A donor is Fundraising’s summary record for one giver. It holds that giver’s totals, club, and giving history, while the name, address, and other details stay on the CRM contact or organization record. This article explains how a donor connects to that CRM record, how donors are created, and how donor notes and the anonymity flag work.
One Donor, Tied to Exactly One Contact or Organization
A donor is always tied to exactly one CRM contact or exactly one CRM organization. It is never tied to both, and it cannot be tied to more than one contact or organization.
When Rhythm creates the donor, it builds the donor’s identifier from the giver the donor summarizes. That identifier never changes, so you cannot move the donor to a different contact or organization later.
Each contact and organization should have no more than one donor record. That keeps all of a giver’s Fundraising activity in one place. Create or edit the underlying contact or organization as you normally would in CRM; Fundraising uses the record you link to the donor.
Because the donor is tied to the giver’s identifier, the donor does not store its own name, address, phone number, or email. Rhythm copies those details from the linked CRM record.
The Donor's Name and Details Are Copied, Not Synced
Each time you save a donor, Rhythm copies the current name and contact details from the linked contact or organization. This happens only when the donor is saved, not continuously.
If you update a giver’s name or address in CRM, the donor keeps showing the older copied details until something saves the donor again. For example, the donor may update after Rhythm recalculates it for a new gift. If a donor’s displayed name or contact information does not match the CRM record, it usually means the donor has not been saved since the CRM change. The donor will catch up the next time it is saved.
For an organization donor, if Rhythm cannot read the linked organization record, the donor’s name shows as “Unnamed” instead of staying blank.
Where Donors Come From
A donor comes from one of two places:
- Staff create one directly, the same way you create other Fundraising records.
- A donor is created automatically the first time a manual gift or pledge is entered for a giver who doesn't have one yet. You do not need to create the donor first. When you enter the gift or pledge and choose the contact or organization, Rhythm creates the donor for you.
If Rhythm cannot create the automatic donor, the gift or pledge cannot be saved. For example, this happens if you are not able to create donors. The Console shows Unable to save gift. If you see that message when you save a manual gift and did not expect a donor-creation issue, check whether Rhythm needed to create a donor.
An anonymous recurring donation can still be tied to a contact record because the giving form requires an email address. Rhythm uses that email to create the contact behind the anonymous recurring donor; without it, there would be no way to link the ongoing charges to a record.
Warning
The created date on a donor or contact can be misleading when you are looking for first-time donors. Merging duplicate contacts, or other later audit activity on the record, can update that date even though the giver’s actual gift history is older. Do not rely on a created-date filter by itself to identify donors who are new for a given year; check their actual gift history as well.
Notes and the Anonymity Flag
A donor can include two details beyond totals and club:
- Free-text notes. The donor record has a notes field, but the Console does not currently offer a place to enter or view it. Notes can only be written by a caller using the API. A signed-in Portal member who reads their own donor record does see their notes returned, so be aware that staff currently have no Console view into notes if you use them in your donor work.
- The anonymous flag. Staff can mark a donor as anonymous from the donor form’s
This is an anonymous donorcheckbox. This records that the giver has asked not to be named, shows an alert on the giver’s CRM page, and lets you filter donor search by anonymity.
Warning
Marking a donor anonymous does not hide their name anywhere. It is a note for staff to see and search on, not a privacy control. The giver’s name still appears normally everywhere else, including to any Portal member who can otherwise read the donor.
This setting is also separate from the anonymous option on an individual gift. Marking a donor anonymous does not mark their gifts anonymous, and marking one gift anonymous does not change the donor.
Tip
A built-in giving-summary field does not necessarily have a matching field for the opposite direction. For example, the donor's last gift date is a system-provided field you can use in records and queries, but there is no equivalent system field for a donor's first gift date. Do not assume that because one summary value is available, its inverse is too.
Related
See the related articles for creating or editing the underlying contact or organization, how Rhythm calculates a donor’s giving totals, how donor clubs work, and how to create or edit a donor directly in Fundraising.