Your donor retention rate is a good indicator of your organization's health.
Within 'Donor Management', you can view several statistics on your donors, including your donor retention rate from the past three years.
This is the calculated rate of donors who gave in the previous year and the following year. For example, your 2024 'Donor Retention Rate' should reflect the percentage of which of your donors gave in 2023 and also in 2024 - in other words, which donors were "retained" year-over-year.
Note: If your organization operates on a fiscal year that you have updated to reflect in 'Donor Management', your donor retention rate will reflect which donors were retained over your fiscal year instead of the calendar year.
While 'Donor Management' can calculate your annual donor retention rate on your behalf, you can manually calculate that rate anytime. This might be helpful when reviewing a smaller time frame or a specific group of donors.
Step 1: Navigate to your 'Contacts'
From your 'Donor Management' Dashboard, click the 'Contacts' tab on the left navigation panel.
Step 2: Create a custom filter
On your 'Contacts' page, click the 'Create Filter +' button.
For this example, we are pulling the number of donors who made a gift in 2023 and 2024.
To pull donors who gave in 2024, we will use the following:
Total donation amount (custom date range) > (is) greater than > 0
Next, click the 'Add Condition' link -
To pull donors who gave in 2023, we will use the following:
Total donation amount last calendar year > (is) greater than > 0
When you are ready, click 'Search'.
Step 3: Make a note of your results
After clicking 'Search' the page will reload and you can view your results.
In this example, 5 donors gave in 2023 and 2024.
Step 4: Edit your filter
Click the 'Edit Filter +' button to return to your custom filter.
For this example, we want to pull the number of donors who gave in 2023 but not 2024.
To remove the 2023 filter, click the 'x' next to it and click 'Search' again.
Step 5: Make a note of your results
When the page reloads, you will find the number of donors who gave in 2023.
Finally, divide the first number of results by the second number of results and then multiply the total by 100% to determine the percentage of donors retained over time.
In this example:
5 ÷ 28 = 0.178
0.178 x 100 = 17.85%
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