Q: When a family that has made an annual fund gift leaves your school during or at the end of the annual fund year, do you count that family in your participation rate? And what about divorced families? Do they count as one or two households?
A: Count anyone who left the school or is not returning in the Annual Report. We do often wait to "roll" current parent records to "withdrawal parent" until after close the fiscal year to make sure everyone in the correct listing by class. Keep the history of the donors and keep them on listings for the campaign, etc., even though they are no longer at the school.
As for divorced parents—Norfolk Academy, has run this every single way to see if counting them as one unit or two inflates or deflates participation numbers. To answer this, each school is different. Norfolk Academy has a high parent participation rate (in the 70% range usually) and found that the effort of trying to count by family unit was not worth the 1% point or less that it swayed our numbers. In truth, some divorced parents want their ex-spouse "credited" and listed, and others are just as adamant about not doing that. Try to be specific to donor intent. If the ex-spouse wants to credit the other, then add the soft credit to track that intent. Solicit each spouse as if they are two households and hope to get gifts from both. Generally speaking, we count divorced parents as two units unless notified otherwise.
From time to time, one of ISM’s Development experts answers a question that our readers are pondering. This month, Gigi Tysinger, Director of Advancement Services at Norfolk Academy (VA) and ISM Advancement Academy faculty member, tackles the topic of “counting” families for annual fund participation rates.
