How Much is a New Donor Worth?

17 Feb How Much is a New Donor Worth?

18 February 2025

By David Allen, Development for Conservation

Beginning in about 2017, I started collecting data from readers of this blog about the five-year value of new members and donors making first gifts to their land trusts. My theory was that because recruiting new donors in any kind of pro-active way often costs more money than it raises, key decision-makers are understandably reluctant to invest much in marketing.

On the other hand, if we could show that the average 5^th-Year Value of new donors was more significant, the longer-term return-on-investment will more than justify short-term costs. By 2019, 42 land trust organizations of all shapes and sizes had participated from across the country. The results showed that though the 12-month value of an average new donor might be only $70 or so, the 5^th-year value was much closer to $1,000 – that’s $1,000 in 5^th year money from EACH new member recruited.

The research mostly fell apart in 2020 and 2021 – the COVID years – but I’ve been curious about the flood of new members that made first contributions in those two years. Did they renew? Did they keep giving and become more loyal? How did their 5-year Value compare with that of previous recruiting years? Can we explain the data?

So, I’d like to ask you to take a moment and participate again this year. Here’s what I would need:

• Isolate the members and donors you have who made first gifts to your organization at some point – any point – during the calendar year 2020.
• Now add up everything those donors gave to your organization – as a group – since then (1/1/2020 through 12/31/2024).
• Send those two numbers to me – the number of donors and the total amount they have given. The email address is David (at) DevelopmentForConservation (dot) com.
• Any kind of narrative you might be willing to share from your experience during COVID would be welcomed as well.

If yours was one of the organizations that sent me data in past years, I will reach out independently to ask you to participate again. If not, you might want to repeat the exercise for 2019 and 2018 donors as well as 2020 donors. That way, you will be able to see how COVID affected your organization specifically.

Note that I do not reveal the names of the organizations when I report on the data.

Thank you SO much in advance!

Cheers and Have a Good Week!

-da

PS: Your comments on these posts are welcomed and warmly requested. If you have not posted a comment before, or if you are using a new email address, please know that there may be a delay in seeing your posted comment. That’s my SPAM defense at work. I approve all comments as soon as I am able during the day.

Photo by Nancy Morris courtesy of stocksnap.io.