By Anthony R. Alonso, President and CEO, Catapult Fundraising
We recently reviewed a nonprofit donor file with roughly 14,000 records. Only 569 people had made a gift in the previous 12 months. That is about 4%.
My first thought was not, “This organization needs more donors.” It was, “What happened to the other 13,000?”
Those people were not strangers. They were former donors. They had raised their hands at some point and said they believed in the organization’s work. Some had given once. Some had given for years. Some had made significant gifts.
Then the relationship went quiet.
That is a very different problem from donor acquisition. And in many cases, it is a much more interesting fundraising opportunity.
Why donor retention and reactivation matter
The fundraising industry has a donor retention problem.
The Fundraising Effectiveness Project reported that overall donor retention was 18.1% in Q1 2025, down slightly from 18.3% in 2024. The same report found that the total number of donors declined 1.3% year over year.
The numbers tell an important story: nonprofits are still raising money, but keeping donors engaged remains difficult. That makes the people already sitting in your database incredibly valuable.
And there is another important distinction. Donor retention is not the same thing as an active donor rate. Retention asks whether donors who gave previously gave again. Your active donor rate asks a different question: how much of your database has given within a defined period.
Both numbers matter. If you have a large database but only a small percentage of it is currently giving, do not immediately conclude that you need more names. First, find out what happened to the people you already have.
Start by calculating your active donor rate
This takes about ten minutes. You do not need a consultant to do it.
Pull the number of unique donors who made a gift during the last 12 months. Then divide that number by the number of usable, mailable, non-deceased records in your database. That gives you your active donor rate.
569 active donors ÷ 14,000 usable records = 4.1% active donor rate
That number should become a management metric. Do not look at the percentage alone. Look at the actual number of donors behind it. And do not compare your active donor rate directly with an industry retention benchmark. They measure different things.
Instead, use the number to ask better questions:
- How many donors gave last year but not this year?
- How many have been inactive for one to two years?
- How many are three to five years lapsed?
- How many made a major gift at some point?
- How many have given ten or more times?
- How many have never received a personal conversation?
- How many have outdated phone, email or address information?
That is where the opportunity starts to appear.
Your donor database is not one audience
One of the biggest mistakes we see is treating the entire donor file as if everyone needs the same message. They do not.
A healthy donor reactivation strategy should separate people according to their relationship with your organization.
Current donors
These are the people who have given within your current 12-month window. The goal is retention, stewardship and, where appropriate, upgrading.
Recently lapsed donors
These donors gave relatively recently but have not renewed. They should usually be among the first people you test with a focused reactivation effort.
Longer-lapsed donors
These people may not have given in several years, but their history can tell you whether they are worth another conversation.
High-value and major-gift lapsed donors
This group deserves special attention. A donor who once made a $5,000, $10,000 or $25,000 gift should not automatically be treated like someone who made a single $25 gift.
Loyal donors
Look at the number of gifts, not just the amount. Someone who has made 12 gifts over 10 years may be one of your organization’s most committed supporters even if none of those gifts was particularly large.
Different donors require different conversations.
Before you buy another list, look at the one you already own
This is one of the simplest questions a nonprofit can ask: how much fundraising potential is already sitting in our database?
In the 14,000-record file we reviewed, the three-to-five-year lapsed group contained roughly 900 people. More importantly, that group included 144 historical gifts of $5,000 or more.
Those were not cold names. They were people who had once trusted the organization enough to make a significant gift. That changes the conversation.
Before suppressing a lapsed donor because they have not given recently, look at their history. When did they first give? How many times did they give? What was their largest gift? What programs did they support? Did they give in response to a particular event or campaign? Were they ever a volunteer, board member, parent, client, patient, student or family member?
And perhaps most importantly: has anyone actually talked to them?
A lapsed major donor is not necessarily a lost donor. Sometimes they are simply a donor whose last conversation ended and nobody started the next one.
Data hygiene comes before donor calling
This is where many reactivation programs quietly fail. The strategy looks good. The segments look good. The messaging looks good. Then someone discovers that half the phone numbers are disconnected.
Bad contact data does not necessarily produce a bad fundraising result. It produces no result.
Before launching a calling program, clean and append the data. Look at phone numbers, email addresses and mailing addresses. Look at age or date of birth, deceased records, duplicate records and household information. Then pull the giving history forward: lifetime giving, last gift, largest gift, number of gifts, and previous campaign or program participation.
Then look at the match rates. If a segment has terrible phone coverage, do not force it into a phone program simply because calling is part of your strategy. Use the channel that gives you the best opportunity to reach the donor.
Why the phone can change a lapsed donor conversation
A donor who stopped responding to your mail does not necessarily need another piece of mail. Sometimes they need a person.
A sequence we have used successfully begins with a letter from someone the donor recognizes, letting them know that a call is coming and explaining why the organization wants to reconnect. Then the call happens while that letter is still relatively fresh.
And the call should not sound like a script. It should sound like someone knows the donor’s history. Something as simple as:
You gave to us in 2019, and you had actually given three times before that. We noticed you have not been with us recently, and I wanted to reach out personally and see how you are doing.
That is a different conversation from, “Would you like to renew your membership today?”
The objective of a win-back call is not necessarily to get the largest possible gift. The first objective is to restart the relationship. If the donor’s last gift was $100, start there. If they tell you they would like to do more, that is a different conversation. The upgrade conversation can come later.
The information donors give you may be worth as much as the gift
One of the overlooked benefits of donor calling is what you learn. Donors will tell you why they stopped giving.
