Welcome to February: The only month where you can relive the same day over and over (thanks, Groundhog Day 🐿️) while simultaneously trying to convince someone that love is in the air! 💘
❌ As we are all navigating the changing federal landscape, I’m certain none of us have missed the announcement that federal grants and loans were temporarily paused on Tuesday, January 28, and then rescinded on January 29, 2025. However, policies and executive orders are continuing to change. If you need help navigating the waters, please don’t hesitate to reach out to your client partner.
On January 29, Sens. Lankford and Coons introduced the Charitable Act to expand and extend the expired non-itemized deduction for charitable giving. Reps. Moore, Davis and Pappas are expected to introduce a House version soon.
🚒 As we began this year, California was hit hard by devastating wildfires. At RKD Group, we have many valued partners, team members and friends who have been deeply affected by these disasters. Thank you to those who have donated, helped and participated in the recovery efforts. I’m especially grateful to have witnessed how the animal welfare community has stood together during this crisis.
💡Hello retention! NextAfter did a worthy test on sending the normal cadence of emails (control), and for the test group, they added a weekly Friday cultivation email. The cultivation email was personal and looked similar to a letter, with a link to a Leadership article. Those stellar results? Adding cultivation messages led to a 13.1% increase in conversion rate, a 25% increase in average gift, and a 41.5% increase in online revenue from donors. Taking the time to nurture relationships paid off in significant ways.
📲 Email open rates are declining, and it is possible the new AI-generated email summaries may be playing a role in it. That preview text you created has now been replaced by an AI summary. If your reader feels like the summary is all they need, they may never open it. Or, if your email is even somewhat confusing, the AI summary will be inaccurate or worse. What can you do? Use bullets and pre-headers in your emails and make sure you’re adding value to the reader’s day so your reputation makes them want to open your email.
👏 Round of applause for Lisa Sargent’s Thankology book. She encourages you to start with a 10-minute gratitude audit. Gather your organization’s thank-you letters, notes, emails, etc. Now ask 7 questions:
- Who am I sending this to ― first-time donor, monthly giver, loyal supporter, volunteer, etc.?
- If I’m sending TYs to all these generous folks, can I amend the copy to create segment-specific versions? (Hint: You can always modify for segment-specific versions.)
- Why am I sending this TY?
- What prompted the gift ― special appeal, newsletter, annual campaign ...?
- Does my thank you reflect this? (It should.)
- Is any info in my TY letter or TY email out of date?
- If I received this thank you, would it make me feel appreciated ... loved ... seen ... inspired ... uplifted ... not just for my gift, but for my generosity ― for who I am as a person and a donor?
If you want to see more hints and tips, follow her #21daysofthankology hashtag on LinkedIn.
🗣️ Shout out to the Jeremy Haselwood Show on LinkedIn, which explored the key differences between donor acquisition through direct mail and digital channels. The takeaway? It’s not about choosing one over the other; it’s about balancing both to maximize your nonprofit’s impact.
👟 Lace up your sneakers and head over to Ronnie Richard’s Thinkers Newsletter on LinkedIn post, “Weathering the storm: Gear up to navigate fundraising challenges.” He discusses the dynamic environment fundraisers are in and highlights the key points of the 2025 Nonprofit Marketer’s Compass. If you are not subscribed or did not receive the Thinkers Newsletter, then you might have missed our other recently released GivingPulse Field Guide, emphasizing the shift from channel-first to audience-first communications.
Below is my collection of articles and studies from the past month. If you’re not thirsty or famished yet, grab your favorite beverage and possibly a snack.
1. Donor Perceptions of AI, Tailoring Donor Communications with AI & Using AI Effectively 🤖
Have you considered using AI but hesitated because you worried about donor perceptions? The Chronicle of Philanthropy has a good article about a study released last October, “Donor Perceptions of AI.” The study revealed interesting insights about donor attitudes toward AI. The results showed both contrasts and alignments in how donors perceive AI and how comfortable the nonprofit industry is with using it (according to previous studies).
