Calculating Event ROI with FundRaiser

by Larry Weaver

What is ROI? Why do we need it? How do we get it? Return On Investment (ROI) is simply a mathematical statement that tells us how much money we got back from an event when compared to how much we spent on the event. It’s not the whole picture of an event, by any means, but it does tell us, dollar for dollar, how we increased our money on a particular event. Because some events will be held as much to increase the number of donors as to raise money, it’s important to understand that ROI is all about the money, not acquisition or retention of donors, nor upgrading donors to new levels, so it is not always a good indicator of whether or not an event was successful in any broader sense.

When an event is held primarily as a fund raiser, it’s a good idea to be able to figure out both “projected” ROI (before you commit to the event) as well as a post-event evaluation of “actual” ROI. Before the event, it’s good to know if there is any chance it will be profitable, but there are a lot of unknowns, like how many will attend, how many who attend will give, how much the average gift might be, and other aspects, like the cost of the event in dollars and time.

In FundRaiser Professional, the Campaign Management section allows you to plug in a single expense figure (overall cost of the event) so that the program can then figure out ROI for the event. In FundRaiser Select, you can manually come to the same figures, as long as you know the cost of the event. With Professional, you use the Campaign Management section to identify people who will be attending, keep track of attendance and gifts, and more. Then, at any time, you can print out various reports about the event, some of which will include the ROI figures.

If you’ve had similar events in the past, and used FundRaiser to record gifts coded specifically for the events, it will be fairly easy, even with Select, to do a report based on the time period and gift code(s) to see how many people gave and what was given. Then some hand-calculations will give you other numbers, like the average gift per person, for instance. 

The main gift code used to identify the event in FundRaiser is the Motivation Code. It might be used “generically” for recurring events, such as the Annual Spaghetti Dinner, or it could be used specifically for each event, such as the 2008 Annual Spaghetti Dinner. Either way works, as long as you remain consistent with that event. If it’s generically identified, then reports for a specific year will need to include a date range when you are looking for just that year’s figures. With specific codes, each event is kept separate and can be easily compared, especially with the Donation/Deposit report variation called “Summary Report”. This report breaks down all giving during the time period specified into all the different codes, including the Motivation Code.

The Summary Report will also break down gifts based on whether they were “In Kind” or “Monetary”, as well as showing not just the amount given, but the number of gifts involved and the number of donors involved. The latter is important for accurately assessing the event, too, as the “cost per donor” and “cost per gift” will be different if you have donors who gave multiple times for a single event. You might want to keep track of the ratio of the number of people invited vs. the number who attended, as well. If you’ve sent invitations to a particular Grouping of folks, or to multiple groupings, you can keep track of those numbers, or assign everyone invited a category code (en mass, through the Groupings menu) so that you can gather them all together at some time in the future.

Have you seen the pattern here? It is that the real key to coming up with good pre- and post-event figures, including ROI, is consistent coding, both people and gifts. If you want more information on coding, consider attending a live webinar.  Sign up on the training calendar on our website.

Larry Weaver is the FundRaiser Training Manager. He's worked in and around computers since the working as a Navy sonar technician in the late 1960's. His passion is operations, whether operating sonar gear, computers, guitars, motorcycles, or any other motorized vehicle. He's applied his  passion to FundRaiser's Training department, holding live web training sessions and recording training CD's on various FundRaiser Software related topics.

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