Measure What Counts - A Petrus Development Episode

Happy 2026! Looking to strengthen your fundraising this year? Andrew and Rhen are back with a practical episode on metrics and goal setting that goes beyond typical New Year's resolutions.

In this episode, they break down the key metrics fundraisers should track to build a stronger program—including the important difference between lead measures (what predicts success) and lag measures (what shows results). Andrew shares realistic benchmarks for dollars raised, donor meetings, communication frequency, database growth, and more.

Whether you're new to tracking metrics or refining your approach, this episode will help you focus on the numbers that actually drive fundraising growth.

And if you want to learn more about fundraising metrics and development strategies, join us at an upcoming Petrus RAISE workshop! Texas, we're headed your way first—sign up now!

INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT:

12:36.53
Host
Well, howdy, everybody, and welcome back to another year of the award-winning Petrus Development Show. I am Rhen Hoehn, and joining me today is Andrew Robison. How's it going, Andrew?

12:48.57
AROB
Yeah, it's going very, very good. I'm enjoying the—I wouldn't say winter weather here, although we're supposed to get some pretty bad winter weather coming up in the next couple of days.

12:59.68
AROB
So we'll see if that happens. You never know. But yeah, enjoying the cool weather, at least.

13:01.72
Host
All right.

13:05.71
AROB
Fewer mosquitoes outside.

13:07.61
Host
There you go. No mosquitoes here in the snow. Did you have a good Christmas? Good New Year's? What have you been up to?

13:14.84
AROB
Yeah, it was good. We had a good Christmas. My wife—the flu went through our house. So my wife was out for a couple of days right over Christmas, which was unfortunate. But we did all the Christmas things, you know, as much as we could.

13:30.64
AROB
And then New Year's was nice. And then I took my oldest daughter, Annabelle—16. She went to SEEK with me in Columbus.

13:40.59
Host
Ah, excellent.

13:41.26
AROB
So SEEK is the big conference every year that FOCUS puts on. That's generally the first through the fifth of January. And so I've been to many, many—I think I've gotten to most of them since 2015. But my daughter has been asking. She asked to go last year, and I was like, "Well, I don't know, maybe." And then she asked to go this year, and I said, "Yep, let's do it." So she had a blast. It was awesome. It was good to be there with her and experience that.

14:09.52
Host
Excellent. Any—we're just getting started in the year.

14:13.01
AROB
How about you?

14:13.88
Host
Oh, me.

14:14.15
AROB
How about you?

14:14.98
Host
Ah.

14:15.03
AROB
Yeah, first Christmas with the new baby, huh?

14:17.43
Host
Yeah, exactly. It was good fun. It was kind of nice. We had all the relatives visiting through November and early December with the baby, with the baptism. So we had just kind of a quiet Christmas to ourselves. All relatives live seven hours away.

14:32.88
Host
So we didn't drive anywhere. We just hunkered down at home and had a nice, quiet family Christmas. And it was nice. It was good.

14:39.58
AROB
That's awesome.

14:40.36
Host
Can't complain.

14:41.46
AROB
Good.

14:41.77
Host
Lots of snow, so lots of skiing and snowshoeing with the kids and just getting out and enjoying it.

14:45.68
AROB
Good. Good.

14:49.05
Host
Did you start your year off with any New Year's resolutions?

14:53.28
AROB
Ooh, good question. So I sometimes do New Year's resolutions. It's more just like, "All right, what do I want to look back on the year and say I'm glad that I accomplished that?"

15:08.18
AROB
Um.

15:08.53
Host
Hmm.

15:09.26
AROB
It's funny, you know. I'm in a stage of life, stage of business, you know, with my family that I look back on the year and inevitably every year I'm like, "I did not expect it to go like that."

15:22.46
AROB
Or...

15:22.74
Host
Ah.

15:23.66
AROB
Wow, that came out of nowhere—those big things that we accomplished or did or whatever it is. So I've got to be very agile in terms of, you know, kind of goal-setting and resolutions.

15:35.06
AROB
But this year I've got two big goals. One is professional with the company. We've been dabbling and doing a lot—I say dabbling, it's more than dabbling—we've been investigating, exploring some AI solutions for Petrus, for the company, for our clients. And so I told the team that I wanted 2026 to be the year that we launch our big AI tool. So that's professional goal number one. And then personal goal number one is I've been working on and working around a lot of books and writing the last couple of years.

15:51.38
Host
Yeah.

16:16.71
AROB
And so this is the year—2026—that I want to actually finish one of those books, get it out there, maybe self-publish, maybe go through the publishing route, but actually be able to say, "Yes, I'm done. It's out there. I'm finished with it." And that I have a book. So yeah.

16:35.67
Host
Excellent. That's exciting.

16:37.24
AROB
Yeah. How about you?

16:38.88
Host
I set one big goal this year, and that's to walk 5 million steps, which should—yeah, sounds like a lot.

