Campaign leaderboards: setup and customization

What are campaign leaderboards?

Leaderboards add a competitive, motivating element to your campaigns by ranking affiliations, designations, or other groups based on donor count, total raised, or participation rate. They're especially popular on Giving Days and tiered campaigns where friendly competition drives engagement.

How leaderboards work

Leaderboards pull data from gifts made to your campaign in real time. Each gift is attributed to one or more affiliations (like Athletics, College of Arts & Sciences, or Class of 2015), and the leaderboard ranks those affiliations based on the metric you choose:

• Donor count — Number of unique donors (most common for Giving Days)
• Total raised — Dollar amount raised by each affiliation
• Participation rate — Percentage of constituents who gave (requires data import)

Setting up a leaderboard

1. Open your campaign and navigate to Campaign Settings
2. Find the Leaderboard section
3. Choose your ranking metric (donor count, total raised, or participation rate)
4. Select which affiliations or groups should appear
5. Configure display settings—choose how many entries to show and whether to display exact numbers or just rankings

Leaderboards on tiered campaigns

If you're running a tiered campaign (e.g., a university-wide Giving Day with college and department pages), leaderboards can appear at each tier. Key things to know:

• Gifts roll up. A gift on a Tier 2 page counts toward the Tier 1 leaderboard too.
• Affiliation-based ranking. If a donor selects multiple affiliations, their gift may count toward multiple groups—this is by design.
• Percentages over 100%. Overlapping affiliations can cause total percentage to exceed 100%. This is expected behavior, not a bug.

For more on counting rules, see Understanding Counting Rules for Campaigns, Tiered Pages & Leaderboards.

Adjusting leaderboard totals

To manually adjust a leaderboard (e.g., for offline gifts or incorrect affiliations):

1. Go to your campaign's Manage Donations -> Offline Gifts section
2. Adjust the dollar or donor counts for the designation or affiliation the leaderboard is associated to. You can enter negative numbers to lower the count. 

3. Make your adjustment as incremental changes. Example: entering "5" will add 5 donors, it will NOT set the count to 5 donors. 

   Note- adjustments here will also impact tiered landing pages! 

Leaderboard data refreshes in near-real time, so changes appear within minutes.

Tips for effective leaderboards

• Use donor count for Giving Days. It emphasizes participation, making every gift feel equally valuable.
• Keep it visible. Place it prominently so visitors see the competition immediately.
• Seed with early momentum. Add offline commitments before launch so the board doesn't start at zero.
• Communicate the rules. Let advocates know how rankings work so they can rally their communities.