Understanding Counting Rules for Campaigns, Tiered Pages & Leaderboards

Campaign Total Calculations

Your campaign total includes several different types of gifts and reflects various giving methods. Here's how different gift types are counted:

Online Gifts

• Recurring gifts are not shown in the "Online Dollars" column of the campaign table but are counted in the campaign total as follows:
  • Indefinite recurring gifts: Only the installments processed while the campaign is live count in campaign totals
  • Time-bound recurring gifts: The full pledged amount is counted

One-time gifts are included in online dollars if they are in one of these states: confirmed, paid, authorized, pending authorization, pledged unpaid, pledged failed, recurring, recurring paid, recurring failed, or recurring canceled. Phantom gifts appear on leaderboard displays but do not add to overall donor totals. Gifts in any other state—for example, pending, canceled, or deleted—are not factored into campaign totals.

Offline Gifts

• Manually added offline gifts count toward campaign totals, leaderboards, and donor maps
• Offline adjustments can be made to modify donor counts, dollar amounts, and designation data
• Important: Adding affiliations to gifts after they're made does not automatically trigger relevant restricted match/challenge gifts to count those donors
• For detailed instructions on managing offline gifts, see our offline gifts article

Matches and Challenges

Important timing considerations:

• For matches: The donor is counted and dollars start incrementing as soon as the first applicable gift is matched
• For challenges: The donor and dollars are not counted until the challenge is fully met or released
• Both matches and challenges only count new gifts moving forward from when they begin
• Both online and offline matches/challenges appear the same way on your public campaign pages but only online ones show in your donation report
• Matches increment only at checkout or gift creation time
  • Criteria essential for determining match or challenge eligibility should be on the pre-payment form
  • Edits made to online or offline gifts after creation will not automatically count for matches and challenges

Donor Counting Rules

Donor Deduplication

Our system uses the following rules to ensure accurate donor counts:

• Donors are deduplicated based on matching both email AND name
• Different names with the same email will count as separate donors
  • Example: If Taylor Smith with taylor@email.com gives $10 and then gives another gift as Taylor S., it counts as two separate donors
• This deduplication applies to campaign totals, tiered pages, donor-count challenges, and leaderboards

Joint Donors

Joint donor fields are different from the Spouse data field:

• Joint donors count as two donors in overall campaign totals if any value is put in the Joint donor or Joint year field
• The gift amount is counted once, not doubled
• Joint donor deduplication does not apply - even the same name in a joint field counts twice
• For specific affiliation groups (like class years), joint donors may appear in multiple categories while maintaining accurate total donor and dollar counts overall (soft credit on leaderboards)

  Report-aligned joint donor counting for tiered campaigns

  Tiered campaigns now offer a report-aligned method for counting joint donors. When enabled and a gift includes joint donor fields, the donor-count logic on tiered campaign pages (filtering or grouping by year-based affiliations) follows the inclusion rules of the All Gifts (Donation) report. Consequently, donor totals on a tiered page match those in the All Gifts report for the same filters.

  • This setting affects only donor counts for gifts with joint donor or joint-year information. Gift amounts remain unchanged and are counted once per gift.
  • It applies specifically when year-based affiliations categorize joint donors on tiered pages, ensuring consistency with the All Gifts report.

  Project settings and campaign behavior

  • New projects automatically enable report-aligned donor counting for tiered campaigns.
  • Existing tiered campaigns retain their current donor-counting behavior until updated.
  • Campaigns cloned from an existing project automatically enable report-aligned donor counting for new tiered campaigns.

  Impact on reconciliation and reporting

  • Donor totals for tiered pages will align with the All Gifts report when joint donors and year-based affiliations are involved.
  • Only donor-count logic is affected; dollar amounts on leaderboards and campaign totals remain unchanged.

  Edge cases and tips

  • If a joint donor belongs to multiple affiliation groups (for example, a donor with two different class years), they will be counted in each applicable group as in the All Gifts report.
  • For existing tiered campaigns, remember that updates are required to switch to the report-aligned method.