- Privacy and data security risks are a top concern for both donors (60%) and nonprofit professionals (70%).
- While over 82% of donors said they were somewhat or very familiar with AI, 92% of nonprofits reported feeling unprepared for AI.
- Donors also expressed concern over a lack of human touch in interactions (60.2%) and job displacement for nonprofit staff (43.3%).
- Over 40% of donors surveyed responded that AI use would have a positive or neutral effect on their giving.
Another great article to reference in the Chronicle is How to Use A.I. Effectively and Protect Your Organization’s Reputation and Values. It provides real-life examples of setting policies, including when to use AI images, setting safety priorities on data, and what can be uploaded to AI. Let me know if you need a copy of it.
Finally, an article in NonProfit Pro, 3 Ways to Tailor Donor Communications With Predictive Artificial Intelligence explored three specific predictive analysis strategies your nonprofit can use to refine its donor communications, along with use cases and examples for each approach.
- Natural Language Processing for Metadata Management: Nonprofits can use it to evaluate text from donor communications, emails, social media posts and other unstructured data sources to identify relevant metadata, including donor preferences, feelings and engagement levels.
- Donor Segmentation: Save time by creating tailored messages for specific donor groups. Rather than creating individualized messages for every person in your donor base, you can create tailored messages for overarching personas. Also, identify donor upgrade opportunities.
- Campaign Management: Use it to predict which donors are most likely to respond to certain types of outreach by evaluating their past engagement and response rates.
2. GoFundMe 2024 Year in Help Report ⛵
In December, GoFundMe unveiled its 2024 Year in Help report, celebrating the generosity of individuals and nonprofits worldwide who helped each other throughout the year. With an average of two donations made every second, the report showcases the most generous places globally, significant moments that drove unprecedented help, and trends shaping the future of giving. A few facts:
- One in three are repeat donors
- Average donation is $77
- $42M+ donated to individuals
- $23M+ donations to nonprofits
- 2M+ first-time organizers
AI features on the platform were used more than 10 million times to deliver additional help, and Meta made integration possible. Live streams transformed into fundraising events. Besides disaster and fundraising for the Olympics, donors supported hundreds of thousands of medical fundraisers, collectively raising more than $1B.
Ireland retained its position as the world's most generous country on GoFundMe for the sixth consecutive year, while Vermont led the United States as the most generous state for the third year, ranking highest in donors per capita, and Marietta, GA, was the most generous city.
3. Next for DAFs? Accounts as Tools for Regular Folks, Not Just the Wealthy 🙌
This article gives us food for thought. When advocates of donor-advised funds look to the future, they see something like this: Banks that offer customers DAFs along with checking and savings accounts. Employers that give DAFs to workers as a benefit, not unlike a 401(k). And digital-giving platforms that provide users with accounts to stash cash in pursuit of charitable goals.
The industry is taking small steps with new, low-cost offerings to attract more of the 60 million households that give to charity every year. To expand its market reach, the DAF industry is taking steps to make funds more accessible:
- Two of the three largest DAF providers — Fidelity, and DAFgiving360, formerly Schwab Charitable — eliminated their minimum contribution to open an account. Typically, donors are required to put in anywhere from $5,000 to $250,000 to open a fund. But now, half of the 10 largest DAF sponsors have no minimum
- At least three community foundations in large metro areas — Atlanta, Chicago and Kansas City — do not require a minimum contribution. The Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta dropped its $100,000 minimum in 2020, “with the intention of living into the word ‘community’ that’s in our name,” says Tim Bresnahan, vice president for philanthropy. The move also aims to make DAFs available to individuals in their 20s or 30s who want to give more strategically but don’t have the wealth for foundations, Bresnahan adds.
