Social threads push precision over scale

Fundraisers are telling each other to stop chasing volume alone and start managing donors in smaller, more deliberate groups as the pool of givers keeps shrinking. (afpglobal.org) The data behind that warning has been hard to miss. The Fundraising Effectiveness Project said on April 25, 2025 that total dollars in 2024 rose 3.5% from 2023 even as donor counts fell 4.5%, with the sharpest drop among donors giving $1 to $100, down 8.8%. (afpglobal.org) That pattern carried into 2025. The same project said on July 29, 2025 that first-quarter dollars rose 3.6% year over year, but donor counts slipped 1.3%, retention edged down from 18.3% to 18.1%, and the $1-to-$100 donor group, still 57.0% of all donors, fell 11.1%. (afpglobal.org) On social media, practitioners have turned those figures into a tactical argument: map what happens after a first gift, separate first-time donors from repeat donors, and send different follow-ups to each segment. Two recent posts from Devidasa Kawal and Jeremy Reis pushed that case in public, arguing against one-size-fits-all appeals and for tighter donor-journey planning. (x.com 1) (x.com 2) The basic idea is simple. A donor journey is the sequence from first gift to second gift to recurring support, and segmentation means grouping people by facts such as gift size, giving history, or channel so each group gets different messages. (bloomerang.com) Recent survey data points the same way. Bloomerang said on February 18, 2025 that 65% of donors want regular updates about their impact, but only 36% of nonprofits provide them, and only 38% of fundraisers track first-time donor retention rates. (bloomerang.com) Trust sits near the center of that advice. Bloomerang’s survey of more than 380 fundraisers and 1,000 donors found that 24% of donors stopped giving because they lacked transparency about how contributions were used. (prnewswire.com) The same report found that 82% of fundraisers named limited staff and resources as their biggest retention obstacle, while only 30% pointed to donor fatigue as the top problem. That helps explain why the current push is less about sending more messages than about sending fewer, better-timed ones after the first gift. (nonprofitpro.com) The numbers also show why small donors are getting extra attention. In the first quarter of 2025, they made up most donors by count, but the steepest retention declines were concentrated among micro and small donors rather than supersize donors. (afpglobal.org) So the thread running through the latest advice is narrower than “raise more.” It is “keep the first donor you already paid to acquire,” then prove impact quickly enough that a second gift feels like a continuation, not a fresh pitch. (x.com)