Overview: Managing Donor Leveling

For organizations managing large fundraising programs, understanding a donor's giving level is vital for knowing how to move them to the next tier of giving or engagement. Our Donor Leveling system allows you to use multiple criteria to establish a hierarchy of giving levels that track your major, mid-level, sustainer, and low-dollar donors. Each level can be configured to display a badge at the top of the donor's record so you can quickly identify your most important donors as soon as you land on their contact record.

You can also implement multiple sets of criteria to set up parallel donor leveling programs to track donors in differing programs. This implementation is common for organizations that track donor leveling in a membership or current giving program but have a separate leveling scheme for things like planned giving or major gifts.

Donor Leveling is part of Bonterra Development's Development Standard, Development Pro, and F&E Enterprise packages.  Setting up Donor Level requires a professional services project.  If you already have a professional services contract for Account Management or a contract for Enhanced Support or Premier Support, your consultant may be able to assist with this setup.  If you do not have Account Management or Enhanced Support or Premier Support or have already used up your project hours, please reach out to your Installed Base Account Executive to get a quote for Enhanced or Premier Support or additional hours. If you don't know who is your Account Executive, use this form to reach your Account Executive: https://www.bonterratech.com/support and select I need help with Sales & Account Management.

When to use Donor Leveling

Organizations that have established giving status levels can use Donor Leveling to automatically track and update each supporter's status on a daily basis.
 

A classic example of donor leveling is a membership program with a tiered structure (Platinum, Gold, Silver, etc) that is time limited. Where donors are in the hierarchy usually depends on the amount and recency of the last gift. If the donor doesn't renew or upgrade their membership by the deadline, they become a "lapsed member". The deadline is often either within the calendar year, the fiscal year, or the one-year anniversary of the date of the gift.
 

Some member programs are more complex and include instances where a donor may give a set amount but not be eligible for benefits or premiums usually given at that level. Or donors may stay in a particular membership category even if their renewal lapses or they give a different amount in subsequent years.
 

Since each organization's membership program is unique, you will need to work with your Account Manager or Client Services to implement this feature in a way that meets your needs. You will need to provide us with a list of criteria to define each of your donor levels and we will set it up for you.
 

Establishing Donor Leveling criteria

Donor Leveling is meant to track a donor's current giving level and the levels are designed to be mutually exclusive. For example, a donor can't be both a Blue member and a Gold member at the same time. As a result, we don't recommend this feature be used for identifying donors in transitional states like Major Gift prospects or recently lapsed donors. A better practice is to apply a level based on their current (or recent) giving level, and then to use other criteria to further segment your donors if you need to do searches or run reports.
 

There are, however, some unique instances where you may want to implement parallel donor levels. For instance, donors could be a Gold member and also part of the Planned Giving Society. You can have several donor groups with levels for each group. Each group is made up of a set of mutually exclusive donor levels. A single donor can have a level in one or more groups. Our team will work with you to design a donor leveling system to fit your needs.
 

In general, donor leveling criteria can be drawn from any of the query fields that exist in Create a List. We can also combine any of the criteria to create more complex leveling systems to meet your needs.
 

Creating sticky levels

By default, donors rise and fall through your full donor level "tree" based on how the dynamic data in their record changes. If they give more, they might rise to a higher donor level. If they make a renewing gift, but at a much lower level, they usually fall to a lower donor level in your hierarchy. 
 

In certain circumstances it's possible for levels to be made sticky, meaning, once they qualify for a level they will stay there indefinitely. You may want to implement this for donors who reach a lifetime giving threshold or for individuals who have a special long-term relationship with the organization. Even though their giving may be less currently, you may decide to continue to treat them the same as when they were giving at their highest level. When creating your Donor Leveling program, be sure to identify any membership levels or criteria that should be sticky for your most loyal and committed members.
 

Identifying and tracking your members

Once your Donor Leveling program has been implemented by your Account Manager or the Client Services team, the leveling feature will run automatically each night to classify your supporters. Donors are added or removed from the levels based on the criteria you provided.
 

You also have the option to include a corresponding badge for each of your membership levels. You may wish to include badges only for specific membership categories, such as Major Donors.

Once Donor Leveling has been activated and run successfully, you will see every supporter's donor level in the Targets section of the Contact Record. Those that are in a level with a badge will display the badge in the top section of their contact record.

Relevant Articles:

Read more about membership

How do I include or exclude donors in a Search?

How do I get a summary of Donors in each level?

How do I add Donor Levels to contribution reports or exports?