News

For many local United Ways in Pennsylvania, resource development teams are small but mighty. With so much to manage, it’s easy to focus on year-to-year fundraising targets without stepping back to examine how your revenue is structured—or what that structure means for your long-term sustainability and growth.

That’s where tracking and analyzing revenue diversification data over time becomes not just helpful, but essential.

From Data to Insight: What Can This Tell You?

Tracking your revenue sources across time isn’t just a data entry exercise, it’s a window into your organization’s financial health and strategic potential. Once your numbers are in place, the real work—and real value—comes from interpreting what the data shows. Here are several critical insights your organization can uncover through this process:

• Trend Spotting: Year-over-year comparisons help you identify what’s changing—and why. If your employee giving has steadily declined while sponsorship dollars have grown, you might consider doubling down on sponsor cultivation while revisiting your employee engagement strategies. If one fundraising event plateaus while another grows rapidly, your team can decide whether to sunset, scale back, or restructure the less effective one. Spotting these patterns allows you to shift focus to areas with upward momentum while addressing declines early.
  
  Example: A 3-year growth streak in your Giving Society might reveal that your stewardship and storytelling efforts are paying off—suggesting further investment in those approaches could yield even more.
  
• Risk Management: Your Revenue Concentration Score (RCS) evaluates how much of your total funding comes from just one or two sources. A high RCS (typically over 70%) signals that your organization may be overly reliant on one stream, like a single large grant or single stream of a workplace campaign. This is a critical risk factor.
  
  Knowing this allows you to plan ahead. You can start cultivating alternate streams (e.g., planned giving, individual donors, corporate sponsorships) so that a loss in one area doesn’t threaten your overall stability.
  
• Opportunity Identification: The data can shine a light on areas of untapped potential. Perhaps you have very few donors in the Emerging Leaders Society—yet you have a strong pipeline of young professionals engaged through workplace campaigns. That’s a signal to focus outreach and stewardship efforts in that direction.
  
  Or maybe you’re seeing low participation in one giving society. That could signal a growth opportunity. If event revenue is flat but sponsorship income is strong, you may want to shift resources to cultivate new sponsors rather than host more events. The key takeaway, these aren’t just numbers—they’re clues to where your organization can grow more effectively and sustainably.
  
• Setting Smarter Goals: Instead of arbitrary fundraising goals, use historic donor counts, average gift sizes, and giving trends to build attainable benchmarks.
  
  Example: If your average Women’s Giving Society donor gives $1,200 annually and you had 10 donors last year, a stretch goal might be adding two new members. But if that group has stayed flat for five years, it may indicate a need for a fresh cultivation strategy before setting a growth goal. Or, if your Emerging Leaders Society grew by 15% annually, planning for similar growth next year is realistic and rooted in evidence.
  
  This approach also allows you to reverse-engineer your targets: want to raise $25,000 from a giving society? Based on average gift size, how many new members would you need? That level of clarity makes your plan more actionable.

Why This Matters
With limited staff and time, United Ways need to be strategic. Data helps you decide where to focus your energy for the greatest return. Are you trying to grow planned giving but your endowment hasn’t increased in five years? Are 80% of your workplace campaign donors unaffiliated with any giving society? These are actionable insights.

More importantly, having this information ready gives you a clearer story to share with your board, funders, or community partners. You can advocate for new investments, shifts in strategy, or staffing decisions with data to back it up.

Ultimately, analyzing your revenue data helps your United Way move from reactive planning to proactive strategy. The most successful fundraising strategies are not always the flashiest—they’re the most informed. With a deeper understanding of where your dollars come from, how trends are shifting, and where your greatest opportunities lie, you’re empowered to make smart, informed decisions that grow your revenue—and your impact.