Using lists on Donorfy, you can view and analyse your data in two different ways:

• Data tab - view your data as a list, as described here in Lists Overview
• Visualisation tab - create a visual representation of your data

Getting started

Within your List, click on the Visualisation tab

Within the visualisations area you can build your summary, chart, etc. Under Choose visualisation, you will see two boxes - ‘Display’ and ‘Measure’.

Display - this is what you’d like to summarise (also known as categorical or qualitative data). This data is normally represented by a word. Some examples would be; Campaign, Fund, Constituent Type, and Gender.

Measure - aggregate this column (also known as numerical or qualitative data). This is data in numerical form. Some examples would be amounts (gift, payment, allocation) and research scores.

Data Aggregation - As the measure gives you a numerical value, you can choose from the following for your aggregation:

• Sum
• Count
• Average
• Highest
• Lowest

We discuss some examples at the end of this article.

So, what does that all mean?

To create a nice chart using your data, you need to choose a category you’d like to display and a number you’d like to measure.

You choose what you’d like to display and measure from the selected columns, which are found under ‘Available columns’.

These will be based on the columns which you have selected in your List, so they will differ from List to List, for example:

To set the items for Display and Measure, click on and Drag your preferred items from the available columns area to the relevant Display or Measure box, then Drop it in. The blue-dashed area will then display the column that has been dropped into it.

What are your visualisation options?

• Pie Chart
• Line Graph
• Bar Chart
• Value*

*Value works slightly differently to our other options. You only need to choose what you’d like to measure.

These can be selected by clicking on the relevant button option under the Choose visualisation area.

Formatting your visualisation

You may choose to add a thousand separators, show the value as money by adding a currency symbol, and add decimal spaces.

For example:

You can also choose to change the size of the text, which shows the value.

Tips, tricks, and shortcuts

Right-click on or near your visualisation to copy the chart/graph ready for pasting into another document, such as a finance or trustee report.

Once you have created your visualisation, you can hover over the relevant pie segment or bar to see the specific measurement for that data. See the example below:

You can use activity and tag custom fields in your visualisations, so you can create some really insightful representations of your unique data. There are two key things to note:

• You can pull custom text and number fields into your visualisation.
• Make sure you select a specific activity or a specific tag when creating your list, and save! This step ensures you can view and use your custom fields. See the below pics for what this should look like.

If you want to count the number of constituents in a particular category:

• Use a constituent list
• Include the column ‘Number’
• Your measure will be ‘Number’ using the ‘Count’ aggregation.
• Your display will be the category.

A couple of examples of where you might use this:

• How many constituents you have of each type (see image below)
  • Display = Constituent Type
  • Measure = Number (Count)
• Where are your donors living
  • Display = Personal County
  • Measure = Number (Count)

To download a visualisation, click on the download 'cloud' icon to the right of the screen. This will download a picture file (.png) to your computer downloads area. 

Examples of visualisations

‘I would like to see how much income we have in each funding pot’

We can break this down into:

• Display = ‘each funding pot’ = Fund
• Measure = ‘how much income’ = Payment Amount (Sum)

Check out the image below to see how this looks on Donorfy:

‘I would like to know which campaigns delivered the highest average donation’

We can break this down into:

• Display = Campaigns
• Measure = Allocation Amount (Average)

So, on Donorfy this looks like:

‘I want to quickly check the total income for this quarter on a regular basis’

The two key things here are:

• Use the ‘value’ visualisation

• Measure = Payment Amount (Sum)
• Lock the list = ‘on a regular basis’ (ensure nobody changes your visualisation!)