- Workplace giving programs are incorporating DAFs. The number of accounts hosted by the nonprofit arm of Benevity, which manages employee giving and corporate matching-gift programs, reached nearly 680,000 in 2023, according to tax filings — a nearly five-times increase since 2017. The average value: $305. The Blackbaud Giving Fund, launched in 2020, makes DAFs available to workplace giving and peer-to-peer programs. Serving chiefly as a pass-through — it doesn’t invest donations — it has distributed more than $2 billion to nearly 200,000 nonprofits.
- Silicon Valley start-ups like Daffy and Charityvest are offering low-cost DAFs and encouraging individuals to set aside money each month for charity. In its second year of operation, Daffy donors put $105 million in their accounts, with 36 percent of transactions coming through recurring gifts. The minimum contribution: $10.
From our friends at Charity:
New Webinar Series: DAF Strategies for Every Role:
- DAFs + Major & Planned Giving: 2/12 at 12PM ET
- DAFs + Peer-to-Peer & Events: 3/5 at 12PM ET
- DAFs + Direct Response, Memberships & Mid-Level Giving: 3/26 at 12PM ET
DAF Fundraising Tip: Make Your EIN Work for You - Your nonprofit’s EIN (Employer Identification Number) is key to unlocking seamless donor-advised fund contributions — but only if it’s easy to find. Ensure your EIN is prominently displayed on your website, donation pages and communications to help donors quickly identify your organization when making DAF gifts.
4. Don’t Wait Until Year End To Spend Paid Media Budgets 📢
From NonProfit Pro, this article touches on the high notes. The initial reaction to tight budgets and the knowledge that paid media participation is a requirement is often to wait and focus all of the budget during giving season (November and December), hoping that, despite heavy competition from nonprofits and the commercial world, your message will land and someone will be compelled to become a donor. This is not the right approach for a lot of reasons.
Why waiting to buy paid media doesn’t work: Nonprofits need to foster connection with people and build passionate communities so that when they make an ask, that ask is not screamed into the wind but instead becomes dinner party conversation. This is not a fourth-quarter activity; it is an ongoing effort that takes time and a focus on creating value for donors as well as the people the mission serves.
Paid digital programs require participation throughout the year to be effective — and an ineffective paid program ultimately costs more than other efforts. People know less about your organization than you might think. They also don’t trust established institutions and know that they have lots of options to support people in need close to them. Therefore, trust needs to be built and FOMO introduced. It can be hard to capture people’s attention towards the end of the year because of vacations and travel, so this often takes creative ad placements that sometimes do not come with a direct return on ad spend (ROAS).
5. 5 Trends That Will Shape Fundraising in 2025 💹
Every year, the Chronicle of Philanthropy reports on 5 trends that will shape fundraising for the year and what it means for your nonprofit.
Key Points below:
- Tax Law Changes, Other Legislation: This year, a bipartisan coalition of nonprofits will push for a charitable deduction for non-itemizers. If that passes, fundraisers need to be ready to let donors know how a new deduction might allow them to increase their giving.
- Integrating Fast-Changing AI Advances: Fundraisers will have to navigate the tensions as they determine how best to use new AI tools while still maintaining the trust of their supporters.
- Dwindling Donors Remain a Problem: The question fundraisers have to ask this year is: Was the 7% increase for GivingTuesday a blip on the radar, or can they make it a trend they can build on moving forward? The Chronicle profiled nonprofits that are making a concerted effort to reconnect with everyday donors and asked fundraisers for their best advice.
- The Promise of Donor-Advised Funds: Fundraisers have long told the Chronicle that many of the gifts they receive from DAFs are anonymous, making it difficult to thank donors and build a relationship with them. They investigated and learned that those gifts might not be so anonymous after all. Fundraisers and consultants shared their tips for what to do when you get what seems to be an anonymous DAF donation.
- Nonprofit Finances Strained: Last year was marked with financial turbulence for nonprofits. A number of organizations saw a drop in funding that led to hiring freezes, program cuts, layoffs and, in some cases, closures. The sector also hasn’t fully recovered from the pandemic, a recent report found, noting the COVID-19 pandemic may have cost nonprofits 1 million jobs. This means nonprofits need to stay atop their fundraising game to help buffer against financial stresses in the coming year.
