Contents
Reporting for a Year-End Appeal Letter
Reporting on This Year's Donors
Reporting on This Year's Donations
Reporting on People Who Had More Than One Transaction Type This Year
Reporting on Donor History
This guide details how to run several reports that are especially useful for year-end. For more information on using this data to send letters and emails, click here to view our Year-End Communications guide.
Reporting for a Year-End Appeal Letter
Every organization has different criteria for who should receive a year-end appeal. However, there some common criteria that many nonprofits use. For example, you likely do not want to solicit people who have already made a donation in the last few months. Let's say we would like to send our year-end appeal letter to everyone who a) has never made a donation, or b) has not made a donation in the last three months.
To create this report, go to Reports -> New Report -> Communication and Mailing -> Mailing Report.
You will be taken to the standard reporting screen in Neon. Note that Neon has already added three criteria: It is excluding people who are marked as deceased, people who are marked as Do Not Contact, and people with at least one email opted-in.
You probably want to include people who don't want to receive email in your mailing list, so you can remove the Email Opt-Out criteria by Editing the criteria area, and then removing that criterion.
This is also where we can Add Criteria. First, let's look for people who have not made a donation. To report on donation information, find the donation category in the dropdown and select First Donation Date Blank.
Add a second group
Now we need to add the second criterion, people who have not made a donation in the last three months. To add this criteria, we need to add a group.
A group in Neon reporting indicates that we want our results to display accounts that meet one set of criteria (in this case, All Donation Amount Equal 0) or people who have not donated in the last three months.
To do this, click Add Search Group. Neon has now added a second group for criteria. Note that because this is a Mailing Report, Neon has added the same User Deceased, Do Not Contact, and Email Opt Out criteria as it did in the first group. Again, you can remove Email Opt Out if you are okay with mailing to those constituents.
Now we can add our second set of criteria. Again, we are reporting on donation information, so look in the Donation category. In this case, we're looking for people who haven't donated in the last three months, so we only want people who made donations prior to August 1 of this year.
Select Donation Date Less & Equal 09/01/2015. You can do this by either typing in the date in the MM/DD/YYYY format, or selecting a date from the calendar. Click Save Changes.
The Search Criteria summary will now update to show the two groups of criteria that you are using. In this case, we are looking for donors who have never made a donation (First Donation Date Blank) or have not made a donation in the last three months (Donation Date Less & Equal 08/01/2014). To run your report, click Run Report, or you may want to first check that you have the columns you need.
Columns will be available for you to add as merge fields into your appeal letter when you draft it in Microsoft Word.
For example, we will want to include their address in our letter, so we want to make sure that Street 1, City, State, etc. are columns in our report output. To add or remove the available columns, click Edit Columns.
The Edit Output Columns screen has two columns: the items that you want included as columns in your report results (Selected) and the items that you do not (Available). To add columns to your report output, drag and drop them from Available to Selected. To remove columns, drag them from Selected to Available. You can also drag and drop columns within Selected to rearrange the order of the column display.
Once you have updated your columns, click Save Changes to return to the report configuration page.
If everything is in order, click Run Report to see your results.
We have 1075 accounts in our system who have not donated in the last three months or have never made a donation. All of these accounts are also not marked as deceased and have not opted out of mailings and emails from us. To make changes to your report, you can go back by clicking Configure Report.
Or, to save, click Save Report Configuration. A pop-up will appear where you can enter a name and choose who can access the report.
This report will now be accessible from Reports Saved Report.
Reporting on This Year's Donors
Many organizations also want to send receipts to donors who gave in the calendar or fiscal year. To do this, go to Reports -> New Report -> Communication and Mailing -> Mailing Report.
You will be taken to the standard reporting screen in Neon. Note that Neon has already added three criteria: it is excluding people who are marked as deceased, people who are marked as Do Not Contact, and people who are marked as Email Opt Out.
You probably want to include people who don't want to receive email in your mailing list, so you can remove the Email Opt Out criteria by blanking it out in the criteria area, then clicking Load your criteria.
This is where we will set our criteria noted above. To report on donation information, click the Donation tab. Scroll down to the bottom of the Donation tab screen. The criteria you will select will depend on if you are looking for donors in the calendar year or fiscal year. Both criteria options are at the bottom of this screen. If I want everyone who has donated in the current calendar or fiscal year, I would select This Calendar Year Total or This Fiscal Year Total greater than 0.
Alternatively, you may only want to search for donors who have given a certain amount or greater in this calendar or fiscal year. To do this, you would select This Calendar Year Total or This Fiscal Year Total greater than the amount. In this example, I want to see all of my donors who gave $100 or more this calendar year.
Once you have selected your criteria, click Save Changes. You will see your criteria summarized in the Search Criteria area.
Columns will be available for you to add as merge fields into your annual receipt letter when you draft it in Microsoft Word. For example, we will want to include their address in our letter, so we want to make sure that Street 1, City, State, etc. are columns in our report output. To change your columns, select Edit Columns under Output Columns.
