Beyond the Numbers: What the Giving Outlook Means for Fundraisers Right Now

Trent Ricker: Hi, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Go Beyond Fundraising Podcast brought to you by AGP. I’m Trent Ricker, the CEO of AGP, and I also serve as the Chief Strategy Officer. And I’ve got a great panel today to talk about an important topic because we’re releasing our Giving Outlook.  

Our Giving Outlook is a report that we’ve done over the last, I think, 14 or 15 years. And part of the reason why I was challenging our team back in our Pursuant days, which is the P from Allegiance Group and Pursuant, was great looking back metrics come out through the year from Giving USA and the Fundraising Effectiveness Project.  

We love looking at that and determining where the industry has been that gives us some indication. However, I always wanted to challenge our team to take that information, assimilate it in a way that we might be looking at what our clients are experiencing and kind of look forward. What’s the outlook? So, we typically distribute this, publish it in September of each year. And as the fall unfolds, it’s an important fundraising season for everybody. And we like to challenge the thinking and look at the information in a different way. I have several guests with me. I’ll start asking you guys to just introduce yourselves, and I’ll end with Matthew so we can dive into the Giving Outlook. But Sarah, why don’t you say hi and introduce yourself? 

Sarah Hartke: Hi everyone, I’m Sarah Hartke, SVP of Client Growth and Strategic Markets at AGP. And I am working with clients and client teams to help our clients be able to expand their donor bases and really expand what they’re doing with clients and also looking at expanding into some other markets. So, I’m really excited about the Giving Outlook. This will be my first time participating. Really excited about the findings and what the actionable steps are that we and the organizations we serve can do with that with that research. 

Trent Ricker: Great. Thanks, Sarah, and welcome aboard to AGP. This is your first year, and we’re lucky to have you. Liz Lowe, why don’t you say hello? 

Liz Lowe: Hi, everybody. I’m Liz Lowe, the VP of Client Relations over here at AGP. I’m also the food bank strategist, which just means I get to put my personal ambition into life and help all of our food bank clients raise more money to help those in their community that need it. Really excited to talk about this with everybody because I think it’s going to answer a lot of the what do we need to do next questions once we can dive into this and really get that forward-looking outlook. 

Trent Ricker: Great, Liz, we’ll be looking forward to hearing your perspective on the food bank market segment and how they can apply it specifically. Alyssa, you’ve been on this a long time. Say hello to everybody. 

Alyssa Boger: I have. Hello. I lead our client experience team here at AGP. And so, it means I get the privilege of working with our team on the front line, so to speak, of serving all the organizations that we partner with across project management and strategy. And then I myself have the privilege to work across some of our larger, more complex partnerships and thinking about omnichannel fundraising and how we continue to innovate and evolve and pilot new strategies that will allow us to continue to drive the industry forward. And then I spent a little bit of time supporting our hospital and healthcare sectors. And so, get to dive deep into our work across hospitals and national healthcare nonprofits. And so really excited to talk today with my friends about what we’re seeing in this fundraising space. 

Trent Ricker: Thanks, Alyssa. I noted you didn’t say your last name. It’s Alyssa Boger. Otherwise, we might have to say, like, Alyssa is now like one word, like Madonna or Sting or Bono. You’re so, yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean, you’re so, you know, popular in the fundraising world. Everybody knows who Alyssa is. Thanks, Alyssa. It’s great. 

Alyssa Boger: Like Zendaya, you know. 

Well, and Boger can sometimes be a little challenging of a last name to pronounce. I’ve gotten a few different iterations, so. 

Trent Ricker: Okay, well, we’ll just keep with Alyssa today. And Matthew, great to have you. You’ve been the grandfather of the Giving Outlook over the last decade or so. So, introduce yourself and then you and I can kind of dive in. 

Matthew Mielcarek: Thanks, Trent. 

Yeah. Thanks, Trent. Hi, everyone. Yes, I’m Matthew Mielcarek, SVP of Strategic Intelligence at AGP. I’ve been with AGP for about 10 years, and I think I have shepherded our Giving Outlook and the discussion and discourse around it for that long as well. So it’s really fun to come together with this crew, with our clients, with the industry to talk about the forces that are shaping philanthropy over the past year, and then to pull really high up and ask ourselves where are we headed, what’s ahead, and how can we be prepared for whatever that thing is.
 

At AGP, my team uses data and technology to tell the story of our donors, to tell the story of our fundraising programs. And often that means identifying paths towards growth. And I think that growth is really a big theme of this year’s Giving Outlook and so excited to be here and go into more detail about what that looks like with all of you. 

Trent Ricker: That’s awesome. Thanks, Matthew. So, we’ll dive in a little bit. I want to kind of give some macro headlines, most of which you guys know. So, then I think it’s important to apply those. I preach at AGP a culture of curiosity. I believe that we partner with many of our clients in the industry in general.
 

And we look to collaborate on interpreting what it means and what we need to do. And I think that there are some macro themes that are starting to emerge over the last several years. Top line, I think most everybody knows that generosity is holding that the 2025 hit 617 billion, and that’s about up 5.7%. 

Inflation’s been pretty hot. So, I think we can kind of look at it and say, it’s good growth. It has been consistently. We have a very generous country that continues to give. This was the first time that it’s over 600 billion. So, I think that’s a big marker.  

What we also see though is starting to become a trend, and that is that the dollars are up, but the donors are down. Dollars are up about 5%, but donors are down 3.6%. And that’s the fifth straight year that the base has shrunk. At least the measure of the base has shrunk. And I think that’s important to delineate.  

I want to kind of share a little bit of my hypotheses on a few things. And Matthew and I,
we’re bouncing this around this year. We’ve actually been bouncing around for several years. But I think for this year in particular, we saw those numbers come out. We continue to ask the question, why is it? How can those two things be true at once?  

Pretty obvious, right? Two things can happen. You can grow your dollars while your base is shrinking if people are more generous. Well, there may be some dollars that are coming in from other places that we can’t necessarily associate with, right? There isn’t the person who’s given us permission to continue that conversation.  

