Donor management: the record that makes second gifts possible

Donor management is the work of knowing who gave, why, and what happened next — so that a first gift has a chance of becoming a second. Most small organisations can produce a list of donations and almost none can produce a list of donors who gave last year and not this one. The first is bookkeeping; the second is the entire job, and it needs a record rather than a spreadsheet of transactions.

What a donor record has to hold

• The donor as a person or organisation, with every gift attached to them rather than listed separately.
• First gift date and amount, which is what makes a lapse visible later.
• Source: what prompted the gift — an appeal, an event, a friend, a search.
• Designation, where the donor asked for the money to go, because breaking that promise ends the relationship.
• Communication preferences and consents, with the date and the wording they consented to.
• Relationships: household, employer for matched giving, and any connection to a trustee or volunteer.
• Every contact you have made, including the ones with no response.

Donor management in four segments

Donor management becomes manageable when the list stops being one list.

1. New: gave for the first time in the last twelve months. The only segment where a thank-you changes behaviour.
2. Active repeat: gave at least twice, most recently within the year. This is the group to steward, not to solicit hardest.
3. Lapsed: gave before, nothing in twelve to twenty-four months. A reactivation ask costs a fraction of finding someone new.
4. Major or recurring: the small number whose absence would change your budget, and who deserve a named relationship owner.

A donor who has given twice is several times more likely to give again than a first-time donor. That single fact should decide where the effort goes: second-gift conversion before new acquisition, almost always.

Keep it as a register, not a donation log

One row per donor with gifts, contacts and consents attached is the shape that answers the questions that matter — who lapsed, who upgraded, who has not been thanked. Ettex Records holds that, with the gift history on the donor row rather than in a separate sheet, and Ettex Mail sends the acknowledgements from the same data so nobody is copying names between systems. Where the donor completed a form to give, Ettex Forms delivers the submission onto the record instead of into an inbox.

What to do in the first seventy-two hours

• Acknowledge the gift, with the amount and the designation stated back.
• Say what the money will do, concretely, not gratefully in general.
• Record the acknowledgement on the donor row so a second thank-you never goes out and a missing one is visible.
• Flag first-time donors for a follow-up that is not an ask.
• Check for a matching-gift employer, which is the cheapest uplift available.

Measures that tell you something

Retention rate by segment, second-gift conversion within ninety days, average gift by source, and lapse count over the last quarter. Total raised is a result, not a measure — it tells you what happened without telling you what to do. A membership database has the same problem in a different shape: renewal rate is the number that matters, and gross subscriptions is the number that gets reported.