We’ve re-branded from Legacy Leaders to Donor Compass™. Learn more.

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Our Story

We are Donor Compass™, and this is our story.

We are the leaders in data-driven relationship building. Donor Compass™ has partnered with over 250 nonprofits across North America to foster meaningful relationships with their top donors. We specialize in planned giving, data analysis, research, and relationship building — and of course, optimizing how you fundraise.

Our story starts in 1995, when we launched as the 1st direct response fundraising vendor to introduce a planned giving program. We recognized the immense potential of planned giving for nonprofits — but the traditional marketing methods failed to maximize this potential revenue.

We decided to combine our unique, highly donor-centric approach with targeted direct response marketing and leading-edge relationship advancement. We use an integrated approach to foster meaningful relationships that inspire donors to give. Our planned, major, and capital giving programs achieve unparalleled results, raising of dollars millions in revenue for our clients.

In 2007, we incorporated the first version of DC Analytics (back then it was called Donor Compass™ Database Analysis) into our four-year planned giving programs. Our proprietary donor analytics tool provides a measurement and ranking of the propensity of a donor to provide you with a relationship gift (planned, major and capital) based on their past giving behavior with your organization.

The results were outstanding. By strategically selecting donors to include in the program, our conversion rates skyrocketed. Over the next few years, we finetuned and improved DC Analytics, making it ready to be a stand-alone product. It was released in 2014, and its intuitive dashboard was ready for purchase in 2019. Now nonprofits can easily identify their best donors — with just the click of a mouse!

Groundbreaking Approach

Our unique, donor-centric approach at Donor Compass™ has had highly successful rates since the 90’s. We have partnered with over 250 nonprofit clients to execute 350+ programs. With each campaign and partnership, we focused on enhancing donor loyalty and engagement, ensuring the best possible results. At the same time, we worked hard to build and improve our methodology. We thoroughly analyzed completed programs and identified ways to innovate and elevate our expertise.

Interested in our full history? Let’s take a walk down memory lane:

1995

  • Donor Compass™ is founded.
  • We are the 1st direct response fundraising vendor to introduce integrated mail/phone programs that focus on planned giving in North America.

1996

  • Donor Compass™ wins the Canadian Direct Marketing Association Merit Award for Integrated Marketing.

1999 – 2001

  • Donor Compass™ receives the Association of Healthcare Professionals Showcase Award for Planned Giving for 3 consecutive years.

2003

  • Donor Compass™ passes the $200,000,000 mark in planned giving commitments secured on behalf of North American nonprofit clients.

2004

  • Donor Compass™ 1st facility in the U.S. opens.

2006

  • Through a $50,000 grant to the Association of Fundraising Professionals (AFP) Research Council, Donor Compass™ provides funding to support 2 separate planned giving motivation research projects conducted by:
    • Russell James.
    • Adrian Sargeant & Jen Shang.

2007

  • Donor Compass™ begins marketing its unique 4 year Complete Planned Giving Program that includes:
    • Donor Compass™ Database Analysis (the 1st database analysis tool on the market designed specifically to unlock the hidden planned giving potential in a nonprofit’s database)

2010

  • Donor Compass™ executes 125th planned giving focused project

2014

  • Donor Compass™ releases Donor Compass™ Database Analysis as a stand-alone service.

2015

  • Donor Compass™ 2.0™ is released. This new and improved version incorporates 2 additional measurement components based on an additional 7 years of empirical evidence.

2019

  • Donor Compass™ introduces Donor Compass™ the easy to navigate, wholly graphic, interactive, new user interface
    with Donor Compass™ 2019.
  • Recipient of the CAGP 2019 GTA Chapter Champion Award in recognition of Legacy Leader’s 13 – year partnership in support of the GTA Mentoring Program.

2021

  • The Las Vegas office opens. We are now able to offer callers from the US and Canada. We actively recruit to build out the US team.

2023

  • We rebrand to Donor Compass™. The new name comes with new branding and a new website, but our relationship-first philosophy hasn’t changed.