16:44.66
AROB
Bro, that sounds like a lot. Okay.

16:48.11
Host
Uh, I mean, it's—I think it works out to 13,700 a day, something like that. So it's achievable, but you've got to kind of intentionally put some time in every day to get there.

16:58.17
AROB
Yeah.

16:58.93
Host
Right. So that's my one big goal. My other one—kind of similar—we were talking about the books we read last year, and I realized I read four or five last year, which didn't feel like very much, although most of them were a thousand pages plus.

17:10.05
Host
So maybe it worked out. It wasn't quite as bad as it felt, but trying to get that number up to at least a couple of books a month.

17:19.08
AROB
That's good. I just had breakfast with a friend of mine, my old boss, actually—Greg—this morning, and he's a big walker. And he's retired now. So he, you know, he was like, "I can walk a little bit more than I used to."

17:33.91
AROB
But he said last year he averaged right around 14 or 15,000 a day. So I should tell him that he probably broke 5 million if he hadn't put that together.

17:43.86
Host
Yeah, he should have. That's correct.

17:46.17
AROB
He did the—I don't remember if he did the Camino in '25 or in '24, but he's done the Camino. And then he told me this morning that he's going back and he's doing it at least once and maybe twice because some family members want to go.

17:57.30
AROB
So they're going to do the shorter—not the full 33 days, but the shorter distances.

18:00.99
Host
Wow.

18:02.01
AROB
But that's a way to get your steps up—go walk the Camino. Yeah.

18:06.44
Host
That'll definitely get them in. The idea came to me actually when the baby was being born. We were at the hospital for I think four or five days, and I sat in that same room and got a couple hundred steps a day, and I was like, "I need to get out and move, and I'm going to set a goal and make it happen." Yeah, it was just—it's hard to sit still, but it's good to get outside too.

18:15.45
AROB
Oh, my gosh.

18:25.28
AROB
Yeah.

18:28.98
AROB
Yeah.

18:32.31
Host
Talking about goal-setting. That's what we're talking about on today's episode.

18:35.48
AROB
Oh, great segue.

18:36.76
Host
Hey, look at that.

18:36.82
AROB
I like it.

18:37.76
Host
So in the past, we have episodes—Episode 134 was our kind of last one specifically about goal-setting. It was in January of 2024, a couple of years ago.

18:47.84
Host
I want to talk specifically—we'll talk a little bit about goal-setting, but in particular, we want to talk about, "Okay, you had goals and results from last year, 2025."

18:58.27
Host
How do we set new goals for this year? What are kind of reasonable expectations for growth going year over year in fundraising? So that's kind of what we want to focus in on today.

19:10.57
Host
How does that sound to you?

19:11.83
AROB
Yeah, that sounds great.

19:13.05
Host
Great. So before we start, I want to make a distinction. There's a couple of different types of metrics in fundraising—I think in everything. But it's helpful to realize the difference between them when you set your goals.

19:25.14
Host
And we're talking about lead metrics and lag metrics. And I think we originally kind of came across this idea in a book called The Four Disciplines of Execution.

19:28.86
AROB
Yeah.

19:36.20
Host
Does that sound right?

19:36.73
AROB
Yeah, Sean Covey and Chris McChesney. Yeah, I read that forever ago.

19:40.89
Host
Yeah, it was several years ago we read that and kind of started breaking things down with those metrics. Can you explain the difference between lead metrics and lag metrics and how they apply to fundraising?

19:51.32
AROB
Sure. So lead metrics are metrics that you track that are based on activity. So you can have lead metrics in literally anything—sales, walking, parenting, and fundraising, of course. So lead metrics are the activities that you do that lead to success. So examples include number of calls you make, number of—you know, when I was at the foundation, I had a percentage of time out of the office. That's a lead metric. You know, number of calls, number of visits—things like that. Those are lead metrics because you control them. Either you do the activity or you don't. And they lead to success. On the other side, lag metrics are the accomplishments that come, the fruit that comes from those lead metrics. So lag metrics would be goals like dollars raised, new gift agreements, new monthly donors. Those are lag metrics because you're not necessarily in control of that. That takes other people agreeing to do things for you to hit those. But if you do the lead metrics, then they will lead to accomplishments, which are the lag metrics, because they lag that activity.

21:19.86
Host
Makes sense.

21:20.96
AROB
Yeah.

21:20.95
Host
And we need both types of goals in fundraising, right?

21:25.05
AROB
You do. It's really easy, though—and a lot of groups, people, individuals, whatever, will fall into the lag metrics tracking, right?

21:35.58
AROB
So, you know, in your example, you said you want to walk 5 million steps, right?

21:36.40
Host
Right.

21:43.02
AROB
So a lag metric would say—

21:43.42
Host
5 million. 5 million. 15 sounds impressive.

21:46.36
AROB
Oh, okay. Sorry.

21:48.44
Host
Sorry to throw you off.

