Velocity

Velocity answers one question: is this person giving now, relative to everything they’ve ever given? A contact whose entire giving history is from this calendar year scores 100. A contact who gave $50,000 over ten years but nothing this year scores 0.

Formula

velocity = ROUND(
  MIN(100,
    this_year_giving / lifetime_giving × 100)
)

No configuration variables. Velocity is pure math.

What it tells you

• High velocity (≥50): The relationship is active. This contact is in a giving cycle right now.
• Low velocity (<50): Giving has slowed or stopped relative to their history. Not necessarily lapsed — check Heat and Recovery for context.
• Velocity = 0: No giving this year at all, regardless of how strong their history is.

Why it matters for segmentation

Velocity is the y-axis of the Hearth quadrant grid. Paired with Heat (the x-axis), it separates four meaningfully different contact states:

• High velocity + high heat → Prime: active and high-value
• High velocity + low heat → Rising: momentum is there, history is shorter
• Low velocity + high heat → Cooling: strong history, current giving has stalled
• Low velocity + low heat → Dormant: neither recent nor historically significant

Edge cases

If lifetime_giving is zero or negative, Velocity returns 0 to avoid division errors. A contact with no giving history has no velocity to measure.