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Getting started with your GivingDNA Giving Dashboard

Your giving dashboard is where you can see powerful graphs that are based on your your uploaded Giving File(s). Below are some suggestions on how to can get started with the info in this dashboard.


Giving Dashboard 

  • Donor Count: Shows how many donors made gifts over set periods of time. This is a great insight for understanding when your donors are giving (year-end period, around a pillar campaign you run, something unexpected...) and helps you budget and set goals for future periods 
  • Donor Revenue: Nonprofits can establish baselines for revenue and compare year over year or month over month and gain similar insights as donor count.
  • Average Donation: Look at average gifts over different filtered periods.  Was there a point where average gift size spiked?  What could have been the reason for it? 
  • Giving Channel: To use this view, you must include a channel source column in the giving file that you uploaded. GivingDNA then maps those channels into this chart.  Click here if you would like guidance on how to upload this information. The channel donors give through is changing and you have more platforms to communicate with them.  It’s important to know which ones are picking up traction or not seeing a lot of donations.  20 years ago, fundraisers could count on mail and maybe events.  Those are both costly and no longer the only ways to receive donations. By including giving channel you can gain insights, into how your donors give to you, and can inform you where you may want to expand or decrease marketing and fundraising efforts.
  • Retention Rate: Organizations need to know how many donors they are retaining from previous points in time, to know how many they need to acquire to grow.  Retaining donors is less expensive than acquiring new ones, so you want to increase this rate as best possible.
  • Coverage Ratio: looks at the number of donors you acquired and reactivated in a fiscal year, and divides that number by those that are lapsed in the same year. If the outcome is 100%, your active donor file is the same size as the year prior. If the outcome is <100% then your file is shrinking, and ultimately you'd like to see an outcome over 100%, which tells you that your file is growing.
  • Giving Pyramid: Clearly tells you how much revenue you are getting from your defined donor cohorts. These cohorts can be defined in your cause settings page or default to <$1,000, $1,000-$10,000 and $10,000+. The amounts relate to gifts made in those ranges in the timeframe you are using in the dates filter on the dashboard, so you can look at giving in those amounts in a single year, all-time or any period in between. This chart will help you understand:
      • Are you too top heavy? (You don’t want to rely too much on major donors as their giving is not as consistent and could wildly swing your year end results).
      • Do you have enough mid-level donors?  For most organizations, 2/3 of their major donors come from direct response, and the first sign that they are upgrading is when they elevate to mid-level and your communication treatments begins to evolve 
  • Growth Rate: aggregates data from your donor count, revenue, average gift size and donations per donor into one chart that compares year over year (or in any comparative period of time).
  • Donor Health: Quickly see, which of your donors have upgrade, downgraded, stayed the same, not renewed or are new compared with a previous period. By filtering this data for customer views you can toggle between viewing "All Data" or select a saved segment that you want to analyze for donor health (ie: gift size or specific giving period). For instructions on how to filter, check out this guide.
  • Lifecycle: The Lifecycle chart is always looking at the current fiscal year - regardless of the date range filters applied. The values in the chart are reflecting the relationship your active donors in the current fiscal year have to your organization from a giving perspective:

    New Donors – Donors who first ever donated to your organization in the current fiscal year
    New Continuing Donors – Donors who donated for the first time in the previous fiscal year and who donated in the current fiscal year
    Key Multi-Year Donors – Donors who donated in the current fiscal year and in the previous 2+ fiscal years
    Reactivated Donors – Donors who donated before, then lapsed and then donated in the current fiscal year
    Reactivated Continuing Donors – Donors who donated before, then lapsed and then donated in the previous and current fiscal year
  • RFM: Your donors recency, frequency and monetary score.
    • Recency - This looks at last gift date

      Less than or equal to 12 months = 1.5 points

      13 to 24 months = 1 point

      25-36 months = 0.5 points

      37+ months = 0 points
    • Frequency - This looks at the number of gifts in the trailing 36 months

      0 gifts = 0 points

      1 gift = .5 points

      2 or 3 gifts = 1 point

      4 or more gifts = 1.5 points
    • Monetary - This looks at the total giving amount in the last 12 months

      $0-$25 = 0 points

      $25-$100 = 1 point

      $100-$250 = 2 points

      $250-$500 = 3 points

      $500+ = 4 points

      To calculate the RFM score we add up the points from each section.