21:49.07
AROB
All right. All right. Well, let me know if you—if 5 million gets too easy, and then, you know, it's next year.

21:50.66
Host
15 next year. That's yeah.

21:57.19
AROB
Okay, good. So you want to walk 5 million steps, right? So that's a lead metric. But maybe your lag metrics are you want to lose 10 pounds, right? Or you want to have more energy every day, or you want to lower your cholesterol, or whatever those lag metrics would be. Your activity that you can control is walking those 5 to 15 million steps every year, which is your lead—will lead to that success.

22:29.05
Host
Excellent. All right. So let's talk about some specific metrics that are typically tracked by fundraisers and kind of what are some realistic expectations for growth year over year. Sound good to you?

22:41.94
AROB
Yeah, sounds great.

22:42.74
Host
Excellent. So let's start with a big one—dollars raised. We all are watching that number obviously carefully as fundraisers. I know this is going to vary, but based on where your organization is at in its kind of fundraising lifetime. So what are some expectations for what you can expect to be able to grow if you do things well over this next year versus the previous year?

23:04.72
AROB
Great. We get this question a lot from pastors, from chaplains, from principals, from board members, and they say, "Hey, what should we expect?" Or, you know, oftentimes, "What should we budget for growth from our fundraising efforts?" And so you hit the nail on the head a minute ago when you said it depends on your station—like, your sort of situation, circumstances. So what do we mean by that?

23:27.25
AROB
An organization, a nonprofit that's never really done intentional fundraising that all of a sudden—not all of a sudden, but that then one year starts with intentionality, right? Maybe you have a staff member that's doing fundraising. You start putting your appeals in place. You build a database. You start going out and asking.

23:46.84
AROB
An organization that's in that situation, it's not out of the realm of possibility to see growth year over year of 80 to even 100% growth year after year. Because you could go from $50,000 sort of accidentally fundraised to $100,000 intentionally fundraised really easily. And that's 100% growth year over year.

24:10.71
AROB
Now, as an organization is getting more established and doing more fundraising and employing the good principles, best practices, that percentage of growth is going to go down.

24:23.80
AROB
And so, you know, an organization that's been doing fundraising for three or four years, right, then, you know, 50% could be a reasonable target. Even 20% for an organization that's been intentionally fundraising for four to five years is not out of the realm of possibility.

24:40.38
AROB
So, you know, your organization might be doing $300,000 a year. Maybe this last year, you did $300,000 in annual revenue through your fundraising. You had a couple of appeals. You went and saw them—some visits.

24:41.09
Host
Okay.

24:54.55
AROB
You could very easily this next year hit $360,000, and that's a 20% increase year over year. So 20% is often kind of the number that I peg for organizations that are usually in the position where they're asking this question because they're saying, "Hey, we've been doing some things for a few years. We've got some activities we do. We've got some donors that are starting to come along. What should we see?" Usually they're somewhere in that 20% range.

25:21.37
AROB
For a very established organization that's doing all the right things, that has a team, the growth is going to be less, but it's more dollars. So, you know, if you're—let's say your high school is doing, you know, a million dollars annually in fundraising and you add a staff member or you add some appeals or you get a little bit more intentional, then you could go from a million to $1.1 million this next year. And that's a 10% growth. So that's usually kind of a safe, conservative growth metric—somewhere in that 8 to 10% for most organizations that are established.

26:03.42
AROB
Now, of course, all of this is outside of capital campaigns or, you know, major shifts in strategy, but normal annual fund, those are pretty safe numbers.

26:10.73
Host
Right.

26:14.39
Host
Gotcha. Would you expect the number of donors to kind of track with that?

26:18.71
AROB
Yes, absolutely. So number of new donors is often going to be a result of the activities—the specific activities you're doing. So, you know, a nonprofit, maybe they've never done an online giving day, right? You've participated in Giving Tuesday or I Give Catholic in the fall, but you've never done your own giving day. And so you do your own giving day in the spring this year, which—we've got a great course on how to run an online giving day if you want to check that out, but you do your own giving day. Well, you could see, you know, a hundred donors that come in as a result of that. Twenty to 25% of those, 20 to 25 of those, are first-time donors to your organization. So the activities and the strategies that you're doing throughout the course of the year is what will kind of align with that growth in new donor numbers. But outside of that, your new donors—that track, that lag measure—is going to track very closely along with your dollars raised.

27:21.50
Host
Got it. How about monthly donors, the growth in the number of those?

