Donation report request

Jodi Cole

SLEC Member
Moving this here, from the departments portion.
I am formally requesting an analysis of our donation data over the past 18 months, to better understand trends and opportunities for improvement in our fundraising efforts. Specifically, I would like to request the following:

  1. Sustaining Membership Donations
    • A graphical representation showing the state of our sustaining donations over the last 18 months.
    • A written report analyzing any notable trends, such as significant drops or increases, with potential explanations or contributing factors.

  1. General and/or One-Time Donations
    • A similar breakdown of general donations, with a focus on distinguishing donations related to specific categories such as:
      • Convention
      • Event-related donations
      • Special fundraisers (ie legal, legislative)
    • Both graphical and written formats, showing where donations were allocated and highlighting any significant patterns or shifts over the given timeframe.
These insights will be invaluable in guiding our strategic decisions and addressing any areas of concern in our fundraising efforts. Please let me know if you need any further details or clarification to proceed.

Thank you for your assistance, and I look forward to your response.

Best regards,
Jodi Cole, SD 07 Rep

I am attaching a screen shot of the original post for reference.
1000012937.webp
 
If you are looking for the quickest route, you could always go look up tec reports. They will have all the info you are looking for. That's how I realized that it took almost 5 months to deposit cash from one of our fundraisers. I can send you a link to the website if you'd like
 
Joe has already agreed to work on these reports. However, I'm not sure through TEC reports that one can determine which of the categories it would be in: Sustaining memberships, or one time donations.
 
By comparing tec reports over time you can determine which are recurring (yearly, monthly) donations and which are one time donations with nearly perfect accuracy. Next week TEC reports are due and you'll have an up to date accounting through the end of the year.
 
By comparing tec reports over time you can determine which are recurring (yearly, monthly) donations and which are one time donations with nearly perfect accuracy. Next week TEC reports are due and you'll have an up to date accounting through the end of the year.
I don't usually look at TEC reports but I'm sure I'm going to have two more often, but from the FEC reports that I have looked at. There's only so much metadata and information that you can gather from those reports they're not the same as the data that we maintain.
 
I don't usually look at TEC reports but I'm sure I'm going to have two more often, but from the FEC reports that I have looked at. There's only so much metadata and information that you can gather from those reports they're not the same as the data that we maintain.
It would take some work, but there is a lot that can be gathered from TEC data. Such as, if you see transactions occuring from the same person and for the same amount on roughly the same day each month, you can infer that that person is a monthly donor even if you don't have the tags that exist in NB to say definitively.

The issue I see with this request is that it's too narrow. 18 months of data doesn't even cover a full political cycle, so unless Jodi is looking for the results of some triggering event from around that time, then 18 months of data won't give us any insight worth taking action on.
 
It would take some work, but there is a lot that can be gathered from TEC data. Such as, if you see transactions occuring from the same person and for the same amount on roughly the same day each month, you can infer that that person is a monthly donor even if you don't have the tags that exist in NB to say definitively.

The issue I see with this request is that it's too narrow. 18 months of data doesn't even cover a full political cycle, so unless Jodi is looking for the results of some triggering event from around that time, then 18 months of data won't give us any insight worth taking action on.
18 months is roughly about how long we've had nationbuilder, so my request was more pragmatic than anything else. I have no objection going back further. I do think that is a lot more work, but I could be wrong.
 
Jodi, I wanted to post this here as well as the SLEC meeting reports. My report covers recurring membership data from 2022 to 2024. As far as the report for one time donations, events, and directed donations, that data will be more difficult to completely report. Joe and I will be working on this and will post when we complete it.
 

Attachments

Moving this here, from the departments portion.
I am formally requesting an analysis of our donation data over the past 18 months, to better understand trends and opportunities for improvement in our fundraising efforts. Specifically, I would like to request the following:

  1. Sustaining Membership Donations
    • A graphical representation showing the state of our sustaining donations over the last 18 months.
    • A written report analyzing any notable trends, such as significant drops or increases, with potential explanations or contributing factors.

  1. General and/or One-Time Donations
    • A similar breakdown of general donations, with a focus on distinguishing donations related to specific categories such as:
      • Convention
      • Event-related donations
      • Special fundraisers (ie legal, legislative)
    • Both graphical and written formats, showing where donations were allocated and highlighting any significant patterns or shifts over the given timeframe.
These insights will be invaluable in guiding our strategic decisions and addressing any areas of concern in our fundraising efforts. Please let me know if you need any further details or clarification to proceed.

Thank you for your assistance, and I look forward to your response.

Best regards,
Jodi Cole, SD 07 Rep

I am attaching a screen shot of the original post for reference. View attachment 840
As to sustaining membership donations: the above report should provide accurate data for the body's analysis. There will be no written report of analysis forthcoming on that data from the Treasurer. In the thread for this meeting, I mentioned what I believe the cause of the recent decline might be. Any other conclusions I might make from this data would be closer to guesses than analysis.

As to general and one/time donations: Compiling the data wouldn't be too difficult, but comparing apples to apples to perform any sort of accurate analysis would be suspect at best. One time donations given at convention are accounted for already on the convention income statement put out with the Q2 financials last year. We ran Andrew's donations to cover Jeff Hewitt's expense through one time donations at the end of last year (a note on this is included in my financial reports for this coming meeting). I suspect if Jocelyn and I were to dig into this on a month-to-month basis, we'd have to have notes on each month to try to adjust each month's amount to make it comparable to other months (apples to apples). I suspect at the end of that extensive effort, that we wouldn't have enough data to draw any solid conclusions given the political cycle, or at least not without going back several years. Complicating matters further is the fact that I have a long list of things that actually need to be done regarding our finances/accounting software/reporting and completing these sorts of side quests has delayed me from being able to put that time towards completing those things (including the things I ran for office on). I've decided that I will not be spending any additional time on these other issues until I can get my prioritized issues dealt with. This does not mean that I do not want to issue the report you are requesting or that I will not issue the report, because I am curious myself. It just means that I have higher priority items that require the very little time I have to give at the moment.
 
Thanks Joe. The monthly membership report is great. I have taken the advice given and pulled TEC reports, going back to 2015, as of now. I have complied then all into a singular spreadsheet (it's 15k lines, and that's just the contributions). Combing through that data is painstakingly long, and I'm working on ways to try to query the data to get what I'm asking for here. I'll reach out once I make some sense of it.
 
Thanks Joe. The monthly membership report is great. I have taken the advice given and pulled TEC reports, going back to 2015, as of now. I have complied then all into a singular spreadsheet (it's 15k lines, and that's just the contributions). Combing through that data is painstakingly long, and I'm working on ways to try to query the data to get what I'm asking for here. I'll reach out once I make some sense of it.
I'm not sure how it would work or if it would be possible, but I wouldn't be opposed to giving you or any member of this body read only access to QuickBooks. If we can make that happen, it would be much easier on you I am sure.
 
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