Funding & Story

You cannot say what your retention was.

"I can't tell you what percentage of last year's donors gave again. We just ask harder when things get tight."

Most organizations do not have an acquisition problem. They have a retention problem that acquisition has been quietly covering — and nobody wants to be the one who calculates it.

If nothing changes

What this costs you.

You replace donors you already earned, at several times the cost.
Appeals get louder because the base gets thinner.
One or two funders carry more of you each year.
Nobody notices the erosion until a single lapse becomes a crisis.

What we do

Donor Development

Most organizations don't have an acquisition problem — they have a retention problem that acquisition has been quietly covering. We build the systems that keep the donors you already earned.

Sector benchmark: donor retention sits at roughly 43% (Fundraising Effectiveness Project, 2025). Ten points of improvement is usually worth more than a year of acquisition spend.

The plan

Three steps.

Measure what you have avoided measuring

Retention by segment, second-gift conversion, and what a lapsed donor actually cost you.

Build the stewardship rhythm

Impact reporting per donor, a non-asking communication cadence, and an owner for every segment.

Install the pipeline

Monthly and mid-level programmes with upgrade paths, and the case for support written properly.

What you get

Concretely.

CRM cleanup and segmentation with an owner per segment
Retention measurement and stewardship rhythm
Monthly and mid-level giving programs with upgrade paths
Church and institutional pipeline with stages and targets
Written case for support tied to outcomes

What changes

On the other side.

Retention measured and climbing, recurring giving growing, and a pipeline instead of a season of appeals.

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