27:25.08
AROB
So monthly donors is even more so important or more so kind of in line with what I was talking about. If you've never done a monthly giving program before, and this year you say, "Hey, we're going to stick our flag in the sand. We're going to start a monthly giving program. We're going to brand it. We're going to watch the videos that Petrus does. We're going to learn how to do this," right? You do everything. You could see a hundred, 200, 300% growth in your monthly donors because maybe you have five right now. You know, so it's really—you really only kind of start tracking or setting goals for new monthly donors as a percentage once you get over—let's say maybe it's a hundred, maybe it's 200, depends on the organization—that's when you start looking at the percentages. Up until that point, I think I've mentioned this on the podcast before, but for years when I was at St. Mary's at Texas A&M,

28:16.95
AROB
our goal every year, our list of goals, always included a monthly donor goal. And it was 30 every year, 30 monthly donors every year. Didn't matter where we were. If we were at 30 this year or we were at a hundred, we set our goal for 30. It wasn't until we were hitting that consistently that we kind of said, "Hey, 30 is a little—maybe a little bit too easy now. Let's increase that to 50." So then our goal became 50. Then it became 75. Then it became a hundred. And so your monthly giving is even more—I say, I go back to what I said earlier, it tracks along with that kind of dollars raised, but with the exception of the growth of a monthly giving program, if you're intentional and you're strategic about it and you make that a priority, it can be exponential for a long, long time into the future. So you could go from, you know, 30 to 60 and then 60 to 120. Both of those are a hundred percent growth. And then 120 to 200, which is 80%, before you start trailing off to those lower percentages because there's just so much opportunity there in monthly giving if you've never done it before.

29:25.05
Host
Yeah. The organization I used to work for, it took us a couple of years to build up to 60 monthly donors. And they had their 60th anniversary a year or two ago. And they did a challenge for 60 new monthly donors.

29:36.90
Host
And they got that within a couple of weeks. So yeah, as things grow over time, you can pick up a lot of momentum there.

29:39.53
AROB
Yeah.

29:44.66
AROB
For sure. Mm-hmm.

29:45.72
Host
Excellent. Here's a little bit different one. Let's talk about setting goals. So the number of face-to-face visits—I imagine with an individual, if you're setting a personal goal, there's probably an upper limit there. For setting an organizational goal, maybe you approach that a little bit differently, though. Maybe you're adding, you know, as things grow, you're adding more staff over time who are doing face-to-face visits, that type of thing. How do you approach setting goals there?

30:07.48
AROB
Yeah, so this is really going to depend on your staffing. So a full-time gift officer, right—not that they don't have to do annual fund, they don't have to maintain the database, they're really just there to make calls, send emails and go on visits—you should be doing 15 to 20 per month at minimum.

30:23.00
Host
Yeah. Yeah.

30:26.18
AROB
And because that's your—that's your job, right? That's what you're supposed to be doing. Like I said, when I was at the A&M Foundation, we had a percentage out-of-the-office, 40% out-of-the-office goal.

30:37.27
AROB
And I wasn't going to get 40% out of the office and not be seeing 15 to 20 people per month. So it depends on the role. So a gift officer, that's their primary responsibility—15 to 20 is a very reasonable goal,

30:53.18
AROB
which is, you know, 200 to 240 a year. If you are a director of an office, you have some staff that you manage, you oversee the annual fund, you also, you know, go on donor visits, your expectation is going to be more along the lines of like 12 to 15 per month because you have to spend time in the office doing those other things. If you're annual fund exclusively, you probably don't have very many visits, probably not even a portion of your goal is to go on personal visits. If you are, then you're probably looking at 5 to 10, and those are very specific—maybe you do class gifts, maybe you do monthly giving, things like that, annual fund. So it depends on your—each person can kind of have assigned goals in terms of visits.

31:42.04
AROB
Those aren't going to need to change. In fact, they're not going to change much year over year, right? Your first year as a gift officer, you can be seeing 15 to 20. It's going to be a little bit more difficult to get those calls. You don't have relationships.

31:56.14
AROB
A friend of mine—he recently started working for a big organization, and he's remote, and he's got a territory, and his only job is to go see people. Well, he doesn't know anybody from anything. And so he's doing a lot of cold calling. And so he told me, you know, it took about three to six months before he was consistently seeing 15 people a month because he just—he didn't have anything to go on. These weren't donors. They didn't know him. These were—maybe they were donors, but they didn't know him. There hadn't been a history of seeing people in that region. So it was very much kind of grinding at the beginning. Now that he's kind of got it going, then that 15 visits a month is easy for him. So it might take you a little bit to get going, but then once you get going, 15 to 20 per month should be consistent year over year for 10 years if you are in that role.

32:44.94
Host
Got it. What about an executive director, a pastor, chaplain, somebody in that type of position? Let's say it's going to be different if they don't have development staff, but if they do have development staff who are doing these visits, how many should they themselves be planning to either join in on or go do themselves?

32:55.73
AROB
Yeah.

33:02.14
AROB
Yeah, so it's almost a shift between quantity to quality. So an executive director who has a lot of other roles, a lot of other responsibilities, they should be seeing usually between 5 to 10 at the high end people per month, specifically from a development standpoint. You know, I get a lot of chaplains or pastors that say, "You know, I mean, I see hundreds of people. I meet with hundreds of people, you know, as part of my role as pastor, part of my role as principal. Many of them are donors. Do those count?"