6. Kickstart 2025 Giving with These 4 Multichannel Lessons Learned from 2024 ❤️💋👨
From NonProfit Pro, here are key takeaways from 2024 to guide nonprofit efforts in the coming year.
- Prioritize Year-Round Engagement Through High-Visibility Channels: To maximize impact, these engagement and cultivation communications should utilize high-visibility channels. For instance, emails reporting the impact of donations may go unopened or end up in junk folders. By contrast, channels like text messaging’s 99% open rate can ensure higher visibility. In 2024, nonprofits that committed to year-round engagement and cultivation that included using text messaging reported significant improvements in their year-end campaigns.
- Continue To Grow Monthly Giving: Weave impact updates into your automated gift acknowledgements to monthly donors while keeping the lift on staff minimal. Take advantage of features within your donation platform, such as custom upgrade links and a post-donation upsell. Increase omnichannel promotion of the program and diversify acquisition strategy and channels.
- Bring the Right People onto the File When Boosting Donor Acquisition: Social ad platform targeting can help identify not only donor look-alike audiences but audiences with interests related to your organization’s cause. Run a lead-generation campaign, and once the leads are on file, it’s important to follow up with them using the content that brought them there in the first place as they’ll be more likely to convert. By leveraging custom targeting, top-performing content and an omnichannel follow up approach, organizations can maximize the value of the leads they bring in.
- Make Major Moments Extend Beyond the Inbox: Instead of defaulting to email when major moments (good or bad) happen for your mission, consider an omnichannel approach. When you need to share breaking news, such as a research update, giving day or disaster relief, try meeting constituents where they are: on their phones. Monitor search traffic around specific terms related to the moment/event. If those are spiking, be sure to update your website with applicable information. Search ads are often a quicker turn than email — be sure to add any keywords into paid or grant strategies.
7. Baby Boomer Women Are Now Deciding the Fate of Trillions of Dollars 🧍♀️
The Wall Street Journal brings us this in-depth article. Women aren’t only stockpiling wealth from their own careers but also getting the final word on how the family nest egg is parceled out. And they are handling the money differently than their husbands by switching financial advisers and investing more with an eye toward longevity. They are redirecting money to charity and allocating more to long-term healthcare.
American women over 60 last year controlled some $8 trillion of liquid wealth assets, according to McKinsey & Co.’s affluent consumer survey. Women’s wealth as a whole has grown by about 80% since 2018, outpacing the 62% growth in total wealth over that span.
This is the first step in the vast generational wealth transfer that is taking shape. Baby boomers, America’s wealthiest generation, are passing along the $82 trillion they amassed during a post-World War II economic boom that featured rising financial markets and falling tax rates.
Older women, in particular, are less likely than men to have relationships with their financial advisers, according to Bank of America. That often turns the death of the spouse into a moment to reassess who is managing the money. Some 70% of women change advisers after the spouse dies, according to the insurance company Transamerica. About 85% of charitable giving decisions by affluent households were made or influenced by a woman, according to a 2024 Bank of America study.
8. M+R’s End of Year Fundraising Recap for 2024 📝
The big picture: The bag remains mixed. M+R considers all of November and December as part of “End of Year” to account for the shifting timing of Giving Tuesday from year to year. In their analysis of nonprofit digital fundraising this End-of-Year season, they found that a slight plurality of organizations saw higher overall revenue raised across ads, email, SMS, social and web giving compared to 2023. At the same time, the median organization saw roughly flat overall revenue raised. All told, that adds up to a mixed bag across our industry, with some organizations seeing more dollars coming in, some seeing roughly the same as last year, and a few seeing less revenue than they’d raised at this time in 2023.
Overall, organizations saw more revenue-positive days than revenue-negative days in December. (In short, more days in December raised more than those same calendar days in December of 2023.) Combined with the bigger picture metrics, this suggests that donors still came through in the end, despite arguably fewer opportunities for fundraising solicitations due to the compressed period between Giving Tuesday and December 31.
