What Is a LYBUNT Report? (And How to Win Donors Back)

If you're not running a LYBUNT report regularly, you're leaving your highest-probability prospects unworked while spending money to acquire new donors who cost five to ten times more to reach.

A LYBUNT report identifies donors who gave last year but have not yet given this year. It is the single most actionable retention tool in any fundraiser's toolkit, and most organizations are either running it too infrequently or not at all.

This guide explains exactly what a LYBUNT report is, why it matters more than almost any other fundraising metric, and how to put it to work.

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What Does LYBUNT Stand For?

LYBUNT stands for Last Year But Unfortunately Not This. It describes donors who made at least one gift in your previous fiscal year but have not yet given in the current year.

The concept is simple: these are people who said "yes" to your mission recently — and haven't said it again yet.

LYBUNT donors are not lost. They're lapsed. And there's a meaningful difference.

A lost donor has mentally moved on. A lapsed donor simply hasn't been asked the right way at the right time. The LYBUNT report tells you exactly who those people are so you can act before the window closes.

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Why LYBUNT Donors Are Your Highest-ROI Target

The AFP Fundraising Effectiveness Project consistently reports that donor acquisition costs five to ten times more than donor retention. Yet most fundraising shops spend the majority of their energy chasing new names while their LYBUNT list quietly grows.

The math is unforgiving. If your organization retains 45% of donors year over year — close to the national average — you're losing more than half your giving base every year. Moving that number to 55% can add meaningful revenue without a single new acquisition dollar spent.

LYBUNT donors are your best re-engagement target because:

• They already believe in your mission. They gave once. The psychological barrier is far lower than it is for a cold prospect.
• You have their contact information. No prospecting required.
• They're recent. The relationship is still warm. Wait another year and they cross into SYBUNT territory — and recovery rates drop sharply.
• They're cost-efficient. A targeted re-engagement email costs a fraction of a direct mail acquisition campaign.

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How to Build a LYBUNT Report

Whether you're building this manually or using software like sherbertOSOS, the logic is the same.

Step 1: Define Your Date Parameters

Set your "last year" window as the previous full fiscal year (e.g., January 1 – December 31) and your "this year" window as the current fiscal year to date.

Step 2: Pull Your Prior-Year Donor List

Export all constituents who made at least one gift during the prior fiscal year. Include their constituent ID, name, email, last gift date, last gift amount, and total giving for the year.

Step 3: Pull Your Current-Year Donor List

Export all constituents who have given at any point in the current fiscal year.

Step 4: Identify the Gap

Match the two lists by constituent ID or email. Donors who appear in the prior-year list but not in the current-year list are your LYBUNT population.

In Excel, this is typically done with VLOOKUP or Power Query. In modern fund accounting and CRM software, this is a single report pull.

Step 5: Segment Before You Outreach

A raw LYBUNT list is not a campaign plan. Segment by:

• Giving tier: Major donors ($1,000+) need personal outreach. Mid-level donors warrant direct mail or a personal email. Annual fund donors can receive a segmented email appeal.
• Recency within the prior year: A donor who lapsed in Q4 is warmer than one who lapsed in Q1. Prioritize accordingly.
• Consecutive giving years: A donor who gave five years in a row before lapsing is a very different prospect than a first-time lapsed giver. Acknowledge the relationship.
• Last gift amount: Your ask should be anchored to their giving history, not your standard ask string.

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What a Good Recovery Rate Looks Like

Industry benchmarks put a 20–30% LYBUNT recovery rate as strong. Organizations with structured, automated re-engagement campaigns consistently exceed 35%.

Consider the math: if your LYBUNT list has 500 donors and your average re-engagement gift is $200, a 30% recovery rate returns $30,000 in recovered revenue — from people already in your database, with no acquisition cost.

The difference between a 25% and a 35% recovery rate typically comes down to two things: how quickly you identify lapsed donors, and how systematically you reach them.

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LYBUNT vs. SYBUNT: What's the Difference?

These two reports serve different purposes and should be worked separately.

	LYBUNT	SYBUNT
Stands for	Last Year But Unfortunately Not This	Some Years But Unfortunately Not This
Lapse window	One year	Two or more years
Recovery likelihood	Higher (relationship is recent)	Lower (relationship has cooled)
Recommended channel	Email and personal calls for major donors	Re-engagement email sequence
Priority	Always work first	Secondary, after LYBUNT

A donor who gave three years ago but not in the past two years will appear on a SYBUNT report but not LYBUNT. They require a different message — one that acknowledges a longer absence and rebuilds the emotional connection before making an ask.

Start with LYBUNT every time. The return on effort is higher, and the urgency is greater.

