Impact: metrics, units & realized cost-per-unit

Impact turns dollars into outcomes. Instead of a bare total, a giver sees what their gift accomplished — "Your $25 fed 10 children." That framing is one of the strongest levers on giving intent and retention.

What it's for

Giving rises when people can picture the result. Impact metrics let you attach a unit (meals, students, kits) and a cost to each post, and let churches capture the real outcomes their Funds delivered.

How it works

On the Impact page, each of your posts has two fields:

• Impact Unit Name — e.g. meals, students, kits.
• $ per Unit — the cost of one unit, e.g. 2.50.

Xerish divides that post's total raised by the cost per unit to show units delivered (e.g. = 1,200 meals). Cost per unit is entered and stored in dollars, not cents. Set it for every post with a clear unit, then Save.

In Analytics → Impact, those numbers roll up: a total-units-delivered headline, a Computed impact breakdown (units derived from giving against each post's impact cost), and Reported impact — figures you've entered manually.

Realized cost-per-unit (church Funds). When a church Fund recipient delivers their grant, you record the outcome on the Funds page: choose the metric, enter the quantity delivered and the final dollar amount allocated. Xerish derives the realized cost per unit = final $ ÷ quantity and flags it if it falls outside the metric's typical cost band — a prompt to double-check the numbers. Each saved result appends a row to that recipient's impact record.

Governing limitations

• Computed units need both a unit name and a positive cost per unit; without them, a post shows no computed impact.
• Cost per unit is in dollars — entering cents inflates your unit counts.
• Realized cost-per-unit capture is part of the church Fund close-out flow and applies to Fund recipients, not ordinary posts.

Good to know

• Forward "computed" units (raised ÷ cost) are an estimate from the cost you set; the realized cost-per-unit reflects what a recipient actually delivered after the grant.
• The typical-cost-band warning is advisory — it never blocks a save, it just asks you to confirm an unusually high or low figure.