Donor Retention Rates in DonorDock

Donor retention measures how many of your previous donors continue giving from one year to the next. Tracking retention can help you understand how effectively your organization is maintaining relationships with existing donors and identify changes in donor engagement over time.

DonorDock displays retention information on your dashboard, including your YTD Retention Rate and the retention rate for the previous year.

Understanding Donor Retention Rates

YTD Retention Rate

Your Year-to-Date (YTD) Retention Rate represents the percentage of your previous donor base that has given again during the current year-to-date period.

If your organization has a fiscal year configured, this will reflect your fiscal year-to-date period. If no fiscal year is configured, it will reflect the current calendar year-to-date period.

This allows you to see how donor retention is progressing so far in your current reporting year.

Your organization's fiscal year can be configured within your Organization Settings in DonorDock. If your organization does not have a fiscal year configured, DonorDock will use the calendar year, January 1 through December 31, for the dashboard calculations.

Previous Year Retention Rate

The previous year's retention rate shows the percentage of donors who were retained during the previous completed year.

The year used for this calculation will also follow your organization's fiscal year settings. If no fiscal year is configured, the calculation will use the calendar year.

Comparing your current YTD retention rate with the previous year's retention rate can help you determine whether you are currently retaining donors at a similar, higher, or lower rate.

Donor Retention Formula

Retention is calculated using donors who gave during the previous year and have given again during the current year.

The basic formula is:

Retained Donors ÷ Previous Year Donors × 100 = Retention Rate

For example:

• 500 unique donors gave last year.

• 325 of those donors have given again this year.

• 325 ÷ 500 = 0.65

• 0.65 × 100 = 65% retention

Finding the Number of Unique Donors for a Specific Time Period

The Giving Summary report can be used to determine how many unique donors gave during a selected period.

1. Navigate to Reporting from the main navigation menu.

2. Locate the prebuilt gift reports in the center column.

3. Select Giving Summary.

4. In the report filters, enter the date range you want to review.

5. Click Run Report.

6. Once the report has finished generating, look in the lower-left corner of the report for the total number of donors returned.

Each row of the Giving Summary report represents summarized giving for a specific donor, so the total number of records provides your number of unique donors for that reporting period.

This report can be useful when determining the total number of donors who gave during the previous year.

Finding New Donors for a Specific Time Period

You can use the New Donors This Year report to identify donors whose first gift occurred during a selected period.

1. Navigate to the main Reporting page.

2. Under the prebuilt contact reports in the left column, select New Donors This Year.

3. Allow the report to generate.

4. To change the reporting period, click the blue Filters button in the upper-left corner.

5. Scroll to the First Gift Date filter.

6. Change the filter from This Year to Custom.

7. Enter the date range you want to review.

8. Click Run Report to regenerate the report.

9. Once the report has loaded, the total number of donors returned will appear in the lower-left corner.

This provides the number of donors whose first-ever gift occurred during your selected time period.

Finding Donors Who Gave in Both Years

To calculate retention, you need to identify donors who gave during the previous year and also gave during the current year.

Because this comparison involves giving from two different periods, there is not a single prebuilt retention report that provides this list directly. However, you can create a contact report using current and last year aggregate total columns.

Run a contact report and include the following columns:

• Fiscal Last Year Gifts

• FYTD Gifts

Apply the following filters:

Fiscal Last Year Gifts
is greater than 0

FYTD Gifts
is greater than 0

To apply a filter to a specific column, scroll to the column you want to filter and click the filter icon, which looks like a funnel. Select the filter criteria you want to use, enter the appropriate value, and click Filter. You can apply filters to as many columns as needed.

The resulting report will contain contacts who had giving during both periods.

The total number of contacts returned by this report represents your retained donors.

You can then use that number in the retention formula:

Retained Donors ÷ Total Donors Last Year × 100

You can also run this type of report using the Calendar year columns for YTD Gifts and Last Year Gifts.

Putting the Reports Together

Because retention compares donor activity across multiple periods, you may want to combine information from several DonorDock reports outside of DonorDock.

For example, you might collect:

Using a spreadsheet can be helpful if you want to track these numbers over time or compare retention from year to year.

Using LYBNTY and SYBNTY Reports

DonorDock also includes prebuilt reports designed to help identify donors who have not yet given again during the current year.

LYBNTY stands for Last Year But Not This Year.

This report identifies donors who gave during the previous year but have not yet given during the current year.

To access the report:

1. Navigate to Reporting.

2. Locate the prebuilt gift reports.

3. Select LYBNTY.

4. The report will generate by default for the current year. To view a previous time period or adjust what types of gifts are included in the report, click the blue filters button on the top left.

This can be especially useful for identifying donors who gave recently but may be appropriate for renewal or re-engagement outreach.

The SYBNTY report identifies donors who have given in a previous year but have not yet given during the current year.

While LYBNTY focuses specifically on donors who gave last year, SYBNTY provides a broader look at donors with historical giving who have not yet returned this year.

This can help identify additional lapsed or potentially lapsed donors who may not appear in the LYBNTY report.

Both reports follow your organization's saved fiscal year settings. If no fiscal year is configured, the reporting periods will follow the calendar year.

When calculating retention manually, make sure the reports being compared use consistent date ranges and align with your organization's fiscal year settings.

For example, if your organization uses a July 1 through June 30 fiscal year, your dashboard retention metrics will follow that fiscal year rather than January through December.

If no fiscal year is configured in Organization Settings, DonorDock will default to calendar-year reporting for these dashboard metrics.

Keeping these periods consistent will help ensure that your manually calculated retention rates accurately reflect the information shown on your DonorDock dashboard.