That’s important. That’s really important. And that’s what we’re going to talk about today. So, part of the decline, I think, is attribution, gifts arriving through intermediaries. We’ve got DAFs and other things that are evolving. In some cases, they’re anonymous. Our job in the nonprofit space is to build trust. Our competitive moat is so that we build trust and people feel like they’ll give permission for us to have a continued conversation.  

So I’m hopeful that that’s part of it. But if that is the case, then that anonymity
is actually a reflection, a little bit of distrust of the organizations and the industry. So we want to reverse that a little bit. And I think the second part that’s starting to dawn on me more is my daughters are getting a little bit older and they’re college age. Clearly, the next generation of donors are supporting in a different way. The loyal donors that we have in our files are aging. 

They’re aging into more means, though, and there’s more generosity, and that’s fantastic. Well, kind of the next generations are not traditionally philanthropic in the same way. It’s not following that same blueprint that we once saw. There are areas that they hang out that we don’t have direct permission to reach them, so it’s a little bit more difficult.
 

Don’t get me wrong, I think they’re very generous, but they’re not generous in the same way that we typically have seen from traditional philanthropy. So I think it’s important to note, there may or may not be fewer donors that are out there giving. I do think it’s shrinking as it relates to that demographic component that gives us an opportunity. And I also do think there’s some unattributed donations that are coming in.  

But the big question that raises is when you get a gift, if in fact gifts are going up, stewardship and retention is more important than ever. And is your organization built to receive that first gift and then receive the next one? 

Create loyalty. I talk about, are you moving your constituents, your donor constituents towards your organization being a philanthropic priority? That’s important to having those aspects of your strategy in motion. 

This year’s report is called Engineering Generosity. I think for the obvious reasons that we just talked about, the question underneath that is can you compound? If in fact you have fewer, then you need to compound more. We need to get sustainability on that. So Matthew, let’s talk a little bit about it. 

You called it a fundraising treadmill, and I really like that. Explain a little bit what you mean in our industry about a fundraising treadmill. 

Matthew Mielcarek: Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think it is too many organizations having to run faster every year and feeling like they’re staying just in the same place. And specifically, I think it’s this, you know, when we’re talking about growth, the traditional view has been that we’re often referring to more people and new donors. Yet we know that the challenge with that is that retention is pretty low in the nonprofit industry, and new donor retention is often half of that low rate.  

So that’s why we call it a treadmill. I also like the hamster wheel. It means you can work incredibly hard, and they make very little forward progress. So, acquisition certainly matters. Acquisition is certainly part of growth. But the question and the mindset shift that we explored in this year’s Giving Outlook is whether acquisition alone can create sustainable growth.
And what we proposed is really an alternate mindset, an alternate model. 

Trent Ricker: Yeah, and I think that’s important. We talk about coverage ratios or for-profit business. Think about how they grow. They’re going to have, they’re going to lose some customers over time, and they need to either get more customers or have their existing customers buy more for them to grow. And that’s true for the nonprofit space. So walk us through this concept of net revenue retention, and what does it see that retention doesn’t otherwise see? 

Matthew Mielcarek: Yeah, I mean, I think donor retention, you know, is a seminal fundraising metric, and it tells us how many people stayed year over year. 

Trent Ricker: Yeah, so quantity of donors, correct? Is that what we kind of, we talk about that a lot, right? Yeah. 

Matthew Mielcarek: Yes, the number of donors. But the big factor and the incomplete picture is it doesn’t tell us what happened to the value that was created year over year. It just tells us if we’re holding on to those donors. So, 2 organizations can have identical retention rates, but dramatically different financial outcomes. And so that’s kind of the nuance that we wanted to explore. That’s what we wanted to see. So the concept that we really highlight in the analysis that we performed within the Giving Outlook this year is based on revenue retention, or net revenue retention or NRR. And it really asks this simple question; how much revenue did the cohort of donors from last year generate this year compared to that last year?  

And so, it is expressed as an index. And the aspiration, the goal in that number would be hitting 100% would mean that all of the gifts given by those folks that we worked so hard to engage, they gave again in the same volume, the same amount this year, 100%.  

We know that that’s pretty aspirational, and I can go into that in a little more detail.
But retention, donor retention measures people, revenue retention measures value. And so that’s the new metric, the new approach that we want to try to use to capture retention, upgrades, downgrades, and attrition all in one value metric. And so that’s why
it’s been pretty fun and pretty exciting for us to explore that this year. 

Trent Ricker: I think that’s great. And again, I always like to draw in parallels from the for-profit space as well. So, I hope you’re all familiar with the concept of a customer acquisition cost. Businesses use it all the time about the sales and marketing expense that it takes to get a new customer. And in our space, there’s similar calculations. And acquisitions not inexpensive, particularly traditional acquisition, and I think is we’re evolving into multi-step acquisition that requires some front-end cultivation. It becomes a bit harder to fully calculate the cost to acquire the new donor, but it’s something that’s worthy of keeping track of.  

In order to determine whether or not that’s worthwhile in the long term, we can only project what lifetime value is. What is a donor worth to us? And we can look back at some historical, but if we’re doing our jobs well, then I believe the stewardship and the cultivation should lead to a higher lifetime value. And those that have the means move up to mid-level, well, sustaining, then mid-level, major, and hopefully into planned giving as well. 

So I like the way that you’re framing this, Matthew, because we’re looking at, we put a lot of effort and energy into acquisition. And its really important in year two that we see a return on that sooner rather than later. So in that net revenue recognition, 100% would reflect that 100% of the revenue.  

Let’s use an example. You raised $100,000 from a set of donors last year. This year, it’s probably going to be fewer donors because we know retention can be difficult. Did you raise less than 100,000 or 100,000 or more? And it is expressed by a percentage. Now we worked across, this is again, our curiosity drives us to start to dive into our data for our clients and kind of blind look at it. Matthew can talk us through. We look through 11 client programs. What do we find, Matthew? 

Matthew Mielcarek: Yeah, absolutely. So we identified, I would say, a range, a continuum of that ratio. And I would say 70% seemed to be the dividing line. People above 70%, we could say that their programs were very efficient. We even called them the Compounders because what they were doing year after year was replacing that value with their programs. And as we drilled in, really no surprise about what programs are driving compounding, but it’s things like having monthly giving programs in place, a mid-level program, recognition and in place. Programs that connect are typically those that compound.  

