Donorbox reporting covers the basics well: donations, recurring plans and supporters, with CSV exports and templated reports. Boards usually want more: trends against last year, retention, campaign results and one view that includes gifts from outside Donorbox. For that you either build a few simple reports from the exports, or put a reporting layer on top of Donorbox. This guide shows what to expect from each.
What Donorbox reporting gives you
Donorbox is a donation platform first, so its reporting is built around gifts. Based on Donorbox's own help material (checked November 2026):
- A dashboard that tracks donations, recurring plans and new supporters over time. (Donorbox dashboard)
- CSV exports for donations, recurring plans and supporters. Donations can be narrowed by time frame, source and campaign. (Donorbox Academy: export data and reports)
- Templated reports under Reports, which you can download as CSV and keep for later edits.
- Recurring plan filters by date and by status: failed, active, paused or cancelled.
- Receipts, including year-end receipts. See our guide to automating donor tax receipts.
- Jay·AI, which Donorbox says produces board-ready reports and is available on its Pro and Premium plans.
Plans and features change, so confirm what your plan includes in your Donorbox account.
For a small organization that mostly raises money online through Donorbox, this may be all you need.
Where board reporting gets harder
Boards rarely ask "how much came in?" They ask questions that cross several data sets:
- Are we ahead or behind last year, at this point in the year?
- How many donors gave again compared with last year?
- Which campaigns brought in new donors, and which only moved existing ones?
- How much of our revenue is recurring, and is it growing?
- What is our total, including checks, events and grants?
The last question is the one that breaks single-platform reporting. Donorbox only knows about gifts made through Donorbox. If you also receive checks, grants, event revenue or gifts recorded in a CRM, no Donorbox report will show the total.
A simple dashboard your board will actually read
Whatever tool you use, keep the board view to one page. This set works for most nonprofits:
| Section | Example metrics |
|---|---|
| Revenue | Total raised year to date, compared with the same point last year |
| Donors | Number of donors, new donors, repeat donors |
| Recurring | Active monthly donors, monthly recurring amount, failed or cancelled plans |
| Campaigns | Amount raised per campaign, number of donors per campaign |
| Funds | Amount by designation, such as unrestricted and restricted |
| Trend | Monthly giving chart across the year |
Add a short "what changed and why" note to the page. Numbers without a sentence of context tend to start more questions than they answer.
For more on the report itself, see our nonprofit board report template.
Three ways to build it
1. Export and build it in a spreadsheet
Export donations and recurring plans each month, and build the dashboard in a spreadsheet. This costs nothing and works for a small team with a steady process. It breaks when the person who builds it is away, and each month's version is a little different from the last.
2. Send Donorbox data into your CRM
Many organizations connect Donorbox to a CRM and report from there. This is the better option when you need one record per donor across all sources. If your CRM is Salesforce, the key decisions are how to match donors, how to avoid duplicates, and how to handle recurring plans. We cover related choices in our CRM comparison. Reports and dashboards in Salesforce are flexible, but someone needs to build and maintain them.
3. Add a reporting layer on top of Donorbox
Our Nonprofit Ops Platform reads from Donorbox and Bloomerang today. With Donorbox connected, its Home dashboard shows this year's totals, donor counts and a monthly chart from your Donorbox donations, with refunds excluded. Donors appear with their gifts, recurring plan and campaign, recurring donors show their monthly amount, and campaigns are available in Reports, including an AI report builder. The connection is read-only, and records are read live rather than stored. If Donorbox is one of several sources, it can sit next to a CRM as an extra source.
One requirement to know: reading Donorbox's data needs API access turned on in your Donorbox account, which Donorbox offers as a paid add-on on some plans. (Donorbox API on GitHub) Check with Donorbox which applies to you.
If you want to see how it would look on your data, ask us on our products page.
A monthly routine that keeps reports consistent
Most reporting trouble comes from the process, not the tool. A routine like this keeps the numbers steady from month to month:
- Pick one cut-off date each month, such as the last day, and report as of that date.
- Pull the same exports every time, using the same filters.
- Check for refunds and failed recurring plans before totals are final.
- Compare to the same period last year, not to last month alone.
- Write the one-sentence summary the board should take away.
- Save the version you sent, so you can explain any later change.
Assign one owner and one backup. When reporting depends on one person's memory, it fails the first time they are out.
Common mistakes with Donorbox reporting
- Counting refunds as revenue. Make sure refunded payments are excluded.
- Comparing different periods. Compare year to date against the same dates last year.
- Reporting recurring amounts without frequency. Convert weekly, quarterly and annual plans to a monthly amount before adding them.
- Not agreeing on a definition of "new donor." Decide it once and write it down.
- Mixing designations and campaigns. They answer different questions.
Frequently asked questions
Can Donorbox produce a board report on its own?
It can give you the numbers for gifts made through Donorbox. You will probably need to add context, and any revenue from outside Donorbox, yourself.
Does Donorbox export to Excel?
Donorbox exports to CSV, which opens in Excel and Google Sheets.
Do I need a CRM to get good dashboards?
Not necessarily. If almost all your giving runs through Donorbox, exports or a reporting layer can be enough. A CRM becomes valuable when you need one donor history across several sources.
Can Salesforce replace Donorbox?
They do different jobs. Donorbox collects gifts; Salesforce manages relationships and reporting. Many organizations use both, with Donorbox feeding Salesforce.
Is the Nonprofit Ops Platform a replacement for Donorbox?
No. It reads Donorbox data for reporting and does not write back to it.
Want dashboards your board trusts?
If your reports take hours to assemble, or the numbers differ depending on who builds them, a review usually finds the cause quickly. Book a free Salesforce health check, or look at the Nonprofit Ops Platform on our products page.