Favorite analytic report in RE?

Mark Guncheon 2

With the year just about half gone, I've been looking at reporting to help our staff see how well we are doing. This made me wonder what others use to keep their staff and leaders on track to reach your goals. Do you have a favorite quarterly report that you use? And how do you present the results to your team?


I've been pulling comparative giving results for board members as well as for all donors. I've been reporting on event gifts, employee giving, gift size, etc. I've also been looking at online vs. offline. This always leads me to Google analytics for our web presence which gives us an astounding amount of data. But are comparative reports the best way to keep staff up to date? 

Jahna Balk 2

I think that it depends on what you're trying to achieve.

• If you want to look at potential untapped donors, run a SYBUNT or LYBUNT report. The Actual vs. Target report can be helpful, too. (Analytic Reports)
• If you're looking for a snapshot of where you are, run a Gift Detail and Summary report. (Financial Reports)
• If you're looking for a report that shows who your donors are, run a Comparison and Summary (demographic reports). We use that to make a year-over year comparison of giving by gift constituent code.

I also tend to make custom reports using the export function, so that I have more granular control over the data I am pulling. For example, we have a donor loyalty program that we initially pulled together from the Consecutive Years Report, but now I use a query/export to get at the data so that I can make sure I am seeing real consecutive gifts to each year's campaigns.