Maybe they did not understand where their money was going. Maybe the organization changed leadership. Maybe they had a bad experience. Maybe they moved. Maybe their financial situation changed. Maybe they simply never received another meaningful communication.
And sometimes they will tell you something the development office has never heard. That information matters.
A good reactivation program does not just generate gifts. It gives you a better understanding of why donors stay, why they leave and what might bring them back.
Do not overlook tribute and memorial donors
There is another group hiding inside many donor databases: people who gave in memory or in honor of someone else. They are often coded as one-time donors. Then they receive a receipt. And that is the end of the relationship.
That can be a mistake. A tribute donor made a gift at a meaningful moment in their life. The person they honored mattered to them. The next conversation should recognize that.
Sometimes the right approach is stewardship first and fundraising second. And sometimes there should not be an ask at all.
If someone gave in memory of a spouse, child, parent or close friend, train the caller to slow down. Ask about the person. Acknowledge the reason for the original gift. Explain what that gift helped accomplish. Then listen. The fundraising opportunity may come later.
Loyalty can be a planned giving signal
While you are analyzing the database, sort donors by number of lifetime gifts, not just lifetime dollars. The person who has made 15 gifts over 12 years may have enormous loyalty even if their average gift is modest.
That matters for planned giving. Blackbaud’s FY2024 donorCentrics data found a substantial difference in retention between recurring and single-gift donors: recurring gift donors had an 81% retention rate compared with 46% for single-gift-only donors, with overall donor retention at 53% in that particular benchmarking cohort.
The lesson is not that every loyal donor should immediately receive a planned giving solicitation. The lesson is that loyalty is a valuable signal. A donor who has demonstrated a long-term commitment deserves a different conversation from someone who made one gift six years ago.
For the right donors, that conversation may eventually include a gift through a will, trust or estate plan. These are patient conversations. A legacy program is measured in years, not in a fiscal quarter. We wrote more about how to open that conversation in National Make a Will Month.
Do not confuse a lapsed file with a shallow file
Not every weak donor file has a retention problem. Sometimes the opposite is true.
In another assessment, we saw an organization where the number of gifts was increasing but total dollars were barely moving. The average gift was around $250. Most of the money came from individuals. The organization had loyal donors. What it did not have was an effective upgrade path.
That organization did not need a win-back campaign. It needed an upgrade strategy.
This distinction is important. A lapsed donor file and a shallow donor file can look similar on a dashboard. They require very different fundraising strategies. Lapsed donors need to be brought back. Active but shallow donors need to be moved up. Diagnose the problem before you spend money solving it.
What the latest fundraising data tells us
The broader fundraising environment makes this even more important. M+R’s 2026 Benchmarks found that online revenue increased 15% in 2025. One-time online giving increased 17%, monthly giving increased 12%, and donor-advised fund revenue increased 44%.
But digital growth does not eliminate the need to manage donor relationships. In fact, it makes the quality of your donor database more important. M+R found that email generated 11% of online revenue in 2025, while nonprofits raised an average of $54 for every 1,000 fundraising emails sent.
Those numbers are a useful reminder. You do not need every donor to respond to every channel. You need to understand the donor well enough to choose the right channel and the right message.
For some donors, that is email. For others, it is direct mail. For others, it may be a phone call. And for your most valuable relationships, it may be a personal conversation from a staff member, board member or volunteer.
Where to start on Monday
You do not need a six-month consulting engagement to begin. Start here.
- Calculate your active donor rate. Write it down and make it a number your development team watches.
- Build your lapsed donor bands. Look at one year, two years, three to five years and longer.
- Identify historical value. For each segment, look at lifetime giving, largest gift and number of gifts.
- Clean the data. Append phone, email and address information. Remove duplicates and deceased records.
- Pick one segment. Do not try to call everyone at once. Start with a group where the data and donor history suggest a reasonable opportunity.
- Use a letter-plus-call strategy. Give the donor context before the phone rings.
- Measure the right things. Do not just report dollars raised.
Track contact rate, conversation rate, reactivation rate, average recovered gift, revenue recovered, cost per donor recovered, the reasons donors stopped giving, and subsequent retention. Then scale what works.
The money may already be in your database
None of this is particularly glamorous. It is data cleanup. Segmentation. Research. Phone calls. Listening. Following up.
But that may be exactly why it gets overlooked.
Your next fundraising opportunity may not be another purchased list or another acquisition campaign. It may be the donor who gave you $500 three years ago. The donor who made ten gifts and suddenly disappeared. The family member who made a memorial gift. The donor who gave $10 every month for five years. The former major donor whose last conversation happened before your current development director was hired.
Before you go looking for more donors, look at the people who already believed in you. That is where reactivation begins.
How Catapult Fundraising can help
Catapult Fundraising helps nonprofit organizations analyze donor files, identify reactivation and upgrade opportunities, develop donor communication strategies and execute calling programs designed to strengthen donor relationships and generate revenue.
If you are wondering what is actually sitting inside your donor database, let’s take a look together.
Sources: donor retention and donor count figures are from the Fundraising Effectiveness Project 2025 Q1 Quarterly Benchmark Report (AFP). Recurring and single-gift retention figures are from Blackbaud’s FY2024 donorCentrics Sustainer Summit analysis. Online revenue, monthly giving, donor-advised fund and email figures are from M+R Benchmarks 2026. Client figures come from Catapult Fundraising donor file reviews and assessments completed for client organizations. Clients are described by type only and are not identified.