Set Engagement Policies
Goal: Decide how your affiliate uses giving levels, capacity ratings, acknowledgment preferences, and solicitation flags so the data you collect on donors actually drives stewardship behavior.
What these settings mean
Each donor in Ayuna carries a small set of structured attributes that shape how the rest of the system treats them:
- Donor Type — Individual, Corporate, Foundation, or Government. Drives how reports segment giving (corporate vs. individual revenue) and which acknowledgment template gets used.
- Giving Level — Calculated automatically from lifetime giving. Your affiliate sets the levels: their names, how many, and the amounts (see Configure Giving Levels). The built-in levels are Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum and Legacy.
- Capacity Rating — Low, Medium, High, Major. Internal assessment of capacity to give. Drives major-gift cultivation lists. Not visible to the donor.
- Preferred Acknowledgment — Public, Private, or Anonymous. Determines whether the donor's name appears in donor walls, annual reports, or honor-roll lists.
- Do Not Solicit — A flag that excludes the donor from fundraising appeals and campaigns.
Giving level thresholds
Ayuna starts every affiliate on these levels, applied automatically from lifetime giving:
| Level | Lifetime giving |
|---|---|
| Bronze | $0 – $999 |
| Silver | $1,000 – $4,999 |
| Gold | $5,000 – $9,999 |
| Platinum | $10,000 – $24,999 |
| Legacy | $25,000+ |
If your recognition program uses different names or amounts, change them under Fundraising → Giving Levels. See Configure Giving Levels. Saving new levels updates every donor straight away.
Levels are applied automatically from lifetime giving. You can set a donor's level by hand in two cases:
- A donor whose lifetime giving doesn't reflect their actual standing (e.g., a major bequest expected, board member, founder)
- An organization donor where you want to recognize cumulative employee giving alongside corporate gifts
A hand-set level lasts only until Ayuna next recalculates that donor, or until anyone next saves the giving levels. Ayuna recalculates a donor whenever one of their gifts is recorded, edited, refunded, deleted or moved to or from them, when one of their payments clears or fails, and when their record is merged with another. At that point Ayuna places the donor by lifetime giving again, even if their total did not change. See Configure Giving Levels.
Giving level vs. sponsorship tier. Ayuna uses Bronze/Silver/Gold/Platinum names in two places that mean different things — donor giving levels (driven by cumulative lifetime giving, used for stewardship and recognition) and sponsorship tiers (the price points you publish for sponsors, configured per package). They are independent: a donor can be at Silver giving level while sponsoring at the Gold tier of your gala.
When to use Capacity Rating
Capacity is a forward-looking estimate of what someone could give if asked well. It's distinct from giving level (what they have given). Set it during cultivation conversations:
- Low — limited disposable income or signal that this person is at their giving ceiling
- Medium — could give more if engaged
- High — clear potential for a 5-figure annual gift
- Major — major-gift candidate; six figures or more in play
The major-gift officer's prospect list is built by filtering on Capacity Rating = High or Major, sorted by recency of contact. Without the rating, that list doesn't exist.
Acknowledgment preferences in practice
Donors choose how they want to be recognized — capture it accurately, then honor it consistently:
- Public — name in honor rolls, donor walls, annual reports
- Private — recognized internally but not in public materials
- Anonymous — neither public nor named internally beyond required disclosures
Run an audit on your donor wall annually against this field. The fastest way to lose a donor is to publish them as "anonymous" by mistake.
Do Not Solicit
This is the strongest flag. Apply it when:
- A donor has explicitly asked to stop receiving fundraising appeals
- A donor passed away and the family hasn't requested ongoing communication
- A board member or staff member who shouldn't be on appeal lists for ethics reasons
Communications, segments, and bulk-send filters all respect this flag automatically.
Editing on the donor profile
All five attributes are edited from the Edit Person dialog on a donor's profile (/people/:personId), under the "Donor Settings" section. Changes are visible immediately on the donor's profile header.
Auditing
Periodically (quarterly is good cadence):
- Spot-check capacity ratings — are they current?
- Confirm Do Not Solicit donors haven't been contacted by mistake
- Confirm public/anonymous preferences are honored in your latest annual report