For the first time since 2021, December 31 fell on a weekday in 2024, as did December 30. Each of those two crucial, final fundraising days of the year saw significant overall increases in revenue raised year-over-year. The largest year-over-year decreases in revenue raised by day fell on the weekends in December 2024.
Taken together, these results reinforce our recommendation to time your End-of-Year outreach carefully and use this higher-volume period of time to reach your supporters across the multitude of digital channels, including audio and connected TV, when they’re most engaged (Monday-Friday).
Here’s the great news: December 31, 2025, will fall on a Wednesday!
9. 2024 Donor Confidence Survey: Post Election ✓
Just weeks after the presidential election, a new survey captured a surge in economic confidence among everyday donors, even if their giving hasn’t caught up to the shifting mood just yet. The share of donors expecting economic improvement in the next 12 months leaped to 39 percent in November, from 24 percent in January, according to Dunham+Company’s latest Donor Confidence Survey, marking the highest level of donor optimism since 2021. The findings paint a relatively rosy picture of giving in the year ahead, with slightly more donors indicating their intention to maintain or increase their support than in previous years.
Even as donors expressed optimism over the country’s economic outlook, they did not express plans to significantly increase their giving. Nearly 80 percent of respondents — a 1 percent increase from the January 2024 survey — expect to give the same amount or more in 2025, the highest percentage since 2021 and a continuation of what the report calls “the healthy recovery from 2023.”
The share of donors saying they’d give less in the year ahead did shrink to 14 percent by November 2024, down from 16 percent at the beginning of that year. That’s a modest but welcome sign amid what’s been called an exodus of everyday donors, with the share of Americans who give hitting record-breaking lows in recent years.
When asked about the most important factors in continuing or increasing their donations, 33 percent of donors said the needs of individual charities mattered to them most. The survey found economic optimism has risen across age groups, with donors indicating they had given more in 2023-24 than they had in the two years before, significantly outstripping the rate of inflation during that period.
Other findings from the report:
- Boomers gave the most online gifts — nine per year — followed by Gen Z with eight gifts, millennials with seven and Gen X with five.
- Among donors planning to reduce their giving, 38 percent cited personal financial concerns — down from 67 percent in January 2024.
- Smartphone giving continued to gain momentum, with 41 percent of donors now making charitable contributions through their mobile devices.
- Social media fundraising also gained ground, with 23 percent of donors giving in response to social media requests, compared with 16 percent at the start of the year.
- Charity websites remained the most effective digital fundraising tool, with 26 percent of donors citing them as the primary prompt for their online gifts.
10. Economic Headlines 📊
The U.S. economy grew 2.5% last year, slower than in 2023 but still at a solid pace thanks to strong spending by American consumers buoyed by low unemployment. Throughout 2024, the U.S. economy defied economists’ expectations for weak growth and hiring. Instead, inflation eased while the labor market largely held up, a scenario known as a “soft landing.”
U.S. inflation picked up last month to 2.9% as gas prices rose sharply, though price gains for other items were more muted. The consumer price index rose 0.4% in December from November and finished the year up 2.9%, according to the Labor Department. December marked a third straight month of gains in the 12-month CPI.
So-called core prices, which exclude volatile food and energy categories, rose 0.2% from November and finished the year up 3.2%. Prices for services, which account for a greater share of spending, rose 0.3%. Wholesale prices rose less than expected in December, a positive sign for the economy amid recent market fears that inflation isn't falling as quickly as hoped to the Federal Reserve's 2% target.
While consumers’ views of their personal finances improved about 5%, their economic outlook fell back 7% for the short run and 5% for the long run, according to the University of Michigan’s index of consumer sentiment survey’s director Joanne Hsu.
