Donor Lifecycle FAQs

Please submit a gift history file that includes all transactions currently stored on your database as far back in time as possible. We analyze your full file back to the original (acquisition) gift for each donor. Eliminating older gifts from your file will negatively impact acquisition and lifetime value metrics. If, for example, you only submit five years of data, it will appear that your entire file is comprised of “New Donors” in that first year, and their lifetime value will only amount to the sum of their gifts in the most recent five years, as opposed to over the entire life of the file.

Our goal is to include philanthropic gifts from individual donors that can be resolicited through direct marketing efforts. Corporate giving trends tend to be less consistent than giving from individual donors and can lead to significant fluctuations in year over year trends. If, for example, several large corporate gifts were received in one year, but not the next, your average gift and revenue per donor may decrease significantly making it appear that your organization is not performing as well as in the prior year. Also, for the benchmarking component, the majority of participants will only be including gifts from individual donors, so excluding gifts from non-individuals will provide you with a more valuable comparative analysis.

We will prepare your analysis including all the gifts submitted in your transactional file. If you elect to include capital campaigns, bequests and events, please be aware that your key metrics may be skewed because these types of gifts are not able to be resolicited year over year. In the year of a capital campaign, for example, you might see a large spike in revenue per donor and average gift because of just a few donors making substantial contributions.