The Top-Heavy Tower
The Top-Heavy Tower
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02 · Premise
The most dangerous sentence in fundraising
“We’re not bringing in as many donors as we used to, but bigger gifts are making up for it.”
It sounds like balance, but it’s actually the description of an unstable program.
The sector-wide data tells the same story across thousands of organizations:
The Fundraising Effectiveness Project’s Q4 2025 report recorded the strongest revenue growth in five years. Yet the number of donors declined 3.6%, continuing a downward trend that began in 2021. Retention has flatlined around 18%, and new-donor conversion remains the sector’s most stubborn weakness.
Giving USA’s 2026 report shows total U.S. charitable giving crossing $600 billion for the first time, reaching $617.2 billion in 2025. But look at where that growth came from. Individual giving rose 4.1%, while bequests were up 19.7%. This is more of a stock market story than a donor story.
RKD’s own analysis of full-file data from 219 organizations through June 30, 2026, found the same pattern: revenue increased, but donor counts didn’t expand at the same pace. The donors who remain are carrying more of the weight.
donors, in a year that recorded the strongest revenue growth in five years. Retention has flatlined around 18%.
FEP Q4 2025
total U.S. giving, crossing $600 billion for the first time. But bequests rose 19.7% against 4.1% for individual giving.
Giving USA 2026
organizations in RKD’s own full-file analysis, same pattern: revenue increased, but donor counts didn’t expand at the same pace.
RKD full-file
Put simply: The nonprofit sector is raising more money from fewer people. That plan works … right up until it doesn’t. And when that happens, everything can come crashing down quickly.
This is the question every fundraiser should be sitting with:
Are we rebuilding our file, or simply relying on major gifts?
This guide is about finding where the structural gaps are in your program and filling them. It’s about the difference between tactics and strategy.
It’s about building a fundraising system where acquisition and stewardship are deliberately run at a short-term loss, feeding a pipeline of monthly and mid-major donors whose long-term value funds the next round of acquisition.
A file that pays for its own growth.
03 · Diagnosis
Height is not the same as strength
Fewer new donors enter than in prior years.
01 · FRONT DOOR
Donors give once and never again—the weakness FEP identifies as the sector’s most urgent.
02 · FIRST-YEAR DROPOFF
Recurring gifts end, often without any decision by the donor at all.
03 · SUSTAINER CHURN
Loyal donors aren’t identified, and miss the attention they need to upgrade their giving.
04 · MID-LEVEL PIPELINE
These gaps go unmanaged for years because revenue is a lagging indicator. It’s the number reported to the board, and it’s the last one to break.
Donor count, retention and frequency all move first, often while revenue is still growing. By the time revenue falls, the structural damage already occurred two or three years earlier.
From there, things often get worse because of one key budget decision. As the line item with the worst-looking ROI, acquisition looks like the obvious place to cut. But reduced acquisition budgets compound the decline.
Investing less leads to fewer new donors and further shrinking files. It’s a vicious cycle that’s ultimately a math problem. And, this math problem is further compounded in ways that are not even visible for many years: the pipeline for planned, major, and mid-level giving.
The key error is expecting immediate returns on long-term investments. A healthy fundraising program runs at two speeds:
Negative ROI in the short term: acquisition and stewardship. You’re not raising money here. You’re buying attention and building trust. On a 12-month P&L, both will always look like losses.
Positive ROI in the long term: monthly giving and mid/major giving. This is where the return builds in Years 2, 3, 4 and 5.
By holding all parts of the program to the same annual ROI, you systematically defund the structural base (acquisition and stewardship) that supports the top of the tower (monthly and mid/major).
The compounding damage is real.
If you cut acquisition this year, you lose this year’s new donors. You also lose the sustainers they would have become in Year 2 and the mid-level donors they would have become in Year 4. Plus, the planned gifts that arrive many years later that have a large, albeit delayed impact on the bottom line.
Over time, those high-value donors bring in surplus revenue that can then be used to invest in acquisition and stewardship. This keeps the cycle active and compounding in a positive direction.
04 · Acquisition
Replacing the blocks you move
Prospect universes have contracted, costs have climbed, and response rates took a hit as inflation squeezed households. None of that is imagined.
