What data should shape your giving season strategy? Here’s what we look at with every customer

By the time Giving Tuesday arrives, most of your giving season strategy is already locked in. The campaign pages are built, the emails are scheduled, and the ad budget is set. So the real advantage isn’t found in November. It’s found in September and October by sitting down with your own numbers and asking what they actually tell you.

The good news is your organization is hopefully already generating this data. Every gift, every visit to your donation page, and every recurring donor who sticks around (or doesn’t) is a data point. Heading into the giving season, it’s a crucial time to turn that data into a plan.

That’s the conversation we have with nonprofits who use GoFundMe Pro, and we think it’s worth sharing what’s in it to help you—whether you’re one of our customers or you’re building out your own year-end data review.

Giving season data only matters once you know what to look for

A dashboard full of numbers isn’t a strategy. The nonprofits that get the most out of Giving Tuesday look at the right handful of signals and ask “So what?” of each one. Here’s where we start.

• Your baseline, and how it shifts. Total gross donation volume (GDV) for the season matters, but so does breaking it apart: How much of that specifically came in on Giving Tuesday versus the rest of the Nov. 1–Dec. 31 window, and how does this year trend against the same window last year? A flat year-over-year number can hide a real shift underneath it.
  Recurring giving depth. Recurring donors are the ones who fund your mission all year round, not just December. We look at how many new recurring donors you acquired during the season, what their average gift and frequency were, and how well you retained recurring donors from past seasons.
• Gift size and gift mix. Average gift size is useful, but median gift size and the distribution across gift bands tell a fuller story. A rising average can mean your donor base is genuinely giving more generously—or it can mean a handful of large gifts are masking a decline in everyday giving.
  Donor retention and “season loyalty.” New donors are exciting, but repeat donors are what sustain a mission in the long term. We specifically track how many of last year’s Giving Tuesday and year-end donors came back this season.
• Channel mix. Where is giving coming from? Emails, paid search, paid or organic social media, direct traffic, or referrals? The mix usually looks different during the giving season than the rest of the year, and knowing which channels carry the season (and which have gone quiet) shapes where budget and attention should go next.
• Timing patterns. Giving during this window isn’t evenly distributed. There are predictable spikes around Giving Tuesday and the final days of December, along with patterns in the time of day when donors are most likely to give. Understanding your organization’s own curve helps with everything from send-time decisions to staffing your support inbox.
• Benchmarks against similar organizations. Your own year-over-year trend is useful, but it’s not the whole picture. Comparing your metrics against organizations of a similar size and cause area helps you tell the difference between “this is just how the giving season goes” and “this is something specific to us worth addressing.”
• How your donation experience compares to top performers. Sometimes the gap isn’t about marketing at all. It’s about the donation page itself. We look at whether organizations getting stronger results use features designed to help them raise more.

Data alone doesn’t make decisions

Before the giving season starts, we sit down with each of our customers for a giving season data review. A few things we focus on in that conversation:

• We build the comparison, not just the numbers. We compare last season’s results with this season’s data so far, so a customer sees a trend, not a snapshot.
• We ask “So what,” not just “What.” A channel shift or a dip in recurring retention isn’t useful on its own. The conversation is more about what it means for the next eight weeks.
• We narrow it down to a few things that matter. Every organization’s data review turns up more signals than any team can act on at once. Our job is to help identify the two or three that deserve real attention this season, not everything that’s measurable.
• We come back to it. A giving season review isn’t a one-and-done meeting in September. The best conversations continue after Giving Tuesday, when there’s fresh data and still time to adjust before the year-end closes.

That’s the partnership piece we think matters most: Giving nonprofits access to their own data is a start, but it’s the walk-through that turns data into a plan.

A checklist for your own giving season data review

Whether you work with GoFundMe Pro or not, here’s a starting list of questions worth bringing to your own nonprofit team before the giving season ramps up:

• How does this year’s GDV compare to the same window last year?
• Is our recurring donor base growing, and are past recurring donors sticking around?
• Has our average or median gift size moved, and do we know why?
• How many of last year’s Giving Tuesday and year-end donors gave again this year?
• Which channels drive giving right now, and has that mix shifted from a typical month?
• Do we know what day and time our donors are most likely to give?
• How do we compare to similar organizations, not just to our own history?
• Is there anything about our donation experience itself that might be holding results back?

If you can answer most of these with confidence, you’re ahead of where most organizations are in September. However, if you can’t, that’s exactly the conversation worth having before the giving season’s two biggest days arrive.

Want a deeper look at specific metrics? Check out Decoding donation fluctuations: Turning data into action for your nonprofit and Pinpointing opportunities to boost your fundraising conversion rate. And if you’re ready to build out your full giving season timeline, our end-of-year fundraising checklist is a good next stop.

Want a walk through for your organization? Reach out to our team to learn more.