Donor CRM App Starter · Industry version
Alumni Giving CRM Template
A fundraising database organized the way schools fundraise — by class year, reunion cycle, and participation rate — in code you own.
School fundraising has its own physics: the class year is the unit of loyalty, participation rate matters alongside dollars, and the reunion cycle sets the calendar. This starter builds those into the donor CRM's schema — and your institution keeps the code.
- 6 core entities
- No per-record pricing
- Code you own
- Vibe + Governed modes
01 · The problem
Why a generic Donor CRM falls short
In alumni fundraising, the organizing unit isn't the individual donor — it's the class. The Class of 2010 has a participation rate, a reunion year, class agents, and a rivalry with the Class of 2011, and every annual-fund report slices by it. A donor CRM without class year as a structural field can't produce the one table every advancement meeting starts with.
Generic tools also optimize for dollars when schools must optimize for two numbers at once. Participation rate — what share of a class gives at all — drives rankings, grant eligibility, and board dashboards, which makes the $10 young-alumni gift strategically real. Software that only celebrates gift size teaches your team to ignore the donors who matter most in twenty years.
And school giving runs on mechanics of its own: employer matching that can double a gift if anyone files the claim, giving societies with recognition thresholds and member rolls, reunion campaigns that wake a class every five years. Bolting these onto a generic CRM as tags and memos means the money they represent leaks — unclaimed matches alone are a five-figure hole at most institutions.
02 · Data model
The data model, adapted
Everything in the base Donor CRM starter —
donorsdonationscampaignspledgesvolunteerssegments— plus the entities this industry actually runs on:
| table | what it holds |
|---|---|
class_years | Cohort records carrying reunion cycle, class agents, participation rate, and totals — the axis every advancement report slices on. |
giving_societies | Recognition tiers with thresholds and member rolls, computed from giving history instead of maintained by hand. |
matching_gifts | Employer match claims linked to the gifts they double, tracked from eligibility through claim to received. |
03 · Screens
Modules through the industry lens
Class-year giving ledger
01Every gift rolls up to a class as well as a campaign, so participation and dollars per class are live figures. The class-by-class table that once took a week before each board meeting becomes a page that's always right.
Reunion campaign progress
02Reunion-year campaigns track goal, dollars, and participation per class, with class-agent views showing exactly which classmates haven't been asked. A 25th-reunion challenge stops being a shared spreadsheet among twelve volunteers.
Society and match-aware reminders
03Reminders widen beyond pledges: donors a small gift away from a society threshold, matches eligible but unclaimed, class agents with contacts left. Each is found by a query over your own data — money already in motion, waiting on a nudge.
04 · In practice
Workflows it models
Giving day by the numbers
01A one-day campaign with per-class leaderboards, participation counting live as gifts land. Class agents watch their standings during the day; the wrap-up report is done when the day is, because it was computed all along.
Reunion cycle kickoff
02Reunion classes surface automatically each cycle. Campaigns open per class with agents attached, lapsed classmates land in segments, and outreach starts from history — what the class gave at its last reunion, who led, who matched.
Recovering unclaimed matches
03A quarterly pass over matching_gifts lists eligible-but-unfiled claims with donor and employer. An afternoon of follow-up recovers gifts already made once — the highest-ROI task on the advancement calendar.
Alumni Giving CRM template — frequently asked questions
Does it track participation rate, not just dollars?
Participation is computed per class from live gift data — givers over class size, by year and campaign. Both numbers appear side by side in class reporting, because a school that only sees dollars undercounts its own future.
Can class agents and reunion volunteers use it?
Agents get scoped views of their own class — progress, participation, who hasn't been contacted — without access to the wider database. How much a volunteer sees is your policy, enforced in code you control.
Does it work for K-12 schools as well as universities?
Yes — the class-year structure carries over, and independent schools typically add households and parent giving alongside alumni. Both are schema extensions the starter's donor model absorbs cleanly; annual-fund participation reporting works the same at any scale.
Can it manage giving societies automatically?
Society membership is computed from giving history against each tier's threshold — annual or lifetime, your rules. Rolls stay current without hand maintenance, and near-threshold donors surface as ask opportunities rather than afterthoughts.
Related
Dual7 App Starters
Build your Alumni Giving CRM on your terms
A fundraising database organized the way schools fundraise — by class year, reunion cycle, and participation rate — in code you own. Describe your version to start — the output is a project you own.