We often have clients get in touch with us towards the end of the financial year, expressing concern about whether their income is likely to hit their target. As charities watch in those last few days for the donations as it feels like they’re trickling in, let us reassure you that everything should be alright.

Just today, we were asked to provide some support to a client as they were preparing to show their board that they’d been growing their higher-value donors over recent times and needed to invest in some relationship management.

The chart below shows similar information for a different smaller organisation that was happy to have their data used to demonstrate that this behaviour is consistent across charities.

The chart above looks at the number of unique donors for different value bands over time. Ultimately, it looks like we’re seeing a decline in the volume of people in the $500-$999 group and the $2,000-$4,999 group. This raises questions about the cause. Was it because investment in adequate resources hadn’t been made or because we hadn’t finished the year? It could be either or both.

To build a better understanding, we decided it would be helpful to plot out the cumulative volume of donors in each of the value bands and when they made their first gift for the previous financial year, FY22.

The chart above paints a helpful picture that applies to income and when donors give the financial year. After our measurement line on June 21, you can see that we still see a reasonable increase in the number of donors giving in the last 9 days of the financial year.

Finally, we can have a look at how things turned out in the last 9 days for this organisation financially too. Across these higher value bands in the last 9 days, a total of $71,000 in donations was received. There was another $40,000 raised from donors giving less than $250 each too. This works out as 11% of income in the last 2.5% of the financial year.

So while we’re so close to the end of the financial year, rest assured there could still be another 10% of income to be received in the coming days for your organisation.

If you need help with insights like this or with information to present a case for investment to your board, please get in touch.