Verification and Troubleshooting

Required Reports for Complete Totals

• Online Donation Report - includes online gifts and online matches/challenges
  • Using custom report templates in the Online Giving > Reporting section
• Individual Offline Report - for manually added offline donors
  • Go to Offline Gifts section of campaign settings
• Matches and Challenges Report - for offline matches
  • Go to Matches & Challenges section campaign settings

Recommended Report Columns

Include these key fields in your reports:

• Donor Name and Email (for checking duplicates)
• Donation Amount and Status
• Joint Gift field information
• Recurring gift details (recurring status, total pledge, installments)
• Multi-split designation data if applicable

Campaign Statistics Page

• Go to your campaign's Settings > Statistics
• Provides clear breakdown of online and offline dollars
• Shows timeline of gifts
• Can be regenerated throughout the campaign

Tiered Campaign Pages and Leaderboards

Understanding tiered page and leaderboard counting:

• Gifts count toward tiers and leaderboards based on their ultimate designation or affiliation, regardless of which page the donor used to give
• If designations are included in multiple tiers, a single donor may appear in all those pages
• The sum of tiered page totals may not equal the overall campaign total due to this overlap
• Use the download feature in tiered page settings to verify specific gift details.

  Tier 1 vs. Tier 2 leaderboards: what shows where

  The main campaign page (Tier 1) and the tiered landing pages (Tier 2) count gifts differently:

  • Tier 1 leaderboards: Reflect all gifts across the campaign, regardless of designation or affiliation.
  • Tier 2 leaderboards: Display only gifts that meet the specific designation or affiliation filters for that tier.

  For example:

  • A donor who gives through any tier page appears on the Tier 1 leaderboard because all campaign gifts are tallied.
  • The donor will appear on a Tier 2 leaderboard only if their gift meets that tier’s specific criteria.

  In reconciliation, if a donor gives on a Tier 2 page but selects a designation or affiliation outside that tier’s filter, the donation appears on Tier 1 but not on the Tier 2 leaderboard. As a result, counts on Tier 2 pages will differ from the unfiltered Tier 1 totals, as expected.

   

Recommended Reporting Practices

For the most accurate and detailed gift information, we recommend:

• Creating Custom Report templates in the Online Giving > Reporting section 
• Regularly reviewing the Donation Report for detailed transaction data, including gifts that may have come in on other campaigns or forms (sometimes a donor uses an old link)
• Checking the Deposit Report to reconcile processed payments that have been deposited
• Using the Statistics page for the most accurate breakdown of online versus offline giving

Remember that campaign totals may take a few minutes to refresh after making changes or adding new gifts. If you've made edits to gifts, it may take a new gift processing, new offline gift, or a manual refresh from GiveCampus for your campaign and page totals to update.

FAQ — Why does a school-affiliation leaderboard sometimes show fewer donors than the tiered-page donor count?

• Quick answer: A school/affiliation leaderboard only credits a joint donor when the primary gift record includes a matching school/affiliation value. If the joint donor information is recorded using the Joint Year field (a class-year value), that joint credit appears only on class-year leaderboards.

• How the counts differ:

  • Affiliation-based leaderboards use the affiliation selections recorded on the gift. Joint donors appear only if the primary gift has a matching affiliation.
  • Gifts with joint information recorded as a Joint Year bypass school/affiliation leaderboards and are counted only on class-year leaderboards.
  • For example, if a gift records a school affiliation for the primary donor but the joint donor field uses a class-year value, only the primary donor is counted on the school/affiliation leaderboard, while the joint donor appears on the class-year leaderboard.

• Report-aligned counting importance:

  • When the report-aligned joint donor counting for tiered campaigns is enabled, donor counts on tiered pages match the totals in the All Gifts (Donation) report. This alignment minimizes discrepancies when joint donor fields are involved.

• How to diagnose the mismatch:

  1. Download the All Gifts report for the campaign and apply the relevant filters for the tiered page or designation.
  2. Review the gift rows and check the Joint Donor column for entries without a school/affiliation selection.
  3. If a gift shows joint donor information with only a Joint Year value, expect the joint credit on the class-year leaderboard, not on the school/affiliation leaderboard.

• Practical tips:

  • To have a joint credit show on a school/affiliation leaderboard, ensure the gift record includes the proper affiliation selection for the joint donor.
  • Verify that the campaign is set to use the report-aligned donor-counting method if you encounter ongoing discrepancies.
  • Note that these rules affect donor counts only; gift amounts continue to be counted once per gift.