Collecting and analyzing data is key to the long-term success of any organization. With the right data, your nonprofit can discover insights that will improve your donor engagement techniques, build awareness, and enhance your fundraising tactics. That’s why we’ve created Donor Reporting Templates. Check out each donor report, template, and directions on how to use them.
Collecting and analyzing data is key to the long-term success of any organization, including nonprofits. With the right data, your organization can discover insights that will improve your donor engagement techniques, build awareness, and enhance your fundraising tactics.
But conducting thorough data analysis can be time-consuming at best, and confusing at worst.
That’s why Donorbox offers Donor Reporting Templates. These aggregated data reports help you better understand your donors, reach them where they’re at, and raise more funds to further your mission, all without spending the time it takes to manually organize key metrics.
In this blog, we’ll share details about each of our reporting templates and how to use them.
Data should be at the heart of your nonprofit – it provides an objective view of your organization and can help you make informed decisions about everything from fundraising to marketing to your programs. Plus, keeping track of your data for management purposes, such as sending year-end tax receipts and audits, is important.
On the fundraising side, data can help you more effectively engage your supporters using donor segmentation and personalization. Instead of just guessing which tactics and messaging your donors will best respond to, analyzing data enables you to segment donors based on demographics, gift history, and more, and target them with customized messages.
This is where donor reports come in handy. Reports aggregate all of this important information in your database into one location, allowing you to better understand trends and glean insights from key data.
For example, you might see in your historical data that your female donors have been most likely to donate towards backpacks for children in August after receiving an email appeal. You can then be sure to target these women – and others similar to them – with an email series about your back-to-school backpack program in July and August.
Data helps you understand your donors at a higher level. And donor reporting enables you to take action toward improving donor engagement and establishing donor relationships, leading to sustained growth for your organization.
Pro Tip: Check out these 20 KPIs for Nonprofits to learn more about key performance indicators and determine which data points may work best for your organization.
Constructing your own donation reports can take time away from furthering your mission. By organizing key data into an easily digestible format, our Donor Reporting Templates enable you to easily conduct critical donor data analysis, providing insights that will empower you to take relevant action.
In your Donorbox account, find three donor reporting templates – Donor Overview, New Donors, and LYBUNT. Using these templates, review our suggested data points and target specific dates.
To access these reports, follow the steps below.
Click here to log in to your account and view your dashboard.
Don’t have an account? It’s free to register for Donorbox, and we offer the lowest platform fees in the industry! Sign up for your organization today.
Select ‘Reports’ in the left-hand navigation of your Donorbox dashboard – find it under ‘Engage’. Here, you will be able to see any existing reports as well as create new ones.
Select ‘Create New Report’ in the Reports dashboard to build a report using one of our templates.
Choose your template from the options listed – Donor Overview report, New Donors report, and LYBUNT report. Find more details about each of these reports – and how to use them – below.
Select the ‘Next: Parameters’ button to move on to the next step.
Here, you can select your parameters, including the timeframe you would like to review for the Donor Overview and New Donors reports. You may also name your report – we recommend being as specific as possible – as well as add a report description.
Click ‘Finish: Create Report’ to generate your report.
Your report may take a few minutes to generate, depending on the level of detail as well as the amount of donor data required. Do not refresh the page while the system is creating your report.
Once your templated report is created, you may download a CSV file by clicking ‘Download’. Don’t worry – this report will also be saved on the main ‘Reports’ page in your dashboard, and you’ll be able to access, edit, and download it at any time!
If you would like to edit an existing report, head back to the main ‘Reports’ page. Find the report you’d like to edit, then click the three-dot icon and select ‘Edit Report’. You may also delete the report here.
You can edit the name and description of each report, and change the date ranges for the New Donors and Donor Overview reports, at any time.
Political fundraisers in the United States are required to regularly file with the Federal Elections Commission (FEC). Donorbox has two reporting templates to make this process seamless for organizations that need it: an FEC Donor Template and an FEC Donation Template.
