Highest Previous Contribution (HPC)
A metric used in measuring donor giving, HPC is the “high-water mark” of the individual donor’s historical giving as measured with the largest single gift up to the current point in time. This method is popular because it’s easy to source the data to determine it, but the downside is that it over-indexes on the size of a single gift—for example if basing a threshold on a single gift of $10K+, we would ignore a donor who gave monthly gifts of $1K ($12K total in a year).
Highest Annual Cumulative (HAC)
A metric used in measuring donor giving. Unlike HPC, HAC is based on giving within a full fiscal year to better consider the cumulative impact of smaller gifts given at a higher frequency. Thus HAC could also be thought of as “largest year”. Typically HAC-based thresholds will be higher than those based on HPC, as they take into account an entire year of giving.
Giving Level
Donor giving levels are a way to subdivide available donors based on past behavior. While the specific monetary levels and names vary by organization, there are generally three main concepts represented like layers of a pyramid that build on top of each other:
Major
These donors have given large single financial gifts and are often managed directly by a donor representative (similar to a regional sales model), including visits, events, and presentations. The most common threshold we see for major donor giving is a single gift (HPC) of $10K or more. Major donors are often presented with specific initiatives or proposals to fund. While often accounting for the largest portion of revenue, this segment will represent only a small number of donors.
Midlevel
These donors haven’t given at the major donor threshold, but have demonstrated capacity with a significant individual gift or have other indicators of capacity such as wealth screening data. We most commonly see the threshold for midlevel giving starting at a largest single gift (HPC) of $1K or more, or the largest giving year (HAC) of $2.5K and run up to the major donor threshold. Some nonprofits directly manage midlevel donors, while others do not. When managed, midlevel caseloads tend to have far more donors per representative than major. While often accounting for a large portion of overall revenue, midlevel tends to only account for 5-10 times the number of donors at the major level.
Broadbase
These donors usually make up the majority of the donor file, having given any amount below the start of the midlevel threshold. Many of these donors have unknown capacity, and will often self-upgrade into higher levels of giving. Thus broadbase giving is ultimately the first step in the midlevel and major donor pipeline—but isn’t always treated as such.
While some organizations base giving levels on pure financial thresholds, others base it on whether or not the donor (or donor prospect) is currently assigned to the caseload of a donor representative.
We view giving level as a high-water mark, meaning that if a donor has given at a certain level, we will categorize them as that level of donor even if they haven’t continued to give at that level. We do this because otherwise high-capacity donors heavily skew trends.