January and February have closed their doors, and we’re beginning to enter Spring. What a gift we fundraisers have been given to work with passionate partners, volunteers and supporters.
Most organizations have a fundraising plan, but how many have a full stewardship calendar? Ask yourself:
- Is your acknowledgement program on auto-repeat?
- Have you revisited your segmentation or upgraded your thank-you strategy in the last few years?
Today’s tools make it easier than ever. AI can help segment donors, tailor acknowledgements and differentiate messaging for new, reactivated and upgraded supporters. But the strategy still matters most.
Donors should feel:
- Welcomed
- Seen
- Thanked
- Updated
- Invited back in
Stewardship plans should also include newsletters, impact reports, welcome journeys, handwritten notes, phone calls and lively digital storytelling.
How you reach your donors directly impacts retention, involvement and lifetime value. Investment in stewardship always pays forward.
Now, on to this month’s insights …
📊 Join me in getting excited: Our 2026 RKD Benchmark Report is published! It delivers the nonprofit sector’s earliest and most comprehensive look at full-year 2025 fundraising performance, drawing on data from 215 nonprofits, 5.5 million donors, $1.48 billion in revenue from gifts under $10,000 and $4.3 billion including major giving.
📰 Just when you’re ready to declare direct mail “over,” the Wall Street Journal features a crossing guard earning $14,000 per month mailing personal musings.
💚 Need some donor stewardship inspiration? Katelyn Baugh shares a 14-Day Stewardship Workflow on LinkedIn that’s worth reviewing to expand your ideas.
⏲️ If you haven’t subscribed to Jeremy Reis’ weekly Two-Minute Fundraising Tip, do it now. He weaves in real fundraiser stories to reinforce reminders and provide great tips.
NonProfit Pro covered how to shut down a spoofed nonprofit website before donors are harmed. Worth bookmarking.
🖖 Americans can expect to live longer than ever, per the latest CDC data. A new report released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) showed that Americans born in 2024 could expect to live to 79 on average, with the life expectancy figure fully recovering from a pandemic-era dip to hit a new high.
Ⓜ️ Meta plans to trial premium subscriptions across Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp, offering expanded AI capabilities while maintaining core ad-supported experiences.
☕ Pour your coffee, soda or favorite beverage and dive into this month’s highlights, insights and studies.
1. NonProfit Pro: Volunteerism Rebounds From Pandemic-Era Lows, Gallup Finds 🤝
Volunteer participation in the U.S. has largely recovered from its pandemic-era decline, according to new Gallup research. The share of Americans who volunteered in the past year (63%) has climbed back near pre-2020 levels after hitting a low in 2021, Gallup’s latest analysis shows. The rebound follows one of the steepest drops in volunteer participation Gallup has recorded since 2001 when it began tracking the measure.
2. Donor-Advised Funds 🙌
Chariot launched their donor-advised fund gift processing platform. Nonprofits and grantmakers can send, receive and enrich grant payments through a single, secure portal. In February, they held a webinar covering What’s Ahead in DAF Fundraising—worth a watch if you were unable to attend. Thanks to Chariot for a review of the plethora of DAF reports available:
For nonprofit fundraisers:
- DAF Fundraising Report—for benchmarking your own DAF revenue
- DAFRC DAF Donor Study—to better understand the donors behind the grants
- Reinventing the Cycle—for practical guidance on adapting your fundraising approach
For 9 key DAF themes and what’s ahead, read this Chariot article.
3. WSJ: How Businesses Are Manipulating ChatGPT Results ֎
You’ve long heard about search engine optimization. Companies are now spending big on generative engine optimization. When you ask ChatGPT and other AIs to recommend a product or service, odds are the top answers were put there by humans.
This doesn’t mean artificial intelligence is lying to you. That first answer is probably a worthwhile option. But a growing number of small and midsize businesses are paying big bucks to get favorable mentions from chatbots.
For a look at nonprofit organizations, check out AI SEO marketing: Why nonprofits need to prepare for AI search now.
4. Peer-to-Peer Fundraising Brings in Donors — But Most Don’t Stay 💨
Between 2022 and 2025, about 40% of first-time donors to nonprofits came through peer-to-peer campaigns, according to the new report “Trends, Insights, and Opportunities: The Power of Peer-to-Peer Fundraising” from GoFundMe Pro and GivingTuesday. Researchers discovered this fundraising channel has a critical re-engagement window. Peer-to-peer donors are most likely to give again within the first 90 days of their initial gifts. After that period, repeat giving drops compared with donors acquired through other channels.
