Apteco Mission research · October 2026

What 42 charities' board reports show about their supporter data

By Kyle Keith, Apteco

In October 2026 we read the public board documents of 42 charities, 41 in Canada and 1 in the United States: 100 annual reports, audited financial statements and strategic plans, plus each charity's own website. Here is what showed up again and again. No charity is named.

How we did it

For each charity we did three things:

• listed the ways a supporter can give or take part, like giving online, giving monthly, volunteering or buying an event ticket;
• looked for public proof of which CRM (the database that holds donor records) the charity uses;
• wrote four questions about their supporters that their own reports raise. That is 168 in all.

1. Supporters come in through many doors

Every charity had several ways in. We listed between four and six for each one.

Each door brings in a different kind of supporter. A monthly donor, a volunteer and an event guest can all be the same person.

2. Many of those doors are on other websites

The most common was CanadaHelps, used by 11 of the 42. Others included ticketing, raffle and volunteer platforms.

Why it matters: each website keeps its own list of people. Unless those lists are joined, one supporter can look like two or three different people. A guest who later gives through CanadaHelps can look like a brand-new donor.

3. For almost half, the public record doesn't show the CRM

For the other 23, the proof was something public, such as a donation form, a membership page or a job posting that named the system:

• Blackbaud products: 11 (Raiser's Edge at 7 of them)
• Salesforce, or a product built on it: 6
• Keela: 2
• iMIS, Virtuous and Sumac: 1 each
• Salesforce or Microsoft Dynamics (the proof fit both): 1

Not finding the CRM says nothing about how well a charity uses its data. It only means anyone offering help has to ask first.

4. The most common opportunity: event guests who never gave

For each charity we picked the two Mission pathways that fit its reports best, 84 picks in all. The one that came up most often by far:

The next most common:

• The First 90 Days, asking new donors for a second gift on time: 14
• Catch Them Before They Lapse: 10
• Volunteers Who Have Never Given: 10
• Monthly Giving Conversion: 8
• Funder Reporting and Stewardship: 5

The events ranged from walks and runs to galas and lotteries. The people who come are already involved, which makes them a natural group to ask.

What Canadian research says

Our 42 charities are a small sample. The widest Canadian study we know of points the same way. Future Proof, from the Canadian Centre for Nonprofit Digital Resilience, reports that only 14% of Canadian nonprofits say their organization is fully integrated digitally, while 81% of nonprofit workers believe digital skills are essential. Nearly half describe their organization's digital skills as basic or just starting out.

The top skills gaps it names are privacy and data security (32%), data-informed decision-making (24%) and data management (23%). That is the gap a joined-up supporter record closes without a hire: the insight is built and delivered, not dug for.

Try it on your own data

You can test any of this with three columns from your CRM: supporter ID, gift amount and gift date. No names, no addresses.

Or see every pathway, audience and insight in the Apteco Mission Field Guide.