We are trying to analize donor trends to the Annual Fund over the course of several years using the following categories: New Donors, Retained and Renewed. So, say for each of the past three fiscal years, we want to show how many (and show names) donors fell into the three categories. We can get the new donors and retained easily, but are having difficulty getting at Renewed donors. For example, if someone gave in FY06, but not FY07, but gave again in FY08, they would be considered renewed in FY08. The best we can come up with is to get total number of donors for the FY, subtract query of new donors, subtract query of retained donors and whoever is left would be considered renewed. Does anyone else do this kind of donor analysis and if so, how do you utilize RE to get that data. I haven't mastered Pivot Reports and am wondering if that would be the way to go for something like this? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Kate

It is worth looking at the canned reports under analytical reports as many of these focus on donor analysis, e.g. consecutive giving, comparative report etc

 Kate,  I just got this email yesterday through the YMCA organization forum posts.  I've looked at it a little - it may be helpful for your stats.  I just copied it over to this reply - if there's a problem with the links the name of the post is below and it was sent by David Beebe.

According to the pdf file it gathers data for new, recapture, upgrade (increased $), downgrade, lapsed and much more.  Pdf also shows sample of report.

This Fundraising Effectiveness plug-in is part of current RE versions - if it's not listed as a plug in in your software, there's a knowledgebase that has info on downloading it.

It might help with what you need.

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Kate,

I do analysis on our Annual Campaign to determine, new, 1 year skip, 2 or more year skip, decreases, refusals, and flat gifts.  I know my way of doing this is an usually way to capture this information, but I started using packages under appeals to capture the information.  When gifts are entered we put the correct appeal and package on each gift, which enables me to export the data.  Then I have a crystal report that will summarize the packages with number of gifts and dollar amounts.

 Please contact me if you have any questions.

There is a dashboard which does this - the donor giving analysis dashboard.  Unfortunately it was created as a dashboard and not as a report as it should have been so it is not very flexible.  For example you can only report on this FY or last FY but not the FY before. 

Please join with me and create a case with BB that this Dashboard is not very flexible and needs to be a report with greater flexibility.

Also note that it does very funky things when you try to report on any time frame less than a full year.  For example if you report on this week - It only counts a retained donor if they gave this week and LAST week.  Otherwise they are renewed. So unless you have weekly donors, all of your donors will fall into either new or renewed.  Please also join me in complaining about this to Blackbaud.

This may be a silly question, but what does dates does RE consider in a fiscal year?  Does this question make any sense?

Thanks!

The iscal year is determined by the organization.  It may be the same as a calendar year (i.e. Jan 1 - Dec 31) or a different parameter (i.e. July 1 (of one year) - June 30 (of the following year).  Hope this helps.

Your organization sets the fiscal year as part of your configuration.  You can look on that screen to see what month your's ends.

I do this every year and do some customized reports in excel to get the graphical representations my boss likes to see.

The terminology we use is New, Renewed and Reactivated and dropped. 

New being a new donor in the year being analized

Renewed being a donor in the year being analized and the year prior

Reactivated meaning a donor in the year being analized but not in the previous year

Dropped means a donor in the year prior to the year being analized but not in the year being analyzed (LYBUNT)

I can get these figures using query or using some canned reports under analytical reports (New donors report, LYBUNT report, etc)

I also use the comparative report to determine increases and decreases

The important thing I have found is to make sure that you are using the same gift types across the board (example for the comparative report: You may only want to use cash gift types and leave out pledges if your organization takes multi year pledges and wants to see actual cash given from year to year where amulti-year pledge would scew the number to be a decrease even if they are giving the same from year to year.)