# Donor Personas by Age and Place: A Sample Report

Every giver with a postal code we can place lands in one of 20 personas, built from two facts most CRMs already hold: birth year and postal code. This sample report shows what each persona tells you.

## Key takeaways
- Donor Insights places every giver with a postal code it can place in one of 20 personas: four generations, plus Age unknown, crossed with four kinds of place (City, Suburb, Town, Country). Givers it cannot place are in no persona.
- A persona needs two fields already in your CRM. Personas turn on when birth years cover at least 25% of givers and a postal code we can place covers at least 50%.
- Each persona gets two scores. The Donor score measures how healthy its giving is to date, and the Opportunity score measures how much room its givers have to give again, give monthly, or give more.
- In the sample report, Boomer Suburbanites rank No. 1 by Donor score but No. 12 by Opportunity score, so the persona with the strongest giving is not the one with the most room to grow.
- Every persona opens into a First 100 to call list, ordered by Opportunity score, with a Next ask for each giver: Second gift, Go monthly, Upgrade, or Win back.

A donor persona in Donor Insights is a group of givers who share a generation and the kind of place they live. Every giver with a postal code we can place lands in one of 20 personas, such as Boomer Suburbanites or Millennial City Dwellers, built from two facts most CRMs already hold: the giver's birth year and postal code. A giver whose postal code we cannot place is in no persona. Personas turn on for an organization when birth years cover at least 25% of its givers and a postal code we can place covers at least 50%. The rest of this article walks through a sample report for a fictional organization, Example Relief Collective, so you can see what each persona tells you before you turn it on for your own file.

**20** — personas per organization in Donor Insights: four generations, plus Age unknown, each crossed with four kinds of place

## What is a donor persona in Donor Insights?

A persona answers two questions about a giver: when were they born, and what kind of place do they live in. Generation comes from birth year, using the generation boundaries popularized by [Pew Research Center](https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2019/01/17/where-millennials-end-and-generation-z-begins/). A giver with no birth year on file goes into Age unknown rather than being guessed at. Place comes from the giver's postal code. Donor Insights maps each postal area to City, Suburb, Town, or Country, using official public geography files from each country's statistics agency and our own population-density cut-offs.

The two halves of a persona, as the app names them

| Generation | Who | Place | Where |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Gen Z | Born 1997 or later | City | Dense city neighborhoods |
| Millennial | Born 1981 to 1996 | Suburb | The suburbs of large metro areas |
| Gen X | Born 1965 to 1980 | Town | Small cities and towns |
| Boomer | Born 1964 or earlier | Country | Villages and open country |
| Age unknown | No birth year on file |  |  |

Crossing the five generation groups with the four places gives 20 personas. The app names them the way you would describe the people: Gen Z Townies, Millennial Suburbanites, Gen X Country, Boomer City Dwellers. The four groups without a birth year read Age unknown, City through Age unknown, Country. A giver keeps their persona unless the birth year or address on file changes. What changes year to year is the giver's lifecycle stage inside the persona.

These personas describe who your givers are and where they live. They do not describe why a person gives. Motivation still comes from what your team knows about each donor, which our guide to [donor personas beyond RFM](https://donorinsights.com/articles/donor-personas) covers. Generation and place are useful because they change real decisions, such as which channel to lead with and whether a mailed letter or an email reaches a group best.

## What data does a persona need, and what stays private?

Two fields, both already in your CRM. Personas turn on when birth years cover at least 25% of your givers and a postal code we can place covers at least 50%. A giver here means anyone who has made a gift above $0. Postal codes can be placed in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia. In the sample, Example Relief Collective has birth years for 53% of its 24,223 givers and a placeable postal code for 90%, so Personas is on. Givers without a placeable postal code are in no persona.

- Nothing is bought or appended to place a giver in a persona. The birth year comes from your CRM, the postal code from the giver's address, and the kind of place from our mapping of official public geography files.
- Birth year is used to set the generation and is never shown. Lists show an age band, from 18 to 24 up to 65 and over. A birth year that would make a giver younger than 18 is treated as unknown.
- A persona with fewer than 10 givers shows no numbers and has no page, list, or download, so no card describes a handful of identifiable people.
- The lists are named, for your own team's use. Downloads are recorded and limited per person per day.

