The Social Impact Solutions Podcast · Social Impact Solutions

Accelerate Fundraising with Strategic KPIs with Kaitlin Windle

May 11, 2025·50 min·4 clips

Kaitlin Wendell's simple Excel graphs helped a ballet company raise the most money in its 20-year history.

This episode features John Mark Vanderpool of Social Impact Solutions interviewing Kaitlin Wendell, founder of Apt.io, a platform providing automated data and benchmarking for nonprofits. Kaitlin's background includes investment banking at J.P. Morgan and serving as a nonprofit CFO, giving her a rigorous financial perspective on sector challenges. The conversation focuses on how nonprofits can use actionable data to improve strategy, sustainability, and fundraising outcomes. A core topic is the "pace metric," which tracks fundraising progress as a percentage of the annual goal against time, rather than just raw dollars raised. Kaitlin emphasizes analyzing donor giving levels, noting a consistent pattern where 20% of donors contribute 80% of total revenue, an application of the Pareto principle. She shares a case study from an art school where shifting major donor renewals to January 1st dramatically improved cash flow and turned an operating deficit into a surplus. The discussion covers the problem of data silos between departments like finance, fundraising, and marketing, which Apt.io aims to solve with integrated, automated monthly reports. Kaitlin argues that manual data processes, like sticky notes on checks or printed bank reconciliations, are still common and hinder strategic decision-making. A key insight is that clean, visualized data delivered automatically allows teams to shift from compiling reports to actually discussing strategy and course-correcting in real time. Kaitlin suggests organizations can use standardized reports to manage board requests, focusing analysis only on metrics that support strategic goals. She advocates for nonprofits to "lean into what you're good at" and stop activities, like certain social media efforts, that don't engage their ideal donor profile. The concept of "diversification through duplication" is introduced, meaning scaling by finding more donors like your top 20% rather than spreading efforts thinly across many channels. Kaitlin observes that every organization she has implemented the pace metric with in the past year has reached its fundraising goals. The tone is educational and conversational, blending practical advice with strategic frameworks drawn from finance and data analytics. The style is solution-oriented, with both hosts sharing anecdotes and case studies to illustrate their points. This episode is ideal for nonprofit executives, development directors, and board members seeking data-driven methods to streamline operations and accelerate fundraising. Listeners looking for a high-level, inspirational discussion without tactical details might find it less applicable.

As heard by us

Fundraising gets clearer when the right KPI leads the conversation.

This episode treats fundraising as both math and judgment: which donors matter most, which KPIs actually move the work, and how marketing, communications, and CRM data can stop fighting each other.

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Why you'd press play

You want fundraising metrics that tell you where to focus next.

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