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Import your giving history

Import is the one task where an hour of care pays for itself many times over. Everything downstream reads what you load here.

Bring your oldest data

Section titled “Bring your oldest data”

Import the oldest data you have.

A donor’s pattern is the useful thing, and a pattern needs years. Someone who gave every year from 2014 and stopped in 2024 is a lapsed loyal donor worth a phone call. In a two-year window they are invisible.

Old data being untidy is fine. It is expected, and the import is built for it.

What to bring

Section titled “What to bring”

Anything holding gifts or people:

  • A spreadsheet, however it is organised.
  • Exports from your CRM.
  • Exports from each giving platform.
  • A list of members or subscribers, even without gift amounts.

Bring them separately rather than merging them by hand first. Relae merges better than a morning with copy and paste, and merging by hand loses the record of which channel each gift came through.

Running an import

Section titled “Running an import”

  1. Drag the file in. Spreadsheets and CSVs both work.

  2. Check the reading. Relae proposes what each column is. It gets most of them, and it asks about the rest rather than guessing.

  3. Resolve what it asks about. Usually date formats, or which of several amount columns is the gift.

  4. Preview. You see what will be created before anything is written. Nothing is saved until you say so.

  5. Import. People and gifts are created, and gifts are matched to people.

  6. Clear the review queue. See reconciling gifts.

Relae proposes a reading for each column. The ones it is unsure about are the ones it asks you about.

The columns that need your attention

Section titled “The columns that need your attention”

Which amount is the gift. Platform exports often carry three: what the donor paid, what was receiptable, and what reached your bank after fees. They are different numbers and only you know which one your records should hold. If you are unsure, the amount the donor paid is usually the right choice, with fees tracked separately.

Dates. A date written 03/04/2026 is March in one convention and April in another. Relae asks rather than assuming, and one wrong answer moves gifts across a fiscal year end.

Names in one column. “Dr. Margaret Okonkwo and David Okonkwo” is common and is two people. Relae splits what it can and asks about the rest.

Anonymous gifts. These are real gifts and should come in. Import them without a name rather than dropping them, so your totals are right.

After the import

Section titled “After the import”

Check three things before you trust it:

  1. Does the total match? Compare against a number you already believe, like a year’s audited revenue.
  2. Does the gift count look right? An unexpectedly large count usually means duplicated rows.
  3. Spot-check five donors you know well. Does their history look like what you remember?

If something is wrong, fixing it now is much easier than after three months of work has been layered on top. Ask us before you start correcting records by hand.

Custom columns

Section titled “Custom columns”

Columns Relae has no opinion about are kept rather than discarded. After the import, review them and decide what each one is: a real field, a tag, or noise to hide.

Next

Section titled “Next”