Many other organizations were a bit lower, and I would say ranged from 40 to maybe 70%. And I would say that they are the Replenishers. I would probably characterize them a bit more on that treadmill, on the hamster wheel, in that growth for those organizations is coming externally from them, but again, needing to be replaced year after year. So, it felt to us that 70% threshold was really important. No one crossed the 100% line. 

Trent Ricker: Did that surprise you that no one crossed 100%, Matthew? 

Matthew Mielcarek: A little bit. You know, yeah, I almost, I want to play with it and model what would have to be true. How realistic is it to do so? I would be very intrigued by that. And I’d love to do a deeper analysis to look back at how that ratio has changed year after year for many organizations. And I would even say, especially AGP client case studies where we inherit or work with a client where a program might be in a bit of crisis and where we’ve worked with them over time. I’d love more data, more data points to illustrate that progression to determine if 100% is aspirational.  

But I definitely believe that it can be that all-in-one value measure to determine how well we are engaging with those donors year after year. And if we’re becoming more successful at being and building a program that compounds over time. 

Trent Ricker: Yeah. I think we have to delineate too that some organizations do front-end premiums as part of their acquisition, and they’ve got calculations to be able to determine, we’ve done this for a long time, we do a front-end premium, we know we’re going to have a certain number of TRIT, we know we’ll have a certain number that we retain, the long-term lifetime value of it makes it net positive return on investment, net positive down the road.  

I would suggest, though, I’ll use another cohort, events. I’ve heard this a lot, right? Oh, Liz gave to Matthew who was doing the walk to save the baby snakes and he gave, she gave to Matthew not saving the baby snakes. That could be true.
But if we actually take that assertion and assume that that’s true for all event participants or donors to the event that did not participate, then we don’t even have the opportunity to build a relationship. And I would posit that we’ll get away from baby snakes for a minute. We’ll use something a little bit more specific like cancer – high likelihood that those that are supporting but didn’t participate are in fact themselves or a couple degrees away from being afflicted by cancer and could maybe want to support it.  

My point in that is we sometimes just disqualify certain cohorts of donors. It’s like, man, those are event donors. We try to fundraise them from the past that just doesn’t perform very well, right?  

Front-end premiums are very important, but that is not, they are more transactional. That can be an important mechanism. But we also need to understand that when we do acquire donors in that route, how can we cultivate those that have some connection to our mission, that we can then begin to create some loyalty to it. So, it’s very important to look at it that way knowing that, as Matthew pointed out, not one of the 11 that we looked at, what was the max that we had, Matthew? 

Matthew Mielcarek: It was probably in the neighborhood of 75 to 80% overall. 

Trent Ricker: Yeah, an individual organization. I think that’s right. Yeah. And, and you have, you know, you have telling the story of two programs. As I mentioned, some programs that are high transactional acquisition and/or event driven are the ones on the treadmill that have to continue to do that in order just to continue to refill the bucket. 

Part of it’s because they’ve conceded, rightly or wrongly, and I’d argue for another podcast day, that in this day and age we might be able to steward and cultivate and determine who in that file might be worth cultivating and who might not be. But in that case, those are the ones that are kind of more of an uphill battle than the others. 

Is that what you found amongst the 11? 

Matthew Mielcarek: Yeah, yeah, I think so. It is that many of those organizations are working harder to be reliant on major gifts, which we know might be very spiky from year to year, or acquisition to really drive a lot of that growth. 

Trent Ricker: Interesting. Well, last question for you, Matthew. Did we have any findings on the mid-level as it relates to net recurring revenue, around maybe newly acquired donor that gave what was defined as a mid-level gift to begin with? 

Matthew Mielcarek: Yeah, that’s, you know, we were just talking about is 100% reasonable? Is that a meaningful target? Is it real? And what gives me hope and makes me want to keep it aspirational is that when we looked at mid-level programs across all of our clients, our analysis showed that mid-level revenue retention actually averaged 88% across all of the clients that we explored.  

So that means this band are often the donors most likely to increase their commitment if they have the right experience. I think, you know, all of us love mid-level programs and mid-level donors. I think this is the proof that shows their durability. And so, I love looking at and evaluating mid-level donor revenue retention because I think it can really be the start to having this full discussion to say, how well are we doing there before we, you know, layer in major donors? They’re going to be a little noisy before layering in our general level donors.  

I think mid-level is a wonderful place to start to determine where generosity is compounding or stalling within your program. It’s also a good proxy for more broadly engineering those connection points within a program and saying, okay, if that exists, if that number is high, we’re doing pretty good. Let’s extend that measurement and look at how we’re doing even more broadly. 

Trent Ricker: To put a cap, that’s excellent, because I think to put a cap on that a little bit before I shift over to Sarah, there’s a simple concept I want our listeners to kind of get their head around. I think for a long time being in this business, and depending upon which market segment, and this is all directional sample data, but somebody might say, wow, I’d be thrilled if I could retain 1/3 of my donors, my new donors.
Right. Wow, 35 percent. Let’s just say that then you’re conceding two-thirds of your new donors are not going to be with you again.  

If you were to get a 100% NRR, you essentially have to get three times as much from the one-third that you hold in order to hit 100%. And that doesn’t seem very practical.
And that’s why, when I thought of that, why don’t they get over 100%? I said, wow, they’re letting too many of their first-time donors go. 

There might be some business rules in place that we need to rethink. And as an industry, we actually have fewer donors that are at least trackable. And that leads me to a little introduction over to Sarah here. I think before I get there, to the group, if somebody chooses to stay anonymous, because that’s where I want to kind of start with Sarah, meaning they give through a DAF and they choose to say anonymous. Is that a preference, do you think, or maybe a signal of distrust? I kind of want to get you guys a sense on it, because why would somebody say, I’m going to give out of my DAF, which indicates that they are generous by nature and understand the tax advantages of the DAF, to then just say, I want it to go through my Schwab account. And I’m an anonymous donor. Pretty difficult to have high NRR when we don’t know who you are. What are you guys thoughts on that? This is a group. 

