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Author: Kristenson, Joel
Last Updated: 2017-08-24
Overview
This article walks through the steps to find recurring *donation* records in the Contributions List,and how to build a monthly donation report using the format and pivot tools to show what donors have given month-by-month.
As of the time this article was written there are two merchant gateways that you can use with Trail Blazer that support recurring credit card donations, they’re Authorize.Net and Vanco Services.
Example monthly recurring donation report:
Tip: this article provides a variety of useful SQL queries you can utilize to filter your data. Most of the examples in this SQL tutorial are requests that customers have had over the years, which require using the SQL tab.
Steps
Open the Contributions list.
Under the General tab click the Recurrence drop-down, select Monthly & Monthly / Sustaining, click [OK], and then click [Search] to populate the list with all the recurring monthly donations in your database. In this example there were 222 monthly recurring monthly donations.
Tip: you can filter this report further by things like date-range if necessary:
After generating the list of recurring donations, click the [Format] drop-down and select Columns…
Make sure that these columns are selected, and then click [OK]:
- First Name
- Last Name
- ContributionYearMonth
- DonorID (not show, but included by default)
- Amount
After the columns listed above are added to the grid, click the Pivot button.
Under the Row Label tab select Donor ID, First Name, and Last Name.
Under the Column Labels tab select Contribution Year Month.
Under the Data tab select Amount, and then click [OK] to generate the pivot report.
The report will display your recurring monthly *donors* with the total amount they’ve donated each month. My finished example is below (only the first 15 months display in the screenshots as my report goes all the back to 2012 when my monthly recurring donations started).
You can export, print, and graph the pivot report using the buttons on the top tool strip.
Return back to the contribution list you built in the previous steps in order to save both the format and the search query for future use.
To save the search query as a favorite, expand the Advanced Functions tool strip, and click blue the [Save] button.
Create a descriptive name, and then click [Save]. My example is below which I called “Recurring Monthly Donations”.
You can reload the saved search in the future under the Favorites tab.
To save the format click the [Format] drop-down > Save As…
Give the format a descriptive name and click [Save]. In this example I called it “Ready for Pivot”.
You can reload the format in the future by clicking the [Format] drop-down > Select Saved…
Choose the format you previously saved, and click [Select and Close].
Take a look at the related resources below for a wide variety of other articles and videos related to this topic.
Related Resources
Article: Advanced Queries – the SQL Tab
Article: SQL Wildcards
Article: Creating and Saving Default Formats for Reporting with the Grid
Article: Search Query – New Donors This Month, and This Year (Primarily for Nonprofits)
Article: How to Create a Donor LYBUNT Search Query (Donors Who Gave Last Year But Unfortunately Not This Year) and How to Save and Load it as a Search Favorite
Article: Building a Search Query for ‘First Time Donors’ THIS Year – Save and Load it as a Favorite & Add it to your Dashboard
Article: Save and Load a Search Query as a (Dynamic) Search Favorite
Article: How to Delete or Rename a Search Favorite (Query)
Article: What Donors Have Increased Giving Over Last Year
Article: How to Use the New Dashboard Features – Adding Graphs and Metrics with Drag-and-Drop
Video: Reporting 105 – Pivots – summary reporting
Video: Getting Started 105 – Queries with an AND condition
Video: Reporting 102 – Quick Reports and Export
Video: Getting Started 104 Queries with wildcards
Video: Favorites Deleting Saved Queries
Video: Getting Started 102 Beginning Queries - Nonprofit
Video: Reporting 104 – Joined tables
Video: Search – Contribution AndOR (donated in 1 time period but not another)
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