Four of four · Seasons & proof
The board does not want a database. It wants an answer.
Once a year somebody asks whether the audience grew, whether the donors stayed, and whether any of the effort showed up in the bank. In most organizations answering that costs a weekend of spreadsheet archaeology, and the answer is a guess with a chart on it.
Almost every donor CRM organizes around the calendar year, because almost every donor CRM was built for organizations whose year is the calendar. An arts organization's year is a season, and it starts in September, it ends in June, and its September is not comparable to anybody's January.
So the season is the spine here, not a filter bolted onto one. Events, gifts, campaigns and pledges all belong to one, and every comparison Fay makes is season against season.
What it answers
The six questions a board actually asks
"Are we ahead of last year?"
Raised this season against the same point last season, to the day. A season that is 40% through is compared with a season that was 40% through, which is the only version of that number worth reading.
"Did we keep our donors?"
Retention as a fraction of last season's donors who gave again, with the raw counts beside it, because a percentage without its denominator is how boards get misled.
"Where did the new money come from?"
New donors and returning donors counted separately. Growth that comes from keeping people is a different business from growth that comes from constantly replacing them.
"Were the houses full?"
Average fill across the season's events, ticketed quantity against capacity, plus the walk-up count nobody else measures, so a full room is not mistaken for a well-recorded one.
"Is the audience becoming donors?"
New attendees this season, and how many of them have since given you money, as a percentage. This is the number the whole product exists to move, so it is stated rather than implied.
"Can I have that as a spreadsheet?"
Yes. Every list exports to CSV filtered exactly as it appears on screen, so what you hand the treasurer always matches what you were looking at when you said it.
One thing this page is not. Fay does not do fund accounting and does not pretend to be your books. It answers development questions about who gave, who stayed and who came, and it exports cleanly into whatever your treasurer already uses for the rest. A product that claimed both would be worse at both.
Next: the number on that season page only moves if the people arriving at your door end up in your records. Which is where the whole thing starts.