If your file falls short of either minimum, the Personas screen shows how close you are, with your own coverage drawn against the minimum, and a Request personas button that sends a note to your customer success rep.

## Which persona do you work first?

The app ranks the 20 personas two ways, and the two rankings answer different questions. Both scores run from 0 to 100, and a persona's score is the median of its givers' scores, which means half the givers score above it and half below.

- Donor score: how healthy a giver's giving is to date. It weighs the chance they give in the next 12 months, how much and how often they have given compared with your other givers, whether their giving is rising or falling, and their lifecycle stage.
- Opportunity score: how much room a giver has to do more. It takes the giver's strongest next step, such as a second gift, a monthly gift, a larger gift, or a return after a lapse, and ranks it against every other giver in your organization as a percentile, so a score of 90 means more room than 90% of your givers.

The overview lays the personas out like a periodic table. No. 1 sits top left and the last-ranked persona top right, the way hydrogen and helium sit on the chemistry chart, and the ranks in between fill three rows of six, left to right. A Rank by toggle switches the table between the two scores.

## What does the sample report show?

The sample covers Example Relief Collective, a fictional organization with 24,223 givers, 90% of them placed in personas. Every figure in it is made up for illustration. The table below lists the six personas with the highest Donor score, and the last column gives each one's rank by Opportunity score.

Top six personas by Donor score, Example Relief Collective (sample report, illustrative data)

| No. | Persona | Givers | Median LTV | Donor score | Opportunity rank |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | Boomer Suburbanites | 2,583 | $694 | 59 | No. 12 |
| 2 | Boomer Country | 786 | $746 | 58 | No. 17 |
| 3 | Boomer Townies | 1,237 | $642 | 57 | No. 15 |
| 4 | Boomer City Dwellers | 942 | $602 | 53 | No. 13 |
| 5 | Gen X Country | 553 | $445 | 51 | No. 11 |
| 6 | Gen X Suburbanites | 1,864 | $459 | 48 | No. 9 |

Median LTV is the median lifetime giving per giver to date, so half the persona has given more than that amount and half less. In the sample, Boomer Suburbanites are 12% of placed givers and account for 20% of lifetime giving, and they rank No. 1 by Donor score. By Opportunity score they rank No. 12. Most of them already give steadily, so the room left is mostly an Upgrade. The persona with the most room is Millennial City Dwellers, who rank No. 16 by Donor score: many of them gave for the first time recently and have not yet made a second gift.

The lifecycle chart on each persona compares the persona with the organization average for each of five lifecycle stages. An index of 100 means the persona has the same share of givers in that stage as the organization does, and 150 means half again as many. The chart below sets the two personas side by side.

Lifecycle index by stage, Boomer Suburbanites and Millennial City Dwellers (100 = organization average; sample report, illustrative data)

|  | Boomer Suburbanites | Millennial City Dwellers |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Acquire | 43 | 198 |
| Convert | 61 | 155 |
| Retain | 158 | 46 |
| Lapsed | 85 | 101 |
| Reactivate | 114 | 81 |

Boomer Suburbanites sit at 158 on Retain, far above the organization average, and well below it on Acquire. Millennial City Dwellers show the opposite shape. One group is a file to keep and grow with care. The other is a group of new givers to bring to a second gift before they lapse.

## What is on a single persona's page?

Each persona opens into its own page. The page starts with a short description written from your own numbers. A sentence only appears when your data supports it, so a comparison is never padded in. For the sample's Boomer Suburbanites it reads: "Givers born 1964 or earlier living in the suburbs of large metro areas. Most live in the United States. More of them kept giving year after year than your organization average. Fewer than average gave for the first time this year. Their median lifetime giving is among the highest of your personas."

- Five numbers: Total giving, Median LTV, Total givers, and the persona's Donor score and Opportunity score with its rank on each.
- Lifecycle river: the same givers at the report date and 12, 24, and 36 months before it, showing how many moved between stages, so you can see whether the persona is renewing or thinning out.
- Lifecycle chart: the index by stage, 100 being the organization average.
- Where they live: givers by country.
- First 100 to call, and the Full Register of every giver in the persona, each downloadable as a spreadsheet file.