Alyssa Boger: I don’t know if the donor really knows. Do they know? Just how, you know, like, do they really understand how much that impacts the ability to communicate with them? I don’t know if, I don’t know that they do. 

Trent Ricker: Great point. 

Sarah Hartke: Yeah, I would agree. I would agree. I don’t think that they necessarily know. And it depends on, you know, they may think they’re anonymous, not necessarily to the organization, but maybe they don’t want their name published. And there are things that they’re worried about their, you know, name and address being sold. 

Trent Ricker: An excellent point. 

Sarah Hartke: So I don’t think there’s a real understanding yet about DAFs and organizations have to work through that with their donors and make sure they’re communicating clearly, you know, that they want to know when they’ve given a DAF. 

Trent Ricker: And social media, you know, is another area where they may collect donations and then they give a lump sum check to the organization. We’re not quite clear. Some places give us partial data, but we’re not sure if that Jack Smith from Naples, Florida is the same Jack Smith in our file. It’s tough. Alyssa, I think you’ve got a great point there. They may not know. 

Which makes it tough for us because if they think they are known and they aren’t stewarded, boy, that’s even a worse look on our brand, right? So we just need to be cognizant. So as I shift over to you, Sarah, we think about things like this. These are the pressures that our leaders are dealing with from DAFs to sustaining giving. What are we going to call it? Mid-level retention. 

How are we going to leverage AI? Where do they start? 

Sarah Hartke: It can be overwhelming. And I think often nonprofit leaders think, well, we have to do everything. And so, I think being equipped with some more information and also the grace to not have to tackle everything at once is a way that we as consultants can help them.  

You know, but I won’t say it’s easy, but a great place to start is always assessing your program, you know, looking at, you know, where you are, is there something you’re good at? Is there one really meaningful opportunity that you can take advantage of? Looking at your staff and your resources too, you know, what’s something where we could see a major difference if we initiated it now? In addition to everything else that they’re already doing. 

Trent Ricker: That’s good. I think in those areas, everybody’s got pressures from their board to explore them. And I think what we’re trying to say is that if we boil this down, retention is the new acquisition. My team has heard me say, and I’ve said to the market quite a bit, if we do retention really well, then our acquisition programs actually become
momentum, not replacement, the treadmill that Matthew talks about, you can actually make progress.  

And if we’re doing retention really well, then that retention is going to compound, and compounding is going to take us where we need to go as well. From that, what are some of the elements, Sarah, related to retention that we feel like are most impactful. 

Sarah Hartke: Well, absolutely stewardship. You know, stewardship is often thought of as an add-on when someone has time on their plate, or maybe it lives in member services or somewhere else. And it really needs to be part of the foundation because I think, you know, it’s the bottom layer because it has to be part of the foundation. It has to be built into communication strategies and there has to be an investment in stewardship.  

And it also has to be the top layer, you know, because those stewardship touches really have to be layered in kind of throughout the donor journey. And as they’re engaging, as they’re upgrading, as they’re becoming a monthly donor or whatever it may be,
that those stewardship touches are part of the fabric of the way that an organization communicates with their donors. 

Trent Ricker: I think that’s great. I’ve long been. And I think everybody would say, who’s not a proponent of stewardship? But I think the reality is that it’s more difficult to measure. So, the CFO, typically during the more difficult time, says, we can’t continue to do those things because they’re expensive. And I don’t see the direct correlation for the ROI.  

In our agency and consulting world, and I would say that we’re in alignment with our senior leaders that we work with our clients here in the market. We know that the absence of stewardship creates this problem that we’re talking about. If somebody feels marginalized, feels like they’re taking for granted, they don’t know what their gift did, they feel like they’re only being asked for money when they’re being communicated with, they’re not going to continue to give you that organization.  

So I might argue that stewardship can create a competitive advantage for you. It’s actually what builds loyalty. When you are communicating stewardship well, and somebody, let’s say, is raising money that you trust, the person who, geez, if Liz is supporting this organization and she’s talking about them on social media, and I trust Liz, then I should trust this organization when I give to them as well.
 

A lot of for-profit organizations, I think, are wise to kind of have customer pledges. This is what we promise you. Apple will say something like, privacy is a fundamental human right. That’s what we believe for you, or Zappos with their 365-day return policy. It feels like they’re protecting. 

I’m curious about what we can do in the nonprofit space to, we think about journey mapping, but we think about that from the organizational lens of where we want the donor to go, as opposed to what’s the experience for the constituent? Does that make some sense?  

So ,Sarah, talk to me a little bit about what we can do with those first-year donors. And while we might want to move them to that second,
gift, how do we kind of embrace them in through stewardship? 

Sarah Hartke: Well, obviously, the most basic thing is to make sure that they’re thanked promptly and accurately. And yeah, I mean, some organizations won’t send an appeal if, you know, the donor hasn’t been thanked, and they like to wait three months. But I think we all know that, you know, the first three months after someone’s made a gift when the organization is top of mind is really the best time to reach out to them. 

But it doesn’t have to be an ask that first, that first, you know, outreach. It could be, you know, some information. It could be the newsletter. It could be an e-newsletter or something like that.  

The way that I always think about stewardship is, yes, that first to second year is a really critical time, but all of the stewardship you’re doing really contributes to planned giving.  

And if organizations can think of it that way, how many times have we seen, you know, somebody who’s given to an organization, maybe a modest gift over a period of time, they continue to receive newsletters and possibly appeals, and many years later, the organization receives a fairly large gift from someone that probably wasn’t even on their radar. And I think… 

Trent Ricker: That exemplifies the epitome of the highest level of loyalty, right? When that happens, right? It’s latent in your file from that perspective. Let me throw this out to the group. Yeah, go ahead, sir. 

Sarah Hartke: Yeah, and I think, okay, I was just going to say, I think some organizations think, oh, you know, we have to clean up the database. This person hasn’t given in a long time, but I think they should take a beat and think about, well, you know, do we really need to? Like, yes, you should always be cleaning up your data, but, you know, there’s something to be said for continued stewardship, even after someone hasn’t given for a period of time. 