33:35.61
AROB
No, those don't count. If it's a pastoral visit, if it's, you know, you're seeing them because you're the principal, that—but a specific donor-related, whether that's a discovery call, cultivation call, solicitation call, stewardship call—usually 5 to 10 per month.

33:52.18
AROB
Most of your executive director visits are going to be either at the high-end cultivation or solicitation. Your executive director isn't going to be doing a lot of discovery calls because that's your development staff. That's what they're doing. You might be doing some stewardship calls, but those are really, again, at that kind of high level, most impactful donor level.

34:14.05
Host
Makes sense. How about setting goals for the number of solicitations you make at different levels, different gift levels?

34:21.05
AROB
Yeah, so when I start working with a new development director and we start setting our annual goals for the year, it's helpful to walk through this process. And the numbers are going to be different for each organization. Again, going back to where they are, right? But to set a number, a set number of goals at different tiers, is a good way for a gift officer to be strategic and focused on, "All right, I can make all the thousand-dollar asks that I need to, but how far is that going to move the needle if I've got a, you know, a half-million-dollar goal? It's not. I need to have some $5,000 asks every year to fill that pipeline with, you know, future major gift donors. I need to have some $10,000." Yeah. "And, you know, ideally I should have some 25 and maybe even a hundred."

35:12.15
AROB
It's often fun for an organization or a development director who's never made big, big asks and it's not part of their kind of culture or history to sit down with them and say, "Okay, this year I want to see you add two

35:24.41
AROB
six-figure asks to your goal list." And they say, "Oh my gosh, I don't know who I'd ask for a hundred thousand dollars. That's crazy. You think I could? We've never had a gift that big." "Well, that's why we're doing this, right?

35:34.73
AROB
That's why we're saying, 'Who would you—if you're going to ask?' Then by, you know, over the course of the year, we need to probably have six to eight that you're kind of considering, 'Those could be my asks.' And maybe you go over and you ask all of them, but usually not. The timing isn't right at that high level. You need more cultivation, right? You realize, you know, the project, you need this specific project." But starting to kind of turn that mentality to, "Oh, we've never had gifts that big, but we're probably not going to get them if we don't go and ask for them. So I need to figure out who's got potential for that and then start identifying, 'Oh, you know—'" They always say, "Well, I don't know who I'd ask for that." And then I say, "Okay, well, let's just sit here and think about it.

36:15.29
AROB
Okay. Well, I mean, I guess Steve and Mary—like maybe Steve and Mary could do that. Like they've indicated they've got some capacity. Okay. Maybe Steve and Mary." "And we're talking like over a couple of years." "Yeah, it could be a pledge." "Okay.

36:29.82
AROB
All right. Yeah. Let's put Steve and Mary on." So you start thinking about it and you start thinking, "Oh yeah, I actually do have some people at that level." The funniest one is to say, "All right, let's set a goal to make a million-dollar ask this year." And, you know, you see the eyes get real big, and they say, "Oh, my gosh, I could never—I would never—I don't know who to ask.

36:49.90
AROB
They're going to say no. We don't have the project." "Isn't that—" "Okay, well, let's just start thinking about it. Let's get strategic." So that's really kind of where those goals shift.

36:57.40
Host
I remember when I started in fundraising, you were my consultant, and we were a couple of years in, and you kind of challenged me to put some hundred-thousand-dollar asks on the goals for the year.

37:07.84
Host
And I was looking through my database, and I was like, "There's just nobody out there that can make that size a gift. We just don't have it." And now, several years later, I can think of at least half a dozen off the top of my head who have made multiple six-figure gifts to the organization, right?

37:20.88
AROB
Yep.

37:21.65
Host
They're out there. You just got to get to know them, build the relationship, and it'll come over time. And make the asks and get them to consider a gift that they may have not ever just even considered making before.

37:31.80
AROB
Yeah, make the ask. I mean, even outside of goal-setting, right, that's a helpful exercise for any director, pastor, chaplain, development director, board chair, or whatever, to say, "Okay, if somebody was going to make a million-dollar ask to our organization"—and again, I'm talking about groups that don't normally see that level of giving, right—"if somebody was going to make a million-dollar ask, what would we

37:56.98
AROB
—what would we use that for? And B, who would we ask for that?" That's a great exercise for anybody, any organization to do, because oftentimes you don't—A, you don't think you're worthy of gifts that big. So if you don't think you're worthy, then you're definitely not going to go ask. B, you don't think you have the projects or the need. Well, in reality, a gift at that size would be transformative and you'd find a way to use it outside of just like, "Well, I'd give everybody a raise," right? You know, okay. And then, you know, A, you have to think you're worthy. B, you have to think you have the project. And then C, you have to stop thinking of your donors as being

38:38.39
AROB
not major gift prospects. Every organization has at least $1 million donors somewhere in their database. It's just—I mean, the numbers are statistically virtually impossible not to—but maybe you've never thought about, "What are we worthy?" And you've never thought about, "What would we use it for?" So then you never get to that point of thinking, "All right, who actually could make a gift at that level?"

