Donor counts

Robyn Swiderski

Our President would like a graph of all current donors at the end of each month. This information is presented to our Board members. What is the best way to pull this information? I have tried using a query with "last gift date" [We use a 15-month time period to be considered a "current" donor.] 

I used to use pivot reports, but that wasn't his preference. I'm at a loss as to how to get the simplest answer and pull the correct information. Any and all help appreciated!

Thanks.

Sage Evans

Robyn Swiderski:

Our President would like a graph of all current donors at the end of each month. This information is presented to our Board members. What is the best way to pull this information? I have tried using a query with "last gift date" [We use a 15-month time period to be considered a "current" donor.] 

I used to use pivot reports, but that wasn't his preference. I'm at a loss as to how to get the simplest answer and pull the correct information. Any and all help appreciated!

Thanks.

Could you use a comparative report in Analytical Reports? Defining time periods?


For me, I'd probably keep the information in excel to build the graph and just export out the number of current donors each month using a Gift Detail and Summary Report or even a standard export.


What are you trying to graph, just the amount each month?

Keri Barnhart

Robyn Swiderski:

Our President would like a graph of all current donors at the end of each month. This information is presented to our Board members. What is the best way to pull this information? I have tried using a query with "last gift date" [We use a 15-month time period to be considered a "current" donor.] 

I used to use pivot reports, but that wasn't his preference. I'm at a loss as to how to get the simplest answer and pull the correct information. Any and all help appreciated!

Thanks.

What kind of graph are you looking for? Current donors by constituency, total by month, individual names? That could influence what you need to pull out.

Every month, I report on the number of donors in 2 ways:

Total donors per constituency (this is based on the VSE groups)

Total donors per college


I compare the number for this month to the fiscal year to date, and also the totals month to month.


What you do with the data in excel can vary, but what I have to get out of RE is a gift query: all gifts for X time period, soft credits to both, MG to the org, with an output for the fund type (this is where we store the fund's college), gift id, fund split amount, pledge balance, REID, and gift subtype (we mapped this to the primary constituency). I make a copy of the query output, then deduplicate the first by REID+Constituency and the second by REID+Fund Type. After that, it's just a matter of a pivot table or pivot chart.


I save these files every month so that I can pop the totals into a running total spreadsheet. If Excel hasn't decided to freak out on me, it's a matter of minutes to export the query x2, deduplicate, and copy the numbers over. Plus we have a historic record that won't change if there are gift adjustments or back-dated gifts, so our year-to-year reporting for the Board won't have fluctuating numbers if they decided to compare last year's report.

Christine Cooke 2

Robyn Swiderski:

Our President would like a graph of all current donors at the end of each month. This information is presented to our Board members. What is the best way to pull this information? I have tried using a query with "last gift date" [We use a 15-month time period to be considered a "current" donor.] 

I used to use pivot reports, but that wasn't his preference. I'm at a loss as to how to get the simplest answer and pull the correct information. Any and all help appreciated!

Thanks.

How do you want to pull the info?  by Constituent Code?  By just a whole number of donor no matter what fund they gave to or what appeal it rode in on?  This makes a difference in how you might pull info.


Under Demographic and Statisical Reports ->> there is Statistical Reports that you can break down by time period that may do the trick.