Trent Ricker: Yeah, I think that’s good. I think that stewardship is still looked at as something that you do, time permitting, and, you know, budget permitting, as opposed to a truly funded line in the budget that’s necessary. And I think our Giving Outlook is showing that there’s fewer donors, the cultivation is extraordinarily important.  

I want to, again, from a for-profit example, when you make a first time purchase, you ever made a first time purchase and it was good, it wasn’t great. And there’s a couple of things you’d want to have fixed, but you wouldn’t go out of your way to talk to them about it. But then you get a timely survey later ,and you tell them all the good things, but also the things that weren’t exactly perfect. That’s important to the company, right? 

And it’s also very important to you, and it makes you feel heard a little bit, but it took that prompting. And that prompting saying, oh, they want to hear from me, and it’s okay that I talked to them about it. And sometimes you might even be rewarded with that, well, I’m sorry to hear that, you know, Liz, here’s a 10% discount on your next purchase. In nonprofit space, we aren’t selling goods and services. 

So the first thing we have to do is acknowledge a gift. And sometimes I’ve seen organizations still do it. It’s a receipt. The receipt’s fine, it’s important. But if we’re just giving a receipt, it feels transactional, not relational. The fundamentals of what we’re doing in stewardship need to be thank you. Here’s your receipt because you need it for your records. Here’s what your gift is doing for us. Here’s what others like you are able to accomplish. Thank you for being part of this mission. And would you consider giving again?  

And that last part might follow right away, or it might be a little later. There’s different tactics that work in different ways, but I think we’d all agree. Stewardship is critical. I’m going to shift over to Alyssa for a few minutes and everybody feel free to pipe in it as
as I’m bringing you all of this conversation.  

So Alyssa, you and I get a chance to work in healthcare and hospitals together a lot. They have some uniqueness. In many cases, hospitals have patients that could turn into grateful patients. And there’s other aspects of healthcare and hospital that have nothing to do with the patient experience, they’re raising money to cure a disease or the research that they’re otherwise doing to impact care and cure. Talk a little bit about the challenges that healthcare and hospitals face in this area of acquisition and stewardship. 

Alyssa Boger:
Uh, I think both hospitals and healthcare have been under, as a number of other sectors have been, quite a bit of pressure the last year as there have been shifts in just tax policy, the Big Beautiful Bill, there’s been cuts to NIH funding, payer mix has shifted. And so more pressure on the annual fund, or on the foundation to really help drive overall revenue for an organization.  

For some entities where maybe, especially within the hospital foundation world, where the hospital is, you know, this nice thing to have, it helps to propel major gifts, has really become more central to overall organization strategy. How are we engaging more donors? How are we building our donor base?

And so, I think that has influenced quite a bit over the last year or so, how hospital and healthcare organizations are thinking about acquisition. What does that culture of philanthropy, if you will, look like from the moment that, you know, your ad is going out to try to bring in new patients to the hospital or to the cancer center. They become a patient, and then they’re ultimately hopefully stewarded and led to a gift that philanthropy in some way is woven throughout that experience and not just something that’s tacked on once they’re discharged.  

And so, you know, how do you build that longer-term relationship with a patient, or with someone who has been recently diagnosed with some type of disorder and might be searching for information online about that disorder? Like how, I think within that healthcare and hospital space, the collaboration with marketing and fundraising is just becoming more and more critical, because of how people are searching for information, how they’re becoming aware of organizations, and all of that is leading into both patient acquisition, you know, acquisition of leads who are maybe individuals who’ve recently been diagnosed, with a disorder and then hopefully leading them into that relationship of wanting to fund the great work that they’ve been a benefactor of or beneficiary of. 

Trent Ricker: Yeah, it’s competitive dollars out there. You know, we need to acknowledge that, that a hospital might be raising money for a variety of programs, particularly if they’re doing research, or they might want to do community health programs. And then you’ve got your larger multi-affiliate health organizations that are a front door to collecting donations and then distributing grants to the research organizations to impact the great work, regardless of what door that supporter walks into. I think I’d like to ask you that. I think with hospitals, we actually have a pipeline of patients.  

And in other cases, we have no pipeline except for maybe events is a pipeline of sorts or traditional acquisition. We work with some multi affiliate health organizations that rely upon traditional acquisition methods. But talk about that a little bit, how the differences between acquisition and in the context of Giving Outlook, the importance of keeping the donor once we get them in subsequent years. 

Alyssa Boger: That’s a great question. I think with my like consultant hat on, I would say it depends. I think about, you know, the hospital space, you might have some organizations that have a pipeline of patients, but it’s not the ideal donor pipeline. So it may be children’s hospitals where you have grateful families, but they may not always be in the position because of ongoing care or cost to contribute.  

Or, a cancer center that might have a stream of patients, but it’s really small. And so, they’re almost in some ways reaching beyond the normal patient pipeline into acquisition that looks a lot more like a, you know, national healthcare nonprofit that might be leaning now more and more into digital strategies, lead gen.  

How are you engaging, whether it’s through content strategies, you know, offers, being able to share information about a disorder, diagnosis, we can be really hyper targeted in the digital space that’s still HIPAA compliant to be able to meet individuals where they are in a journey and be able to provide more immediate value. and information and maybe hope and inspiration that could more quickly lead to that first gift.  

There’s still a place, obviously, for direct mail acquisition. It’s just, I think, shifting in how we engage those, whether it’s patients or it’s just individuals who have a passion for that particular program or disease area and being able to more quickly connect and provide that value and impact that will lead them into that first and second gift. 

Trent Ricker: That’s right. And my last point for you is, I think, a point of friction. I’ll come to that in a second. But when we lift up a couple areas that you talked about, on the one hand, I think hospitals have this arc where marketing is responsible for patient acquisition to a large extent. Then there’s patient experience, which is typically the the doctors, the healthcare organization, the spirit of the organization.  

We begin to then get into donor acquisition through grateful patient, and then donor experience with donor experience being an important part where stewardship takes place, retention, stewardship, growth up the pyramid. I think of that as PA, patient acquisition, PX, patient experience, DA donor acquisition, and DX donor experience in that arc now, that’s a pipeline of potential donors in that aspect. Other organizations, let’s take American Cancer Society, for instance, that first interaction with the American Cancer Society website is very likely to be somebody who’s recently been diagnosed or a family member of that individual. And then that is not the time to raise money. That’d be the equivalent of asking for a donation at the hospital as they’re filling out their intake forms. You would never dream of it at all.  

