Seasons

What Seasons are for

Seasons are the reporting spine of Fay. A season is a named stretch of dates, Riverside’s runs from September to June, and almost everything else in the app hangs off one. An event, a ticket order, a gift, a campaign: each belongs to a season, and that is what lets Fay answer a question like “how does giving this week compare with the same week a year ago.”

The list lives at /seasons, and each season has a page of its own. Click a season’s name and you land on it: what has been raised, how that sits against your goal and against the same point last season, and who has been giving. From there View events takes you to that season’s events list, already filtered to it (the address reads events?season_id=…). A season is both a place you visit and the lens the rest of the app is viewed through.

The seasons list

Each row is a single season. Season is the name, and it links to that season’s page; whichever one you are in carries a Current badge beside it. Dates shows the span as “September 1, 2026 – June 30, 2027.” Raised totals every kept gift filed under the season, and Events counts the ones that have not been archived. On the right sit two actions, Edit and Archive.

One season is always the current season: the one whose dates contain today, or, if today falls in a gap between seasons, simply the newest. The current season is the default lens for the Today and for the season filters across the app, so keeping its dates right matters.

The season page

Clicking a season’s name opens its own page, the one screen in Fay that answers “how is this year going?” in figures rather than rows. Nothing is edited here. It is a reading, and every number counts kept gifts only, so archiving a gift takes it back out again.

Three figures sit across the top. Raised is the season’s total, with the change against the same point last season beneath it, “18% vs. last season,” marked up or down. Goal shows how far along you are as a percentage, with the target itself underneath. Donor retention is the share of last season’s donors who have given again, with the plain count, “14 of 20 kept”, spelled out below.

Two cards break the year down. Giving lists raised this season, the Same point last season comparison with the gap in dollars beside it, the goal, and the donor count split into new and returning. Audience lists events, tickets, Average fill, how many people were New to you this season, and how many of those newcomers have since given.

Average fill counts only the events you produced yourself. A concert a partner orchestra staged sold its house through the partner's box office, so the tickets Fay can see are whatever list they hand over afterwards, never the night's real sales, and measuring that against their capacity would report every co-production as a half-empty room. The night still counts in Events, in Tickets, and in everyone's attendance history; it is left out of this one number only. See Events for how to name a producer.

Any comparison Fay cannot honestly make renders as an em dash rather than a zero: a first season has no prior year to measure against, and a season with no goal has no percentage to show. On the right, View events drops you into that season’s event list and Edit season reopens the form, or, if the season has been archived, a single Restore button stands in place of both.

Creating & editing a season

New season asks for four things, one of them optional. Name is free text with a placeholder like “2026–2027”, most organizations name a season for the years it spans, but the label is yours to choose. Starts on and Ends on set the span. Fundraising goal is the one you may leave blank: enter it in dollars, cents are accepted but rarely wanted, and the season page tracks what you have raised against it. Leave it empty and nothing pretends to be zero: the goal percentage reads “·” and the Giving card says “Not set.”

Fay holds you to a few rules. A name is required and must be unique within your organization, so you can’t keep two “2026–2027” seasons side by side. Both dates are required, and the end must be after the start, save an end that lands on or before the start and Fay tells you it “must be after the start date.” Edit reopens the same form later, which is how you’d nudge a season’s dates or fix a typo in its name.

Archiving, never deleting

Once a season has any events or donations filed under it, Fay will not let you delete it, too much history hangs off it. Instead you Archive it, and the confirmation is plain about what happens: “Archive 2026–2027? It will be hidden from lists but never deleted.”

Archiving lifts a season out of every list and picker without touching a single event or gift beneath it. View archived shows the ones you’ve set aside, each marked Archived and carrying a Restore to bring it back. Nothing is ever truly thrown away, the same promise you’ll find on the People and every other list in Fay.

What a season pulls together

The season page gives you the year at a glance, but a season’s real work happens on the screens it groups. On Events the season picker narrows the calendar and the sold-and-walk-up counts to one year at a time. On Donations every gift is stamped with the season it fell in, so lifetime totals and per-season totals both add up. And the season’s own page leans on them hardest of all: its “Same point last season” comparison can only line this year up against the equivalent point a year ago because last year is itself a season, with dates Fay can match against this one.