I would like not only a report but the ability to query on 'consistent' donors and export easily. Was also very disappointed and frustrated when unable to generate a list of donor who'd given 'X of Y' years but maybe not consecutive years.

Still working on getting a quote from BB about creating a custom report to be able to do this.

I agree with this very much. Just because someone didn't give last year, or for one year a few years ago, doesn't mean they aren't a loyal donor. Without being able to pull this information, we are missing donors who would qualify as loyal and should be recognized as such...

Our organization is also seeking an efficient way to find out how many of our members have given for X years or X of Y years and to easily retrieve donor lists according to the number of years a donor has given. This is basic information, essential to fundraising and something BlackBaud should address right away. Case in point: we have a donor who wants to celebrate his 25 years of giving to our organization by matching any additional gifts from donors who have given to our organization for ten or more years, consecutive or not. We should be able to readily secure an accurate list of eligible donors through Raiser’s Edge instead of having to do a lot of manual manipulations to get the needed information.

Definitely a wonderful idea. We send a special appeal letter to our "loyal" donors each year. "Loyal" translates to anyone who gave a gift in at least 10 of the previous 15 years. When we started this, a BB rep (or maybe it was a Knowledgebase solution) guided me through the complicated process of setting up the query Dianne mentioned and then reworking the Excel file with the "count" function, sorting on total years, eliminating those who fall below my parameters, etc. So the original query is useless for globally adding anything (like the appeal) to these loyal constituents' records. And you better remember to ask for all your fields in the query, like address, last gift amount, etc. because you don't have a query to export. And the next year you have to eliminate the original year and add the next one and start all over.

Hey ladies and gentlemen,

An update, Blackbaud quoted us $4,500 to create a custom report through Crystal. We talked about it and they removed some of the fields and it was still going to cost between $3000-$4000 dollars. We said "No Thank You." We had to manipulate data as described above and I agree with Pat that next year we will have to do it all over again and subtract out those we included this year. Blackbaud does need to create a custom report at no charge for customers to be able to produce this type of information. This is NOT unreasonable information to ask for. We recently sent out our first "Decades of Caring" mailing and this will be an annual event for us. I am not pleased that we have to export all this information out of Raiser's Edge and manually manipulate it to get the number of years given (not necessarily consecutive). We pay a nice price for maintenance and basically got little assistance with this project. I talked with our account manager and he was sympathetic and directed me to this site but without shelling out the money for a Crystal report, we were on our own to come up with a report. It tooks hours to figure out a process and still one that is not easy at that!

One of our Gift clubs is affectionately called the 25-25 club. The donor has given 25,000+ dollars over 25+ non-consecutive years. The "total years" of giving (non-consecutive) is reported on the gift summary form for the individual donor. We need to be able to query against it, export it in data sets, and include it in dashboards & reports.

Oh my goodness! This is EXACTLY the problem I am facing! Only my boss is requesting lists of various levels of giving....5 yrs, 10 yrs, 15 yrs, 20 yrs, 25 yrs and 30 yrs (but not necessarily consecutive giving). I'm glad to know I'm not just overlooking how to run this data! Yes, Blackbaud, please create this report for us!! :)

Agreed! Would be nice to be able to view consecutive months as well for identifying potential monthly donors.

I agree on two counts: 1. a report which provides multiyear, noncnsecutive giving data would be extremely helpful! 2. The report should be able to be exported to an Excel spreadsheet so that the date could be sorted, subtotaled, prioritized, etc.
I just set up a work-around in Exports:
1. Create a Query of donors with a gift date between two time frames (e.g. 2000-2013). If you specificaly want multiple year donors, query on Summary Information/Summary Gift you have several options:
a. Number of Gifts "greater than..."
b. consecutive years giving greater than (use a number of 2-5 to catch multiyear donors)
Save.*
2. Create an Export, using the query you just created to gather your donors. In the export fields you can list all the constituent data you need (name, contact info, constituency, etc). Then create a new column for each year, setting the dates according to your fiscal year, as follows:
Summary Information
Gifts
Total number of gifts: Criteria: Gift date between 1/1/2000 - 12/31/2000 (or FY dates)
KEY to creating consecutive year totals by year = between each year, click on the bold report name at the top of the Output box, then click on Summary information and add info for the next year.
By doing this you can export as many years as you have information.
Be sure to export using the CSV format to keep your numbers in number form. then you can open that CSV spreadsheet and "save as" Excel to continue working.
Now you have a very user-friendly spreadsheet that can be totaled, averaged, etc. by both column and row.
*In lieu of a query, you might also be able to run a sybunt report. Check the create an output query box, then use the output query generated. It would give you all donors from all years, so it is not ideal, but another way to work around nevertheless.

Samona - I do not recommend using total number of gifts. This could include gifts that have been adjusted down to $0 (due to a bounced check or gift entry error) unless you remember to use a start amount of $0.01 or exclude zero amount gifts - causing people to look like donors who may not be. I recommend using total gift amount since $0 gifts would never impact a total amount.

I am in complete agreement as to why Blackbaud cannot set a canned report to show amount of years a donor has given. We recognize loyal donors each year at an annual banquet and the process I go through is crazy when we have a database as sophisticated as the Raiser's Edge. Needless to say, all organizations need to know who their loyal donors are over the years. When a donor happens to miss a year of giving they are then thrown out of the consecutive years report.

Has any work been done by Blackbaud to address the need for this type of report? Still needing an easier work around.