Create and Schedule a Fundraising Report for End-of-Year Giving in the Salesforce Nonprofit Success Pack

From #GivingTuesday to the end of the giving season, it will be critical for fundraisers to keep close track of progress toward their fundraising goals. For those with Salesforce, you can facilitate that by scheduling a report on that progress so it is emailed to key staff daily. This step-by-step recipe will walk through the creation of a fundraising report and how to schedule its delivery.

For other last minute #GivingTuesday tips, watch our webinar, #GivingTuesday Fundraising for Procrastinators.

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Objective

Create a custom Report in the Salesforce Nonprofit Success Pack that shows gifts from new donors vs. previous donors during this year's giving season and emails it to key staff once a day

Estimated Time

20 - 30 minutes

Requirements

Salesforce Nonprofit Success Pack
Use of the Donations (aka Opportunities) objects to track donations
Rudimentary familiarity with creating custom fields and Reports in Salesforce
Is First Gift Ever custom field outlined in Step One of Chart New Donor Acquisition Cumulatively by Month during the Last 5 Years Salesforce how-to recipe

Desired Outcomes

Chart gifts from new donors vs. previous donors during this year's giving season which will be defined as starting with #GivingTuesday and concluding December 31st
Calculate the average gift amount, largest gift amount, smallest gift amount, and total gifts for gifts during last year's giving season and aggregate by new donors and previous donors
Schedule the report to be emailed to key staff once a day

The End Result

New Donors vs. Previous Donors Last Giving Season in the Salesforce Nonprofit Success Pack

To create the above chart and its custom Report, we'll be following the exact same steps as outlined in our how-to recipe Calculate Giving from New Donors vs. Previous Donors Last Giving Season in the Salesforce Nonprofit Success Pack. If you have already created that Report, you can make a copy of it and adjust the Date filter to be from 11/28/2017 - 12/31/2017. You'll also want to make sure that you update the references to "last year" and 2016 to "this year" and 2017. Once done, you can skip to Step Four in this how-to recipe.

To build this custom report on Opportunities from scratch, follow all of the steps in this how-to recipe. It will allow you to show the above chart with its breakdown of gifts by new donors vs. previous donors during this year's giving season, where "new donor" is defined as someone who gave for the first time ever during that holiday giving season. Totals, averages, minimums and maximums are shown for all donations during this year's end-of-year giving season at the top of the chart with the Report having these metrics for new vs. previous donors.

Step One: Create a custom Report

With our Is First Gift Ever custom Opportunity field created in this earlier recipe, we can create our Report:

Go to the Reports tab
Click New Report
For Select Report Type, choose Opportunities
Click Create
For Show, confirm "All Opportunities" is selected
For Date Field > Range, select "Custom"
For From, enter 11/28/2017 which is #GivingTuesday this year. This date can be updated for future year's reporting.
For To, enter 12/31/2017
Click Filter > Add
In the new Filter form that appears:
- Next, choose "Won" from the field drop down
- Select "equals" for the operator
- Enter "true" in the text field
- Click OK
Click Save and enter in the following values in the popup window and click Save:
- Report Name: New v Previous Donors This Giving Season
- Report Unique Name: New_v_Previous_Donors_This_Giving_Season
- Report Description: Donations from New v Previous Donors During This Giving Season
- For Report Folder, select the folder of your choice
- Click Save

Step Two: Change your Report to a Summary Report and Create a Bucket

Next to the Preview header, click Tabular Format and select Summary
In the Fields left column, double-click Add Bucket Field
In the popup for Source Column, select Is First Gift Ever
For Bucket Name Field, enter "New vs. Previous" without the quotes
In the search field to the right, enter "true" without the quotes and click Search
Tick the checkbox for "True" in the results view
Click the down arrow next to Move To
For the Create New Bucket field, enter "Donations from New Donors" without the quotes
Click Enter
In the search field to the right, enter "false" without the quotes and click Search
Tick the checkbox for "True" in the results view
Click the down arrow next to Move To
For the Create New Bucket field, enter "Donations from Previous Donors" without the quotes
Click Enter
Drag and drop your new New vs. Previous bucket field where it says "Drop a field here to create a grouping."
Hover over the Amount column heading and click the down arrow
Click Summarize this field...
Tick off all of the summary options
Click Apply
Save your report

Step Three: Modify the Report's chart

To create the chart noted above in Lightning, edit the default chart as follows:

Display As: Donut Chart
Chart Title: New v Previous Donors 2017 Giving Season
Label Groups: Values
Cumulative: check
Add: Group
Save your Report

Step Four: Schedule the Report to email to you and other staff

Now we can schedule our report to be sent to ourselves and other Salesforce users. The process is different depending on which Salesforce user interface you use so we'll tackle them both separately.

For those using Salesforce Lightning, run the report and click the drop down arrow in the upper right and then click Subscribe.

Salesforce Report Subscribe in Lightning

In the modal popup, select the frequency and time at which you wish to start to run the report. We'd recommend Daily and first thing in the morning so you have this information right when you first begin your day. And if you find yourself faced with a time zone you weren't expecting, you can change it for your entire Salesforce org or just your user account.

Salesforce Report Edit Subscription

If you wish to include others but don't see that option in your modal popup, you likely need to enable access levels for sharing Report And Dashboard. This is an arcane little step that will require you to switch to Salesforce Classic for the moment. Once you've done that:

Go to Setup
In the Quick Find field in the left column, search for "Folder Sharing"
Click Folder Sharing
On the Report and Dashboard Folder Sharing page, tick the checkbox for "Enable access levels for sharing report and dashboard folders"
Click Save
Return to Salesforce Lightning and continue with the earlier steps

Salesforce Report Edit Subscription

In Salesforce Classic:

Open the Report
Click the down arrow next to Run
Click Schedule Future Runs...
Select the users, frequency and time at which you wish to start to run the Report
Set the Start date as 11/28/2017 and the End date as 12/31/2017 to run from #GivingTuesday to the end of the year. Click Save Report Schedule.

Clarification

This Report is structured such that, if a new donor during this year-end giving season donates multiple times during that giving season, their first gift will be included in the "Donations from New Donors" cohort and their subsequent gifts in the "Donations from Previous Donors" cohort.

Next Steps