Free download · 25 pages
The Meridian Review
The donor strategy review you could hand a client.
A complete donor and fundraising strategy review for Meridian Hope Foundation, a fictional organization built from synthetic giving records.
One gift file, read from the first gift to the last: what is growing, what is quietly slipping, and which moves return the most. Every figure traces back to giving records, and the argument fits on one page.
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Meridian Hope Foundation is fictional and every number in the review is synthetic. The structure, the methods, and the way the findings are presented are what we prepare for a real donor file.
What agencies do with it
A finished review to put in front of the people you serve.
The Meridian Review is the deliverable at the end of a real engagement. Read it as the one you could build for a client, and as the one a client could ask you for.
01
Pitch a strategy retainer
Walk a prospect through a finished review, then sell the work that follows it: the segmentation, the win-back program, the stewardship plan for the donors who carry the file.
02
Benchmark a client file
Put a client's retention, revenue concentration, and lapsed-donor value next to Meridian Hope's synthetic figures and see where the shape of the file differs.
03
Brief a board
Borrow the one-page argument and the scorecard: situation, complication, question, answer, then three moves sized in dollars a year.
04
Structure a quarterly review
Use the six sections as the agenda, the forecast as the stake, and the appendix's list of data gaps as the honest last page.
If you lead an organization yourself, read it as the review you could ask for on your own donor file.
Inside the review
Six sections, one argument, twenty-five pages.
Every section answers one question about the file and closes on a figure a board can repeat. The figures below are Meridian Hope's synthetic numbers, taken straight from the review.
Up front
A steward's note, the executive summary as a one-page argument, and a scorecard of six metrics with a trend, a reference point, a status, and a first move for each.
01 · 1 chart page
The shrinking file
How many donors are active each year, and what carried revenue while the donor count fell.
−49%active donors since 2016, from 418K to 213K, while revenue held roughly flat
p. 06Active donors and revenue by year. The count fell while the dollars held. 02 · 2 chart pages
Acquisition
How many new donors arrive each year, which channel gave way, and how giving moves through the calendar.
−72%new donors acquired per year since 2017, with a year-end peak 90% above the quiet months
03 · 2 chart pages
Retention and stickiness
Whether the donors who stay are more committed than before, and where first-time donors lapse.
66%year-over-year retention, up from 61%, while half of first-time donors lapse within a year
04 · 3 chart pages
The economics of the file
What a donor is worth by giving tier, how concentrated revenue is, and how much proven giving lapsed donors hold.
~$391Min proven giving held by 730K lapsed donors, with a top-tier donor worth about $863 in lifetime value
p. 14Lifetime value by giving tier. Each upgrade step roughly doubles value. 
p. 15Revenue concentration. The top 10% of donors give 76% of revenue. 05 · 3 chart pages
Where the dollars come from
Which channels bring volume and which bring value, what designated giving carries, and where the file lives on the map.
~$3,220average major gift, against $36 by direct mail, across a file that reaches every region
06 · 2 chart pages
The path forward
What acting on the file is worth against letting it drift, and in what order the moves should land.
~$8M/yrbetween doing nothing and acting, sequenced into four moves and a first-quarter roadmap
p. 23Four moves, sequenced by value and effort. Reactivation first.
At the back
An appendix of definitions, benchmark sources, provenance, and the data gaps stated plainly: which totals are floors, which retention figure the file cannot support, and how much of the file carries a wealth score.
Six of the twenty-five pages are shown here. The other nineteen arrive in the PDF. Email me the review
What a review surfaces
The donor file shrank 49% while revenue held.
Meridian Hope's active donors fell from 418K to 213K across nine years. Revenue held near $74M only because the average gift kept rising, and new-donor acquisition fell 72% underneath it.
A file that looks fine on the revenue line can be losing the people who fund it. The review names the loss on page three, sizes what it costs each year the file drifts, and sequences the moves that recover it.
49%
fewer active donors than in 2016
Synthetic figures for a fictional organization.
How it is made
One artifact of an always-on platform.
The Meridian Review is what the DonorInsights platform produces from a gift file: sixty-plus charts across contacts, donations, and campaigns, read into a strategy a board can act on. The platform runs every day. The review is the moment it is written down.
Connect to any source system
Gift and constituent records come in from the CRM the organization already uses. No re-keying, no exports by hand.
Decades of donor stewardship
The method behind the review has been applied across hundreds of organizations and hundreds of millions of gifts.
Numbers you can trust
Every figure in the review traces back to the organization's own giving records, and the appendix says plainly what the file cannot yet tell you.
Send yourself the Meridian Review.
Twenty-five pages, emailed as a PDF, free. Read it as the review you could hand a client, or the one you could ask for on your own file.
Meridian Hope Foundation is a fictional organization. Every number in the review is synthetic, built to show the shape of a real review without describing any real donor file.