January 27th made history as a bloodbath for tech stocks due to the release of China’s AI dark horse DeepSeek R1 model. The S&P 500’s technology sector lost 5.6%, its worst one-day decline in more than four years. In all, the bloodbath wiped out some $1 trillion from the stock market’s value, according to Dow Jones Market Data. Because DeepSeek made its research and results public, other AI companies can also adopt them, potentially paving the way for other models’ improvement rather than posing a direct threat to them. The company’s app quickly rose to become the most popular on Apple’s iPhone store.
Mortgage rates rose above 7% for the first time since mid-2024, an early setback for a housing market that is coming off two consecutive years of poor sales. Higher rates are dimming hopes for a recovery in the sluggish housing market. However, rising homeowners insurance costs due to disaster and more homeowners spurning some risky neighborhoods will wipe away $1.5 Trillion in U.S. home values, according to a new study.
With interest rates near record highs, Americans are spending more on credit cards and carrying bigger balances month to month. JPMorgan Chase, the biggest U.S. bank, said in its most recent quarterly report that it saw higher revolving credit card balances, or the amount people don’t pay off monthly. Capital One also said the proportion of people making just the minimum payment is above prepandemic levels. The Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia found revolving credit card balances in the third quarter hit their highest levels in data going back to 2012. The share of consumers making just the minimum payment also edged up.
Hiring blew past expectations, with 256,000 jobs added in December. However, unemployed office workers are having a harder time finding new jobs. There are more than 1.6 million unemployed workers who have been job hunting for at least six months, an increase of more than 50% since the end of 2022.
According to figures from the National Employment Law Project, lawmakers across 21 states and 48 cities and counties marked the first day of the year by raising their minimum-wage floors, with 55 of those jurisdictions hiking pay rates to meet or exceed the $15 per hour that advocates have long set their sights on.
The new “no buy 2025” trend encourages people to purchase as little new stuff as possible. Some people make lists of specific items they won’t purchase, while others vow not to buy any nonessentials. Those participating want to reduce spending and pay off debt amid rising inflation and economic uncertainty. The trend has gained traction on social-media platforms like TikTok, with people sharing their experiences and tips for successful "no buy" challenges.
Should You Fear the ‘Silver Tsunami’? The impending wave of an aging (Boomer) U.S. population is either a crisis or an opportunity … depending whom you ask. Their departures from the work force will amount to a “silver tsunami,” in the words of financial analysts and economic researchers, that will upend life, work and retirement. An uptick in use of the barometrically inflected term nods to what some see as an unstoppable demographic disaster caused by the confluence of a wave of retirees and relative dearth of young people. By 2035, the Census Bureau estimates, older adults will outnumber people under 18 in the United States for the first time.
Yahoo Finance has launched their fourth year of the Finance Chartbook: 44 charts that tell the story of markets and the economy to start 2025. Provided by key members of the finance world, these 44 charts tell the story of the economy and markets as the year gets off to a very busy start with a new president — and much more.
11. Visit the RKD Resources Website Page for some great posts, podcasts and webinars 🧐
RKD GroupThinkers Monthly LinkedIn Update:
- Exploring generosity: Insights as we approach GivingTuesday
- Cooler weather, football and—gulp—here comes giving season!
- Chat: Meet Thomas Mantz at Feeding Tampa Bay
- Thinkers: The need for balance between innovation and tradition with T. Clay Buck
- Solid Gold: The Nonprofit Marketer's Guide to Trust
- Listen Up - The Nonprofit Marketer's Guide to What Donors Want
Some days feel downright overwhelming, and on those days, we all need a good laugh to lighten the load. Sometimes it’s an old joke, and other times it’s an absurd video. One that always tickles me is the 2021 classic: “I’m not a cat.” Every time that lawyer solemnly declares, “I’m not a cat, and I’m prepared to go forward,” I absolutely am not able to stifle my laughter. What’s your go-to to laugh to lighten your mood in a challenging moment?
Above all, I hope you feel truly appreciated this month and not like hiding in a groundhog burrow. It’s important that you rest and know the profound impact you make each day with your time, talents and ideas for your organization. Your efforts save lives and change lives in meaningful ways.
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