Non Profit KPI Considerations

Non Profits have several KPI’s that most businesses do not possess. One of the big reasons for their importance is that Non Profits can go out and get grants to help fund operations based on these numbers. Grants tend to be very heavily driven by numbers, so keeping track of KPI’s here will help you to get grants quickly and efficiently, not only for operations but also for capital improvements to your operations.

At this point, you might be wondering what KPI’s should be kept track of from a Non Profit perspective. While not exhaustive, here are some of the big areas that Non Profits should consider when it comes to KPI’s.

Total Volunteers: How many total volunteers contribute their time to serve your Non Profit? Additionally, and very importantly from an operational perspective, how many volunteers do you need at a minimum?

Volunteer Hours: What is the total time that all of your volunteers contribute yearly to your organization? What is the annual average in volunteer hours that you need to ensure that your volunteers can complete the necessary tasks in front of them?

People Impacted: How many people does your organization impact? One key area to consider is differentiating between direct and indirect impact; especially if you have a large number of people your organization impacts indirectly. What would emerge here as a baseline to identify if the year was above or below average?

Number of Donors: What is the total number of people that donate to your organization in a year? Specifically, what is the average number of donors you need to have in a year to ensure that you break even for the year? One important note here: it is crucial that your Board of Directors donates to the organization. While time could be considered, at the end of the day, organizations will not be likely to support a Non Profit organization where your board does not donate. If the board (whose primary responsibility is to Fundraise for the Organization) will not contribute to it, why should they?

Again, there will likely be specialized KPI’s that will come into focus for your Non Profit that are not mentioned here. However, the four KPI’s listed here are pretty standard across the board for all Non Profit organizations. Most importantly, these KPI’s will be used in helping your organization pursue grants as well as tell the story of why donors and sponsors should support your organization.

There are some important challenges that should be addressed at this point. While all of the listed KPI’s are helpful, keep these two issues in mind:

Data Collection: Identifying all of the KPI’s is substantially easier than collecting the data. What process do you use to collect the data as well as ensure that everything that you have is accurate?

Resources: Having an analyst for data in a For Profit business is quite likely. However, having an analyst on staff for a Non Profit might not be within budget. How will you be able to get the numbers crunched properly to develop your benchmarks?

As you can see, these challenges are not the easiest to overcome. They might require some creativity on your part, but the end result is that you can establish benchmarks for your KPI’s, as well as have the data at your disposal to tell the story of how your organization is impacting the community, making your home a better place for everyone.

As is the case with other topics that this newsletter has covered, there is a very good chance that other areas (Startups, Scaling, Growing Pains) will give some insights into KPI’s that your organization should consider implementing, especially if your organization has a stream of income under the category or related business income. However, at the end of the day, the bread and butter KPI’s for your Non Profit are listed above. These are the areas that, if you have to choose where you will do your data collection, you should select without hesitation.