And so American Cancer Society’s obligation there is to provide information to their constituents, support, opportunity to connect in a community. When we think about friction, particularly in giving, let’s come back to fundraising then.
 

We’ve been doing some work recently about how people can give, and if it’s so hard to get a new donor, what are some areas that we’re creating our own friction and making it a little bit more difficult for people to give that we can kind of lower that bar? 

Alyssa Boger: So first I would say it’s, especially in the hospital and healthcare space, it first starts with the education that the organization is a nonprofit or, you know, that intake form or that form that they’re, you know, filling in their name to get information from that main page they went to on ACS’s website. I don’t want to ask for a gift right then, but would love for them to know your, you know, your visit is subsidized by X or you’re receiving this information because of the support of millions of Americans.  

You know, whatever it might be, a copywriter can frame it much more eloquently than I can. But being able to at least frame from the get-go that they’re benefiting from philanthropy in some way, shape, or form.  

It’s a lot like higher education, where, you know, your education to some degree is subsidized, or maybe you’ve received scholarships. And so how are you able to find those little moments where it doesn’t feel inauthentic or it doesn’t feel over the top? 

But there’s those little nuggets along the way that plant those seeds of philanthropy so that when it does come time for that ask, it doesn’t feel like it’s a bait and switch or that all of the education of philanthropy lives and rests with the annual fund or with the donation, the donor team.

So I think that’s part of that collaboration and just understanding that everyone is part of being a fundraiser to some degree and being able to weave that through the experience. And then making it easy for donors to give. I think more and more, it’s how is your website optimized to receive gifts?  

So even if, you know, you’re still maybe sending direct mail out more and more, we’re finding more and more giving is coming through QR codes on your direct mail, your direct mail forms or URLs, postcards that are leading to people to give online, more digital acquisition. And so, ensuring that your website is optimized, that it’s prime for AI search and all of those search assistants, you know, on Google, that you’ve done the hard work. 

Trent Ricker: So that they find you to give that gift, right? 

Alyssa Boger: Right, exactly.  

And then when they get to that donation form, that it’s optimized for conversion. It’s easy for people to give through Apple Pay or through Venmo or through DAFs, with that continuing to just rise in terms of the number of donors giving through donor advised funds and lower-level donors, it’s, you know, accessible to anyone, that that is something that’s easy to leverage and access.  

And there are some tools now that make that very streamlined. You can, they can share their information so that instead of receiving that gift anonymously, to your point earlier, Trent, you’re actually getting the donor information along with that grant that’s being paid out. I think more and more the tech side of your website and how it’s optimized for receiving all different types of gifts online is going to be more and more critical. Younger donors in particular are just going to jump
when they feel like there’s friction in the process. 

Trent Ricker: Yeah, if you’re thinking of your website landing page, unfortunately still seeing it a lot where the bar is not where it needs to be. I recently did a project for a client where I looked across many sites and saw a variety of intake where there was friction all over the place.  

To your point, if we’re only thinking about somebody whipping out their credit card and typing it in, then we’re only now catering to one type of constituent, donor. Make no mistake, if somebody, I have an anecdote, a friend who has funded their DAF over the last couple of years with $5,000, they probably are not going to give outside of their DAF, given where they are in their arc of life. If you don’t make it easy for them to give through that DAF, they will find someone else too. They don’t want to pick up the phone. They don’t want to talk to anybody. They want to click on something. They want to be able then to give it and they don’t want to go into Schwab of Fidelity and search for you and then give you the $500, particularly if it’s a new gift. So, you need to reduce the friction.  

I was even on American Airlines site today. They’ve extended their payment options to include Venmo and Apple Pay. And that’s a long time coming, frankly, because they haven’t had that. It’s been store a credit card and click here and give us your three numbers on your CVV on the back.  

People want to give the way that they’re comfortable in giving. And if it’s hard to get donors, we need to make sure if a donor is ready to give to you that they don’t abandon you. 

So, let me switch to Liz. Liz, food banks had a phenomenal year last, well, was it last year? I guess it would have been. Yes. So when we get new donors from something that happens externally, then we get an influx of donors, and it’s a little bit of a different
situation.  

Talk through both COVID and the SNAP world about what happened in food banks with new donors coming in and what we needed to do to cultivate them. 

Liz Lowe: I think the topic of the day is kind of friction, right? We need to make sure that we’re removing any kind of friction. And post-COVID, that was when food banks saw the largest surge of donors they had ever really seen in such a short amount of time. And most of that giving came in online. And most food banks weren’t really set up with the infrastructure to handle that, which caused a lot of friction, right?

Being able to report back to those donors in their digital space where they were obviously comfortable giving, felt a little clunky. I’m seeing less of that with the most recent giving at Q4 of 2025, but it’s still there. Like we still want to bucket donors into these nice little buckets and make it easier to communicate. And it’s not really,
what’s working.  

As an organization, they tend to count touches, a donor experiences a relationship. So, if we’re not thinking about it that way, that’s automatically causing friction. And then to your point earlier, Trent, you know, if they can’t go back online and give in a very frictionless way, that’s kind of really unintentionally hurting the retention of those new donors that we just got to come on file.  

Stewardship plays a big role in it, too. They have to be set up for stewardship, and that’s been a little bit of a friction point as well because it’s been seen as a nice to have, rather than a have to have, even though that’s, you know, we all experience the same thing as either a donor or a consumer.  

It’s just making sure that that’s been a highlight of whatever their plan is. And you and I have done a couple donor journey exercises with clients now, and we’re coming across the same thing. Like it comes to be more of like a sequence of communications, but that doesn’t automatically mean it’s a journey. So it’s just being able to take a step back and what does your welcome look like? 

Trent Ricker: Yeah, I think what’s unique about food banks, and we can expand it to human services in general, when there’s a crisis of sort, the SNAP crisis a couple years ago, COVID even going further back, we get an influx of new supporters. That’s a blessing that’s necessary for us to address the need at hand.  

