In the past we’ve discussed how desirable it would be for GWWC to release cohort data to allow potential donors to properly evaluate how much value GWWC creates. Without it its hard for us to estimate the lifetime value of new members. While it seems clear GWWC is positive value, we need to be able to compare it to other effective charities. At the time it was suggested that you would release this data; any chance we could see it in time for this giving season—or if not, in the new year?
Hey Dale,
Here’s our most recent giving review, which has that information in. The section you want is 1 d. ‘Amounts donated’. We didn’t end up including it in the webpages on plans and effectiveness because it’s captured in our calculation in ‘rate of leaving, going silent and not giving’ (in the ‘realistic calculation’ flow chart), and we didn’t want to make the overall too long and complex.
There are some other sections in there you might be interested in too, like trust statistics, pledge fulfilment and giving, and employment status.
Hi, Just to add to this, here is a link to a document I made with the sort of data you suggested sharing in the conversation earlier this year about cohort data. (Some of this is already contained in the Giving Review but I’ve presented it by cohort to hopefully make it easy to read). I agree that it’s useful to collect and share, so thank you for the prompt!
This is impressive—several thousand dollars of donation per member, with no obvious trend downwards excluding the first cohort (which was filled with especially large givers). This easily suggests a member is worth tens of thousands of dollars of donations.
And I’d expect My Giving data to underreport, since there will be people who donate but don’t both to fill it in.
Hi again! I’ve now had a look at this—for the cohorts who joined before 2013 it looks like 30% of those who reported meeting their pledge in 2014 had not reported meeting their pledge in 2013. So this shows that just because someone didn’t report their donations in 2013 doesn’t mean they didn’t the following year. I have added a breakdown of this in the 2014 cohort document. (NB I also made some very small corrections to the 2013 cohort info, which slightly increased the numbers for ‘people who recorded some income and donation data’ and changed the median %’s donated)
Hey Michelle,
In the past we’ve discussed how desirable it would be for GWWC to release cohort data to allow potential donors to properly evaluate how much value GWWC creates. Without it its hard for us to estimate the lifetime value of new members. While it seems clear GWWC is positive value, we need to be able to compare it to other effective charities. At the time it was suggested that you would release this data; any chance we could see it in time for this giving season—or if not, in the new year?
Hey Dale, Here’s our most recent giving review, which has that information in. The section you want is 1 d. ‘Amounts donated’. We didn’t end up including it in the webpages on plans and effectiveness because it’s captured in our calculation in ‘rate of leaving, going silent and not giving’ (in the ‘realistic calculation’ flow chart), and we didn’t want to make the overall too long and complex. There are some other sections in there you might be interested in too, like trust statistics, pledge fulfilment and giving, and employment status.
Hi, Just to add to this, here is a link to a document I made with the sort of data you suggested sharing in the conversation earlier this year about cohort data. (Some of this is already contained in the Giving Review but I’ve presented it by cohort to hopefully make it easy to read). I agree that it’s useful to collect and share, so thank you for the prompt!
This is impressive—several thousand dollars of donation per member, with no obvious trend downwards excluding the first cohort (which was filled with especially large givers). This easily suggests a member is worth tens of thousands of dollars of donations.
And I’d expect My Giving data to underreport, since there will be people who donate but don’t both to fill it in.
Thanks Allison for such a clear document!
Do you have similar numbers for the 2013 pledge?
Hi Peter, I don’t yet but am working on it: I’ll post them here when they’re done :)
Thanks! :D
Here is the cohort information for 2013
Do you know what the overlap is like? Are the people going silent in 2013 the same people who go silent in 2014?
Thanks!
Hi again! I’ve now had a look at this—for the cohorts who joined before 2013 it looks like 30% of those who reported meeting their pledge in 2014 had not reported meeting their pledge in 2013. So this shows that just because someone didn’t report their donations in 2013 doesn’t mean they didn’t the following year. I have added a breakdown of this in the 2014 cohort document. (NB I also made some very small corrections to the 2013 cohort info, which slightly increased the numbers for ‘people who recorded some income and donation data’ and changed the median %’s donated)