 of staff and board, and 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 Xponential Australian Major Gifts Benchmarking Study to illustrate – and Greenpeace Australia Pacific as a case study.   In six years to CY2023, Greenpeace increased its major gift income from $1.8 mill to $5.8 mill.  

We’ll cover positive findings about Greenpeace’s major gifts program, and give real-life examples where Greenpeace improved its practices in response to its benchmarking findings from 2018 to 2023. 

We will also share some useful overall major gifts statistics from the whole 2023 Study which are found nowhere else. They provide a useful starting point for comparison with your program. Examples: definitions of major donors, sources of new prospects, average gift sizes for different methods of major gifts fundraising, and sector differences.

Although about major gifts, the presentation will help you think more generally about how to use benchmarking for fundraising.