Guest Article by Sarah Tedesco, DonorSearch
A major component of many nonprofit development strategies is identifying new donors. However, marketing your organization to brand-new donors is much more expensive and time-consuming than finding creative ways to keep your existing donor base engaged with your organization.
Proactive stewardship, regular outreach, and exciting new initiatives can help you keep donors engaged and win back lapsed donors. These efforts even provide a natural marketing opportunity to sell your cause to new supporters.
This article explores four actionable strategies to win back former supporters and stabilize your fundraising baseline through long-term support.
1. Automate giving and engagement
A few primary reasons behind donor lapse are forgetfulness, a lack of appreciation, and not being asked to give again. Automated thank you notes, regular outreach cadences, and well-timed invitations to give can all encourage engagement with your organization and boost long-term donor retention.
These milestone touchpoints and follow-up time periods can indicate times to reach out to your donors with a gift invitation:
Their timed donation cadence: Identify each donor’s typical time between gifts, then use this window to proactively remind donors to give just before their typical donation period.
Follow-up messages: If a recurring donor misses a usual payment, send gentle messages asking them to give using their preferred outreach methods.
Ask donors to update their contact information: Sometimes, automatic recurring gift payments fail due to outdated credit or debit cards, or your contact information for a supporter is no longer accurate. Ask your supporters to verify and update their donor profiles at least once a year to prevent missed payments.
Leverage anniversaries: Reach out to donors around gift anniversaries or when you launch new initiatives. These nostalgic time periods may incentivize donors to return.
Request feedback on your programs: Sometimes, asking donors for ways to improve your programming motivates them to give again. At the very least, it shows that you care about their experience with your organization.
Remember that your donor stewardship strategy shouldn’t consist only of requests to give. Make sure to include initiative updates, event and volunteer opportunity invitations, and beneficiary testimonials alongside your requests to establish a non-transactional outreach cadence. After every gift, send a genuine thank-you note to your supporter showing your appreciation for their contribution.
2. Include stewardship outreach
Center your stewardship around impact reports to make sure that current and lapsed donors understand the impact of their giving. If donors don’t feel that their support is making a true difference to your organization, they’re likely to contribute their funds to other causes.
In your outgoing communications, make sure to emphasize the value of every dollar raised. Send regular impact reports including qualitative and quantitative metrics, such as:
Funding reports: Send updates about every major fundraiser showing how much you raised and the specific causes those funds will support.
Equivalence metrics: It can be difficult to picture how certain donation sizes correlate to positive change. When crafting an impact report or writing donation page copy, tie a standard gift amount to the real difference that money could make. For example, a food bank might state that a $20 donation can provide five meals to families in need.
Include goal metrics: For campaigns still in progress, use a visual graph or donation temperature chart to measure how close you are to your final fundraising goal. This visualization can help create excitement and motivate supporters to give.
Feature impact testimonials: Reach out to your beneficiaries to ask if they’d be willing to share how your organization has positively impacted their lives. Seeing the face and hearing the story of someone who has directly benefited from your organization’s support is a powerful motivation to continue support.
While creating frequent, personalized impact reports for each donor to your organization is an effective method of retention, it also creates a lot of work for your team. Fortunately, artificial intelligence (AI) tools can alleviate some of that stress.
Use predictive AI to identify the causes each of your donors has previously given to and initiatives they might be interested in supporting. Then, leverage generative AI to draft an impact report tailored to their interests. Have a development team member review each report, then send it to your supporters to get them excited to support your mission.
3. Send personalized outreach
When reaching out to lapsed donors, make sure to craft a personalized appeal that shows your appreciation for their past contributions to your organization and highlights exciting new giving opportunities. Here are some ideas to personalize your lapsed donor outreach:
Use past engagement data, including initiative participation, event attendance, and volunteer histories, to promote initiatives aligned with their interests.
Include previous donation amounts and their impact to remind lapsed donors of the real impact of their contributions to your organization.
Target your outreach efforts to specific communication channels that they usually engage with. For example, if a donor prefers direct mail communications, but your organization has pivoted solely to email outreach, make an exception so they can be included.
Provide a variety of giving options, including adjustable gift amounts, matching gift programs, volunteer grant opportunities, and corporate philanthropy options, so donors can re-engage in a way that is sustainable for their financial needs.
Before reaching out to your lapsed donors, DonorSearch by EverTrue recommends using prospect research tools to determine their capacity, affinity, and philanthropic mindset. This information will help you craft a personalized appeal that reflects their past interest in your cause and provides ways to donate that reflect their abilities.
4. Use ongoing campaigns
Ongoing fundraising initiatives provide the perfect excuse to re-engage with your organization organically. A solid annual fund campaign, driven by your mission, creates a natural sense of urgency and community momentum. Capitalize on the excitement of a successful fundraiser to update lapsed, recurring, and annual donors on your current projects and invite them to get involved.
When reaching out to lapsed donors about your current campaign, provide impact metrics showing how much money you have currently raised with a digital tracker, how much impact a small donation within their demonstrated capacity has, and the overall positive effect of your fundraiser.
Then, frame your appeal messaging around the positive the donor can make today, rather than focusing on the fact that they stopped giving in the past. Donor-centric appeal copy lets contributors know they can make a tangible difference by funding your mission, encouraging a deep commitment to your cause.
Retaining existing donors through thoughtful re-engagement builds a much stronger financial foundation than constantly chasing new acquisitions. A strong stewardship matrix and automated, personalized outreach can help retain and re-engage donors at risk of lapse, reiterating their importance to your community.
This guest post was written by Sarah Tedesco.
Sarah Tedesco is the Chief Operating Officer and Part Owner of DonorSearch, a prospect research company that focuses on proven philanthropy. Sarah is responsible for managing the production and customer support department, which focuses on client contract fulfillment, retention, and satisfaction. She also collaborates with other team members in various areas like sales, marketing, and product development. Sarah holds an MBA from the University of Maryland and worked as a foundation prospect researcher before joining DonorSearch, providing her with industry experience that she applies to her responsibilities day-to-day.
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