RKD Group has tracked the donor prospect universe for years, and while it has declined, the drop has been far less pronounced across the industry than it appears inside certain organizations.
For most nonprofits, a viable prospect universe still exists. It just requires the fundamentals to be fully optimized for long-term growth rather than partially executed.
The more useful question is what’s actually broken in how acquisition is run. One answer is an over-reliance on cooperative databases.
Co-ops serve a real purpose, but leaning on them exclusively creates two problems. If every organization in your cause flags the same proven donor, she gets buried in mail from all of you.
And co-ops can’t reach her neighbor, who cares deeply about your cause but has never given to one. Therefore, she doesn’t exist in the transaction data.
Fixing the top of the funnel means adapting to today’s acquisition challenges: diversifying the list mix beyond co-op models, thinking audience-first rather than channel-first, and building real strategies for communities the industry has historically underinvested in.
It also means fixing measurement. Donors are increasingly influenced by direct mail but fulfill the gift online, which makes single-channel attribution actively misleading. Without matchback analysis, you will underestimate mail, over-credit digital, and optimize your way into the wrong budget.
Success story
Like many food banks, Food Bank For New York City (FBNYC) saw a huge surge of new donors during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Their challenge was to use the post-pandemic period to turn an emergency-driven digital program into a sustained acquisition strategy.
As the immediate crisis faded, FBNYC and RKD continued investing in digital media, combining evergreen ads with timely campaigns to reach new audiences and keep the organization visible year-round. From FY21 to FY22, FBNYC tripled its digital media investment and generated more donations in FY22 than in FY21.
The strategy continued to evolve through new tactics, including Instagram reminders, abandoned-cart ads and evergreen sustainer ads.
From FY22 to FY24, media investment grew another 21%. By FY24, FBNYC had 8.6% more unique online donors than during the pandemic peak in FY20, while media-attributed revenue was up 264% compared with FY19.
The results show how continued investment can establish digital media as a reliable driver of new donors and long-term revenue.
05 · Stewardship
Moving with care
Precision matters here.
Cultivation typically has a clear plan. We build a communications calendar with specific audience touchpoints through appeals, newsletters, email, and more. The goal is to move the donor to give a second gift and eventually another and another as we nurture them to becoming a lifetime supporter.
But stewardship can be more vague, which is why it so often has no explicit owner.
Stewardship is the ongoing relationship care that happens after a gift, with the explicit goal of increasing retention and trust. This is how we communicate with donors without an ask.
It follows a repeatable cycle:
Acknowledge
A timely, personalized thank-you by mail, email or SMS, depending on the audience.
Recognize
In the way that donor actually wants. Some value public acknowledgment; others prefer private appreciation. This is a segmentation decision.
Report impact
Show precisely what the gift did, combining storytelling with evidence.
Invite engagement
This is not just a one-way relationship. Give your donors opportunities to provide feedback and share their thoughts.
Then repeat, deepening as the relationship matures.
The context of today’s consumer market makes this urgent. Donor trust in nonprofits has eroded, for-profit brands now market themselves as cause-driven, and message volume is overwhelming.
Stewardship’s first job is simply proving you’re worth believing.
All donors “test” your organization, consciously or not, just to see how you respond. A no-ask, responsibility-free touchpoint after a gift — one the donor can simply enjoy — is how you pass that test. If you ask again immediately, you’ve answered the question about who the relationship is for.
This applies with particular force to surge moments. Year-end spikes, disaster response and high-need seasons deliver donors whose motivation is specific and time-bound. Folded straight into standard programming, they lapse quickly.
Success story
A national health and disease organization partnered with RKD to build a more sustainable digital program and reduce its reliance on high-frequency email and paid search.
The strategy connected awareness, engagement and fundraising across the donor journey, with greater emphasis on cultivation, stewardship and mission-relevant content.
The organization reduced overall email volume while increasing revenue in each of the first three years. It also introduced new email journeys, text messaging and content designed to educate and engage supporters before asking for financial support.
These changes helped produce a 79% increase in core donors, a 54% expansion of the overall donor file and a 78% increase in total digital revenue. Email revenue increased 9% year over year even as the number of emails delivered declined 25%.