Currently, just 0.4% of donors who come in through a peer-to-peer fundraiser choose to make their gift recurring. The report suggests one potential factor for the disconnect: Recurring gift amounts are often presented at the same levels as one-time gifts. Lowering suggested recurring gift levels could make the figures more appealing and increase total revenue raised from peer-to-peer-acquired donors by more than 30%, according to the analysis.
5. How the most innovative fundraisers are leveraging … 🤗
If you’re looking for AI prompts or a transformational gift strategy, FreeWill’s recent webinar archive is worth exploring.
You can also search their library for any number of topics and upcoming webinars.
6. Most Trusted Nonprofits 2025 🔐
Key takeaways:
- St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital continues to dominate public trust. The research hospital ranks No. 1 across all 12 demographic categories, far outperforming other nonprofits and health care organizations.
- Goodwill gains traction among younger consumers. Its high rankings with Gen Z and millennials may reflect the broader rise in secondhand shopping rather than a shift in brand sentiment.
- Gen Z’s trust deficit persists. Average net trust among Gen Z is roughly half that of the general population—a gap we see across many sectors, not just nonprofits.
Let’s interject some comments here from Christine Bork’s post on LinkedIn where she captured this beautifully. Why St. Jude? The difference is they have spent decades showing up consistently almost everywhere. And yes, they spend over $100 million a year on marketing whereas the median nonprofit spends $12,950 a year on advertising.
Related article in NonProfit Pro: How Nonprofits Can Rebuild Trust After It’s Been Lost.
7. Why Nonprofits Can’t Ignore Life Cycle Email Flows for Long-Term Donor Retention 🔄
Life cycle email flows draw on a core principle of email marketing—relevance—but apply it with a more human lens. Not every donor is the same, and they shouldn’t be treated the same. A first-time donor, a faithful monthly supporter and someone who hasn’t given in two years represent distinct emotional and behavioral relationships with an organization. When nonprofits recognize those differences and act on them, fundraising performance improves, relationships strengthen and trust deepens.
What Every Life Cycle Email Strategy Should Include
- The Welcome Series
- Recurring Donor Nurture
- Lapsed Donor Re-engagement
- Milestone and Anniversary Touch Points
Why Life Cycle Email Flows Improve Donor Retention
- They build trust before making another ask.
- They help turn one-time donors into long-term supporters, increasing overall lifetime value.
- They prioritize relevance over volume.
- They scale personalization without straining staff.
8. Economic Headlines 📊
Annual inflation slowed in January, helped by declining prices for gasoline and used vehicles. Consumer prices rose 2.4% in January from a year earlier, cooler than the 2.7% of December and below expectations.
The U.S. GDP grew at 1.4% annual rate in 2025’s final quarter, weighed down by a record-long government shutdown. For 2025, the economy grew 2.2%, the slowest annual growth since 2022, according to Commerce Department data.
The Conference Board’s reading for consumer confidence increased by 2.2 points in February to 91.2 from an upwardly revised 89.0 in January.
The Wall Street Journal reported a few weeks ago, the break is over—companies are jacking up prices again. After holding the line on prices for several months, companies—big and small—have begun a new round of increases, in some cases by high single-digit percentage points.
Veradata recently posted Fundraising When Costs Rise: The Egg Price Signal, with a reminder that economic pressure changes the way people decide to give, but it does not change generosity.
9. Visit the RKD Resources Website Page for some great posts, podcasts and benchmarks 🧐
- A digital fundraising tune-up for animal care marketers
- Digital fundraising strategy: A practical framework for modern nonprofits
- Market research for nonprofit organizations: Elevating your marketing and fundraising
- Thinkers: An entrepreneur on a mission to end slavery, one tea towel at a time
- Chat: How a weekly volunteer became a community builder at a growing food bank
With our world, news cycles and government funding shifting almost daily, you may be carrying more weight than usual. Psychologist and author Dr. Rick Hanson recently reminded readers to notice when we shift from Green to Yellow to Red. Stress can move us out of balance in an instant, and it takes time for the body to recalibrate.
So when you feel that internal needle moving toward Yellow and beyond, pause. Exhale slowly—twice as long as your inhale. Let your nervous system settle. Think of something that makes you feel steady or grateful.
Then return to the work in front of you. Identify the one do-able action that matters most in that moment.
We can encourage the causes of good outcomes. We can’t control every result.
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