The perimeters of a retention report vary from organization to organization but generally rely on a combination of similar data:
- When users created their accounts
- How many events a user has registered for
- The date of the most recent event a user has registered for
Examples of what retention means:
- How many volunteers who created accounts this year have been repeat volunteers?
- How many volunteers from last year are still volunteering this year?
- What is the average span of time between account creation and most recent registration?
What is going to be done with this data:
- Gather total numbers of volunteers who are repeats vs those who are not
- Gather total numbers of volunteers who created accounts in previous years and are still volunteering today
- Identify trends in what months volunteers are creating account which lead to repeat volunteerism
- Reach out to non-repeat volunteers in an attempt to re-engage
All of the above can be answered via data from the Custom Users Report.
- Navigate to the Reports page, select Custom Reports, then Users
- From the Column Chooser drag the following fields into the report:
- Created - date the account was created
- Event Count - total number of registered events
- Last Activity -date of the most recently registered event (may be in the future)
Utilize sorting, filtering, and searching to narrow the list for the needed metrics.
Pointing at the magnifying glass reveals search parameters.
Selecting 'Between' allows for entering a date range. This search would result in a list of all user account created 1/1/2023 through 12/31/2023.
'Less than or equal to' 12/31/2023 displays all account created before 2024.
Similar filters/searching can be applied to the Last Activity column, as well as searches for Event Count.
This combination would display all user account created before 2024 who have done greater than 1 event with their most recent event being in 2024.
Once you have your data, you could whatever calculations are needed for your organization. The fastest way to know the total number of users within a filter would be to export the report to Excel.
If the purpose was to reengage with a selection of volunteers, pressing the 'Email' button on the upper right allows for emailing all users within the filtered list.