Donor Insights
Get your first analysis

Institutional donor analytics

Your donor file is a trust. Steward it like one.

We read your contacts and gifts the way a fund reads a portfolio, scoring retention, lifetime value, and concentration across the whole file.

Thousands to millions of dollarswaiting to be recovered in lapsed donors

Get your first analysisSee the methodology

Your first analysis is included with every plan, and it starts with a five-minute conversation. How your data is handled

Score every donor's 24-month survival probability

Illustrative — sample data for a fictional organization.

  • hundreds of organizations
  • Connect to any source system
  • built for any scale

The cost of not knowing

A donor file declines quietly. The annual report is the last to know.

Donors rarely announce that they are leaving. They simply stop. A card expires, a season gets missed, a once-a-year gift never repeats. Each one is small. Together they bend a file downward for a year or more before the annual totals show it. By then the donors behind the dip are the hardest to bring back.

Quarterly giving vs last year, trailing three years
859095100Year 1Year 2Year 3down 14 points before the annual total shows it
Sample quarterly giving for a fictional organization, declining gradually over three years.

Sample file — synthetic data for a fictional organization.

How many of your donors are lapsing each year and why?

  • A recurring gift ends at an expired card. That is an involuntary loss, not a decision to leave.
  • A once-a-year donor simply does not return, and nothing in the file marks the moment.
  • Net of every gift, the file keeps less than it did last year, before a single new donor is counted.

The turn

You can't steward what you can't see.

Donor Insights reads the same file and makes the decline visible while you can still act on it. You see who is slipping, who is gone, and which moves might bend the line back up. Seen early, a fading donor is a choice you can still make. Seen in the annual report, it is a donor already gone.

if nothing changes vs with a plan
80859095TodayprojectionIf nothing changesWith a plan
Sample projection for a fictional organization from today: a declining status-quo path and, with a plan, a modest recovery, each shown with a widening uncertainty band.

Projection — synthetic data for a fictional organization. What a plan recovers depends on your file. DonorInsights.com identifies potential tactics, results are dependent on the Organizations execution. DonorInsights.com does not give this as investment or strategic advice.

How it works

See where your file has been, where it's headed, and how to change it.

01

Understand your history

Start with the file you already have: retention, lifetime value, and how much of your giving rests in a few hands, read the way a fund reads a portfolio. You see the file as it is, not as the year-end summary described it.

kaplan-meier — sample organization
60%70%80%90%100%0mo12mo24mo36mo
Sample Kaplan-Meier survival curve for a fictional organization.

02

See the likely future

Hold everything as it is, and the file still moves. Left alone, next year's giving usually lands below last year's, for reasons already sitting in the data.

if nothing changes
80859095TodayprojectionIf nothing changes
Sample projection for a fictional organization from today: a declining status-quo path and, with a plan, a modest recovery, each shown with a widening uncertainty band.

03

Change the future

Then the bright spots: lapsed donors worth a second ask, donors likely to give more, and the marketing that brought in donors who stayed. Each is a move you can weigh, with its likely effect on the line, before you commit to it.

Three moves you can weigh

Win back lapsed donors

Ranked by how likely they are to return, and what they gave before they lapsed.

Estimated recovery: Six-figure recovery

Grow high-likelihood donors

Donors sitting one ask from the next giving band, ranked by expected value.

Estimated upgrade: Next giving band

Double down on what worked

The channels that brought in donors who stayed, not only donors who gave once.

Estimated 24-month value: 7.9x over 24 months

The platform

The platform your team reads between meetings.

The product is one platform, built on your file and open whenever a question comes up. More than sixty charts cover contacts, donations, and campaigns, with marketing data read next to the gift file.

60+charts across contacts, donations, and campaigns, every one filterable and exportable to CSV

The donor lifecycle, end to end

  1. 01

    Acquire

    New donors by source, channel, and cohort

  2. 02

    Convert

    First gift to second, and the time between

  3. 03

    Retain

    Who is staying and who is slipping

  4. 04

    Reactivate

    Lapsed donors worth a second ask

Filter and export on every chart

Two dozen filter attributes narrow any view to the donors you mean, and every chart exports to CSV in one click for the next campaign.

Built to open instantly

Views are pre-computed, so a chart is on screen the moment you click it, with nothing to wait on while your team watches.

AI analysis, added on top

Ask the file a question in plain language and read the answer. It is AI, so verify anything you act on. The Ask panel below is a live preview.

Marketing economics

Know your true cost of acquisition.

The platform reads Google Analytics and your email platform next to the gift file, so every channel and campaign carries its real economics: what it cost, what it returned, and what its donors became worth over two years.

Email leads the file at $18 to acquire.

7.9×

return on the best-performing channel, once you count what its donors gave over two years, not just their first gift

Cost to acquire vs 24-month value, by channel
ChannelCAC24-mo valueReturn
Email$18$142
7.9×
Organic search$24$118
4.9×
Referral$31$126
4.1×
Paid social$52$96
1.8×
Paid search$68$88
1.3×

Illustrative — sample data for a fictional organization.

One file, many lenses

Choose a segment and the whole review re-reads the file.

Pick a group of donors and every panel moves together — the survival curve, the scorecard, and the lifetime-value estimate all re-read the same file through that lens. Below is a fictional organization, switched live.

Read every active donor on the file

Modeled lifetime value per donor

$0

Across 42,000 active donors on the file.

24-month survival

60%70%80%90%100%0mo12mo24mo36mo
Sample Kaplan-Meier survival curve for a fictional organization.

