Overview

Retention answers one question: of the people you already had, how many are still with you? It is the number that tells you whether your programme is building something lasting or quietly replacing the same people every year. Vome measures it two different ways, and the first job is knowing which of the two you are asking for.

This article explains how to think about retention, then how to build it with trackers and KPIs. It is written for administrators setting up the Analytics module.

Plan required: Analytics is available on the Enterprise and Ultimate plans.

1. What does retention actually mean on Vome?

Two questions, and they are not interchangeable.

Rolling retention compares two stretches of time that sit next to each other. Of the people active in the earlier stretch, how many were active again in the later one? It is fast, it updates every month, and it tells you about right now.

Cohort retention takes a group who arrived at the same time and follows that same group forward. Of the people who started in March, how many were still active six months later? It is slower, because a programme four months old cannot have a twelve month figure, but it is the one that tells you whether people stay.

Most organisations want both. Rolling retention belongs on the dashboard you check weekly. Cohort retention is what you take to a board meeting.

2. How do I decide what active means?

You decide, and everything else follows from it. When you create a Retention and churn tracker you choose one of three definitions:

• Logged hours on a shift. The strongest signal, and the right default if your people reliably log their hours.
• Assigned to a shift. Use this when people are booked onto shifts but hours are not consistently recorded.
• In the database (start date to archived date). The roster answer. No shift data is involved at all: someone counts as active for as long as they are on your books.

Pick this deliberately and write it down somewhere. Two people reading the same retention figure while holding different ideas of what active means will disagree forever.

3. What is the activity window, and why does it matter?

Volunteering is not a monthly subscription. Somebody who helps in January and again in June has not left in March, they are simply someone who helps every few months. The activity window is how you tell Vome that.

On the tracker you set it to one of:

• Within the KPI selected period. The window is whatever period each KPI asks for.
• Rolling last N months. The window is always the last N months, ending where the period of the KPI ends.

Six months is a sensible starting point for most volunteer programmes. Choose a window that matches how often your people actually turn up, not how often you would like them to.

This changes the number, not just the label: on a rolling window, a KPI set to This year measures the last six months ending at the year end rather than the whole year. The card always states the window it really used, so read that line rather than assuming the period is the window.

4. How do I build a retention tracker?

1. Go to Analytics and create a new tracker.
2. Choose the Retention and churn category.
3. Set what counts as active, using section 2 above.
4. Set the activity window, using section 3.
5. Optionally narrow it by site, category, opportunity or shift title. Leave the filters empty to measure the whole account.

Build one tracker rather than several. A tracker is a definition, and every KPI you hang off it inherits that definition, which is what keeps your numbers reconcilable.

5. Which retention number should I put on a dashboard?

A KPI built on the tracker can read any one of these:

• Retention rate. Gross retention: of the people you had, the share you kept. This can never pass 100%.
• Churn rate. The mirror of gross retention: the share who dropped off.
• Net retention rate. Whether the group held its size, counting arrivals too, so it passes 100% when recruitment more than replaces the losses.
• Retained, lost, newly active, first time active, came back after a gap. The pieces the rates are built from, useful when you need to explain a movement rather than report it.

If you only ever show one, show gross retention next to net retention. Gross alone cannot tell the difference between a programme that is holding on to people and one that is losing them but recruiting fast enough to hide it.

6. How do I see whether retention is improving over time?

Three ways, depending on what you want to show.

• Set the period of the KPI to Specific year or quarter and build one card per year. Two cards side by side is the clearest possible before and after.
• Add Compare to and choose Same period last year, which prints the change in points on the card itself.
• Read the KPI as a Trend graph over a custom range to get a line instead of a number.

One thing to know when you use Compare to on a retention KPI: retention is already a comparison between two windows, so the delta you are adding compares two rates. That is a legitimate thing to want, and the card says so underneath itself, but it is worth saying out loud before someone asks.

7. How do I measure whether people stay 3, 6 or 9 months?

This is cohort retention, and it is one measure: Still active N periods after they came in, found under the Cohort retention group when you pick what a KPI measures.

