Donor Retention and Year-End Checklist

Build LYBUNT and SYBUNT lists

• Agree your fiscal year start once and use it for every list.
• Pull the LYBUNT list of donors who gave last year but not this year.
• Pull the SYBUNT list of donors who gave in an earlier year but not this one.
• Remove anyone marked Do Not Contact before an appeal goes out.
• Report retention as not available when your records are too short to judge.
• Write a LYBUNT appeal that recognizes each donor's last gift.

Retention rate: of last year's donors, the share who gave again this year.

Judge silence against each donor's rhythm

• Give each relationship an expected interval: monthly, quarterly, twice a year or annual.
• Measure overdue contact against each donor's own interval, not one cut-off for everyone.
• Add a second contact for any funder reached through only one person.
• Compare contacts in the last 90 days with the 90 days before.
• Acknowledge any gift still unthanked after two weeks today.

Set the thank-you standard before the rush

• Set a gift-to-thank-you standard in days you can keep on your busiest day.
• Pick the gift amount that triggers a personal call from the director or a board member.
• Give every gift a named owner.
• Schedule the next touch at a set gap after each thank-you.
• Check overdue thank-yous daily through December.
• Review on-time rate and workload by owner, and move calls off overloaded owners.

Project year-end giving from your own history

• List your segments, such as current, lapsed and monthly donors.
• Count the contacts in each segment.
• Write your own response rate and average gift beside each segment.
• Multiply contacts by response rate by average gift, then add the segments.
• Compare the projection with the target before December.
• Close any gap by adding a segment, raising an ask or agreeing a new target with the board.

Use your own records, not industry benchmarks. The projection is arithmetic, never a forecast of money raised.

Map the season and keep one gift log

• Put every appeal on one map with start date, end date, audience and goal.
• Count how many other appeals overlap each one.
• Give every touchpoint a prep date and a prerequisite.
• Raise any launch in the next seven days whose prerequisite is not done.
• Confirm appeal goals add up to the season target.
• Log one row per gift with date, amount, campaign, source and thank-you status.
• Flag possible duplicate gifts for review instead of deleting them.

Calculate totals from the gift rows, never type them. A gift with no campaign counts toward no goal.