Appeals Analysis

Appeals are the solicitations used to bring in gifts, such as direct mailings, online donation pages, phonathons, auctions, or events. To quickly assess your organization's fundraising through specific solicitations, select Fundraising, Analyze or Reporting, Appeals for a dashboard of key metrics. To increase the impact on your mission, use this analysis to drive action and inform your next steps.

Tip: To view the Appeals dashboard in Reporting, select Add , Appeals, Open.

To analyze your fundraising effectiveness, you can compare giving in response to your ten top-grossing active appeals and their goals under Top appeals. With this analysis, you can quickly identify which solicitations resonate with donors and which are at risk of meeting their goals. For more information, see Top Appeals Analysis.

Note: To analyze the ten top-grossing appeals that meet specific criteria, use the filters. For more information, see Appeals Analysis Filters.

To help motivate fundraisers and track their effectiveness, your organization may set goals to raise through appeals. Under Progress to goal, you can view which appeals acquired the most (and how much), and how the giving compares to their goals. For more information, see Progress to Appeal Goals.

Note: By default, the Progress to goal metric includes your ten top-grossing active appeals. To analyze the ten top-grossing appeals that meet additional criteria, use the filters. For more information, see Appeals Analysis Filters.

Campaigns are your overall fundraising efforts or initiatives, such as an annual campaign toward operating expenses or a capital campaign toward a new building or an endowment. Under Appeals by campaign, you can quickly compare how much your appeals acquired, and — to determine which initiatives resonate with donors — how much of the giving each campaign receives. For more information, see Campaign Analysis for Funds or Appeals.

Funds represent the donor's intent for how you should use or earmark a gift, such as toward a specific cause or financial purpose. Under Appeals by fund, you can quickly compare how much your appeals acquired, and — to determine which causes resonate with donors — how much of the giving applies to each fund. For more information, see Fund Analysis for Campaigns or Appeals.

For context of why donor's give, we recommend you track their primary affiliation with your organization — such as Board member or Volunteer — as constituent codes on their records. Under Appeals by constituent code, you can compare giving in response to appeals by their donors' constituent codes to identify who's engaged. For more information, see Constituent Code Analysis for Campaigns, Funds, or Appeals.

Note: By default, the Appeals by constituent code metric includes your 20 top-grossing active appeals. To analyze the 20 top-grossing appeals that meet additional criteria, use the filters. For more information, see Appeals Analysis Filters.

To help determine which solicitations resonate with donors and acquire mostly larger or smaller gifts, you can quickly view and compare breakdowns of how many donors give — and how much they give — in response to your appeals under Appeals by giving level. For more information, see Giving Level Analysis for Campaigns, Funds, or Appeals.

Note: By default, the Appeals by giving level metric includes your 20 top-grossing active appeals. To analyze the 20 top-grossing appeals that meet additional criteria, use the filters. For more information, see Appeals Analysis Filters.

Under Appeals by age group, you can quickly compare how much your appeals acquired, and — to help determine which generations of donors they resonate with — how much each age group contributed to the giving. For more information, see Demographics Analysis for Campaigns, Funds, or Appeals.

Note: By default, the Appeals by age group metric includes your 20 top-grossing active appeals. To analyze the 20 top-grossing appeals that meet additional criteria, use the filters. For more information, see Appeals Analysis Filters.

Tip: With the Revenue type filter, you can choose whether to analyze revenue received through cash-in-hand giving or committed through pledges and matching gifts. For more information, see Revenue and Recognition.

To view a list of records included in the number-crunching, select the total or metric. For further analysis, select Create list to open the list in Lists, where you can apply additional filters, choose columns, and save for future reuse. For more information, see Lists.

For deeper analysis of an appeal, select its name to open its record. For more information, see Appeal Records.

  • To easily apply frequently-used filters to the dashboard, select the filter criteria and then save their view for your personal reuse. For more information, see Saved Views of Dashboards.

  • To review the dashboard offline, download it as a PDF, or automatically receive a PDF as an email on a regular basis. For more information, see PDFs or Spreadsheets of Dashboards.

Note: The Appeals dashboard respects security by fund and automatically excludes gifts you don't have rights to view. For more information, see Record Security.

Note: Hang tight! It may take up to three hours for these metrics to update based on new or edited information. If no one at your organization has used the reports in over a month, the initial data refresh might take up to 24 hours.