To access these additional templates, you’ll need to change your organization type to ‘political organization’ if you haven’t already. You can also select this option when you sign up.
Discover all the steps to become compliant in our FEC filing checklist!
Don’t know where to begin with the reports you can build using these templates? Here are more details about each of the available donor reporting templates and how to use them.
The Donor Overview template provides you with a bird’s eye view of your donors and their gift amounts during a set period of time, selected by you. This template also aggregates donation amounts and counts over that time period.
How to Use: This flexible report can be utilized for many different purposes. You can use it to track trends among your donors over selected dates, and learn how to better engage with them based on your findings. Uncovering these trends will enable you to better segment your audience based on gift amounts, campaigns, and more data.
In addition, you can use the Donor Overview report to track the effectiveness of a specific campaign by looking at the time frame during which it was held. And you can compare month-over-month or year-over-year changes, view the entire calendar year for year-end receipts, or look at your fiscal year for financial purposes, such as creating your annual report.
Our New Donor report template makes it easier than ever to keep track of your new donors as well as their first and last name, email, first donation date, and their first donation amount. Like the Donor Overview template, you can adjust the time frame to see new donors over a specific period.
How to Use: The New Donor report is beneficial when it comes to ensuring you are reaching out and engaging new donors with thank you letters and other touch points in your stewardship and fundraising strategies. Similar to the Donor Overview report, you can also use it to compare your donor acquisition levels during specific campaigns or other periods of time. It also makes it easier to glean insights about what messaging or tactics may be bringing in new support.
The LYBUNT report template is critical for tracking and engaging those elusive lapsed donors. Standing for “Last Year But Unfortunately Not This Year,” LYBUNT donors were clearly interested in supporting your organization at some point, but have not given this year for one reason or another. With this report template, you can easily track these donors in one location.
How to Use: Each nonprofit organization has (or should have) a lapsed donor strategy focused on LYBUNTs. Use the LYBUNT report template to quickly segment these donors and apply this strategy to the appropriate contacts. This also gives you more time to successfully re-engage your lapsed donors with targeted email campaigns, direct mail appeals, personal phone calls, and more.
Pro tip: Re-engaging lapsed donors should be a critical piece of your overall fundraising strategy. Learn how to do so in this blog. Listen to this podcast where we discuss 3 ways to win back lapsed donors.
These three donor reporting templates are the first of many to be released by Donorbox. They were selected as the first to be launched after several interviews with Donorbox customers, when they were determined to be the templates needed and requested most by the organizations that use our platform.
As we build additional reporting templates, we will continue to welcome feedback from our organizations about your wants and needs. If you would like to suggest that a specific report be made into a template, please fill out this form to let us know. This form can also be found on the ‘Create New Report’ page.
Bonus Resource: Listen to this podcast on top tips for Annual Reporting to strengthen donor engagement:
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Creating and reviewing reports containing key donor data is critical to the success of your nonprofit organization. Reviewing this information on a regular basis will give you important insights into trends, the effectiveness of your marketing and fundraising tactics, donor demographics, and more. This will help you make better-informed decisions and take appropriate action.
But most (if not all) organizations do not have the time or capacity to consistently build and look over reports. Donorbox’s Donor Reporting Templates address this challenge, making it quicker and easier to gain powerful insights into your donors with New Donors, Donor Overview, and LYBUNT reports.
Ready to check out the templates for yourself? Log in to your dashboard and get started today. Each reporting template is accessible to all Donorbox users without additional fees!
And if you aren’t already a Donorbox organization, you can sign up for free here. We offer a suite of powerful fundraising tools, available with no start-up fees, no contracts, and the lowest platform fees in the industry. We can’t wait to help you help others!
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Kara has several years of experience in communications and marketing for nonprofit organizations. Her love for serving others began while fundraising for and attending mission trips. She then worked with multiple local nonprofits through various marketing agencies and volunteer opportunities before becoming a communications manager at Variety the Children's Charity of St. Louis for more than four years. Kara now specializes in writing and enjoys sharing her experiences and knowledge with others on this platform.
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Kara Schmid