I’ve also seen repeated errors by the nonprofit space that received those disaster relief donors, right? They think of them as a one-time episodic donor. They’re thrilled to get those donors, but they may not have the infrastructure to say, okay, these are new donors that gave from a catalyst that was beyond us.
We’re all over the news. Look at the lines at the food pantry. Help your neighbors and people are compelled to help their neighbors. What do you know about that first-time gift?  

Liz, explain to me because you’re a big supporter of food banks yourself. What would you, how would you describe the first-time donor that gave to a food bank as a result of seeing the line around the corner on television?
What do we know about that person? 

Liz Lowe: We know that they’re, number one, they’re an emotional giver, so please don’t treat them as a transactional donor. That’s the first glaring, like, no, no, no exclamation point.  

Anybody that gives during a time of crisis, no matter what the crisis is, is doing because it has emotionally touched them somehow, some way, right? So, we want to make sure that we’re continuing that relationship, as an emotional relationship. Bring them into the organization, show them how they are actually supporting their fellow human, because that’s what drove them to do whatever it was, to give either financially or by volunteering or by donating actual food funds. But the biggest mistake I see is just kind of throwing them into the rest of the communication cycle.  

And that doesn’t work if that’s not what drove that donor to give for that first time. If it’s because they saw that long line, you can explain to them the impact that they’re making in their community and the continued need for that impact to be made in their community.  

And I think that that gets forgotten about in the melee of everybody, oh my gosh, this is a crisis. This is what we to do. But we need to take a step back and do what we say we’re going to do and meet that donor where they are and communicate with them in whatever it was that prompted them to give in the first place. And that doesn’t mean creating more work. It just means creating an intentional communication track for certain subsets of donors. 

Trent Ricker: Yeah, and I’m going make a challenge to the group, regardless of what market segment you’re in, if you receive an influx of episodic donors that are reacting to some external event, you are going to be blessed with an influx of extra dollars for those new donors. 

I would challenge you that if you spent on those donors two to three times more in stewardship on those episodic new donors, your retention and lifetime value of them coming back to you will pay off many more fold.  

Let me explain. If in fact, Liz gives a first-time gift to an organization as a result to a human crisis, and she’s then, I wouldn’t say inundated, but given frequent updates about what’s happening, the thanking for that gift, what we’re actually doing, how the people are doing that are the mission recipients. If she’s consistently getting updates and not asked again, maybe it’s a soft ask, just to, if you feel so compelled to add to your gift, here’s a button. I would almost guarantee that those folks will feel relational and not transactional, and will likely become longer term loyal constituents.  

You don’t have to go right to, oh, thank you for your gift. Would you like to become a monthly donut? That’s not why they gave the first time they gave in response to a human event.  

And to Liz’s point, we can mark that that was an emotional gift. It’s not a head gift where someone’s giving from a calculated way for tax reasons or the otherwise. It’s in response to need. The other thing I’d say that food banks do quite well, language is important though, right? They talk about food insecurity, they talk about neighbors. I would really challenge all of our nonprofit segments to think about what we call inside the organization, like I don’t love calling them donors, right? Donors are sounds like organ donor and you can get my organs when I die, right? Donor is a very cold word to me, right? Very operational constituent. But what are the words that are warm? If you give to a food bank that can then distribute a meal, you’re helping your neighbors. It’s very personal.  

And we slow down and we show, look at how your gift continues to help your neighbors, and we continue to give that in stewardship, we have an opportunity to, another cold word, capitalize. I hate that, but you know what I mean, capitalize on a moment. That sounds wrong. But we have the opportunity, I think, to go deeper with those that already have a heart to give. So those are, yeah, go ahead. 

Liz Lowe: Yeah, it gives us, it’s a catalyst, a catalyst instead of being capitalistic, it’s a catalystic-moment of being able to get deeper support within your own community. And fundamentally, it’s people helping people, right? Like regardless of what nonprofit industry you’re in, it’s still at the end of the dday;it’s people helping people. 

If we can learn anything from our other vertical markets, from food banks, learn about strength-based messaging. We are here to make people look the best that they possibly can and support our neighbors, however, and whatever drives you to do that. 

Trent Ricker: Yeah, I reflect back as I close with you, Liz, and then we’ll bring it back to the group and our closing thoughts. But I reflect back the whole concept of creating pigeonholes for certain segments.  

Oh, those are disaster relief donors. They’re not going to give again.
Oh, those are folks that gave to the participant that they won’t give to us.
Oh, that’s just a year end giver.
Oh, that’s just a Giving Tuesday giver.

You need to start asking questions. What drove them to give? What is their age? What is their demographic?

How might we communicate with them differently so that we can build relationship to get that second gift? And to go back to what Matthew said, to get the second gift in subsequent years to create retention in NRR.  

I reflect back upon a very large disaster relief organization that I worked with about 20 years ago following a hurricane and huge influx of gifts.

And they didn’t steward at all. They weren’t ready for the online giving. That was just 20 years ago. And they had a debate at the end of the year, should we suppress these folks? Or do we throw them in our year end giving?

They threw them in the year end giving, and they didn’t have a great response from that cohort. They kind of created that themselves, because the hurricane was August and September, they weren’t talking to that constituency about what happened and the work that they did and why they should continue to give.  

All they got was a receipt and an end of year appeal. And that led to those disaster relief donors. They’re just episodic, that is not the case. And in this day and age where retention is the new acquisition. We have to be very smart about removing friction and then stewarding to keep them.  

Okay, I want to kind of close up here on going around the floor. Matthew, what’s your key take away and what can you give our audience as it relates to what we learned from the Giving Outlook? 

Matthew Mielcarek: I think that my guidance would be get started, have a fresh perspective on growth. And I sort of am going to go back to my mid-level darlings to say start with your mid-level program because I think it’s a priority for many organizations. It should be if it isn’t. And I think you can get your hands on that data and those donors and tell a big story and identify great growth opportunities by focusing on mid-level donor retention alone. 

Trent Ricker: So I would, that’s great. And I would add, just like what I said to Liz, if you’ve got an episodic, responsive gift, and I said double down on your stewardship there.  