39:02.19
Host
Yeah. And if you're new in fundraising, you may—one thing I've run into myself and talking to others is that you don't spend any time necessarily in circles of people who can make that level of gift, right? Like it's just not even conceivable that somebody has a hundred thousand dollars that they could just give away right now.

39:18.23
AROB
Yeah.

39:18.24
Host
But there are people out there. We once asked for a hundred thousand dollars from somebody, and they literally wrote us a check for it right then.

39:25.14
AROB
Yeah. Now you do it and they just Venmo you, right?

39:27.67
Host
So it's out there. It happens.

39:33.37
AROB
Oh, yeah.

39:33.71
Host
Right.

39:33.94
AROB
Can they tap your phone? Yeah.

39:37.34
Host
Excellent. Good. Let's see—a couple other items that a lot of times you might set goals for or at least track as a fundraiser. How about communications frequency? What should that look like, especially early on in an organization's fundraising journey? How much should that grow over time?

39:55.99
AROB
Yeah, so this is more about, again, getting back to being intentional, not just simply cramming in more communications to hit a goal number, but it's about being strategic and intentional. And what I always tell people is you want to get into an ask-and-inform rhythm. So what that means is that if you're asking somebody in the spring, then you're informing them in the summer. If you're informing them in the summer, then you're asking a gift from them in the early fall. If you're asking a gift in the early fall, then you're informing them of their impact in the middle of the fall. So you kind of look at your calendar, you figure out when do I want to make our asks—end of the year is a great strategy, great time. Beginning of the school year, even for non-school organizations, is a good time. And then spring is a good time. And so then in between, then you want to make sure that you're informing them through a newsletter, through, you know, events, through whatever. You're informing them of the impact of their giving

40:58.04
AROB
so that they can't say, "Then I only ever hear from you when you ask me for money," or you don't have people that know a lot about what you do and are never asked to give. So if you get into that rhythm of asking and informing, then you are—or A, you're overcoming those mentalities, but then B, you're actually seeing a lot more success when you do ask because people are aware of the impact and they want to support, be part of that. So that schedule right there is, you know, three asks and three informs.

41:30.07
AROB
And those can take all sorts of different, you know, shapes. But that's a pretty good, pretty standard schedule for even well-established organizations to be in that. Obviously, you know, you've got some emails that go out in between there. You might have an event that, you know, is more of a cultivation event. You know, those things kind of fit, layer on top of there. But that's a pretty good rhythm.

41:54.09
Host
Yeah. And when I talk to people about digital communications, like with email, I like to have them work toward a monthly email going out of some sort. And I think that's pretty achievable.

42:04.80
Host
And over time, you're probably working up toward every other week, roughly.

42:08.12
AROB
Nice.

42:08.11
Host
Twice a month is sufficient for most organizations.

42:08.32
AROB
That's cool.

42:11.61
Host
More than that gets to be a lot to maintain. Although one of my favorite nonprofits that I follow sends a weekly email, but it's short. It's quick, like a picture with a, "Hey, this just happened. This event happened, or we had these results at this." "Thought you'd love to see it."

42:25.30
Host
And it's almost like a social post sent out as an email. It's real quick. And because it's not a heavy commitment, I always read them and look at them, open them, look at them, read them.

42:28.63
AROB
Nice.

42:33.78
Host
And so I'm always thinking about them. So that's kind of a good goal to work toward there. Good. And the last metric that I have I'm going to ask you about is database growth.

42:45.28
Host
Something we always need to be thinking about, even though it can be kind of a tedious thing to work on. But what kind of goals should we be setting for growing our database year over year?

42:55.16
AROB
So I would set goals that are very similar to those percentages of dollars raised, right? One hundred percent growth in your database year over year when you're just getting started, you don't have a history of collecting names and addresses—that's very achievable. As your database gets bigger, you don't want to take your foot off the pedal, though, and just say, "Oh, we know everybody that would conceivably be on our database. We're not going to slow down on collecting them. We're not going to do some of those things that we know generate new addresses and new names." You've got to keep your

43:29.88
AROB
foot on the pedal because otherwise that pipeline will dry up. So, you know, you always want to have at least a 5 to 10% growth of your database. And again, you know, when I—the goals that I had were usually, you know, "We want to add 500 names to our database." And that wasn't really a percentage. It was just, "We want to be able to add—" and you figure out like, "All right, that was really achievable," or "Gosh, I was going around getting people to fill out clipboards, you know, on the street to hit that number." Like, you know, "All right, so then we need to adjust." But once—it might take a little bit of trial and error to fit, but you always want to be adding names to your database regardless of where you are.

