Satisfied donors give more, are more loyal, and recommend other donors.
If that is the profile of a satisfied donor, how many satisfied donors do you have in your donor base? In most cases, the answer to that question is an estimate.
What is your confidence in the estimate? Do you know how to raise the satisfaction level? Donor satisfaction comes from the effectiveness of your programming and the significance of the help you give to others.
Are you able to quantitatively measure effectiveness? Here are four questions you can use to determine the satisfaction of your donors.

Is the alignment between achievements and mission obvious to everyone? As an example of good alignment let us assume the mission of the youth center is to help youth make sound decisions and the rate of teen pregnancy is half of the rate of the surrounding community.
Are the achievements what the donors and the community expect and want? Are the clients aware of how the achievements are affecting their lives? Is there clear communication of the achievements?

It takes effort and a relationship with the service recipient to measure effectiveness.
Giving a family a bag of groceries is evidence of service.
However, without following the family for several months it is impossible to know if the food improved their health, changed their eating habits, or if they sold the food to pay the rent and went to bed hungry.
It is impossible to follow every bag of groceries.
It is possible to follow some bags of groceries.
The donors want to know about the ones you can follow.
Feeding someone is important.
Changing the nutritional profile and eating habits of a family is significant.
As another example, think about a student.
In a parochial school, academic achievement is important but limited by the potential of the child.
It is like the bag of groceries.
Instilling life skills is significant to the donors and justifies the tuition.
When a student develops good study habits (disciplined living) and achieves study goals (results oriented), the student is laying the foundation for life long success.
That is significant.
That is evidence of effectiveness.
Further demonstration of life long success would be to report to the donors 10 years after student graduates.
Next Step:

Define program goals and express them in terms the donors, clients, and community will find significant Develop quantitative measures for each program goal Annually set new goals that will encourage everyone to produce at a higher level Frequently communicate the effectiveness and significance of the programming

This process ensures that the clients receive what they need and donors and the community receive what they want from the programming.
As the programming goals become more significant, the reputation of the organization will increase.
With a growing reputation comes increasing sustainability and donor and community support.
If the programming is effective and significant, the donors will be loyal, generous, and active recruiters of support.
Loyalty, increasing generosity, and recruiting others are quantitative measures of donor satisfaction.