Secure, continuously updated donor intelligence built directly into Crimson.
Every campaign is sitting on more donor data than it can act on. Names, gift histories, contact records, response patterns: the raw material for better fundraising decisions is already in the file.
What most operations are missing isn't data. It's prioritization.
Who should you call first? How much should you ask for? Which donors are most likely to give again? Who is quietly drifting away? And which names are costing more to reach than they're likely to return?
That's the problem Pulse exists to solve.
Reports look backward. Pulse looks forward.
Most fundraising reports are a rear-view mirror. They tell you what already happened: who gave last cycle, what an appeal raised, which source codes performed.
That's useful. But it answers yesterday's questions.
Pulse is the predictive donor intelligence layer of the Crimson ecosystem. It analyzes patterns across your donor file and turns the information you already have into forward-looking guidance about what donors are likely to do next.
Pulse generates predictions including:
- Donation Recurrence — the likelihood a donor will give again within 30, 60, 90, 180, or 360 days
- Next Donation Amount — an estimate of what a donor may give next, helping sharpen ask strings and upgrade targeting
- Annual Giving Potential — expected donor value over the next 12 months
- Predicted Lifetime Value — a forward-looking estimate of a donor's longer-term value
- Expected Mail Value — predicted return from mailing a donor, helping identify profitable audiences and potential suppression opportunities
Together, those predictions help answer a much more valuable question than simply what a donor has done before:
What are they likely to do next?
Your donor file doesn't stand still. Neither does Pulse.
Donor behavior changes constantly throughout a campaign. Someone gives for the first time. Another donor increases their gift. A reliable contributor begins to lapse. A low-dollar donor suddenly shows signs of becoming significantly more valuable.
A static score generated months ago can't account for those changes.
Pulse can.
Pulse scores are refreshed constantly throughout the cycle as new donor activity enters the system. As donor behavior changes, Pulse incorporates that new information into its predictions.
That turns your donor file from a static list into a living, evolving fundraising universe — one that reflects what your donors are doing now, not simply what they did when a model or data append was created months ago.
From a flat file to a ranked universe
Pulse translates those predictions into tiers fundraisers can act on.
Likelihood can be organized into Certain, Persuadable, Longshot, and Dormant. Timing can be organized into Hot, Warm, Reachable, and Lapsed. Those scores can then be combined with geography, channel history, giving behavior, or other Crimson fields.
The question stops being simply, "Who's on the list?"
It becomes: "Who's worth the next dollar or the next hour?"
And an important distinction is that likelihood is not the same thing as wealth.
A traditional wealth screen can help identify who could give. Pulse helps identify who is likely to give, when they may give, and what that giving could be worth.
The wealthiest person in your file isn't necessarily your most likely next donor. And your most likely donor isn't necessarily your biggest potential donor.
Read together, Pulse's likelihood, timing, and value predictions help fundraisers find the right donor, at the right time, with the right ask.
What changes in practice
- Direct mail — Expected Mail Value helps identify your most and least profitable audiences, creating opportunities to suppress recipients who cost more to reach than they're likely to return. In testing, Pulse has identified opportunities to reduce mail volume by as much as 20% without sacrificing revenue.
- Call time — prioritize donors based on their current likelihood and potential value, putting the strongest opportunities at the top of the list.
- Digital — focus outreach on responsive donors, reducing wasted communications and unnecessary fatigue.
- Reactivation — identify lapsed donors who still show meaningful fundraising potential instead of treating every inactive donor the same.
- Mid-major discovery — surface emerging upgrade candidates earlier using forward-looking value forecasts rather than relying exclusively on historical giving or static wealth data.
What the testing shows
In a blind A/B direct mail test using identical creative, timing, and execution, Pulse-modeled prospects were approximately 2.1× more likely to donate than the holdout control.
Total revenue increased approximately 188–200%, with results statistically significant at greater than 99.9% confidence.
In practical terms, the modeled audience generated nearly 3× the revenue from the same mail volume — approximately $4,000 in additional revenue for every 10,000 pieces mailed.
In national-scale mail testing, Pulse-modeled audiences have also generated approximately four to five times the average gift of control audiences.
Full test results are available at pulse.cmdi.com/results.
Figures reflect outcomes from specific, controlled tests and are not a guarantee of future performance. Results vary by file, program, and execution.
Your donor data stays your donor data.
Fundraising data is sensitive. Pulse was built accordingly.
Your donor-level information is never shared with another client.
Other organizations cannot see your donors, giving histories, individual scores, or other identifiable information from your file. Your donor records remain private, your data remains client-owned, and your Pulse scores are available only to your organization.
Where aggregated and anonymized information is used to improve Pulse, it does not contain identifiable donor-level information and does not allow another client to access or identify your donors.
Pulse isn't a donor-list marketplace, and your organization's donor information isn't turned into one.
The objective is straightforward: use your data to make your fundraising operation smarter without compromising the privacy or security of the people in your file. Our full data-handling commitments are published at pulse.cmdi.com/security.
Built into Crimson. Built to stay current.
Pulse isn't a one-time data append that begins aging the moment you receive it. It's built directly into the Crimson ecosystem.
That means no separate donor database to maintain, no new system for fundraisers to learn, and no recurring export-and-reconcile process just to put predictive intelligence to work.
More importantly, as your fundraising program generates new donor activity, Pulse regularly refreshes its predictions so the intelligence available to your team evolves alongside your file.
The result is a secure, continuously evolving decision-support layer built around the donor information you already maintain in Crimson.
Pulse doesn't replace fundraiser judgment. It gives fundraisers better information with which to exercise it.
If you're already a Crimson client, the fastest way to understand Pulse is to see what it can reveal in your own donor file.
In twenty minutes, we'll show you the predictions Pulse generates, how those predictions change the way you prioritize donors, and how they fit directly into the Crimson workflow your team already uses.
See what Pulse can reveal in your donor data → pulse.cmdi.com/demo