06 · Monthly giving
The foundation of what’s possible
This is exactly what gives you the stability to keep funding acquisition through a difficult year instead
of cutting it.
M+R’s 2026 Benchmarks study found that 71% of sustainers are still giving after a full year, and a little more than half are still active after two full years.
Compare that with one-time online donors at 48% retention overall, and just 24% for newly acquired online donors. Sustainers also give beyond the recurring gift, adding an average of 0.2 one-time gifts a year.
RKD’s 2026 Mid-Year Benchmarks show that recurring giving continues to grow: Monthly giving revenue reached a 10-year high, up 29.9% over 2021 and 130.5% over 2017 — rising even in years when uncertainty pushed donors to pull back elsewhere.
Recruitment: digital converts, while mail makes it credible.
Both channels matter, but they aren’t equal partners in monthly giving. Direct mail builds belief; digital captures action. And digital is where most sustainers actually take the next step.
Email, SMS, paid media and optimized donation forms form the “always on” conversion engine, and the biggest gains usually come from removing friction rather than adding asks. A modern donation platform that streamlines checkout, surfaces the monthly option prominently and lets donors self-manage their giving will convert more.
Direct mail’s job is to make the organization feel real, credible and worth investing in. All it takes is two to three sustainer conversion touchpoints a year and providing monthly options in ask arrays. Mail’s role is to point toward the conversion path, not to close the gift.
Then automate the process, not the relationship.
Stewardship should start immediately, leading with speed, specificity and recognition. Keep folding in the news hooks that motivated the original gift — sharing news is cultivation.
A personalized lapse-prevention series lightens the team’s workload while adding engagement. And don’t pull prospective sustainers out of your standard direct response program; run additional versions with exclusive match offers instead.
One caution on churn: Roughly 14% of tracked monthly subscription segments simply stopped, and much of that is a failed card, an ended event or a deliberate pause — not a decision to leave. Assuming churn shows donor intent leads to overestimating dissatisfaction and underinvesting in recovery.
Success story
Seattle Humane partnered with RKD to rebuild donor momentum through integrated direct mail, digital, media, testing and audience-first segmentation.
As the program matured, the organization expanded its digital and direct mail efforts, tailored content and cadence by donor lifecycle, and integrated paid media with direct response campaigns.
The team also invested in their sustainer program on Fundraise Up and in peer-to-peer texting. Those efforts helped Seattle Humane surpass 1,300 monthly sustainers and generate more than $45,000 in recurring digital revenue.
The results demonstrate how digital-first conversion, supported by coordinated messaging across channels, can turn donor engagement into a more reliable stream of monthly support.
07 · Mid-Major
Where the system turns profitable
The lifetime value of mid-level donors is dramatically higher than the average supporter. That’s why you simply can’t afford not to pursue them. Maximizing their potential is the key to fundraising efficiency by connecting the pipeline from mass giving to major giving.
Two things make a mid-level program work:
The first is identifying the right donors.
Predictive modeling exists to find donors primed to increase their support, and the discipline that follows is the part most organizations skip: treat them at the level you aspire for them to reach, right from the start. A donor you’re hoping will give $2,500 should not be receiving your $25 experience.
The second is depth over volume.
Mid-major programs aren’t about the quantity of outreach; they’re about the quality of connection. Interpersonal relationships are built on authenticity — “there is no AI shortcut to donor relationships.” The foundations are reliability, personal communication and trust, delivered through routine behaviors that become consistent habits.
The tactical levers are straightforward: giving-day catalysts with strategic matching offers, personalized digital engagement that balances automation with genuine personalization, and one-to-some outreach that still feels one-to-one. A phone call that exists only to say thank you still surprises people. That’s how low the bar is.
From there, you continue to nurture these relationships and identify the right prospects for major and planned giving. Each step up the tower becomes more about developing personal relationships with care and attention.
Success story
Toys for Tots wanted to strengthen its mid-level giving beyond the holiday season.
RKD launched a dedicated mid-level program through direct mail in April 2024, using elevated creative, tailored messaging and new early-year campaigns. Donor audiences were segmented between existing mid-level supporters and prospects identified through RKD’s Prime Leads model.
