What is a donor and what is a lead? As we define it:
A donor is someone who has made a donation.
A lead is someone who has not yet made a donation.
Donors appear in your CRM when:
A donor makes a donation through any of your online platforms (donation forms, campaigns, stores, etc.)
You import a donation into the CRM.
Leads appear in your CRM when you add them one-by-one, or import them as a list.
The relationship between Leads and Contacts - Automatic Sync
What makes a donor or a lead unique in our CRM is their email address. So a donor with the email address jon@jon.com who makes two donations will have these two donations appear under their profile.
One of the nicest features of our CRM is automatic syncing between Donors and Leads. So, if you add a lead, and the lead then makes a donation, the two records will automatically be synced:
In the Donor's record, all of the information that you entered for them when they were "just" a lead will appear alongside their donor information (which is entered by the donor him or herself).
Note that the platform will not allow you to add a lead whose email address is already associated with a donor.