New Dataro features to raise more at year-end

December is the biggest month in fundraising, and your best donors are already in your data. The work is finding them fast, ranking them and reaching out before the moment passes. In the latest Dataro Product Office Hours, head of marketing Nic Miller and senior product manager Anna Kaufman walked through the features built to help you do exactly that. Here is what the team shipped and how to use it.

Year-end regular givers are twice as likely to give again in December

A quick poll during the session set the tone. Year-end regular givers are about twice as likely to give again in December than other donors. That makes them one of the clearest groups to prioritize right now. Dataro's new Seasonal Insights are built to surface groups like this so you can act while there is still time.

Seasonal Insights rank six year-end lists from your CRM history

Most Dataro Insights react to something a donor just did, such as a new gift or a change in score. That works early in the year. In December it means almost every donor looks the same. Seasonal Insights fix that by reading your December activity and building six ranked lists, with the donors to contact first at the top.

Each list answers a different question:

• Year-end regular givers: one-off gifts in two or more Decembers, ranked by how many Decembers in a row they gave. Recurring gifts do not count, so a monthly donor whose payment lands in December will not appear.

• Not yet given this year: gave last year but nothing yet this year. This is usually your biggest segment and your main reactivation ask.

• Year-end mid-level prospects: gave the last two Decembers and are likely to give at the mid-level but are not yet. A strong group for upgrade asks.

• First year-end donors: gave their first gift between Jan. 1 and Sept. 30 this year. Treat this as a welcome and a thank you as much as an ask.

• Giving Tuesday givers: gave a one-off gift within two days of last Giving Tuesday. This signal is strongest for US organizations.

• Top donors of the year: your top 1% by giving from Jan. 1 through Nov. 30. This list appears Dec. 1 and works as a thank-you call list.

Dataro rebuilds these lists every week from your latest CRM sync, so donors drop off as they give. Each list holds up to 1,000 donors. A donor can sit in more than one list, so de-duplicate before you send to avoid a double ask.

Fixed Size lists start from your budget, not a guess

Most appeals start with a number. A mail house quotes you for 5,000. A call room has space for 2,000 calls. The old approach used a rank filter across your whole file, so once you removed major donors, recent givers and do-not-mail, you were left with fewer names and a new guess at the cutoff.

Fixed Size counts after your filters and exclusions. Suppressions come out first, then Dataro ranks who is left and keeps exactly the top number you want. You can order by model rank, total giving, last gift amount, ask amount or first and last gift, and you get the same count every time.

Filter presets and segments speed up the new audience builder

The rebuilt audience builder makes filters easier to combine and reuse. You can build a filter set, save it as a preset and apply it again without starting over. You can combine filter sets, save column layouts and set default columns for your account. The list updates in real time, so you can spot-check the audience as you build it.

A Dataro assistant can build filters for you if you are less familiar with the data, and it keeps a history so you can see how a teammate built an audience. A light first version of segments lets you split a saved audience by recommended channel or interest area, then export each segment to CSV.

Anniversary filters surface milestones automatically

Anniversary filters flag donors with a milestone coming up. They apply to first gift, last gift, largest gift, created date and gift date. The window is counted from today and rolls forward on its own, so you set it up once and revisit it on whatever cadence works.

A few examples show the range. A donor who gave her first gift in December 2021 hits a five-year milestone this December, a natural moment for a personal thank you. A donor whose last gift was December 2025 is due for a reactivation nudge. A first-time donor from last December is coming up on year one, a good moment to thank and ask for year two.

The donor map and tracked audiences show what is working

Two features go further than list building. The donor map, now in beta, shows your file by geography from ZIP/postal code level up to country, so you can see where donors cluster and build an audience from that view. Tracked audiences tell you whether your outreach is working. You pick a starting group and a target outcome, and Dataro counts how many make that move week by week.

Action tracking, which is live now, logs the calls, emails and notes your team makes against an insight, individually or in bulk. The team is connecting this round-trip with major CRMs, starting with Salesforce and Raiser's Edge, so insights and next actions show up where you already work.

Smaller updates keep your year-end data clean

The session also covered quality-of-life changes. You can chat with support inside the app, send a saved audience to Mailchimp as a tag without a CSV, search donors by email address, fix a wrong contact in Prospect AI and flag likely deceased donors with a source. These keep your data clean heading into the year-end push.

Put these features to work before December closes

A few practical points stand out. Start with the groups most likely to give, led by year-end regular givers. Build Fixed Size lists from your real budget so the cutoff is clear. De-duplicate across Seasonal Insights before you send. Use anniversary filters and tracked audiences to keep the work going past December.

The through line is simple. Your best donors are already in your data. These features help you rank them, fit the list to your constraints and reach out in time, so you raise more before the year closes.