The program was refined over time through performance-based audience selection, personalized offers and new January and November touchpoints. After the first year, revenue from the targeted donor group increased 16.5% year over year, mid-level gifts increased 16%, and the program added 185 mid-level donors. Expanded gift arrays produced no decline in response, while smarter segmentation refined the mid-level file to approximately 15,000 high-value donors and created a stronger path toward future major giving.
08 · Data & analytics
Knowing which blocks to move
“Every stage of the cycle has its own governing metric, and they don’t ladder into a single number.”
Cost per acquired donor and new-donor volume for acquisition
Second-gift rate and retention for stewardship
Churn rate and average subscription duration for sustainers
Upgrade rate and lifetime value by channel and donor level
Report them as one blended figure, and you’ll lose the ability to see which part of the system is leaking.
You also need to know which kind of growth you have. Growth driven by deeper commitment from existing donors requires a different strategy than growth driven by rapid acquisition. Most organizations currently have the first but are still planning as though they have the second.
And you need attribution that reflects how donors actually behave. When donors are influenced by mail and give online, last-touch attribution doesn’t just understate direct mail, it actively redirects budget toward the wrong channels. Matchback analyses and media mix modeling exist to correct that. But, they require important data tied to the gift on not only the promotional channel, but more importantly, the channel of the gift, which is a critical signal of preferred response channel.
Finally, advanced modeling is what turns all of this from reporting into decision-making.
But it’s only as good as the data underneath it.
Predictive scores built on inconsistent coding, duplicate records and gaps in gift history send you chasing after the wrong donors with the wrong offer while the reports look reassuring.
Imagine forecasting that shows what happens to net revenue at three different acquisition investment levels, segmentation that separates the donor ready for a monthly ask from the one ready for a mid-level conversation, and prioritization that tells you where the next dollar does the most work.
Get the data right, and modeling stops explaining what happened and starts shaping what will happen.
Success story
The Salvation Army’s Eastern Territory came to RKD with significant data challenges and a program that had experienced declining results under a previous vendor.
RKD began by improving the organization’s data integration strategy while also optimizing acquisition and implementing a recapture program for lapsed donors.
The combined approach produced growth across several measures. In the first full year of the partnership, gross revenue increased 12%, or $8.3 million, reaching a projected $76.3 million — the organization’s highest level since FY15. The recapture program helped reverse a four-year decline in active donors, contributing to a 21.1% increase in new and reactivated donors. Donor value also rose 9.9%.
The case demonstrates how cleaner data and coordinated analytics can support better segmentation, decision-making and revenue growth.
09 · Closing the loop
Funding tomorrow’s donors with this year’s pipeline
Let’s look at the whole system, with money moving through it.
Acquisition runs at a loss to bring new donors in. Stewardship runs at a loss to keep them.
Monthly giving converts a portion of them into predictable, durable revenue with real margin. Mid-level and major giving elevates the highest-potential donors into the segment that produces outsized return. The surplus from those last two segments funds the next cycle of acquisition.
Run this way, your fundraising program becomes durable and resilient.
Recurring revenue and relational giving absorb the shock of a bad year, which means you’re never forced into the cut that restarts the vicious cycle of decline.
Nobody builds this in a quarter or even a year. Here’s a realistic sequence:
Year 1: Steady the base. Fix stewardship and second-gift conversion. Stand up churn recovery. Hold acquisition volume steady rather than cutting it.
Year 2: Move blocks up the tower. Scale monthly giving with a real sustainer value proposition and a multichannel recruitment program. Define and score your mid-level band. Diversify the list mix.
Year 3: Replace the blocks you moved. Deploy the margin from mid-level and major giving into expanded acquisition and new audiences. The cycle now funds itself, and growth compounds.
The hardest part is shifting the internal conversation. You must trade cost per dollar raised this year for net revenue and donor count in three years. That conversation is far easier to win with a forecast than with a conviction.
TALK TO An Expert
Find out which block is moving.
Tell us where your file is today and we’ll show you what the next three years look like at three different levels of acquisition investment.
© 2026 RKD Group