I would like to analyze our fundraising effectiveness for select funds and see the number of donors and dollars related to new donors, upgrades, recaptures and so forth. And also see what was lost from downgrades and lapsed donors.

Which reports have you tried?  I recommend you try the new donor report, Lybunt report, Sybunt report, Upgrade/Downgrade report, etc.

There is also a donor giving analysis dashboard which has all of this in one report but it has flaws!!! - you can ONLY run it on a full year period such as this calendar year or this fiscal year.  Running on any other period than a full year changes how calculations are made and gets funky.  You also can't put a query of select donors into it, etc.  It is limited and very frustrating that this is a dashboard and not a full on report.

I wanted to use the dashboard you recommended to analyze a group of funds and it can't be done....but that is EXACTLY the outcome I would love to have. I tried the reports you mentioned, but don't see the summary data I'd like, but perhaps I should try again.

I am trying to report on the number of donors who have rejoined.  They once were lost, but now they're found.  Or--they once were lapsed, but they made a gift this year and rejoined. 

 I thought I might be able to build a query, but I've not wrapped my head around how to do that effectively.

 Is there a canned report that I'm just not seeing?

We do not have the membership module, btw.

There is not a report on this but there is a dashboard.  However, beware that dashboards are tricky and behave strangely. 

The Donor Giving Analysis dashboard will group your consittuents into new, repeat, increased, decreased and recovered.  But you should know that the criteria for these categories depends on the date range you use.  If you use a full year (fiscal or calendar) it works as expected.  New is never given before, repeat is gave the same this year as last year, increased is gave more than last year, decreased is gave less than last year and recovered is did not give last year but gave sometime before that and again this year.

IF, however you want to report only on this week,  New is never gave before, repeat is now gave the same THIS WEEK as LAST WEEK, increased is gave more THIS WEEK than LAST WEEK, etc.

Essentially, for fundraisers the only date range you can really report on must be a full year.  If you do that it is a fairly good report.

Thank you!!! 

 So the "new donor" report in reports is for brand spankin' new donors, then?  I also forgot to ask that.  That is my assumption, but I was worried it was pulling in recaptured folks.

I'll try that dashboard.  Thanks Melissa.

Actually, again, that depends.  If I recall correctly, if you put in a filter such as a campaign or fund on the the new donor report it gives you anyone brand spanking new to that campaign or fund regardless of whether or not they have other gifts to your org previously.  You have to be careful with that one.

Thanks so much Melissa.  This is RE craziness.  The dashboards are giving me totally different numbers than other reports--and the filters appear to be the same.

I can't believe RE does not have a canned report for showing reactivated donors.  I think it's completely irresponsible of Blackbaud not to include it.  I'm used to having (with Team Approach) far greater reporting capabilities (like # donors--unique, # reactivated, # lapsed, etc.)  I've been doing this all day:

 Sigh.

I completely agree and have had the same problem.  I was hoping that since BB tok over Target Analytics that they would build some basic benchmarking metrics into their projuct but alas not yet.  I am going to be advocating for this with BB developers.