Adjusting Affiliation-Based Donor Counts

Affiliation-based leaderboards (such as class year, decade, or other groups) rely on underlying gift and donor data. If class-year totals seem off, you must clean up the donor records rather than trying to manually adjust the counts.

Quick answers

You cannot manually adjust donor counts for a specific affiliation such as an individual class year.
Donors are deduplicated based on both name and email.
To deduplicate multiple offline gifts from the same donor, ensure both gifts have identical name and email information.
Offline gifts without email addresses will not deduplicate.
Adding email addresses to existing offline gifts will trigger deduplication.

What you can and can't change

What you can’t change: You cannot manually edit the donor count for a single class year or any specific affiliation value.
What you can change: The underlying gifts and donor details. When duplicate donor records are cleaned up (for example, by consolidating records where the same person appears twice), the affiliation-based counts update automatically.

How donor deduplication works

GiveCampus counts unique donors rather than total gifts. Here’s how deduplication is determined:

Donors are deduplicated based on matching both name and email.
For multiple offline gifts from the same donor, ensure both records have identical name and email.
Offline gifts lacking email addresses will be counted separately until an email is added.
Adding email addresses to existing offline gifts triggers deduplication and reduces donor counts (including affiliation totals) accordingly.

Tip: Consistency matters. For example, "Alex Johnson" and "Alexander Johnson" will not deduplicate unless both the name and email match exactly.

Fixing an overcount for a class year (or any affiliation)

If a class year shows too many donors, it usually means one or more donors have been counted twice due to duplicate offline gifts with missing or inconsistent email information:

Identify duplicate donors
- In your campaign or gift list, look for individuals appearing multiple times, especially in offline gifts with missing or inconsistent emails.
Standardize duplicate donor details
- Open each duplicate offline gift record.
- Ensure the name fields match exactly across records.
- Add or correct the email address so that each duplicate uses the same email.
Save your changes
- Adding email addresses to existing offline gifts will trigger deduplication.
- Once the name and email match, the gifts consolidate under a single donor, and the updated class-year counts reflect this change.

Preventing duplicate donors going forward

Collect an email for every offline gift. Offline gifts without email addresses will not deduplicate.
Use consistent formatting for names. Choose a standard format (for example, "Katherine" instead of "Kate") and apply it consistently.
Determine how to handle households. If two people in the same household should count as separate donors, ensure they have distinct emails or names. If they should count as one, use the same name and email consistently.

FAQs

Q: Can I manually reduce donors for just the class of 1999?

A: No. You cannot adjust donor counts for a specific affiliation value like an individual class year. Instead, clean up duplicate donor records by matching both name and email across offline gifts.

Q: We have two offline gifts from the same person and they’re counting as two donors. Why?

A: This is likely because an email is missing or differs between the gifts, or the names do not match exactly. To deduplicate, ensure that both gifts have identical name and email details.

Q: What happens if I add an email to an old offline gift?

A: Adding an email to an existing offline gift triggers deduplication. If the name also matches, the system will consolidate the gifts under a single donor and update affiliation counts accordingly.

Q: We intentionally don’t collect emails for some offline checks. Can those deduplicate?

A: No. Offline gifts without email addresses will not deduplicate. To consolidate such gifts under a single donor, add a consistent email and ensure the name matches exactly.