The Shifting Donor Landscape
Last year I went to AFP ICON 2025 in Seattle and one of the biggest takeaways was that the donor pyramid is looking more like an Eiffel tower than the pyramid. A small number of donors are doing all the heavy lifting, putting in billions of dollars into philanthropic causes. Meanwhile, the everyday donors are fewer and giving less. What does this tell us as fundraisers? We are not tapping into those smaller donors and will become too dependent on 1-2 major donors to run our organization. When that donor’s funding ends, you will be left with a big gap to fill.
Diversifying Risk
How do we diversify this risk? The answer is to engage the everyday donor in your mission. The way to do that is easier than you think. They are already participating in your organization in some fashion. Identifying them and stewarding that relationship is the task at hand. We are talking about the volunteers, the board members, the spouse that gave from their DAF, and the business owner that sponsored your event. These are all transactions that may not be captured and contributed to the correct individual. Or they are captured but on a variety of platforms.
The Challenge of Tech Chaos
This article Taming Tech Chaos in the Back Office is spot on in regards to the plethora of platforms created to make it easier for donors to give but creates chaos for the nonprofit back office to sort through the data. Online donations via QR codes makes it so easy for the donor. It captures the donor name (auto-filled), and credit card info (from the payment app) and the money gets deposited to your bank. Now you are figuring out who that person is and entering them manually into your main database. A slightly more thoughtful approach might include an import/export functionality that gets the information from one system to the other. Nonetheless, back office manual entry is unavoidable. How about the ACH payment from a financial institution? Are you spending the time to track down the donor who initiated that transaction?
The article does not provide a solution, rather it hopes more technology will solve the problem eventually. And everyday, more technology is being built and targeted to nonprofit leaders! There are so many ‘solutions’ out there that create integrations between the various platforms and now we are filtering through them only to find ourselves with more technology. How do we tackle this problem when all we want to do is serve our mission and the causes that are so dear to our hearts?
Relationships, Not Apps
The answer is not more apps. Donor stewardship is about relationships and all the technology in the world cannot build those relationships. People build relationships. Technology, however, can capture data, analyze it, create reports, and even make predictions so we can focus on the human work of relationship building.
One of the challenges in the nonprofit sector is high staff turnover. People in this field are passionate, but often overworked and underpaid. How can you steward a relationship when the people keep changing? Choosing a technology solution that fits your needs and creating clear processes to ensure data integrity is a good place to start.
Building Resilient Infrastructure
Data is king! But it is also a case of garbage in, garbage out. Knowing which information matters and ensuring it is captured correctly helps protect relationships during staff transition. When the development director leaves, the donor relationship doesn’t have to leave with them. A good system captures historical context so the next nonprofit leader can continue the relationship with an understanding of past conversations. A good system also aggregates the information so you understand the individual as a whole. It can identify that recurring donor giving to your cause over the course of 10 years. Maybe only $50 each time but that consistency shows loyalty. Recognizing and celebrating that relationship is stewardship.
Infrastructure matters. Picking a system that fits the organizational needs and will actually be used by staff and volunteers is key. With good data, you can analyze the reports to craft the ‘ask’, create meaningful touch points, and engage those everyday ‘donors’ at their level. That consistent volunteer may become your next big donor. Are you capturing that data and stewarding that relationship? Do you have the infrastructure in place to easily onboard new staff/volunteers to help with fundraising? Are you using the right tools for the purposes they are designed for?
Take Action!
Review how you track the data on people who care about your mission, not just those who give money, but those who give their time, expertise, and advocacy. Streamlining these processes to ensure the integrity of your data is an investment that strengthens donor relationships while mitigating the loss of institutional knowledge during staff turnover.
