New Donor Report - need to pull donor #, not gift #

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Our org has (thankfully) stayed away from Split Gifts. If someone sends in a $5,000 check for two separate events, we enter two Gifts in RE. 


We've had a big staff turnover in the last year and we are now beginning to focus on metrics. One thing we are tracking is new donors but I'm not getting an accurate number with the canned report. We had one woman donate $1,500 split between three Funds, which means only the first gift entered on her RE record displays as a "new" gift. 


How do I find the correct average gift per new donor? Do I pull a summary of FY Gifts from all new FY donors and divide gift total by number of donors? How do I account for a new donor who gave twice in one FY but made the second gift six months after the first?


Would it be easier to start creating Split Gifts? How do you account for splits in your reporting?
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  • Dariel Dixon 2
    Dariel Dixon 2 Community All-Star
    Seventh Anniversary Facilitator 4 Name Dropper Photogenic
    That's a trade-off for split gifts.  When you create different gifts instead of creating a split gifts, you artificially inflate your number of gifts. So it will throw off your number of gifts, and your average gift numbers.  However, it may make reporting by fund more accurate.  


    It's a tough call to make.  It may come down to which reports you run more often, or which figure you can adjust.
  • Dariel Dixon‍ nailed it.  Issues both ways. If you haven't encountered the reporting issues, search 'split gifts' in the forums and you'll learn what some of the issues can be and what reports get skewed with split gifts. IMO entering split pledges and then applying payments to them creates the greatest reporting messes.
  • I stopped using the canned New Donor report because of soft credit donors. So I built some queries instead, and then take it through export. It would exclude your new donor who gave 2x in the same FY the second time you run it. Let me know if you're interested.

     

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