Donors

Find it: Left nav → Donors · Who can use it: Everyone can browse. Org Admins / CDOs and Development Associates can add, import, edit, and log. Committee members see engagement info but not giving history or wealth details.

What you'll see

The list is a table with Donor, Category, Tier, Lifetime, Last gift, Thank-you ratio, and Ask? columns, 50 per page. Above it are search and filters; below it is the Donor Category Key decoding every badge.

How to find donors

1. Type a name, organization, or email into the search box.
2. Narrow with the Category, Tier, and Stage filters.
3. The Ask? column shows a green/amber pill — green means it's OK to ask, amber means steward first. The ratio dot is green (Healthy), yellow (Watch), or red (At Risk).

The categories: First-Time (one gift in the last year), Returning (TYBNTY) (gave this year, not last), At Risk (LYBNTY) (gave last year, not this), Recurring, Major Donor, Planned Giving, and Lapsed (no gift in 2+ years).

How to open and read a profile

1. Click a donor's name.
2. The top OK to ask? banner is green with a checkmark when the timing is right, amber with a warning when it isn't — the reason is spelled out. In campaign season it shows a campaign-mode tag.
3. The Recommended ask card shows the suggested range (or "Consideration only" for planned-giving prospects) plus "Why this number." The amount is set by donor behavior, not by your need.
4. The Pre-ask checklist summarizes category, last/largest gift, recency, stewardship, and next action. A red stewardship status warns you to thank first.
5. The sidebar Thank-you ratio card shows your touches vs. asks against the donor's tier benchmark over a rolling window.

How to log a gift

1. Click Log gift (staff only).
2. Choose a Gift type — Cash / monetary, In-kind (goods/services), or Pledge installment. In-kind gifts are tracked separately and never count toward cash giving, tier, or ask math; installments apply to an open pledge.
3. Enter the amount (or fair-market value for in-kind), date, fund/designation, and source.
4. Optionally add a Tribute (in honor of / in memory of), mark it recurring (monthly/quarterly/annual, cash only), or Recognize anonymously. Save recomputes the category and ask.

How to log an interaction

1. Click Log interaction.
2. Pick a Type — Thank-You, Ask, or Neutral (neutral counts toward neither side of the ratio).
3. Set channel, date, subject, and notes. If you choose Ask when it isn't OK to ask, a warning appears and you must enter a justification to override — the override is written to the audit log.

How the Add / Edit form is organized

The form uses progressive disclosure: the core fields you fill on every donor — type (Individual / Business / Foundation), first and last name, preferred name, organization/household, email, and phone — sit at the top, and the richer detail is tucked into expandable sections (Name & salutation, Address, Additional contact, Bio & source, Contact preferences) that you open only when you need them. That keeps daily entry fast without hiding the depth.

The bio fields matter for two reasons the platform relies on:

• Correct salutations. Prefix, middle name, suffix, and preferred name feed the formal and informal salutations (left blank, they auto-generate). Getting a donor's name right is the cheapest form of stewardship there is.
• Segmentation and indicators. Donor type, employer, occupation, birth date (which feeds planned-giving indicators), preferred language, and primary/secondary phone with their types let you group and reach donors correctly without cluttering the fields you touch every day.

Custom fields your organization has defined (Settings → Custom fields) appear here in their own section and on the profile, so you can track what matters to your program without waiting on us. See Settings.

How to edit or manage a donor

• Edit opens a side panel with contact details, tier, capacity rating, stage, and flags (Planned-giving prospect, Do not solicit, Recognize anonymously). The trash icon deletes the donor and all their history.
• Tax & Receipts card: issue a gift receipt for any un-receipted gift, generate a year-end statement for a chosen year, and Print / PDF, reissue, or void issued receipts. A receipt is a legal acknowledgment, not a thank-you — it never counts toward the ratio.
• Household & Relationships panel (staff/board): group donors into a household with a primary member and combined stats, and record relationships (spouse, employer, board member, etc.).
• Communicate card: Email the donor, choosing a thank-you / ask / neutral type. On premium plans, AI thank-you and AI ask draft a message for you to review and edit — the AI won't draft an ask that breaks the OK-to-ask rules.
• Documents are covered on their own page — see Attachments for attaching pledge letters, MOUs, and agreements to a donor.

How to create a personalized ask link

The Ask link button on a profile generates a give page pre-filled with this donor's recommended amount, which you can text or email them. Because handing someone an ask is itself a solicitation, generating a link runs through the same OK-to-ask engine as logging an ask: if the timing isn't right the button is blocked, the reason is shown, and you can only proceed by entering a justification — which is written to the audit log. The link expires in 30 days and can be revoked. See Donations for the give page it points to.

How to mark a donor deceased

On a donor's profile, Mark deceased (with an optional date) does far more than set a flag, because the methodology's first duty is to never solicit a deceased donor or their grieving household. Marking deceased:

1. Snapshots the donor's current contact preferences so nothing is lost.
2. Suppresses everything — turns off all email, phone, mail, and SMS opt-ins and sets do-not-contact and do-not-solicit.
3. Removes the donor from every ask queue and eligibility check.
4. Regenerates the household salutation (for example, dropping a deceased spouse so letters read correctly).

The action is written to the audit log. It is a hard stop, reversible only by an explicit Un-mark deceased, which restores the exact preferences that were snapshotted. Nothing here is silent, and nothing is guessed.

How to merge or flag duplicates

The same person often ends up in your data twice. From a profile, admins can Merge duplicate to combine two records into one, and other staff can Flag duplicate to queue a likely match for an admin to review. A merge re-points gifts, interactions, and history onto the surviving record and is irreversible — see Duplicate merge for exactly what moves and how to choose the survivor.

How to add or import donors

• Add donor creates one record manually; categories compute once gifts are logged.
• Import opens a wizard: upload a CSV or Excel file, map your columns (donor and optional gift fields — gift fields enable auto-classification), review the preview, and choose Update / merge or Skip for donors that already exist. Re-imports update rather than duplicate, matching on email or name+address.
• Coming from DonorPerfect, Bloomerang, or Little Green Light? See Importing — we recognize their export columns automatically.

Good to know

• After import, download the Error file for any rows that couldn't be parsed (bad amounts/dates or gift rows with no donor).
• Auto-tier (Org Admin, on the list header) ranks donors into tiers A–E by giving.
• The donor list can show an Avg gift column (average gift size) alongside lifetime and last-gift figures — useful for telling apart a donor who gives one large gift a year from one who gives many small ones.
• Committee members see relationship and contact info but not lifetime giving, wealth capacity, or receipts.