FAQ’s

Given the volume of charities participating in Benchmarking each year and the size of their fundraising data sets, it typically takes just 2-3 months to aggregate all of the data and make the insights available through the final Benchmarking report and presentation.  All Benchmarking participants have a role to play—clean data and fewer re-supplies means we can bring insights to you faster

If you are a user of FIP reports, we will be able to use the data supplied for FIP, and you wouldn’t have to supply an additional extract for Benchmarking.

Google Analytics data is optional for Benchmarking. But please note that your individual Benchmarking Reports will not include Google Analytics associated reports if the data is not available. You can, however, get a general idea of how the industry is performing in terms of GA data in the General Trends Presentation. You can find the steps to give us access to the GA at the section ‘Data Source 4 of 4’.

If it is difficult to extract the data as one single file (especially the transactions), you can split the data into multiple queries (files). We will append the data at our end. But please make sure to have no duplicate information in the files while splitting.

Please Classify them as “Others” and let us know what that gift type or Solicitation Channel is so that we can try to include that as a Standardised Gift type or Solicitation Channel for the next Benchmarking.

Every charity has its way of gift classifications and attribution. That is why IVE have created a standardised gift classifications and Solicitation Channels. Either provide us with the data in the mentioned format or provide us with an additional lookup table file through which we can classify your transactions.

Solicitation channel is the primary medium by which the gift was solicited. This is solely dependent on how you would attribute a gift to a channel. For example, if a Door-to-Door Campaign approached the customer, but then the gift was paid using a follow-up phone campaign, this can be attributed to the Door-to-Door Solicitation channel.

Yes, we expect clawbacks to be in the data supplied for the report.

No, you have to provide the full data again this year because we do not keep any data for more than a year due to our data retention policy.

Yes, the fields need to be labelled correctly and formatted as outlined in this Data Requirements document. If they are not, you will need to re-submit your data.  The subsequent effort may include additional fees to account for IVE DDC Analytics team’s effort and time. Please ensure your data is complete and accurate and follows the naming conventions as outlined below.

One of the most important components of the Benchmarking data is the classification of transactions by their gift type and channel of solicitation.

To compare and benchmark effectively, we need to use standard classifications across every Benchmarking participant charity. We cannot customise the classifications for each, and every individual charity as these transactions need a common, consistent convention to allow for comparison and benchmarking against the industry.

Yes, we will pull out major gifts and analyse them separately. Many charities use a variety of definitions to define their major giving programs, so we will use a standard definition to effectively benchmark yours in relation to the rest of the industry.

It is optional to do so, however, IVE DDC strongly recommends that you do include Donors’ personal details in your data extracts, as this allows for several critical analyses included in Benchmarking to be possible.  For example, Donor Cross-Pollination reporting metrics in Benchmarking relies heavily on Donors’ personal details so these can be matched across multiple charities. These are critical insights which many of the Benchmarking participants seek—in this spirit, we request you provide Donor personal details as part of your data extracts.  This is but one example of how we use this data to produce insights in Benchmarking.

Nearly every charity provides their Donors’ personal details.   IVE DDC takes privacy commitments and data compliance very seriously, and handles data with the highest confidentiality  standards. If you have any questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to reach out to IVE DDC for further details.

Please send data as far back as possible. However, the focus of Benchmarking’s insights begins in 2010 and will include transaction data up to and including 31 December 2021.

For Regular Giving details, please send all available data you have which you deem to be accurate.

IVE DDC will be sending out event RSVP emails the week before each webinar (to be held via Zoom).

If for whatever reason one of your team members who you feel should attend didn’t get the email, feel free to forward the invite link to them so they can sign in and attend.  There will be no hard limits on the number of Zoom attendees.

Certainly not! The upcoming Data Preparation Webinars are intended to give you, as a participating Benchmarking charity, the best opportunity to efficiently supply the required data with as few hiccups as possible. The agenda of the IVE DDC Analytics team will initially be the same. However, we’re expecting some new questions once we get to the Q&A portion of the webinar.

For this reason, we ask that each participating charity attend at least one webinar, but not necessarily all.  The sessions are free, and you’re welcome to attend each webinar if you find the information and Q&A reinforcement helpful!

Yes, Benchmarking membership is open to all charities.

Note, charities with less than 10,000 individual giving transactions (Cash/RG/Bequest) per annum are eligible for Gold and Platinum memberships only. Smaller donor bases will not have a significant impact on the National Trends Report from the combined data sets of our larger member charities, and hence do not justify the significant effort for both you and us in preparing your data to be merged with the national data-set.

We welcome any feedback and are always more than happy to talk to Benchmarking members. You can contact the team by email at: IVENFP.Benchmarking@ivegroup.com.au