People or gifts?

Stop 5 of 58 · about 7 minutes

Are you counting people, or counting gifts? A classic way a board number goes wrong: you count gifts, a colleague counts people, and both of you call it "donors".

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The demo charity's system in Connect: 11 tables. Supporters at the top; Households, Grants, Transaction (Donations), Participants, Volunteers, Emails, Programs, Addresses, Campaigns and Events join to it. Open full size

Sample charity: the people and numbers in these screens are made up, so the picture shows the tool, not a result.

The lesson

Your data sits in tables: Supporters, Donations, Participants, Grants, Volunteer timesheets, Campaigns. Each table counts a different thing.

Supporters counts people.
Donations counts gifts.
Participants counts a person at an event. One person at three events is three participants.

Someone who gave three times is one supporter and three donations. Every count in Orbit tells you which table it is counting. Read that first.

Watch this stop · about a minute

More of it in Orbit

A system diagram in Connect: each table, and how they join. Help Hub: System builds

Your turn, in Field Guide, then Orbit

In the Field Guide, open Base Fields and notice which table each field belongs to.
In Orbit, open Audiences and use the Audience type filter to see how audiences group by table.

Quick check

"How many people gave more than $100 last year?" Which table do you count?

Donations
Supporters
Campaigns

Answer: Supporters

Need a hint?

Supporters counts people. Donations counts gifts.

Why it matters

Count from the right table and every number you share is one people can trust.

Read on

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