What to track on a fundraising dashboard

A fundraising dashboard should answer one question at a glance: are you going to hit your goal, and where is the gap. Four numbers do that: money raised against the goal, pledges that have not come in yet, donors who have not been thanked, and the follow-up tasks waiting on your team. Everything else on the dashboard supports one of those four.

The situation that makes a dashboard necessary is familiar to anyone who has run call time or an appeal. The spreadsheet says one number, the bank statement says another, and nobody can say for certain how many pledges are still outstanding without opening three tabs. A fundraising dashboard fixes that by reading the records you already keep: your donor list, your call notes, your donation pages, and your reports, instead of asking someone to rebuild the numbers by hand.

This post lists the numbers worth tracking, where campaigns and nonprofits read them differently, and which report should come out of the dashboard before a filing deadline or a board meeting.

Key Takeaways
– Four numbers anchor every fundraising dashboard: total raised against goal, pledges outstanding, donors not yet thanked, and open follow-up tasks.
– Average gift size and new-versus-repeat donors catch problems a total raised figure hides, like a single large gift covering for a weak appeal.
– Campaigns read the dashboard for filing deadlines and contributor detail; nonprofits read it for acknowledgment speed and donor retention.
– A missing-acknowledgment count only matters if a person is assigned to clear it, so pair every metric with a task and an owner.
– The dashboard and the report you file or hand to your board should pull from the same numbers, not a second spreadsheet built the night before.

What a fundraising dashboard is

A fundraising dashboard is a single view of the money you have raised, the money still coming, and the work left to get it. It is not a separate database. It reads the same donor records, call notes, and donation pages you already keep, and turns them into numbers you can check in a minute instead of a spreadsheet you have to rebuild for every meeting.

FundHero’s dashboard builds this view from your donor records automatically, so the numbers below live in one place instead of a second file someone maintains by hand.

The core numbers every fundraising dashboard should show

Five numbers belong on the first screen, before anything else:

• Total raised against goal, broken out by period: the current appeal, the quarter, the election cycle.
• Pledges made versus pledges paid, with the gap between them labeled as outstanding pledges, not folded into the total.
• Donations by source: online, check, cash, so you know where money is actually arriving, not just how much.
• Average gift size, so one large check does not make a weak appeal look strong.
• New donors versus repeat donors for the period, since a total raised figure cannot tell you whether you are growing the list or living off the same ten people.

Put these five on one screen. A dashboard that needs three clicks to answer “are we on pace” is a report, not a dashboard.

Donor and follow-up metrics worth a tile of their own

A number without an owner does not get worked. Three donor-level metrics need a task attached, not just a count:

• Outstanding pledges by donor, with the pledge date, so “overdue” means something specific.
• Missing acknowledgments, the gifts nobody has thanked yet. Smart Groups and donor profiles can surface this list automatically instead of asking someone to remember it.
• Donor retention, the share of last year’s donors who gave again this year. It moves slowly, so check it quarterly rather than daily. Our post on calculating donor retention rate walks through the formula, and the Fundraising Effectiveness Project publishes sector-wide numbers to compare against.

A missing-acknowledgment count that nobody is assigned to clear is just a number that makes people feel bad. Assign it to a person and a date, the same way you would a pledge.

Online giving metrics on the dashboard

If you take donations online, two more numbers belong on the dashboard: completed gifts by donation page, so you know which page or appeal is actually converting, and recurring gift count, since a handful of monthly donors can outweigh a single large one-time gift over a year. Donation Pages and Recurring Donations are the two features that feed these numbers, and they are worth checking weekly during an active appeal, not just at the end of it.

Where campaigns and nonprofits read the dashboard differently

Both audiences need the five core numbers. The tiles each group checks first are different.

Campaigns check the dashboard for the filing deadline. The number that matters most is contributions by reporting period, broken out the way your jurisdiction requires. Filing deadlines and the detail federal filers must report are set out in the FEC’s filing instructions; state and local rules differ, so confirm what applies to your office with your state’s campaign finance office before you rely on any dashboard number for a filing. Our post on campaign finance reporting covers how that report comes together.

Nonprofits check the dashboard for acknowledgment speed and retention, since the goal is the second gift, not just the first. A donor claiming a deduction of $250 or more needs a contemporaneous written acknowledgment, per the IRS guidance on substantiating charitable contributions, which is one more reason the missing-acknowledgments tile earns a permanent spot on a nonprofit’s dashboard.

Turning the dashboard into the report you file or hand to the board

A dashboard you check daily and a report you hand to a treasurer or a board should come from the same numbers. If they do not, something is being recalculated by hand somewhere, and that is where errors creep in. Premade reports built from the same donor and donation records as the dashboard, exportable to Google Sheets or Excel, keep the two in sync: the number on the screen on Tuesday should match the number in the filing or the board packet on Friday.

Frequently asked questions

What should a fundraising dashboard show first?

Total raised against your goal, outstanding pledges, missing acknowledgments, and open follow-up tasks. Those four numbers answer whether you are on pace and what is left to do, before you look at anything else.

How often should dashboard numbers update?

Donations and pledges should update as they happen, since a stale total hides exactly the gap you are trying to see. Slower-moving numbers, like donor retention, are worth checking monthly or quarterly instead of daily.

Can a spreadsheet be a fundraising dashboard?

Yes, for a small list and one person maintaining it. It stops working once a pledge or an acknowledgment has to reach a second person, because a spreadsheet does not assign the follow-up or remind anyone it is overdue.

What is the difference between a campaign dashboard and a nonprofit dashboard?

Campaigns weight the dashboard toward the filing deadline and contributor detail their jurisdiction requires. Nonprofits weight it toward acknowledgment speed and donor retention, since the goal is next year’s gift, not just this year’s.

Should a fundraising dashboard include donor retention if it does not change much week to week?

Yes, as a number you check on a schedule rather than daily. A retention rate that is slipping is easier to fix when you catch it at the quarter mark instead of at the annual report.

Build the dashboard from numbers you already have

A fundraising dashboard does not need new data. It needs five numbers on one screen: total raised against goal, pledges outstanding, donations by source, average gift size, and new versus repeat donors, plus the donor-level metrics, missing acknowledgments and retention, that keep the relationship going.

Pick the five that matter most to your team this week, put an owner on every metric that implies a task, and make sure the report you file or hand to your board pulls from the same numbers as the dashboard.

If you are assembling this from a spreadsheet today, start a free trial. No payment information is required, so you can see your own donor records on a dashboard before you decide anything.