1. Add a KPI to your retention tracker.
2. Choose that measure.
3. Set Periods after they came in to 3, 6 or 9. Periods are calendar months.
4. Repeat for each checkpoint you want, and put them on the same view.

Read the same KPI as a Trend graph instead and you get the whole retention curve on one card, every month from arrival onward, which shows the shape rather than three points on it.

8. What counts as still here in a cohort figure?

Three readings, and they disagree about the same person, so this is a real choice rather than a display preference. The control is What counts as still here?

• Volunteered within the last N months (follows the tracker). The default, and the one that matches what your tracker says active means everywhere else. Somebody who helps in January and again in June has not churned in March.
• Volunteered in that exact month. The strictest reading. It shows the true shape of the curve, but anyone who helps seasonally reads as churned in their quiet months.
• Volunteered at some point from then on. Answers whether they ever got that far, which is a different question from whether they had stopped by then.

Unless you have a specific reason, leave it on the first one. It is the reading most people mean when they say somebody is still around.

9. Which people are counted, and who is left out?

Only people who have had time to reach the mark. A nine month figure is worked out across the groups that arrived at least nine months ago. Somebody who joined last month is not quietly counted as having failed to reach nine months, because they have not had the chance yet.

Cells that have not had time to happen are left empty rather than counted as zero. If a card reads blank, that is the system refusing to show you a misleading figure, not an error.

You can also narrow which arrivals are included, using Which joiners?:

• Everyone, all time. The default, and the largest honest denominator.
• Specific year or quarter. Only people who arrived in that window.
• Custom range. Your own dates.

A practical setup: build the same checkpoint twice, once with joiners set to last year and once to the year before. Three checkpoints across two years gives you a six card grid where each row is a milestone and each column a year, and improvement reads straight across.

10. How do I read the curve and the cohort table?

Open the tracker and look at its Overview. Five controls shape what you see: Cohort starts at, Counts as retained, Grouped by, Follow for and Cohorts shown.

The Retention curve is the average across every group old enough to have reached each point. The shape is the useful part. A steep drop that then flattens points at the first experience, because the people who get past the early weeks tend to stay. A steady decline all the way along points at re-engagement instead.

The Cohort by cohort table puts one arrival month on each row and the months since arrival across the top. Reading a row left to right follows one group through time. Reading a column downward shows the history of a single checkpoint, so the three month column read down the page is your three month retention for every month in turn.

If a checkpoint you want is blank, raise Cohorts shown. It controls how far back the table reaches, and a twelve month figure needs groups that arrived at least twelve months ago.

11. What if we do not track shifts at all?

Set the definition of active on the tracker to In the database (start date to archived date). Retention is then worked out from your roster: someone counts as retained for as long as they were on your books, from their start date to the date they were archived.

Two things follow automatically. Groups are built from the date people joined rather than a first shift, and the question of what counts as still here stops mattering, because membership runs in one unbroken stretch. The screen locks both controls and explains why.

One caveat worth checking first: profiles archived without an archive date are left out rather than guessed at. The screen reports how many that is, and if your data was imported it can be a large number.

12. Where do I start?

1. Decide what active means for your organisation, and how long someone can be away before you would say they have gone.
2. Build one retention tracker with those two answers.
3. Add a gross retention KPI and a net retention KPI for the current year.
4. Add cohort KPIs at three, six and nine months.
5. Put them on one view and leave it alone for a quarter before drawing conclusions.

Retention is a slow measure. The first reading tells you where you are, not whether you are improving. The second one, a quarter later, is the one worth acting on.

Summary

• Rolling retention tells you about now. Cohort retention tells you whether people stay.
• The tracker owns what active means, and every KPI on it inherits that.
• The activity window is how long someone can be away before they count as gone.
• Gross retention cannot pass 100%. Net retention can, and the pair is more honest than either alone.
• Cohort figures only count people who have had time to reach the mark.
• Blank is deliberate. It means not enough history yet, not zero.

If you would like help choosing the definitions for your programme, submit a ticket or email support@vomevolunteer.zohodesk.com.