It’s crucial that you ask yourself what type of report you're looking to build before you begin building a filter, because the filters that you create under “Contacts” will provide very different results than a filter created under “Giving.”

Below, we'll walk you through how to determine which information you're reporting on, how to run each of the various types of filters available - and how to double-check your work to make sure the report contains exactly which data you're looking for.

When you’re looking to create a filter, you’ll want to start by asking yourself one crucial question:

“Do I want to make a list of people? Or do I want to make a list of donations?”

Contact filters are most commonly used to answer the question “who” - such as “who donated to this specific campaign?” or “who hasn’t donated in over a year?”

Giving filters most often answer the question “how much” - such as “how much was donated to this specific campaign?” or “how much was raised from out-of-state donors?

If you’re looking to make a list of people, you’ll want to click on the “Contacts” tab in the navigation on the left side of your screen.

You can then create a filter by clicking on the "Create Filter" button towards the top-left of the "Contacts" screen.

If you’re looking to make a list of donations or individual gifts, you’ll want to instead click on the “Giving” tab. ”

You can then create a filter by clicking on the "Create Filter" button towards the top-left of the "Giving" screen.

There are several identical fields available in both filter types – but run side-by-side, they won’t give you the same results! That's why we strongly recommend checking on the results that you've pulled once you've created your filter, to make sure that you're reporting on the right data.

For example, we’ll use the same filter under both filter types:

This Contacts filter is set to pull “last donation date > less than or equal to > 2021-01-01.”

By using the Contacts filter, you’re searching for which donors haven’t given since January 1st, 2021. Since there are 22 results, there are 22 donors who have not donated since that 1/1/21 date.

This Giving filter is also set to pull “last donation date > less than or equal to > 2021-01-01" - the same filter we used for the Contacts filter.

By using the Giving filter, you’re instead searching for the list of donations of the donors who haven’t given since January 1, 2021. Since there are 45 results – this means there’s 45 transactions from the 22 donors we found in the Contacts filter who haven’t donated since that 1/1/21 date.

Go back to the Feature Overview.