Most small charities know, roughly, whether their supporters seem happy. Very few have an actual way to measure it — something repeatable, that turns "I think our donors are pretty loyal" into a real number you can track over time and act on.
That's what this is. The Supporter Loyalty Index is a do-it-yourself loyalty measure I built for small charities self-funded organisations: a short survey, a scoring method, and a ready-made calculator that turns your supporters' answers into a clear picture of where your relationships are strong, and where they're quietly at risk.
Two files, ready to use straight away:
A guide that explains the thinking, gives you the exact survey questions to send, and walks through how to read your results.
A calculator that scores every response automatically — no formulas to build yourself. Drop in your answers and it gives you a loyalty score, a band for each supporter, and breakdowns by how they found you, how long they've supported you, and how things are changing over time.
The measure looks at four things that the published research on donor behaviour keeps coming back to as the real drivers of loyalty: whether a supporter feels the cause is personally relevant to them, whether they trust you with their gift, whether they feel valued and heard, and whether they can see the difference they've made. Alongside that, it checks two real-world signals — how likely someone says they are to keep giving, and roughly what share of their giving already comes to you — so you're never relying on attitude alone.
It also includes a simple way of spotting something most charities miss entirely: supporters who look loyal on paper (they keep giving) but have quietly checked out emotionally. That gap is often the earliest warning sign of a lapse, long before it shows up in your income figures.
This isn't a survey I made up over a tea. The questions and scoring are built on the same body of published fundraising research that most established loyalty models draw on — including Adrian Sargeant and Ken Burnett's work on what actually makes donors stay, and Penelope Burk's research on what donor-centred communication looks like in practice. I've translated that research into something you can use yourself, without needing to read the academic papers first.
Built with small-to-medium charities in mind — including self-funded and volunteer-led organisations that don't have a research team, a data analyst, or a spare few thousand pounds for a commissioned study. If you can run a short survey and open a spreadsheet, you can run this.
£45 — a one-off download, yours to reuse every year.
Have a question before you buy, or want to talk through whether this is the right fit for your organisation? I'd love to hear from you — sam@verdantly.co.uk.
Most small charities know, roughly, whether their supporters seem happy. Very few have an actual way to measure it — something repeatable, that turns "I think our donors are pretty loyal" into a real number you can track over time and act on.
That's what this is. The Supporter Loyalty Index is a do-it-yourself loyalty measure I built for small charities self-funded organisations: a short survey, a scoring method, and a ready-made calculator that turns your supporters' answers into a clear picture of where your relationships are strong, and where they're quietly at risk.
Two files, ready to use straight away:
A guide that explains the thinking, gives you the exact survey questions to send, and walks through how to read your results.
A calculator that scores every response automatically — no formulas to build yourself. Drop in your answers and it gives you a loyalty score, a band for each supporter, and breakdowns by how they found you, how long they've supported you, and how things are changing over time.
The measure looks at four things that the published research on donor behaviour keeps coming back to as the real drivers of loyalty: whether a supporter feels the cause is personally relevant to them, whether they trust you with their gift, whether they feel valued and heard, and whether they can see the difference they've made. Alongside that, it checks two real-world signals — how likely someone says they are to keep giving, and roughly what share of their giving already comes to you — so you're never relying on attitude alone.
It also includes a simple way of spotting something most charities miss entirely: supporters who look loyal on paper (they keep giving) but have quietly checked out emotionally. That gap is often the earliest warning sign of a lapse, long before it shows up in your income figures.
This isn't a survey I made up over a tea. The questions and scoring are built on the same body of published fundraising research that most established loyalty models draw on — including Adrian Sargeant and Ken Burnett's work on what actually makes donors stay, and Penelope Burk's research on what donor-centred communication looks like in practice. I've translated that research into something you can use yourself, without needing to read the academic papers first.
Built with small-to-medium charities in mind — including self-funded and volunteer-led organisations that don't have a research team, a data analyst, or a spare few thousand pounds for a commissioned study. If you can run a short survey and open a spreadsheet, you can run this.
£45 — a one-off download, yours to reuse every year.
Have a question before you buy, or want to talk through whether this is the right fit for your organisation? I'd love to hear from you — sam@verdantly.co.uk.