Scorecard

  • 24-month survival70%
  • Net dollar retention104%
  • Recurring share of revenue41%
  • Median annual gift$95
  • Reactivation rate9%

Illustrative — sample data for a fictional organization.

The analysis beneath it

The methods are the ones a quant would recognize.

No black box. Each figure in the review comes from a named method, stated plainly and shown with its uncertainty.

Methodology revised July 2026.

Kaplan–Meier survival, Greenwood 95% CI
60%70%80%90%100%0mo12mo24mo36mo
Sample Kaplan-Meier survival curve for a fictional organization.

Survival analysis

Kaplan-Meier estimation with Greenwood confidence intervals. We measure how long donors stay, month by month, with error bars that widen honestly as a cohort thins.

Lifetime value

Weibull-modeled LTV with sensitivity grids. Each giving tier gets its own survival tail, discounted across horizons you can vary.

Seasonal-trend decomposition

STL separates the year-end spike from the underlying trend, so a strong December cannot hide a slow decline.

Concentration risk

A Lorenz curve and Gini coefficient show how much revenue rides on the top few donors, and what one departure would cost.

58% of revenue in the top decile

Net dollar retention

One number for whether the base is growing or shrinking before any new donor is counted.

Upgrade-value matrix

Which donors sit one ask away from the next giving band, ranked by expected value.

What the platform produces

When your team meets, the file speaks their language.

Once a quarter the platform turns the same charts into a leadership-grade brief: a steward's letter, a six-metric scorecard, a revenue bridge that reconciles to the dollar, and a sequenced set of moves. Below is a sample rebuilt for a fictional organization.

Sample review · Rivermark Relief · illustrative figures

Rivermark Relief — Donor & Fundraising Strategy Review

$48M

Rivermark's donor file is a $48M trust. Over the next four quarters, here is how we would steward the donors you hold today and grow the giving they have entrusted. Six metrics tell the story. Three moves change it.

Revenue bridge — trailing twelve months

071410.4Opening+1.8New donors+0.6Reactivated+1.1Upgrades-0.7Downgrades-2.4Lapse10.8Closing
Sample revenue bridge for a fictional organization, in millions of dollars.

Scorecard

  • Gross donor retention64%

    First move: Re-sequence the second-gift ask

  • Net dollar retention104%

    First move: Steward the mid-tier

  • Recurring share of revenue41%

    First move: Route failed payments to dunning

  • Payment-failure rate6.8%

    First move: Add a card updater and retry ladder

  • Top-decile revenue share58%

    First move: Widen the major-gift pipeline

  • Reactivation rate9%

    First move: Test a win-back series at month 14

Sequenced roadmap

  1. Q1

    Dunning and card updater

    Recovers a six-figure share now lost to involuntary churn

    Low effort

  2. Q1

    Second-gift welcome series

    Adds 3 to 5 points to first-year retention

    Low effort

  3. Q2

    Mid-tier upgrade path

    Moves an estimated $0.4M into the next giving band

    Medium effort

  4. Q3

    Major-gift pipeline

    Reduces the file's reliance on its top decile

    Higher effort

What a read surfaces

The first pass usually finds money the file was quietly losing.

  • A national organization on 400,000 donors found a third of its recurring lapse was involuntary. The recovery plan defended a six-figure share of giving the file was set to lose.
  • A regional non-profit learned its best-looking channel returned less over two years than its cheapest. Budget moved, and two-year value rose.
  • A development team of two got the same read that once took an expert by hand, in a 30-minute walkthrough.

Illustrative examples — drawn from the patterns a first read typically surfaces, not client results.

Ask your donor file

Ask a question in plain language and read a clear answer.

The platform answers the questions a development director actually asks, in plain language. It is AI, so read its answers as a starting point and verify anything you act on. Try one below, on a fictional organization.

Which donors are at risk of lapsing?

Scanning 48,201 gift rows · 3 sources

Donors likely to lapse, by first-gift band
gift ledger · FY2024–26

3,140 donors are more likely than not to lapse in the next six months, about 7% of the active file. They gave a median of two gifts in the last 24 months, and their last gift was more than eight months ago. The largest group sits in the $25 to $99 first-gift band, where a second-gift ask was never sent.

Illustrative — sample data for a fictional organization.

Sources

We read the systems you already run on.

Contacts and gifts come from the CRM and payment tools you use, and the marketing side comes from Google Analytics and your email platform, so giving and campaign data land together.

Any source system, connected for you. We build the connection when a new one comes up.

  • Virtuous
  • Salesforce
  • HubSpot
  • Bloomerang
  • Funraise
  • Neon CRM
  • DonorPerfect
  • Raiser's Edge
  • eTapestry
  • Planning Center
  • Google Analytics
  • Mailchimp
  • ActiveCampaign

The articles

Short reads on stewarding your donors well.

Guides to reading a donor file with care: retention, lifetime value, segmentation, and the numbers worth putting in front of your board. Every figure traces back to sector research you can open.

Read all articles →

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Get started

Get an institutional-grade read in a 30-minute walkthrough.

No integration project and no long onboarding. Share a few details, book a call, and we walk you through the full review.

  1. 01

    Tell us about your organization

    A short form about your organization and the systems your data lives in, then book a call.

  2. 02

    We run the full analysis

    Survival curves, lifetime value, retention, and concentration: the complete review, rebuilt from a secure export of your contacts and gifts.

  3. 03

    Walk through it with us

    In a 30-minute walkthrough, we help you read what the analysis found. The system points to some suggestions, results vary, and you make the decisions.

Get your first analysis

Your first analysis is included with every plan, and it starts with a five-minute conversation. How your data is handled