The five lifecycle stages are defined from giving dates, so they mean the same thing for every organization:

The five lifecycle stages, at the report date

| Stage | A giver whose |
| --- | --- |
| Acquire | first gift in the last 12 months, and only one gift day so far |
| Convert | first gift within the last 24 months, and two or more gift days |
| Retain | first gift more than 24 months ago, and gave in each of the last two 12-month windows |
| Lapsed | no gift in the last 12 months |
| Reactivate | first gift more than 24 months ago, gave in the last 12 months after a year without a gift |

## Who do you call, and what do you ask?

First 100 to call lists the hundred givers in a persona with the most room to do more, in Opportunity score order, with their city, lifecycle stage, Donor score, last gift date, and giving over the last 12 months. Each row carries a Next ask, the single step most likely to land for that giver given their stage:

The four Next asks

| Next ask | When |
| --- | --- |
| Second gift | for a giver in Acquire: the gift that makes a one-time giver a repeat giver |
| Go monthly | for a giver who is not lapsed and has never given monthly |
| Upgrade | for a giver in Retain, Convert or Reactivate: a larger gift |
| Win back | for a lapsed giver: the gift that brings them back |

When two asks score the same, the app picks the gentler one. A list built this way gives a gift officer or a volunteer caller a place to start on Monday: a short list, a reason for each name, and one ask per call.

**Download the sample report**

Personas for Example Relief Collective, a fictional organization. Sample report, illustrative data: every figure and every giver is made up.

- [Donor personas sample report (PDF) (PDF)](https://donorinsights.com/downloads/donor-personas-sample-report/donor-insights-personas-sample-report.pdf)
- [The same report as a web page (HTML)](https://donorinsights.com/downloads/donor-personas-sample-report/sample-report.html)

Personas are built from the same giving records the rest of Donor Insights reads. To understand the stages behind the lifecycle chart, read our guides to [donor retention rate](https://donorinsights.com/articles/donor-retention-rate) and [lapsed donor reactivation](https://donorinsights.com/articles/lapsed-donor-reactivation). To see your own 20 personas, start with a conversation about your file.

## FAQ

**How many donor personas does Donor Insights create?**

Twenty per organization. Four generations (Gen Z, Millennial, Gen X, Boomer) plus Age unknown, each crossed with four kinds of place (City, Suburb, Town, Country). A persona with fewer than 10 givers keeps its place in the table but shows no numbers.

**What data do personas need?**

A birth year and a postal code for each giver, both from your CRM. Personas turn on when birth years cover at least 25% of givers and a placeable postal code covers at least 50%. Postal codes can be placed in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia.

**Do personas use purchased or appended data?**

No. A giver's persona comes from the birth year and postal code already in your CRM, and the kind of place comes from our mapping of official public geography files. Birth years are never shown. Lists show an age band instead.

**What is the difference between the Donor score and the Opportunity score?**

The Donor score measures how healthy a giver's giving is to date. The Opportunity score measures how much room the giver has to give again, give monthly, give more, or come back after a lapse, ranked against every other giver in the organization. A persona can rank high on one and low on the other.

## Sources
- [Pew Research Center, Defining generations: Where Millennials end and Generation Z begins (2019)](https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2019/01/17/where-millennials-end-and-generation-z-begins/)
- [USDA Economic Research Service, Rural-Urban Commuting Area Codes](https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/rural-urban-commuting-area-codes)
- [Statistics Canada, 2021 Census Dictionary: population centre](https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2021/ref/dict/az/definition-eng.cfm?ID=geo049a)
- [Office for National Statistics, Rural urban classifications. Source: Office for National Statistics licensed under the Open Government Licence v.3.0](https://www.ons.gov.uk/methodology/geography/geographicalproducts/ruralurbanclassifications)
- [Australian Bureau of Statistics, Significant Urban Areas, Urban Centres and Localities, Section of State](https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/standards/australian-statistical-geography-standard-asgs-edition-3/jul2021-jun2026/significant-urban-areas-urban-centres-and-localities-section-state)

## Disclaimer

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Source: DonorInsights.com — https://donorinsights.com/articles/donor-personas-sample-report