Donor Lifecycle Question

Nate Laning

I've been looking into the various donor lifecycle charts in RE NXT, trying to understand how to best use them, and I had a question about how they are compiled. Unfortunately, I don't currently have access to an RE NXT environment to dig further into specific examples, so I figured I'd pose the question to this group.

When identifying donors as Retained, Recaptured, Lapsing, etc., does RE NXT look at the donor's activity based on their last gift date or based on their activity so far this fiscal year? My hunch is that it's all based on the donor's last gift date, but I'd love to have that confirmed.

If the label is based on this fiscal year, I'd imagine the “At Risk” count would suddenly skyrocket at the start of each fiscal year.

Thank you!

Austen Brown

@Nate Laning - Here is additional documentation on the Donor Lifecycle Analysis within Web View:

Nate Laning

@Austen Brown – Thank you! This is incredibly helpful…especially the penguin chart.

The more I look into this, it seems that donor lifecycle identifiers focus on the donor's last gift date. But identifying LYBUNT/SYBUNT donors is more focused on the fiscal/calendar year start date. I think I was conflating the two categories of identifiers, but both are valuable and unique.

Sonya Hansen 2

Hi Austen - I saw your response to this older discussion and thought you might have some insight to a question that my team have raised. How did Blackbaud decide on the parameters for what makes a Lapsed/Lapsing etc donor. Every place I have worked out has determined their own parameters for what makes a lapsing donor, sometimes the difference being several years. I've done searches and looked through KB but can't find any sort of documentation that would show how they came to this "industry standard". With thanks in advance! @Austen Brown

Alex Wong

@Sonya Hansen
here's Blackbaud definition

Lapsing donors haven't given in 15-24 months. To recapture a lapsing donor, review their giving history to see which current campaigns and appeals fits their interests and passions, and suggest a recurring gift for more regular giving.

Lapsed donors haven't given in two to five years. Review your relationship with them to determine why they stopped giving and decided whether to recapture them or mark them as inactive to focus on others.

etc, see link

You are correct, I think every org has it's own “oddity” on what should be consider lapsed/lapsing/etc. Our org particularly does not like BB definition and we continue with our own.

Austen Brown

@Sonya Hansen - Welcome to BB Community forums! The how/why when it comes to Blackbaud is often unknown. If you'd like to see a change I recommended visiting the RE NXT Idea Bank and making sure it is represented. If you find any ideas that particularly resonate with you or if you end up creating your own, feel free to share direct links to them here - we'd be happy to show support by voting for them.

Sonya Hansen 2

@Austen Brown @Alex Wong Thank you both for your input - much appreciated. I suspected that there wasn't going to be a firm answer to how BB define there categories. Although hoping it's built off the back of the benchmarking in place through NXT.

Our team is trying to streamline some of the more manual reviews that we do so I'm keen to promote the automated process that BB already has in place - it's just nice to be able to tell your manager why something is more industry standard than what we define it as. ?

Dariel Dixon 2

@Sonya Hansen, I think I disagree with you here. @Alex Wong gave you the specific BB definition for these terms. Your organization may disagree with those timeframes, but they pretty clearly defined. I do wish that the database would allow admins to set those definitions so that they meant more to our organizations.

Sonya Hansen 2

@Dariel Dixon Thanks Dariel - yes, I understood Alex's response and I had seen those definitions. Perhaps my use of the word ‘define’ was not best placed. My original question was to ask how did Blackbaud come to those definitions. What metrics did they use to determine that was going to be the standard by which everyone that uses RE would then be tagging their data.

Sherry Aldrich

@Nate Laning I've had issues using these because the last I knew the NXT life cycle stages did not take into consideration soft credits. A good majority of our donors will give through 3rd party and be soft credited. They would show up on the nxt life cycle lists saying they have not given. I haven't figured out a solution on this so we continue to use the queries in the database view for this information.