Please Stop Saying Lapsed Donors Are Your 'Best Prospects'

Whenever I or anyone else at Bloomerang writes or speaks on donor retention, we often recommend that fundraisers isolate donors who haven’t given in two years into a separate list, removing them from regular direct-mail solicitations and other costly marketing efforts.

While we are a bit more aggressive on this point, it’s not uncommon to hear independent consultants recommend the same for donors who haven’t given in three to five years.

The reason for this is that data pulled from our customer database (thousands of nonprofits in the United States) has shown that if a donor hasn’t given in two years, the likelihood that he or she will give again is about 2.2 percent.