Report on increase giving in relation to previous gift

Melanie Lachcik

I am looking for a way to report on increased or decreased giving based a donor's previous gift in relation to the most recent gift regardless of the gift's date.  I would like to be able to run a weekly report/list/query showing me all donations from last week and if this gift if higher/lower/same as their previous gift.  Does anyone know of a good way to accomplish this?  

JoAnn Strommen

Have you looked at Reports > Analytical > Comparative Report?  Compares two time periods for increases/decreases.

Melanie Lachcik

I have...the trouble is it uses dates as the parameters. I would like to compare gifts regardless of the time frame of the previous gift.  So if a donor gave $100 in May of 2018 and then $200 in July of 2018 I would like something that shows me that the newest gift is higher than the previous gift regardless of date.  Would there be a way to accomplish this in the comparative report that I am perhaps not thinking of?

Aaron Rothberg

Hi Melanie-


It sounds like you want to compare Last Gift with Gift before the Last Gift. There's nothing like this within Raiser's Edge that I know of, but you could do this in Excel by Exporting the last two gifts in Descending order from all gift dates and then write a formula to compare last gift to the gift before the last gift.



 

Melanie Lachcik

Yes Aaron that is what I want to do...I just tested your solution and I think it worked!  Thank you so much!  It would be great if there was something in RE that allowed for this natively.  I was able to create a query to narrow down the group that I want to compare.  This should be pretty easy for me to export on a regular basis.  Thank you again for the help! 

Aaron Rothberg

You might also think about keeping your formula in a text file handy so you can quickly paste it into your Export. I like text for these types of things so I'd use something like (assuming S2 is Last Gift Amount and R2 is Gift Amount before Last Gift):


=if(S2>R2,"UPGRADE",if(S2=R2,"SAME",if(S2<R2,"DOWNGRADE")))

Melanie Lachcik

Thank you so much!  This formula is incredibly helpful!  Good tip on keep it on hand...I will start to do that with some of my other things.