44:16.34
Host
Great. Well, I think that gives kind of a good picture of what to expect and what's reasonable as you set your goals for the year, if you haven't already, as you think about setting goals for future fiscal years and such.

44:27.13
AROB
Yeah, absolutely. I think that this is a really good time to be doing it, but it's also really important to be mindful, even if you're setting—even if you're like, "All right, I don't know what our percentages should be.

44:40.70
AROB
I don't know how many new monthly donors. I have no idea. We've never done this before." Pick a number and go with it.

44:47.67
Host
Yeah.

44:47.74
AROB
And if it's wrong this year, then you find out it's wrong and then you adjust. Some people say, "Well, I don't want to do that because that could be deflating if we don't hit the goal." Well, then set a conservative goal, right? Or go into it knowing, "I don't know what the goal is, you know, but I'm going to try." I mean, I was building Legos with my daughter this weekend, and we just got some of the motors, you know, which is pretty fun. It's kind of like, you know, now I've got trains running all over my house and, you know, nothing better than stepping on a, you know, Lego train that wasn't there when you went to bed at night. But we were like, you know, it brings like this new element to Legos because it's not just like, "I stick these blocks and they all stick together." It's like, "No, I have to put the battery pack here, and the battery pack has to go to the receiver. Then the receiver has to be on channel four." So it's like—she put it all together and she was like, "Dad, this stinks because I can't get it to work. It's not working. I think something's broken." It's like, "Well, maybe nothing's broken.

45:47.20
AROB
Let's see if we got it set up right." And so then we turned out we didn't, and so we adjusted some things, and then we still couldn't get it, and I was like, "I don't know. Let's go to YouTube, and surely somebody—some 13-year-old on YouTube has filmed videos about how they build this up." And sure enough, they did. So then we listened—we kind of took the instruction, put it together, and then all of a sudden the train is working and she was like, "Oh, this is amazing. This is—I love it. I want to get more trains." I was like, "Yeah, you know, an hour ago you were ready to throw it all in the garbage because you couldn't get it to work." Right? A little bit, you know, parallels with fundraising and particularly goal-setting. It's kind of like, "All right, I don't know how this should work."

46:21.92
Host
Thank you.

46:23.30
AROB
Like, I don't know how these things should go together, but I can try. Like, I can plug this into this and maybe it'll work. And if it doesn't work, then I can ask somebody, and then, you know, then maybe I can get it to work.

46:36.52
AROB
So it's like, sometimes you just have to be okay kind of living in that messy space for a time before you get it figured out. But if you don't get it figured out and you just throw it all out, then, you know, you're never going to move forward.

46:48.38
Host
Yeah, it's worth setting aside an hour or two every month to track your goals and the metrics too, right? You pretty much have to do that. Years ago, I used to run marathons, and I had a big Garmin watch, and this was before everything synced up, all right?

47:04.21
Host
So if I wanted to see my cumulative stats, I had to plug my watch into my computer, wait for it to upload, pull up this special software, right?

47:10.42
AROB
I had one of those, yeah.

47:12.13
Host
And I had a goal of running a thousand miles in a year. And the first year I didn't track it as it went. I just put my watch on, you know, on January 1st to see what I ended up at the previous year—991 miles.

47:26.90
AROB
Oh, brutal.

47:28.15
Host
And I didn't learn my lesson because I did the same thing the next year. And I got to 995.

47:32.50
AROB
Ugh.

47:33.09
Host
I was like, "Seriously?" One or two more runs, I would have—you don't want to do that with your fundraising goals, right? Take the time, track it as you go, even though it's, again, a tedious job that feels like it's not kind of contributing to your fundraising efforts necessarily.

47:41.37
AROB
Funny.

47:49.11
Host
It's going to point out where you're lacking, where you're falling behind so you can make adjustments in the course of the year. So spend some time to do that.

47:56.47
AROB
Yeah. And one last thing on this point is it's also okay to set like some micro goals, right? So, you know, we're talking about annual goals, but you can have a monthly goal. You can have a weekly goal.

48:06.50
AROB
You can have a daily goal, you know, like you and me and Matt, we're doing this, you know, silly little challenge over the year where every month, one of us gets to pick a new thing that we're challenging ourselves to do for 30 days.

48:07.76
Host
Definitely.

48:19.66
AROB
Right. And, you know, maybe we'll get it, maybe we won't every month, but at least it's about like, "Hey, let's be like, 'Here's something that I really want to do better.'

48:31.21
AROB
Let's focus on it for the next 30 days, see if I can get better." And then if I can, then hopefully those habits will translate and continue, but, you know, not setting a 365-day goal. We're setting a 30-day goal, which is a lot more manageable.

48:45.53
Host
Yeah, absolutely. Good. Well, to wrap up today, I don't have a game. Unfortunately, I'll blame the baby.

48:52.76
AROB
Hey-o!

48:53.46
Host
I know. I do have a life hack, though. If you're a fundraiser in Texas, especially, we have some workshops coming up that you could attend that'll kind of give you a boost going into the calendar year.

