How School Fundraiser Analytics Improves Sales

Understanding your numbers can make a big difference

What percentage of schools do you think actually take the time to thoroughly analyze their results once their sale is over? It’s probably an extremely low number, as most would predict. And that’s a shame because as it turns out, schools are unknowingly leaving money on the table.

School fundraiser analytics is about the hard numbers that tell the real story about your sale. Taking the time to interpret these numbers provides insight into discovering ways you can make more money the next time.

As it turns out, most schools measure success by comparing their sales to what they did the previous year. As long as they sell the same amount every year, they feel that there’s no reason to change. Is this a good benchmark?

Many fundraising companies provide a sales report to their schools. Most sponsors will use it to either cross-reference orders, give out top seller awards or simply file it for their records. Schools don’t even realize that there are hidden gems in their reports. If only they took the time to truly understand the numbers. They could then discover new ways to improve their sales results.

Using your sales reports as a school fundraiser analytics tool pays off. To bring this point home, we’ll use a real-life example of a school that improved their sales by over $3,000 from the prior year.

Example School Fundraiser Sales Results in 2014

Here are the results for our school after their fall 2014 fundraiser:

• Brochure Sales: $17,393.00
• Online Sales: $2,351.00
• Items Sold: 1,616
• Total Sellers: 171
• Student Participation: 34.9%
• Average Items Sold / Seller: 9.45
• Average Retail Sold / Seller: $101.71

Since the average sale for a school with 500 students brings in around $15,000 most would consider this school’s fundraising results to be good enough. But this sponsor wanted to improve her sales so she increased her student sales goal.

Example School Fundraiser Sales Results in 2015

Last year, students needed to sell 8 items to earn admission to our Big Event Magic Show. So this year she decided to increase it to 10 items in order to get students to try to sell more. It worked.

• Brochure Sales: $18,048.50
• Online Sales: $4,919.00
• Items Sold: 1,808
• Total Sellers: 162
• Student Participation: 33.8%
• Average Items Sold / Seller: 11.16
• Average Retail Sold / Seller: $111.41

Her total sales, brochure and online sales combined, increased to almost $23,000 this year compared to just under $20,000 last year. What was interesting is that her participation actually dropped, so she ended up with fewer students selling more items. Both the average items and average retail sold per seller increased significantly.

We have always preached that the key to increasing sales is to work on improving student participation. However, using school fundraiser analytics, this sponsor was able to achieve her objective by simply increasing her seller goal. The bottom line with any fundraising campaign is to bring in as much money as possible, so mission accomplished.

Isn’t it amazing how a slight change had such a large impact?

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Author Bio

Clay Boggess has been designing fundraising programs for schools and various nonprofit organizations throughout the US since 1999. He’s helped administrators, teachers, and outside support entities such as PTAs and PTOs raise millions of dollars. Clay is an owner and partner at Big Fundraising Ideas.