The Edit Output Columns screen has two columns: the items that you want included as columns in your report results (Selected) and the items that you do not (Available). To add columns to your report output, drag and drop them from Available to Selected. To remove columns, drag them from Selected to Available. You can also drag and drop columns within Selected to rearrange the order of the column display. I have edited several of my columns.
Once you have updated your columns, click Select Columns to return to your report summary and Run Report. From the results page, you can go back to edit your criteria by clicking Configure Report or save your report by clicking Save Report Configuration.
Save Report Configuration will open a screen where you can choose a name for your report and decide who has access.
Reporting on This Year's Donations
In Neon, you can run reports for donor information and donation information. A Mailing Report, mentioned above, will give us donor information - how many donations the donor made this year, their address, etc. However, you may also want a report of donation information for this year that includes information on the amount of each donation, its associated campaign, etc.
Run a Donation Detail Report by going to Reports -> New Report -> Fundraising -> Donation Donation Detail Report.
You will be taken to the main reporting screen in Neon. To narrow down the donations click Edit under Search Criteria. We want to find all donations that have been made in 2014. Use the criteria called Donation Date by searching for it or looking under the Donation category under "Search Group 1".
To report in date ranges in Neon, we will need to use the Advanced operator. Select the drop-down menu to the right of Donation Date and choose the final option, Advanced...
The Advanced fields will display beneath the criteria. We are going to provide Neon with the date range that we are looking for gifts in.
- Select Greater & Equal for the first operator and enter the first date in the field to the right of the operator.
- Then select Add Advance Criterion and choose Less & Equal and enter the second date in the range in the field to the right of the operator.
- Once you've entered you dates, you can Save Changes.
Your Donation Date information will now be complete. Add any other criteria, then click Save changes. Your criteria will now be displayed on the Main Reporting Page.
Here you can review your criteria and Edit the Output Columns to change what data is displayed about the resulting donations. For more information on Columns, click here.
Click Run Report to view your report results.
If you would like to see different data in your report, you can always click the Configure Report button to return to the Main Reporting page.
Reporting on People Who Had More Than One Transaction Type This Year
Many organizations that have more than one transaction type in Neon (donations, memberships, event registrations, store purchases) want to know how many people had more than one transaction type with their organization this year. For example, let's say I want a list of all of my donors who were also members this year. To do this, I can go to Reports -> New Report -> Communication And Mailing -> All Accounts Report.
First, we want to set the criteria for everyone who made a donation this year. To report on donation information, find the donation category in the search field dropdown.
The criteria you will select will depend on if you are looking for donors in the calendar year or fiscal year. If I want everyone who has donated in the current calendar or fiscal year, I would select This Calendar Year Total or This Fiscal Year Total greater than 0.
Alternatively, you may only want to search for donors who have given a certain amount or greater in this calendar or fiscal year. You would select This Calendar Year Total or This Fiscal Year Total greater than the amount.
In this example, I want to see all of my donors who gave $100 or more this calendar year.
Now we need to add our criteria to see the constituents who were also members this year. If we want to see everyone who was a member at any point this year, we need to set a date range for Membership Expiration Date.
To report in date ranges in Neon, we will need to use the Advanced operator, which will allow you to choose multiple operators. The first one will appear below automatically.
- Choose your date, (in this case Greater & Equal to 01/01/2015) then add a second operator by clicking Add Advanced Criterion.
- Add your second date (in this case Less Than & Equal to 10/21/2015).
Your Membership Expiration Date information will now be complete. Add any other criteria, then click Save Changes.
Your two criteria will now display in the left panel.
As always, you can Edit the Output Columns option to change the data being displayed about the resulting constituents. For more information on Columns, click here.
Click Run Report to view your report results.
Reporting on Donor History
Cumulative transaction data in Neon is available in New Reports for the current fiscal year and/or current calendar year. If you need to report on an account's transaction activity outside of those date ranges, you can use a Stats Report. More information on the Stats Report is available here.
To create a Stats Report, go to Reports -> New Report -> Communication And Mailing -> Stats Report.
Let's say we want to see everyone in our system who made any sort of transaction with us (donation, membership, event registration, and/or store purchase) in the last two years. First, we can select the Transaction Type of All Transactions. If we don't need all the transaction types, we could simply check the ones we needed (e.g. Donations and Event registrations).
Next, you need to set the Date Range that you wish to report on. In this case, we want to report on transactions in the last two years, so I am going to enter the appropriate dates in the Start Date and End Date fields.
Finally, if I want to, I can limit my search results only to people who made a certain amount or number of transactions. For amount, enter a Min and/or Max Total Amount. For number of transactions, enter a Min and/or Max Total Count. In this case, I am looking for people who have made at least $100 in transactions in the last two years.
Once you have set your criteria, click Save and Continue.
You will be taken to a Neon report summary screen. You can use this to set additional criteria. For example, if I want to see all constituents who have made at least $100 in transactions in the last two years and live in Chicago, I can click Edit under Search Criteria to add that criteria.
You can also configure columns from this page by clicking Edit under Output Columns. For more information on Columns, click here.
Once you have entered your preferred columns and criteria click Run Report to view your report results.