Omnichannel fundraising is more than a buzzword — it’s a necessity if you’re going to meet your constituents where they are. But, accurately measuring and tracking your efforts across multiple channels is a significant challenge, especially if you have a small team.

Direct and indirect channel attribution can help you put the pieces together. We explore the challenges of channel attribution and offer tips for communicating how an omnichannel approach builds brand awareness and drives ROI.

Omnichannel vs. Multichannel

While they’re often used interchangeably, there’s an essential distinction between an omnichannel and a multichannel approach. In a multichannel strategy, you measure performance on each channel alone. For instance, an email campaign would yield one set of data, and your online donation form another.

However, an omnichannel strategy takes a holistic perspective of your engagement and performance. Say you email a donor, but they don’t act on it then. Only after seeing a social media ad do they go back, click on the email, access your online donation form, and give.

Each channel was part of a cohesive campaign that drove a donation. But when you need to know which specific channel influenced the gift — or which team deserves the credit — it gets tricky.

It comes down to two things: your data and your ability to access the data you need. At a base level, you have your list of individuals — those you solicited — and how they responded to your messaging. You must be able to organize and analyze your data to show a bigger-picture impact.

Getting a Handle on Your Data

People interact with your organization in a large and growing number of ways across multiple channels and devices. As a result, your data likely lives in various tools, such as a transaction database, customer relationship management (CRM) software, email service provider, social media tools, and digital advocacy platform.

What’s more, your data comes in several forms. For instance, first-party data is data you control and own, such as your donation records. But third-party data comes from the tools you use, such as Meta or Google. You have no control over what data these third parties share or whether their users are anonymized.

Another issue is that most nonprofits don’t have a data warehouse that can aggregate, standardize, and unify all this data. Some tools, like Salesforce and Blackbaud, are beginning to offer more integrations that make this more manageable. For instance, GivingDNA combines your data with third-party data to analyze and uncover fundraising and marketing opportunities.

These are significant challenges to overcome, but it’s not impossible. The journey to achieving a complete omnichannel view of your data offers multiple opportunities to gather critical information about your program and donors, so it’s worth the legwork.

Attribution Models: Direct, Indirect, Time-Based

A combination of direct and indirect attribution will give you the most comprehensive view of your omnichannel efforts.

• Direct attribution: “We sent an email to 1,500 people, and 600 clicked on the link.”
• Indirect attribution: “Approximately 10,000 people were exposed to our monthly giving campaign somehow, and 4,500 initiated a recurring gift.”

Obviously, indirect attribution is more complicated. It looks at all the revenue directly sourced to a campaign, plus all the revenue that’s tangential to those marketing efforts. Nevertheless, it’s essential. Looking at the data that way gives you a broader view of how a campaign impacts your overall giving.

You can also zoom out further with a time-based attribution model. This looks at the donations made within a specific timeframe — say, 30 or 45 days after a campaign dropped. The campaign may not have directly influenced the gift, but it was part of the reason behind it.

The wider your view, the harder direct attribution becomes. But all three models enable you to follow your donors from channel to channel and see the many different ways they support you.

Communicating Your ROI

When it comes to reporting the effectiveness of your efforts, you need a combination of direct, indirect, and time-lapse attribution. Be as specific as possible where appropriate, then zoom out and give a broader picture. For instance:

• “Here’s where we started. Here’s what we sent out. It generated this much direct revenue.”
• “We know it generated this much indirect revenue.”
• “Here’s the full universe of people who received that mail and what they’ve done since.”

Breaking your data down like this makes a complex story easier to understand. It also captures the overall health of your fundraising efforts and can even help you justify some of your programs.

Say your cost per acquisition is lower for your major gifts program than your direct response program. Executive leadership or board members may question whether the costlier program is worth your time and investment. Through indirect attribution, you could show how many major donors began their relationship through a direct response initiative.

3 Tips to Get Started

Measuring your omnichannel efforts through attribution paints a more complete picture of your organization’s fundraising health. It may take some time, but each step brings you closer. These tips can help you begin:

1. Create an inventory of your data sources. Know where you’re currently collecting and storing data to get a sense of how donors interact with you.
2. Review whether the tools you use can speak to each other. For instance, can you get your email data into your offline CRM?
3. Consider building a data warehouse or repository to get all your critical information into a single place.

Our team can guide you through attribution models and help you make the most of your omnichannel fundraising strategy. Reach out today to better understand your data so you can drive more revenue for your organization.

This blog post is based on a recent episode of the Go Beyond Fundraising podcast. Listen to the entire conversation now: Uncovering Your Omnichannel ROI Through Attribution