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The donor record

The donor record is the centre of Relae. One record per person or organization, holding every gift they have made through every channel, plus what you know about them.

Everything else reads from it. The ratings, the worklist, the forecast, the board report and the receipts are all views of these records.

What one record holds

Section titled “What one record holds”

Identity. Name, contact details, and whether this is a person or an organization. Foundations, businesses and government bodies are records too, and Relae tracks them as organizations rather than trying to treat them as people.

Giving history. Every gift, from every channel, in one list, with a running total by year. Lifetime total, this year, first gift, most recent gift, largest gift and the gift count sit across the top. Each row in the list carries its date, the campaign and fund it was attributed to, and the amount. The channel a gift arrived through is on the gift itself: open a row to see it.

Ratings. Affinity, access and capacity.

Relationships. Who they are connected to, at home and professionally. See the relationship graph.

Notes. What was said, when, by whom. See writing notes in plain sentences.

A donor record for Sam Rivera. The left column shows contact details, the source identifiers the record arrived under, and the three rating meters for access, affinity and capacity. The right column shows gift history: lifetime giving, this year, largest gift, first and last gift dates, a gift count, a bar per year, a cumulative giving line, and a table of every individual gift with its date, campaign, fund and amount.
One person, one record. The source identifiers along the top show the systems this donor arrived from, and the history underneath is every gift from all of them.

Why one record matters more than it sounds

Section titled “Why one record matters more than it sounds”

Before reconciliation, a donor who gives through three channels appears as three separate people, each with a third of their history.

The consequences are not cosmetic:

  • Their lifetime total looks small, so they never reach your major-gift attention.
  • They get thanked as a first-time donor when they have given for six years.
  • Your board report undercounts them.
  • You approach them for $500 when they have already given you $9,000.

The record exists so none of that happens.

People and organizations

Section titled “People and organizations”

Relae treats an individual as the core record type. Households and businesses are handled as groups with a primary contact rather than as a separate kind of record, so a couple who give jointly stay two people who are worked as one.

This matters when you write. You thank a person, not a household, and the record knows which person to name.

Custom fields from your old system

Section titled “Custom fields from your old system”

Imports usually carry columns Relae has no opinion about. A membership level, a seat number, a volunteer flag.

Those are kept as custom properties, and you decide what happens to them: keep them as they are, relabel them, pin the useful ones as a column on your records list, or hide the noise. Relae never interprets a custom value and never shows one to a client in a shared view.

Next

Section titled “Next”