Budget Season is Coming (or is HERE!): Start with Your Data, Not Your Wishlist
If you’ve worked in fundraising for more than a minute, you know how budget season often begins.
Someone asks: “What do you think we can raise next year?”
And suddenly you’re staring at a blank spreadsheet, trying to remember everything that happened over the past 12 months.
Before you start throwing numbers around, the most important thing you can do is get your data organized.
Is this the glamorous side of fundraising? Definitely not.
But is it essential? Hell to the Yes.
When your data is clear, budgeting becomes a strategic exercise instead of a guessing game. And trust me, your Next Fiscal Self will thank you.
Let’s do this together, shall we?
Step 1: Pull a Simple 3-Year Donor Report
Before doing any analysis, start with a basic report that shows you how your donors have behaved over the past three fiscal years.
You don’t need a complicated report, simple is better.
Pull a report that includes:
Donor ID for your database
Donor Name
First Gift Date
First Gift Amount
Last Gift Date
Last Gift Amount
Largest Gift Date
Largest Gift Amount
Lifetime Giving Total
Total Giving in Current Fiscal Year
Total Giving in Last Fiscal Year
Total Giving Two Fiscal Years Ago
Helpful, but optional: Capacity rating.
That’s it. With these fields you can quickly see:
Who is consistent
who is increasing their giving
who might be ready for a larger conversation
who has quietly drifted away
Why Lifetime Giving Matters
Because sometimes a donor’s recent giving doesn’t tell the full story.
A donor who gave $250 this year may ave actually given $7,500 over the last decade.
Another donor who looks lapsed may have given $10,000 historically and simply hasn’t been in contact recently.
That context matters.
Step 2: Clean Your Data before You Analyze it.
Before diving deeper, do a quick data clean up.
Look for:
Duplicate donor records
Gifts coded to the wrong campaign or year
Missing donor information
Obvious data entry errors
Even small improvements can make your analysis more accurate.
Step 3: Create a Simple Working Spreadsheet
Export your report into a spreadsheet where you can easily sort and filter.
Columns will remain the same as your report, but also add columns for:
Segment Group
Relationship Manager Notes
Step 4: Identify Your Core Donor Segments
A helpful exercise is grouping donors into simple categories.
For example:
New Donors: First gift within the past year
Retained Donors: Gave last year and this year.
Upgraded Donors: Increased their giving.
Lapsed Donors: Haven’t given in 12-24 months
High-Capacity Donors: Capcity indicators but not yet giving at that level.
Each group tells you something different about where your future revenue may come from.
A Small Reality Check
Fundraising budgets should never start with a revenue goal.
They should start with an understanding of your donors.
When you know your donor base well, your projections become more grounded in reality and you’re less likely to promise something your team can’t deliver.
Action Steps for This Week:
Pull a 3-Year donor giving report from your database.
Include lifetime giving and largest gift if possible.
Clean obvious data issues before moving forward.
Export the report into a spreadsheet you can sort and analyze.
Segment donors into basic categories (new, retained, upgraded, lapsed)
Next week we’ll talk about the next step: looking honestly at your fundraising performance this year and what your numbers are actually telling you.
Because before we can plan for the future, we need to understand the past.