Matthew, I think your point is if somebody starts at a mid-level, you get a first-time gift at $1,000, double down on your stewardship with that cohort. There’s a reason that they gave it.

They either have means or they’re very connected with the organization. The investment in year one to keep that type of donor is critical, right? So that’s a great key take away. 

 Sarah, what’s on your mind? What was the thing that you would say is an important take away from our audience? 

Sarah Hartke: I think it’s, you know, and not to steal any thunder from Matthew’s area, but it’s really important to think about your data. And a lot of organizations still, even though we’ve been talking about it for years and years, don’t understand how important that data is for you to map it, for you to assess your program, and for you to move forward. Your strategy is going to be built on your data. So don’t forget data always has to be a priority. And for some people, I think they’re a little intimidated by it because they may not kind of understand what’s in their data, but that’s really going to be the key to unlocking that one thing that that organization can take action on. 

Trent Ricker: I’ll add to that real quick and suggest that data is just numbers and the headline can hide a weakness.

And Liz, we learned that. I’ll move to you next since it’s a good segue. A lot of the organizations and food banks saw the lift in number of donors and the lift in revenue, but they had a weakness in not being able they, collectively as a group, not some specific, because there was a pretty big, I think, chasm between those that were doing it well and what they then benefited from in the subsequent years and those that didn’t. 

 But the data can hide weaknesses as it relates to operational excellence, stewardship, and retention.

What would you take away, Liz, beyond that? 

Liz Lowe: Yeah, I absolutely agree with that, number one. Great metrics can always hide poor metrics, right? So really make sure that you’re understanding your data. And I think the biggest take away for me is that growth doesn’t always have to be something new. It could just be removing friction from something.

And Matthew, to your point of elevating your mid-level program, I agree with the same thing with sustainers. I think that that’s an easy way to grow the support in your community, especially with a community-based nonprofit. Like that’s really like the core. 

So being able to go back to reviewing a donor journey as a relationship rather than touch points and make sure that we are treating everybody that is giving to us regardless of level, as a community member and making sure that they feel part of the organization with continued impact updates rather than just continual requests for more donations. 

Trent Ricker: I like that a lot, Alyssa. 

Alyssa Boger: I think for me, it’s, I think some of the core strategies that we have today that are working. You know, when you think about a nonprofit leader needing to justify their budget to their board, those high ROI strategies, the proven tactics are what’s still driving programs. When you think about traditional acquisition and our e-mail programs. 

But what’s really going to, I think, fuel that next generation of mid and major donors or the next generation of planned donors is going to require more innovation and testing to reach new audiences that are engaging in different ways. And so, being able to think about how our country is shifting from a demographic perspective, the way that we have, you know, typically talked to an older white female, you know, isn’t as indicative of the larger population that might be philanthropic. The Giving USA and Fundraising effectiveness results really track giving to nonprofits, not you know, giving to people or giving through influencers.  

And so being able to tap into that next generation of donors is going to require, I think, thinking about how we tell our story and where we tell it in a different way. And to Liz’s point, like removing the friction in that process, so that we can continue to, I think, combat what we’re seeing in more of the traditional spaces within philanthropy. 

Trent Ricker: That’s fantastic. That’s great advice. I’ll close with my own thoughts as it relates to what I think that our folks can do, but I want to challenge everyone to understand that attribution is no longer linear. I think we’re well past the stage where the investments that you make in your brand, in your visibility, in your events, your digital presence, your social media, mail can generate a gift that arrives in a DAF.

And those that aren’t thinking that way need to start thinking that way. And again, I feel like I preach to the choir because I think a lot of leaders who listen to this podcast already know that. But we have to educate our boards, and we have to educate our CFOs on that so that we keep the programs alive that are necessary to be alive.

Here’s my challenge to the group that are listening today. Have your team, everyone on your team, make a gift to your own organization, 25 bucks. And just say, what about employee giving program is it’s mandatory that you make a $25 gift. And if you want to have some fun with it, then reinvest that into a pizza party or a margarita machine on a Thursday or whatever you want to do, but have everybody make a $25 gift.

And 90 days later, huddle up and ask him how he felt about that first 90-day journey.

Ask him, did they feel valued?
Ask him when they felt
unheard.
Ask them if it was easy to give.

Have a conversation that is non-threatening. Nobody’s jobs at risk on it. But I guarantee you in that conversation, if you put yourself in the customer spot, the donor spot, you’ll learn a lot. Liz, I know you do this with food banks an awful lot. You know, you’re trying to find out what that journey looks like. 

There’s always room for improvement. But as a closing, as it relates to our giving outlook, what we’ve learned is there are fewer donors and retention is the new acquisition. So how we treat the first-time giver is critically important and those first 90-days are pivotal.
 

Well, I want to thank you guys, Matthew, Sarah, Liz, Alyssa, thank you guys so much. If you haven’t already downloaded the Giving Outlook, it’s available to you now. And we look forward to hearing your questions. On our website, Matthew, why don’t you tell the folks about how they can measure NRR, and we’ll take it from there. 

 
Matthew Mielcarek: That is right. We have two worksheets that can support activation of many of these concepts and help you build on next steps. Both of them are part of the Giving Outlook overall.

The first one is an NRR calculation worksheet.

It can be a little tricky depending on what command you have of your data. So ,we have sort of the direct route and then a shortcut. And again, taking a perspective of mid-level donors is a great place to get started.

And then the second is an assessment for how well your organization is compounding.

And so there are some key questions, a little bit of an internal fundraising audit that looks at the connections between your fundraising programs and can serve as a recommendation for you on steps to take for connecting your fundraising program as a result of that work. So, both of those resources are available to you, certainly. If you need help using any of them, feel free to reach out directly to us. 

Trent Ricker: Fantastic. So go download the Giving Outlook if you haven’t already. Go make everybody give a $25 gift. Fill out the worksheets that Matthew just alluded to, so you know where you stand from your dollars. And AGP is always happy to collaborate.

We’re just as curious and I’d love to hear if you’ve got some success stories or if you’re struggling, please reach out and we’d love to help you.
Thanks.