How Steward counts

The definitions

Average gift: the total of the counted gifts divided by how many there are, to the cent. A refund comes off the total and is not a gift. Soft and matching credits are not gifts. Pledges do not count until they are paid; each payment on one is a gift.

Retention, the Fundraising Effectiveness Project measure: of the people who gave last fiscal year (your organization's own year), the share who have given again this fiscal year.

Retention at the same point last year: of the people who gave the fiscal year before last, the share who had given again by this date last year. Use it to compare this year so far with last year.

First gift date: the earliest gift above zero on file, or the first gift your old system told us about if that is earlier. It is kept up to date whenever a gift is added, edited, refunded or deleted, two people are merged, or a file is imported.

This year and last year: your fiscal year, the one you set under Settings, Your words, "When does your year start?" (choose January for the calendar year). Home and Fundraising show the dates once at the top. Year-end tax statements stay on the calendar year, because that is the tax year.

Money

A gift is the full amount the donor paid, including a processing fee they chose to cover. The fee and the net show beside it on the gift. Finance uses the net for bank deposits and reconciliation. Campaigns, Lifetime and averages use the gift amount.

Soft and matching credits are never added to Lifetime, a campaign total, a goal total or an average. They are shown as their own Soft credit figure on the profile and in reports, with the gifts behind it.

A grant assigned to a campaign counts toward it, on the public bar too, unless the campaign has "Leave grants off the public bar" turned on.

Goals

A goal counts the gifts dated inside its own start and end dates, the same on Home and Fundraising.

A parent goal totals the gifts given to it directly plus the gifts given to its child goals, and a gift is never counted twice.

One rule each

Lapsed: they have given before, but not in the last 12 months. Lapsing: their last gift was 9 to 12 months ago. The tags, the Directory, groups, Drift, journeys and Lost & Found all use this one rule, on your organization's own calendar. Retained: they gave last fiscal year and have given again this fiscal year.

Giving level is what someone gave in the last 12 months against your cut points in Settings, Giving levels. It is the only giving level Steward uses: the Directory, groups, Communications and the Board all read it.

A household is the household record. Linking two people as spouses or as a household puts them in one household, and the household's combined giving is the one household total.

History and Ask

First gift, Donor since and the lifecycle tags (New, Current and the rest) count the gifts your old system told us about. If the file gave no first gift date, its last gift date is used, because the person had given by then.

Ask answers with the same figures as the screens. What one person gave is their profile's figure: Lifetime for all time, This year for your year. "This year" for the whole organization is the same year Home and Fundraising show, with its dates.

History from your old system

When a file brings a person's total from your old system (with or without their gifts), Steward keeps that total as its own figure, with the file's name and the date it came in. Nothing Steward does later changes it.

Lifetime is that total plus the gifts in Steward dated after the last day it covers. The last day is the old system's last gift date, or the day of the import when the file had none. A gift dated on or before that day is already inside the old total, so it is never counted twice.

The profile says so under Lifetime, for example "Includes $50,000 from your old system (before Mar 2025)", and the Lifetime drawer shows the old total as one row.

Gifts with no date

A gift your file gave no date for still lands on the person who gave it, marked "No date". Steward never makes up a day for it.

It counts in Lifetime, the gift count, the average gift, and the event or campaign it was given to.

It never counts in This year, a goal's period, retention, lapsed or lapsing, or any other figure for a span of time, because its year is not known. Where one of those figures leaves gifts out, it says so, for example "1 gift with no date not counted", and that number opens the gifts.

First gift, Last gift and Donor since use dated gifts only. Someone whose only gifts have no date shows "Donor since: unknown".

Click "Set date" on the gift to give it a day. From then on it counts like any other gift on that day.