What Will It Take To Grow The Donor Base?
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The end of August marks the start of the new school year for families with school-age children and the psychological flip to fall for most everyone, despite the extension of summer heat. Leaders in the nonprofit sector are busy gearing up for their busiest fundraising season with hopes of making big gains before the end of the calendar year. Along with raising more money, nonprofits are always seeking more donors. And it goes without saying, they would all love to keep them.
So, what is the key to unlocking donor loyalty?
Having digested the Giving USA report on philanthropy earlier this summer, the record-setting $617.20 billion donated in 2025 offers optimism for the future and demonstrates the long-term resilience of philanthropy despite economic uncertainty. There are more than 1.5 million registered 501(c)(3) charitable organizations in the United States that depend heavily on philanthropy to fuel their missions. Understanding where philanthropy is coming from and where it is going is a critically important source of data.
It is natural for fundraising professionals, nonprofit executives and boards of directors to ask how they can improve their efforts to attract and retain philanthropic support and raise more funds.
Individuals make up two-thirds of all charitable giving, with foundations, corporations and bequests making up the remaining third. Yet most nonprofits say they struggle with retaining individual donors. Further, the number of households reporting charitable giving has been declining over time, meaning that fewer donors are giving.
Being more successful requires digging deeper into your own donor constituencies, understanding human behavioral science and reassessing where your organization is spending its resources and time.
Let’s start with a few thoughts around human behavioral science. If a nonprofit organization wants a larger audience of people making planned gifts, for example, its approach should not lead with death. Instead, emphasizing lasting social impact coupled with a social-norm default – ‘people like me do this’ – inspires much more engagement and giving, according to Russell James III, Ph.D., J.D., CFP®. Russell is a professor, the CH Foundation Chair of Personal Financial Planning and a Charitable Giving Program Director at Texas Tech University, where he directs the on-campus and online graduate programs in charitable giving.
Author Cherian Koshy emphasizes similar principles in his recently published book, Neurogiving: The Science of Donor Decision Making. Koshy demonstrates how identity, social norms and storytelling drive charitable giving. Understanding the generosity that already lives inside every donor helps unlock it. The giving brain is connected to our identity and need for social attachment. Koshy emphasizes that donor retention problems mean we are not getting the social attachment piece right! We need to first name the identity and then create the attachment. “When you want someone to vote, for example, saying ‘Be a Voter’ instead of ‘Go Vote’ helps that person attach to a sense of belonging among other voters like themselves.”
Next, look closely at how your organization is spending its resources and time. The fact is that most written and verbal communication is focused on recognition of the top one percent of those individuals, foundations or corporations who give the most money. While recognition of this generosity is important and should be directed to those who gave, most of an organization’s other givers cannot identify themselves alongside these few donors. Further, advancement staffing models are set up to drive philanthropic revenue from a few donors as quickly as possible. The infrastructure wheel that drives donor acquisition is not backed by an intentional effort to know the identity and need for social attachment for everyone who gives. And because of this, the nonprofit sector continually misses opportunities to build relationships with and retain its donors.
With the advancement of technology, today’s nonprofit sector has more information about its donors at its fingertips than ever before. Studying and using information to understand who gives to your organization and what they gain from making these gifts is key to retaining donor loyalty. Deploying your staff’s human resources to provide the vehicles for social attachment for donors at ALL levels can drive more connection and therefore more giving.
Once a donor feels connected to others like themselves, their sense of loyalty increases. Loyal donors give more often and, over time, up to their capacity. Whether one’s capacity is large, medium or small, an abundance of givers has the power to fuel charitable missions into the future.
If you’d like to explore unleashing your donor loyalty, reach out to me. The M. Gale team wants to partner with you to advance your mission!
Yours in Generosity,
Missy Gale
As CEO and Founder of M. Gale, Missy Gale has dedicated almost three decades to crafting unique strategies and solutions to complex fundraising projects and organizational issues, resulting in transformational fundraising success for her clients. With more than 15 years at the helm of M. Gale, Missy has assisted nonprofits in North Texas and the Southwest in the areas of healthcare, arts and culture, human services, and education. She has been honored as the Outstanding Professional Fundraiser by the Association of Fundraising Professionals Fort Worth Metro chapter and named A Great Woman of Texas by the Fort Worth Business Press.