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The Efficiency Gap: Where Manual Workflows Break Down

The standard LYBUNT workflow in a spreadsheet-dependent development shop looks like this:

1. Export giving history from the accounting system
2. Export constituent records from the CRM (if you have one) or donor database
3. Spend 2–4 hours building a matching model in Excel
4. Manually tier the resulting list by gift size and recency
5. Export again to build your email outreach list
6. Repeat the entire process next month — from scratch

By the time this cycle completes, the data is already stale. Donors have given, lapsed, updated their addresses, or been contacted by another staff member using a different list. And there's no clean way to track which re-engagement touches resulted in a gift without yet another manual reconciliation.

This is why LYBUNT recovery rates at most organizations operate well below their potential — not because the strategy is wrong, but because the operational friction is too high to execute it consistently.

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How Modern Software Eliminates the Friction

In a unified nonprofit platform, the LYBUNT report is not a multi-step export exercise — it's a single click.

Here's what that changes:

• The list is always current. LYBUNT donors are identified dynamically, so as someone gives, they drop off the list in real time.
• Segments are pre-built. Donors auto-sort into tiers based on giving history, engagement score, and lifecycle stage. No manual sorting required.
• Outreach flows directly from the report. Instead of exporting to a spreadsheet and then importing into an email platform, the LYBUNT segment feeds directly into the communication engine. You launch the re-engagement campaign without leaving the system.
• Results are tracked automatically. When a lapsed donor gives in response to your campaign, that conversion is attributed. You know your recovery rate without manual reconciliation.

The organizations consistently achieving 30–35%+ LYBUNT recovery rates aren't staffed differently from those at 15–20%. They've just eliminated the friction between identifying lapsed donors and reaching them.

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LYBUNT Re-Engagement: What to Say

The message matters as much as the timing. A few principles:

Lead with impact, not guilt. "We miss you" emails that focus on your organization's loss rather than the donor's impact tend to underperform. Instead, open with what their last gift made possible.

Acknowledge the lapse briefly, then move forward. You don't need to dwell on the fact that they haven't given. A single sentence like "We haven't heard from you in a while" is enough to orient them before making the case for coming back.

Anchor the ask to their history. If their last gift was $150, don't ask for $25. A re-engagement ask at or near their most recent gift amount signals that you know who they are and value their level of commitment.

Create a reason to act now. A matching gift opportunity, a program milestone, or an upcoming deadline gives lapsed donors a reason to respond today rather than eventually.

A three-email re-engagement sequence — we miss you, here's your impact, last chance to make a difference before [date] — is the minimum viable playbook. Each email should stand alone, but together they build a narrative that gives donors multiple moments to re-engage.

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How Often Should You Run a LYBUNT Report?

The short answer: monthly, at minimum.

Many organizations run LYBUNT reports annually — typically in January — and then build a single re-engagement campaign around the results. This is better than nothing, but it means donors who lapsed in February won't receive targeted outreach until the following January. By then, they've been gone for nearly a year and are approaching SYBUNT territory.

A monthly LYBUNT pull allows you to catch donors as they cross the lapse threshold and reach them while the relationship is still fresh. Organizations with automated workflows can set this to trigger automatically — identifying newly lapsed donors each month and enrolling them in the re-engagement journey without any manual intervention.

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Frequently Asked Questions

What does LYBUNT stand for?

LYBUNT stands for "Last Year But Unfortunately Not This." It identifies donors who made a gift in the previous fiscal year but have not yet given in the current year.

How often should I run a LYBUNT report?

Run LYBUNT reports monthly, at minimum, starting in Q2 of your fiscal year. Early identification gives you more runway for re-engagement before year-end.

What is a good LYBUNT recovery rate?

Industry benchmarks suggest a 20–30% LYBUNT recovery rate is strong. Organizations with automated re-engagement campaigns often exceed 35%.

How is LYBUNT different from SYBUNT?

LYBUNT covers donors who lapsed within one year. SYBUNT (Some Years But Unfortunately Not This) covers donors who gave at some point in your history but not in the current year — a broader, older lapse window. Always work your LYBUNT list first; recovery rates are higher and urgency is greater.

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The Bottom Line

Your LYBUNT list is one of the most valuable assets in your database — and one of the most underworked. These are donors who gave, who care, and who haven't said no. They've just gone quiet.

The organizations winning at donor retention aren't discovering some secret acquisition strategy. They're executing a disciplined LYBUNT process every single month: identify, segment, reach out, track, repeat.

If you're still building that list in Excel, that's the place to start. If you want to make the process automatic — so that your LYBUNT list is always current and your re-engagement campaigns run without manual intervention — that's exactly what sherbertOSOS is built to do.

→ Watch sherbertOSOS run a LYBUNT report and build a re-engagement campaign in under 5 minutes. See it in action.