The Nonprofit Monthly Report: What to Review Each Month and How to Run It

AI Summary

• A nonprofit monthly report should cover donation totals, campaign results, recurring gifts, goal progress, and payout reconciliation.
• Recurring gift reports protect predictable revenue. Check new monthly donors, cancellations, and cards that are about to expire.
• Payout reconciliation matches online gifts to bank deposits. The GivingFuel Webconnex Payments Payout Report lists each payout batch with fees deducted and the net amount deposited.
• GivingFuel combines a real-time dashboard, donor management, exports, and Memorized Reports that can be emailed to your board or accountant on a schedule.
• A short, repeatable monthly review catches problems while they are still small and gives you better stories to tell donors.

It's the end of the month, and somewhere a development director has four tabs open, a bank statement, and last month's spreadsheet, all to answer one question: how did we do? If that sounds familiar, you're in good company. Most nonprofit teams care about their numbers. They just don't have a free afternoon to stitch them together from five different platforms.

GivingFuel is an all-in-one fundraising platform for nonprofits, so your donations, donor records, recurring gifts, and payout reporting live in one connected place. You can save the reports you use most and have them emailed to your board or accountant on a set schedule. Our support team is here to help you set that up.

This guide walks through each report, what to look for, and how to build a monthly review your team can repeat without starting from scratch.

What Reports Should a Nonprofit Review Every Month?

A nonprofit should review five things every month: how much came in, which campaigns brought it in, how recurring giving is holding up, whether giving is on pace for the goal, and whether payouts match the books. Here is where each one lives in GivingFuel.

1. Donation Totals: Start With the Dashboard

Open the GivingFuel dashboard, set the date range to last month, and read the top row. It shows total donation revenue, one-time and recurring revenue, the number of donors, page visits, and the percentage of visitors who completed a gift.

When you scroll down, the dashboard also shows average donation amount, average recurring donation, the top day of the week and hour of the day for giving, and your top five donors by total given during the date range.

What to look for:

• Total revenue compared with the month before and the same month last year.
• The split between one-time and recurring revenue.
• Average gift size. A drop can mean a campaign attracted smaller first-time gifts, which is not always bad news.
• Your top donors. This is a good moment for a personal thank-you call or note, because a monthly report that ends in a relationship is a report worth running.

An example could look like a small animal rescue that closes the month and sees total revenue up. The dashboard shows that most of the lift came from one-time gifts after a social post, while recurring revenue stayed flat. That is useful data. The team now knows the social post resonated with donors, while the monthly giving ask may need some adjustments.

2. Campaign Performance: Which Pages and Appeals Worked?

GivingFuel lets you create donation pages, so each campaign, event, or fund can have its own page. That makes campaign reporting cleaner, because the gifts are already sorted by where they came from.

Use two views:

• Dashboard and Page Analytics. The dashboard covers your whole account or a selection of pages. Page Analytics gives deeper detail on a single donation page.
• Donations Report. This export includes every one-time and recurring donation that is processed through GivingFuel, including custom fields attached to the gift.

Questions worth answering each month:

• Which campaign brought in the most new donors?
• Which page gets plenty of visits but few gifts? That page may need a shorter form or a clearer ask.
• Did the year-end appeal, the spring event, and the monthly giving push each do what we expected?

3. Recurring Gifts: Check the Revenue You Can Count On

Recurring revenue is the steadiest money most nonprofits have, so it's helpful to check it every month. In donor management, all recurring donors live in one place where your team can manage intervals, payment methods, and amounts.

To see a summary of every recurring donor, you can run the Recurring Donation Report. Then check these on the dashboard:

• Expected monthly recurring revenue. This is your baseline for the months ahead.
• Recurring share of donations and donors. A rising share usually means your monthly giving ask is working.
• Recurring cards expiring. This link on the dashboard lists recurring donations with cards expiring this month and the next two. Reach out early with a friendly note.

Cards expire quietly, and a donor who never meant to stop giving can drop off. GivingFuel's automatic card updater helps with this by retrieving updated expiration dates from the card brands. It's available with Webconnex Payments, GivingFuel's built-in payment processing.

Donors can also update their own payment details and recurring gifts in their donor account, which minimizes the amount of emails your team has to send. For setup and failed payment details, see how GivingFuel handles recurring donations.

4. Goal Progress: Compare Actuals to Your Targets

Goals are only helpful if their progress is tracked. GivingFuel gives you the actual numbers, and you bring the target. Write down your annual goal, break it into monthly or campaign targets, and compare them to the dashboard totals for the same date range.

GivingFuel donation pages also support goal meters, so donors can see progress toward a campaign goal as gifts come in. For your internal review, export the donation data to the spreadsheet where you track your budget and compare it there.

A simple monthly goal check:

1. Total raised this month versus the monthly target.
2. Year-to-date total versus where you planned to be.
3. Recurring revenue versus the amount you need to cover ongoing programs.
4. One decision for next month, such as adding a reminder email to a campaign that is running behind.

