The 5 Manual Donor Reporting Tasks That Can Hold Back  Your Spring Campaign

Spring campaigns bring a surge of donor activity, new gifts, renewed commitments, and higher expectations for timely impact updates.

For many development teams, this busy season also exposes manual donor reporting workflows that can be challenging to overcome. Staff spend countless hours formatting spreadsheets, chasing spending details, and coordinating updates across departments just to get reports out the door.

In fact, FundMiner’s 2025 Benchmarking Survey highlighted how 96% of stewardship teams report manual workflows as a challenge. This Slow and fragmented reporting means stewardship pipelines can lose momentum and campaign readiness ultimately suffers. 

The good news is there is still time to reduce these bottlenecks before spring giving ramps up. By chipping away at manual processes and adopting more integrated tools, fundraising organizations can cut the effort required to produce accurate, timely, donor-ready reports.

Below is a practical three-step process you can take to help your team prepare for a smoother spring season.

1) Identify the Manual Reporting Tasks Slowing Your Team Down

Most organizations underestimate how much time reporting consumes because the work is scattered across roles and systems. Before spring begins, looking at the bottlenecks across the process can be helpful:

1. Exporting and reformatting financial data
   Finance sends a spreadsheet. Development reformats it. Stewardship double-checks every number. Hours or days disappear before storytelling even begins.

2. Searching for donor intent or spending restrictions
   Gift agreements often live in PDFs, shared drives, or old emails, forcing teams to interpret rules manually and increasing compliance risk.

3. Gathering program updates one by one
   Stories, photos, and impact details are scattered across departments, requiring repeated follow-ups that delay report production.

4. Designing reports from scratch each time
   Teams rebuild layouts, charts, and visuals that could be standardized or automated.

5. Tracking delivery in individual inboxes
   Without centralized tracking, fundraising teams lose visibility into what was sent and how donors engaged.

As spring approaches and donor volume rises, each of these manual steps adds up to a cumulatively heavy workflow across the organization.

2) Centralize Your Data to Reduce Manual Work Before Campaigns Pick Up

One of the fastest ways to reduce manual reporting is to consolidate where information lives. When data is centralized, reporting becomes simpler and faster.

Centralizing data helps by:

1. Using a source of truth for fund balances and spending
   Teams no longer wait for monthly exports or reconcile conflicting numbers.

2. Storing donor intent and restrictions in one place
   Stewardship and program teams can quickly access what they need without searching old files.

3. Giving internal partners controlled access
   Program leaders can upload photos and updates directly into a shared platform, reducing back-and-forth emails.

4. Standardizing report formats
   Templates ensure consistent branding and messaging regardless of who prepares the report.

Before spring campaigns begin, centralizing donor and financial information is one of the strongest operational investments a fundraising organization can make.

3) Use Technology to Automate and Scale Stewardship

Going one step further, reporting technology can make a measurable difference by automating the most time-consuming steps, such as:

1. Automatically pulling the correct financial data into reports
   Balances and spending categories populate instantly, reducing errors and saving hours.

2. Generating visual charts and summaries automatically
   Teams move from raw data to clear, donor-friendly visuals in seconds.

3. Allowing bulk report generation during peak seasons
   Hundreds of reports can be created at once instead of one by one.

4. Tracking donor engagement after delivery
   Teams can see when a donor opens a report and follow up more strategically.

5. Maintaining audit trails for compliance
   Every update and delivery is logged for transparency and accountability.

For fundraising organizations preparing for spring giving, this is not just an efficiency play. It protects staff time, improves accuracy, and elevates the donor experience.

Preparing Now Makes Spring Campaigns More Successful

Manual donor reporting becomes overwhelming when data is scattered and processes rely on spreadsheets and individual effort. When UC Riverside adopted donor reporting software, they were able to:

• Increase their narrative request response rate from 56% ➡️ 100%.

• Package and deliver their reports 3 weeks ahead of schedule.
• Save money on their printing costs by incorporating digital reports.

Read the full case study here.

Investing in these improvements before spring begins helps fundraising organizations start the season ready, not overwhelmed, and positioned to steward donors with confidence and impact.