Learn · Chapter 2

Donors

Build and search your contact database — the people, households and organizations that give.

A donor is anyone who gives or might give. Every gift, pledge and receipt in Mich attaches to a donor record, so this is usually the first place you add real data.

Mich keeps one record per giver, in one of three shapes:

Profile type	Use it for	What's different
Individual	One person	Name, contact and address for a single person
Household	A couple or family giving together	Adds partner name, gender and birthday fields
Organization	A company, foundation, club or trust	Organization name and website instead of a personal name

Choosing the right type matters more than it looks. A household recorded as two separate individuals splits its giving history in two, which quietly distorts retention, lapsed-donor and average-gift figures for as long as the records exist.

Tutorials in this chapter

1 Add an individual donor Create a donor record for a single person and confirm it saved. Basic 2 Add a household donor Record a couple or family as one donor, with both partners named on the same record. Basic 3 Add an organization donor Record a company, foundation, club or trust as a donor in its own right. Basic 4 Find a donor Narrow the donor list with quick search, or build a precise filter on any field. Basic 5 Record a gift for a donor Start a donation, pledge or pledge payment straight from a donor, with the donor already filled in. Basic 6 Import donors from a vCard file Bring contacts in from a .vcf file, and export your donors back out to one. Intermediate 7 Import donors from a spreadsheet Bring a donor list in from a CSV file, matching columns to Mich fields and skipping anyone already on file. Intermediate