Using LYBUNT & SYBUNT Reports To Find Your Lost Donors

Steven ShattuckJune 01, 2017

financial stewardship

First-time donors only make a second donation 23% of the time. But if a donor gives a second time, they instantly become 64% likely to give again. The more a donor interacts, the more that metric goes up. If you’re able to find these lost donors, you can attempt to win them back. That’s where LYBUNT and SYBUNT reports come into play.

If you can’t get your donors to engage beyond their first interaction, then your time, energy, and money pushing your donors through the donor journey only culminates in a single gift instead of a second or recurring donation. In this post, we’ll show you how to identify your lost donors and how to being re-engaging them.

LYBUNT & SYBUNT Reports

The first step in preventing donor lapse is to find out who these lost donors are. You may be familiar with both of these terms, but for those of us who aren’t, LYBUNT stands for last year but unfortunately not this year. SYBUNT stands for some year but unfortunately not this year.

LYBUNT and SYBUNT are the two easiest ways to target your lapsed donors. If Jerry donated to Save The Sea Turtles with your nonprofit last year but hasn’t had any donation activity this year, then you’ve just found a lapsed donor. Now that you know who his is, we can figure out how to inspire him to give again.

So you’ve got this donor that gave last year but they haven’t yet this year. The first step is discovery, the second is recovery. And the number one ingredient to recovering a donor? Engagement.

Re-Engaging Your Lost Donors

Engagement needs to be based on the type of person that donor is, or the type of persona category they fall within. If engagement looks like an email for every type of persona, then your email wording and images need to be catered differently to each persona type.

Engage them in your email with a story, and assume that with more distance in communication or interaction (3 years as opposed to 1), the less likely this contact will be familiar with your organization. And they need to be communicated with based on that history of (or lack thereof) interaction for anything to stick.

Using Reports To Find & Win Back Lapsed Donors

LYBUNT and SYBUNT reports are incredible tools to expand your donor base. Make sure you’re engaging more efficiently, and increase your active donors and total revenue. There are also other reports you need to run in your donor management platform on a regular basis, such as first-time givers, recurring givers, and major givers. Read more to find out how to use donor reporting to increase donor retention in your organization.

Top 5 Reports To Run In Your Donor Management Platform »

Schedule a live demo with our partner Bloomerang, and we’ll show you how easy it is to create and automate reports, utilize online and offline fundraising tools, quickly integrate and access all your data, and ultimately create more time to engage your donors.

Filed Under:   Donor Management