Need to analyse the actual return on investment for your fundraising programs? The team at The Kids Cancer Project (TKCP), like most donor-funded organisations, are cost-conscious and focused on investing their fundraising budget for the best returns possible. Over the last few years the team at TKCP have made considerable efforts to upgrade their raffle ticket buyers to monthly giving. To ensure they were getting the best possible results, Raisers Hub were willing to go head-to-head with their current agency and allow the team to split-test the results.
What are head-to-head agency tests?
Head-to-head tests involve looking at the efforts of the agencies you employ side-by-side and controlling the test criteria to allow for accurate comparison. Head-to-head tests are a great way to make sure your telefundraising programs are performing at their optimum level and should be implemented as a regular health-check of your fundraising.
For the last three years, TKCP invited Raisers’ Hub to conduct a range of split-tests on their various programs – raffle conversion being one of them. By doing this level of testing early on, the team had a good couple of years of data that supported the decision to prioritise regular giving and assign that effort to one agency. From here, the team were then guided in how to look at Giving Insight to assess the lifetime value of these programs and determine which agency was the go-to for this investment.
What are the challenges of conducting a head-to-head agency test?
Conducting a head-to-head agency test effectively can present its challenges. In the case of TKCP, they found that agencies had differing pricing models and approaches to revenue generation, so simply looking at the costs of the program would potentially lose them revenue over the first year of the life of the supporter.
Instead of looking at price as the number-one criteria, their CEO, Owen Finegan, set the test activity with the following success metrics:
- Year 1 Net Revenue
- Total number of 16 Debit Supporters (Regular Raffle + Regular Gift)
- Total number of 12 Debit Supporters (Regular Givers)
Owen explained,
“Using year 1 net revenue as the key metric enabled the organisation to remove the complication of agencies having different pricing models and focus on the actual revenue the organisation would receive – which is the true value of the program.”
How to choose the right agency for your fundraising
By using Year 1 Net Revenue as the key metric for comparison in their own testing, TKCP was able to compare their existing agency’s fundraising results with that of Raisers’ Hub efforts for the same project.
RG CONVERSION HEAD-TO-HEAD TEST | ||
Agency A | Raisers Hub | |
Data for calling | 8,490 | 8,173 |
Conversation Rate | 33.32% | 45.14% |
Regular Giving Results | ||
Conversion Rate | 5.23% | 6.80% |
Average Monthly Gift | $20.90 | $27.74 |
Confirmed Regular Givers | 148 | 251 |
RG Annual Income | $37,118.40 | $83,552.88 |
Donation Results | ||
Average Gift | $40.70 | $46.91 |
Confirmed Donations | 164 | 147 |
Donation Income | $6,675.00 | $6,896.00 |
Costs | ||
Total Costs | $26,697.70 | $64,494.92 |
Cost Per Regular Giver | $180.39 | $256.95 |
With Raisers Hub yielding both a higher net revenue and increase in the total number of debit supporters throughout the program compared to TKCP’s existing agency, it was at this point that additional decision-making criteria could be safely introduced to further compare the two results.
By widening the criteria used from just costs, TKCP could clearly see the significantly higher amount of new regular givers, net revenue and lifetime value when working with Raisers Hub. But don’t just take our word for it, check out Giving Insight’s analysis into TKCP telefundraising efforts.
Interested in split-testing your programs and truly discovering whether you’re getting the best results? The team at Raisers’ Hub can help, book in a free 15-minute discovery call to find out more.