5. Finance: Reconcile Payouts With Your Books

Reconciliation is where many nonprofit teams lose time, because deposits arrive as batches and donations arrive one at a time. The Webconnex Payments Payout Report is built to solve this. It lists settled transactions grouped by payout batch, with each payment, refund, chargeback, and other payout activity on its own line. It includes a running merchant account balance, so you can see revenue received, fees deducted, and the net amount deposited in your bank account.

Payouts are weekly by default, so a monthly review covers several batches.

A few practical notes:

• The payout report covers transactions processed through Webconnex Payments. If your team connects a different payment processor, use that processor's own reports for the bank side.
• Cash and check gifts you record in GivingFuel appear in your donation data, and they will not appear in card payouts. Reconcile them against your own deposit records.
• Fees come from two places: your plan's platform fee and payment processing. Both are published on GivingFuel pricing, so you can predict what a month of giving will cost.
• GivingFuel exports donor and gift data to CSV or Excel for your board or accountant. If you want gifts to flow into QuickBooks or Xero, integrations are available through Zapier.

GivingFuel is not accounting software, but it does give your bookkeeper clean donation and payout data, so your accounting system stays the system of record for the books.

Monthly Report Checklist

Use this checklist each month. Copy it into your own document and fill in the answers.

• Donation totals: How much did we raise this month, and how much of it was recurring?
• Campaign performance: Which pages and appeals brought in the most gifts and the most new donors?
• Recurring gifts: What is our expected monthly recurring revenue, and which cards are about to expire?
• Goal progress: Are we on pace for the monthly and annual goal, and what is one decision for next month?
• Payout reconciliation: Does each bank deposit match a payout batch, and have we accounted for cash and check gifts?

What Should You Look for in Donation Reporting Software?

Look for reporting that covers five things:

• Scheduled reports that email themselves to your board or accountant.
• Payout-level detail, so each bank deposit traces back to the gifts behind it.
• A recurring donor report, including expiring cards.
• Donor and gift exports in CSV or Excel.
• Reports tied to donor records, so you are not matching spreadsheets by hand.

GivingFuel covers all five in one connected platform, using the dashboard, Memorized Reports, the Webconnex Payments Payout Report, the Recurring Donation Report, and exports.

How Do You Make Your Monthly Report Repeatable?

Save the report once and schedule it. In GivingFuel, a Memorized Report keeps your chosen fields, filters, and date range, then emails the file on a schedule you set: daily, weekly, twice a month, or monthly.

Send it to one or several addresses, so your board treasurer and accountant get the same file you do. You can also choose to send only new records since the last report.

A good starting setup is one Memorized Donations Report for your staff review and one for your accountant. You can see more of what you can track and schedule on the GivingFuel reporting page.

Frequently Asked Questions

What financial reports should a nonprofit review monthly?

In GivingFuel, nonprofits can review a monthly donations summary, a recurring giving report, and a payout reconciliation report from one connected platform. That means the dashboard, the Recurring Donation Report, and the Webconnex Payments Payout Report.

How do I reconcile online donations with my bank deposits?

GivingFuel's Webconnex Payments Payout Report lets you match each bank deposit to a payout batch. It groups settled transactions by payout and shows fees deducted, refunds, chargebacks, and the net deposit, so every deposit can be traced to the gifts behind it. It covers transactions processed through Webconnex Payments only.

What is the difference between a nonprofit financial report and a fundraising report?

A financial report covers income, expenses, cash flow, and budget, while a fundraising report covers donations, campaigns, donors, and recurring giving. GivingFuel covers the fundraising side and gives your bookkeeper the donation and payout data for the financial side.

Can GivingFuel email reports to my board or accountant automatically?

Yes. GivingFuel Memorized Reports can be scheduled daily, weekly, twice a month, or monthly and sent to one or several email addresses, with an option to send only new records since the last report. The download link in each email expires after 72 hours.

How do I schedule a monthly donations report in GivingFuel?

From the Pages screen in GivingFuel, go to Reports, then Exporter, choose Donations, select your fields and date range, and click Memorize This Report. Then turn on Auto Schedule Report, choose Monthly, and enter the email addresses that should receive it.

Do I still need accounting software if I use GivingFuel reporting?

Yes, if your nonprofit keeps its books in accounting software. GivingFuel handles donation, donor, and payout reporting, and you can export the data or connect it to tools like QuickBooks and Xero through Zapier.

Spend Less Time Pulling Numbers and More Time With Donors

A good monthly review for nonprofits answers four questions: what came in, what will keep coming in, whether you are on pace, and whether the money matches the books.

GivingFuel is built for nonprofit teams that want those answers in one connected place, with donation totals, campaign results, recurring gifts, donor records, and payout reporting working together. Scheduled reports mean the numbers arrive on their own, and real people on our team can help you set them up.

We're here to help your team spend less time managing fundraising software and more time building the donor relationships that move your mission forward.

See GivingFuel reporting

– The GivingFuel Team