Convert a donation into tangible units of impact.
How it works
Donors give to outcomes, not to budget lines. This converts a currency amount into the units a programme actually delivers, by dividing the gift by the cost of one unit of service. The arithmetic is trivial; the honesty of the unit cost you feed it is what makes the output worth publishing.
Units delivered = Donation amount / Cost per unit
Donation amountthe gift being convertedCost per unitfully loaded cost of delivering one meal, book, or person-day of clean water
- Meals: 250 / 2.50 = 100
- Books: 250 / 12.50 = 20
- Use the fully loaded unit cost, including logistics, staff time, and the share of overhead the programme carries. A $2.50 food-purchase cost that ignores warehousing and distribution produces an impact claim you cannot defend if a donor or regulator asks how it was derived.
- Unrestricted gifts do not flow one-for-one into any single unit. Charity regulators in the US and UK have both pushed back on messaging that implies otherwise, so the safe framing is "your gift helps provide" rather than a promise of a specific count.
- Partial units round in the donor favour on most sites, which is harmless at 100.4 meals and misleading at 1.4. Show a decimal or round down once the count is small.
- Marginal cost falls with scale. The hundred-thousandth meal costs less than the first, so a unit cost taken from last year total spend divided by total output understates what an incremental gift buys.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Yes. Donation Impact costs nothing, needs no account, and runs right in your browser. There is no paywall, no watermark on the results, and no limit on how many times you can run the numbers.
Donation Impact uses the standard formula for this kind of calculation, so the output is only as good as the figures you type in. Rates, fees, and rules in finance shift over time, and we review the underlying assumptions on a regular schedule; check the "Last reviewed" date above for the most recent pass. Spotted something off? There's a feedback button in the bottom-right corner.