Reporting Overview
DonorDock's reporting tools help you understand the information your organization is tracking and turn that data into useful insights. You can use reporting to review contacts, track activities and engagement, monitor fundraising performance, identify donors for outreach, and better understand trends across your organization.
Reporting in DonorDock includes both detailed Reports and visual Dashboards. Reports are designed for working directly with your organization's records, while Dashboards provide higher-level views of fundraising, donor, campaign, ask, and forecast information.
Reports and Dashboards
The "Reporting" menu provides access to several tools depending on what you want to learn from your data.
Reports
The "Reports" page allows you to create detailed lists of Contacts, Gifts, and Activities. Reports can be filtered, customized with different columns, sorted or grouped, saved for future use, exported, and used to create actions on groups of records.
DonorDock includes prebuilt standard reports for common reporting needs, or you can create a custom report from scratch. When you save a custom report, DonorDock saves the report's configuration, including its filters and columns. The report itself remains dynamic, so the next time you open it, DonorDock uses the latest data that meets those saved criteria.
Dashboards
DonorDock's Dashboards provide visual summaries of fundraising and donor information without requiring you to build a detailed report first. Each Dashboard is designed around a different type of analysis, making it easier to quickly review performance, identify trends, and understand where your organization currently stands.
You can access Dashboards in either of the following ways:
Open the "Reporting" menu and select "Dashboards".
Click the DonorDock icon in the upper-left corner of DonorDock.
When you open the Dashboards area, DonorDock automatically displays the "Fundraising Dashboard". To move to another Dashboard, click the dropdown arrow next to the current Dashboard name, then select the Dashboard you want to view.
Dashboard | Best Used For | What It Helps You Review |
|---|---|---|
Fundraising Dashboard | Monitoring overall organizational fundraising and donor performance | Provides a high-level view of fundraising and donor metrics, including giving trends, donor retention, new donors, campaign performance, and other organization-wide information. |
Campaign Dashboard | Evaluating and comparing fundraising campaigns | Allows you to review campaign performance and compare up to three campaigns using metrics such as dollars raised, Gift counts, donor counts, new and returning donors, retention, Gift size, and anonymous giving. |
Ask Pipeline Dashboard | Monitoring fundraising asks and your organization's solicitation pipeline | Provides a visual view of Ask activity and helps your team understand fundraising opportunities and where they are currently positioned within the Ask process. |
Forecast Dashboard | Reviewing expected fundraising and progress toward projected revenue | Provides a forward-looking view of fundraising by showing projected amounts alongside Gifts already received, helping your organization compare expected and actual fundraising performance. |
Recurring Giving Dashboard | Monitoring active recurring giving subscriptions | Provides a centralized view of active recurring subscriptions so your organization can review and monitor ongoing recurring giving. |
Dashboards are especially useful when you want a quick view of performance, trends, or active fundraising activity. If you need to identify the specific Contacts, Gifts, or Activities contributing to those numbers, apply detailed criteria, or take action on a group of records, a Report will usually be the better tool.
Report Types
The Reports page is organized around three primary report types: Contact Reports, Gift Reports, and Activity Reports. Choosing the correct report type matters because it determines what each row represents and which filters and columns are available.
Contact Reports
A Contact Report will show one row for each Contact that meets the report criteria. A Contact appears only once in the report, even when that Contact has multiple Gifts or Activities associated with their record.
Contact Reports are valuable when your main focus is on people, households, or organizations. For example, they can help you identify donors in a specific state or postal code, find contacts who meet a certain lifetime giving threshold, generate marketing lists based on communication details, or analyze contact-level donation statistics.
Gift Reports
A Gift Report usually returns one row for each Gift that meets the selected criteria. Because each Gift is its own record, the same donor may appear multiple times when they have multiple qualifying Gifts.
Gift Reports are useful when you want to analyze transactions themselves, such as Gifts received during a particular date range, Gifts associated with a Campaign, Appeal, or Fund, pledges, recurring Gifts, soft credits, or other transaction-level information.
Activity Reports
An Activity Report returns one row for each Activity that meets the report criteria. A Contact may therefore appear multiple times when they have multiple qualifying Activities.
Activity Reports can be used to review communications and engagement recorded through DonorDock, including Emails, Tasks, Event Attendance, Volunteer Activities, Asks, and other supported Activity types.
Filters, Columns, Sorting, and Grouping
Once you generate a report, you can keep refining it to focus on the information you need. Use filters to narrow down which records appear, add or remove columns to control what information is displayed, and sort or group the results to make patterns easier to see.
These options can work together to answer much more specific questions. For example, you might start with a Contact Report, narrow it to active donors in a particular state, add columns for giving totals, and then sort by lifetime giving to quickly identify your top donors in that group.
The options available depend on the type of report you use. Contact, Gift, and Activity Reports each work with different kinds of records, so the filters and columns available will vary based on the report type you select.
Working With Report Results
Once you have the right records in your report, you can do more than simply review the results. Reports can be used as a starting point for outreach, bulk updates, follow-up activities, and additional analysis.
What You Can Do | How It Can Be Used |
|---|---|
Add Contacts to a Marketing List | Use the Contacts returned by a report to build a Marketing List for targeted email, direct mail, or other communications. |
Add Badges | Apply a Badge to the Contacts in your report to identify or segment them for future use. |
Create Activities in Bulk | Create Activities for the Contacts returned by a report, allowing you to assign or record follow-up without opening each Contact individually. |
Prepare Donor Communications | Use your report results as the audience for communication and outreach workflows, such as letters or other donor follow-up. |
Open Individual Records | Use report results to locate and open the underlying Contact, Gift, or Activity when you need to review additional information or make changes to an individual record. |
Export to Excel | Export the report when you want to work with the data outside DonorDock. Excel can help you compare results from multiple reports, run additional calculations, create charts or tables, build PivotTables, or prepare data for presentations and internal analysis. |
Export to PDF | Create a PDF version of a report when you need a fixed copy of the results that can be saved, printed, or shared with others. |