1. Advocate for more funding for your organization’s programs and staff

This report quantifies many of the programmatic needs and challenges that your organization experiences, such as high needs for economic empowerment programming, legal services, and outreach and services for marginalized groups. 

Example: If you’d like to apply for a grant for more funding to provide legal services to your clients, you can cite the finding in this report about the average proportion of immigration statuses for South Asian survivor-clients in the U.S.

2. Benchmark your budget, client and call volume, and programs, and identify opportunities for organizational development

Most industry benchmarking reports are for large, mainstream gender-based violence organizations whose community and programs may look very different from your organization! We encourage you to lean on the data in this report as a source of benchmark data from organizations that are similar in mission, demographics, size, that is likely very similar to your mission, clientele, size, and programs. To benchmark, you can look at your internal data, and then compare it against the data shared in this report.

While benchmarking is helpful, keep in mind that many factors vary across the age of the organization, populations served, programs offered, budget size, and more.

Example: If you are looking to invest in a new program, and deciding whether or not to offer it in-house, you can reference the section on Direct Services to see what percentage of organizations are offering that program in-house vs. referring or partnering.

Stay tuned for the release of national budget & salary data in early 2023!

3. Educate your donors, stakeholders, and community and advocate for your organizations

Share this report with your donors, supporters, board, and broader community to educate them about the complexity and value of your work—from the diversity of clients you serve, to the range of programs, and the impact of the pandemic. While they may understand your work at a high-level, this report can help them better understand the work of your organization and the needs of your clients. Of course, we encourage you to use this to raise funds, awareness, and overall support for your work!

Example: At your next donor meeting, share some of the findings in this report and prompt a conversation i.e. about the necessity of financial empowerment programs given that  50% of the survivors served at each organization are unemployed or under-employed.