Every Monday at 8 AM, last week's gifts are pulled from the donor CRM into a one-page email digest: each campaign's total against its goal, new and returning donors, cancelled monthly gifts and the five largest gifts with links to the donor records.
Typical results
Mon 8 AM
Digest in every team inbox
Under 7 days
From a cancelled monthly gift to a follow-up call
≈50%
Less time building the month-end board report
Figures reflect typical results for this kind of automation.
The challenge
An emergency appeal, a year-round monthly giving program and a peer-to-peer run are often live at once, and nobody has a clear view of the week. The development officer spends Monday morning exporting gifts, sorting them by campaign in a spreadsheet and writing a summary, and cancelled monthly gifts often go unnoticed until the month-end board report.
Before and after
Hours per week building the fundraising update
−86%Hours to build the month-end board report
−50%Days before a cancelled monthly gift is noticed
−84%The automation
Every Monday at 8 AM, Make pulls the previous week's gifts from the donor CRM and groups them by campaign. It emails the director and fundraising team a one-page digest with total raised against each campaign's goal, new and returning donors, monthly gifts cancelled during the week and the five largest gifts, each linked to its donor record. The same figures are added to a Google Sheets tab, so the month-end board report starts from numbers that already exist.
How it works
- 01
Gifts pulled every Monday
At 8 AM Make collects the previous week's gifts, refunds and monthly gift changes from the donor CRM.
- 02
Grouped by campaign
Each gift is counted toward its campaign, and each campaign's running total is compared with its goal.
- 03
Donor changes flagged
New and returning donors are counted, and monthly gifts cancelled during the week are listed with the donor and amount.
- 04
Digest emailed to the team
The director and fundraising team get a one-page email with the five largest gifts, each linked to its donor record.
- 05
Figures saved for the board
The same numbers are added as a new row in a Google Sheets tab that feeds the month-end board report.
Starts from
- Gifts in the donor CRM
- Campaign goals
Delivers
- Monday email to the team
- Board report figures
- Cancelled monthly gifts
The impact
The development officer saves about 3 hours every Monday, and the whole team starts the week with the same numbers. Cancelled monthly gifts are seen within days, so the team can call those donors while there is still a chance to keep them, and the board report takes about half the time.
Questions about this automation
Which donor CRMs can it read from?
Any CRM or donation platform that Make can connect to or that exports gifts on a schedule, including common nonprofit CRMs, HubSpot, Salesforce and Airtable bases used as donor databases. Campaign codes on each gift are what matter, so gifts without a code are listed separately for someone to assign.
Can different people get different versions?
Yes. The director can get the full digest, campaign leads a version limited to their own campaign, and the treasurer only the totals. Each version is built from the same data at the same time, so the numbers always agree, and recipients can be added or removed in a settings sheet.
What is needed before the first digest goes out?
Read access to the donor CRM, the list of active campaigns with their goals and the recipients. Simple automations like this are usually live within days, and the first digest is checked against the development officer's own figures before it replaces the manual report.