Why Demonstrating Impact is Crucial to Your Stewardship Efforts
If you work in fundraising and development at a non-profit you probably have some role in tracking and reporting dollars raised. And you may consider thanking donors for those dollars, as well as assuring donors that their gift will be used as they intended, to be key parts of your job. But effective stewardship goes beyond addressing dollars and cents.
In their 2008 book, Understanding Philanthropy: Its Meaning and Mission, Robert L. Payton and Michael P. Moody suggested that it is through giving that “individuals and groups express their values, advocate for their visions of the public good, work to achieve their missions, and find meaning, purpose, and hope in life…” In other words, when a donor chooses to give to your organization, they do so with the expectation that something in the world will be different because they gave. In the nonprofit world, we often call this difference “impact.”
Impact is what legitimizes fundraising. Without impact, fundraising merely sustains the continued existence of a nonprofit that has become an end unto itself, divorced from the public good. Peter Drucker pointed out in Managing the Non-Profit Organization that “If a business wastes its resources on non-results, by and large it loses its own money. In a nonprofit institution though, it’s somebody else’s money – the donor’s money.” Worse still, a non-profit that has ceased to make an impact diverts funds that could be used by more effective organizations, cheating beneficiaries from the opportunity to be truly helped.
The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines stewardship as “the careful and responsible management of something entrusted to one's care.” Donors are not just entrusting their money with us; they are entrusting their desire to make a difference in the world. By evaluating impact and sharing it with our donors, we honor their trust in us and their role as partners in achieving the mission.
According to Cygnus Applied Research, donors want three things: "prompt, personalized acknowledgment of their gifts; confirmation that their gifts have been set to work as intended; and measurable results on their gifts at work prior to being asked for another contribution.” The desire to ensure that the organization is making a difference for the people it serves should be sufficient reason for any non-profit to engage in ongoing evaluation of its impact. But if additional motivation is needed, research has supplied it: recognizing the role of impact in stewardship is necessary to renewing gifts and therefore to the long-term sustainability of the organization.