How ratings work: Access, Affinity, Capacity

Every record carries a rating: a quick, honest read on how promising a donor is to work right now. It is three separate reads, not one number pulled from thin air. Some fundraisers know this shape as an AAC or LAI rating. In Relae it is Access, Affinity, and Capacity, and every score explains itself.

The three axes

• Access: whether you have a real way to reach them. An assigned owner, a board connection, an existing relationship. High access means you can actually get in the room.
• Affinity: how warm they are to your cause, read from how recently and how often they have given and how engaged they are. Warm does not mean wealthy; it means they care.
• Capacity: the size of gift they could realistically make. It starts from what they have already given and never drops below that, so a proven donor is never rated down.

The scores and the composite

Access and Affinity each run 0 to 4. Capacity runs 0 to 9, because giving size spreads across a much wider range than warmth or reachability do. The composite is simply the three added together, so it tops out at 17. A 0 on any axis means unrated, not zero potential.

What a capacity of 9 means

The capacity scale is anchored to your own numbers, not a generic wealth table. The top of the scale is a gift at your highest giving band, given over the natural life of a major-gift relationship, usually four to five years. The bottom is a first, small gift. Every band in between is a real dollar range you can see when you set your capacity scale in settings. Because the scale flows from your major-gift threshold, a 9 at a small shop and a 9 at a large one mean different dollar amounts, and both are correct for the shop they belong to.

Relae suggests, you decide

Relae proposes a rating from the giving it can see, and shows its reasoning on each axis. Nothing is written until you confirm or override it. The rating is a starting read for a human, never a verdict.