49:01.82
AROB
So—

49:05.40
Host
Where are you going to be around Texas, Andrew?

49:08.46
AROB
We're going to be in Houston, in Austin, and in Dallas, Texas. These are all coming up in February. February 25 will be in Houston.

49:20.34
Host
Yep.

49:20.60
AROB
February 26 will be in Austin, and February 27 will be in Dallas.

49:27.51
Host
That is correct. And if you're listening to this episode on the day that it comes out, you'll have a day or two that you can still get early-bird pricing on these workshops.

49:36.86
AROB
Hey-o!

49:38.69
Host
So I'll let you know that right away. What's going to be happening at the workshops first? And we can talk about the logistics there.

49:45.02
AROB
Sure. So we started these in 2025 with our One Day Raise workshops. And so we've been kind of tweaking and refining them. They're at a really good place right now. I like them. We'll probably change the format up as we go through the course of the year, but really what we focus on is the morning is annual fund. So we're going to cover the Big Six. What are the Big Six? We've got communications. We've got

50:08.66
AROB
direct mail. We've got grant writing. We've got monthly giving. We've got—what are the other two? We've got digital giving, digital fundraising, and there's a sixth one in there somewhere. But the Big Six is what we're really focused on. Annual fund is in the morning. We break for—there's a workshop activity, so you can actually put some of this into action. Then we break for lunch. And then after lunch, we'll come back to major gifts. So we usually split up after lunch with the sort of more experienced folks going for a—not one-on-one, but a small group to talk about, "What are your struggles? What are your challenges?" And then everybody else gets an overview on major gifts. You know, how do you schedule calls? What's a script? How do you set goals? Things like that. And then we finish up with a short little primer on feasibility studies and capital campaigns, just so you're aware.

50:59.74
AROB
So we pack a lot into those seven or eight hours. But I mean, we keep doing them and people keep saying, "This is amazing. It's certainly worth the money," especially when it's $59 or $89 or whatever the price is at the time you register. It's a lot of information and it's really great, especially if you can bring somebody else on your team with you.

51:22.82
Host
Definitely. Like Andrew said, early-bird pricing, $59 a person. Regular registration is $89 a person. And good luck finding any other fundraising workshop close to that price. We made it as cheap as we possibly could to make it as accessible as possible, even for organizations that are just starting out fundraising. And we're trying to bring it close to you so it's easy to get to, you know, cheaper than flying across country for a big conference, having hotel and such. And I think one of the biggest benefits is that these regional workshops, you're meeting other fundraisers, other Catholic fundraisers from your local area. So that's going to be a big benefit going out of that workshop, having some local connections, meeting people doing the same work as you.

52:05.05
AROB
Yep. Special events is the other—the last of the Big Six. So—

52:08.03
Host
There we go.

52:08.70
AROB
And then the last thing I'll say is that the group size has been really good. So most of them are averaging around 27, 28 people at these events. And then there are two Petrus staff members at every one.

52:20.26
AROB
So there's a lot of opportunity. It's not so big that you can't get to meet everybody. Like you said, maybe make some connections in there.

52:27.61
Host
Yeah.

52:28.27
AROB
And then also, if you do have questions that you want somebody on the Petrus staff to help you answer, those questions right there. Like it's not too big that you can't take a few minutes after lunch or at the end of the day to ask those questions.

52:41.92
AROB
So I really like this format. I like it. And we've got a whole lineup this year, but we're starting out in Texas this February.

52:51.44
Host
Exactly. And all the details are at PetrusDevelopment.com/Raise. You can see all the other events we have lined up there as well. I know in March, you're going to be in Cincinnati, Fort Wayne, Indiana, Chicago.

53:05.09
Host
April is New York City, New Haven, Connecticut—no, Hartford, Hartford.

53:09.97
AROB
Hartford. Mm-hmm.

53:10.61
Host
And Boston. And then also Orlando, Florida just got added

53:12.46
AROB
Mm-hmm.

53:16.30
Host
in the last few hours, so that's fresh. It'll be added on the site soon. And then we'll be on the West Coast in June. If you're going to the CCMA Conference for campus ministries, you can tack on an extra day there and stay for a fundraising conference right there on campus at the University of San Diego on June 4th, and we'll be in Los Angeles, I think, the next day, June 5th. So—

53:17.78
AROB
Hang on. Yep.

53:24.45
AROB
Yep.

53:40.21
Host
And more are also being planned for other areas as well. Not quite ready to announce those because things change sometimes before we get them finalized. So, but yeah, lots and lots of opportunity to get out there, take your fundraising to a new level and make some new connections locally.

53:56.57
AROB
Yeah, they're great. I love them.

53:58.90
Host
Excellent. With that, we'll call it a day and we'll see you back in a couple of weeks.

54:03.18
AROB
All right. Thanks, Rhen. Stay warm.