Relay for Life – Measuring Success

In every industry data is analyzed to measure success, but what determines success in a nonprofit? What should you be measuring? Of course it will vary among different companies. Let’s look at a specific company to determine what should be measured.  

American Cancer Society

The American Cancer Society is an organization dedicated to cancer treatment and prevention, funded by the money raised at the various fundraising events hosted by the organization. With the numerous amount of fundraising events the American Cancer Society hosts, there is an enormous amount of data in which they can measure their performance, however, we are going to focus on their main event, Relay for Life. Relay for Life has community walks in 27 different countries around the world. Volunteers walk in honor of loved ones they lost to cancer, to honor cancer survivors, and raise awareness about the American Cancer Society.

Data Measurements

In a charity walk foundation, what should we be measuring? You may not realize that you can measure the performance of a charity walk. It is actually simpler thank you think. Here is a short list of the data we should be looking at:

•        Number of people registered
•        Number of walks per year
•        Number of walks per state
•        Number of people registered vs. number of people who actually attended (attrition rate)
•        Number of repeat walkers each year
•        Growth of attendees in 2016 vs. 2017

After analyzing the data, that is listed above; you can understand which walks had a high attendance, which walks had high attrition, the growth of attendance year over year…etc. Now you need to ask yourselves why you received these results. Some walks may have high attrition due to the weather; the reason many people didn’t attend the walk could be because they didn’t want to walk in the rain. How about the walk that had less attendees this year than last year… was it advertised less? It is important that you have this data, and understand it, and use it to make improvements for a more successful event in the future.