Donor Segments

There are a lot of Millennials in our country. And they may eventually be a force to contend with.

Q: What is your advice for nonprofits that are looking to better engage younger donors?

There’s an old saying about collegiate athletes: “The best thing about freshmen is that they become sophomores.”

These days, one of the top questions we are asked at Veritus is: “How should I talk to my major donors during this pandemic?”

It’s vital to understand donor giving trends and, in particular, what giving trends are characteristic of donors by generation.

The most financially successful nonprofits aren’t funded exclusively through well-executed annual giving programs or foundation grants.

In talking about donor identities, marketers will often say they’ve tried personas, and they haven’t worked like the marketer thought they would. Therefore, they aren’t going to invest more in seeking donor identities. Donor identities and personas are fundamentally different.

In this episode of the Nonprofit Chatter, Nhu Te and Taylor Shanklin are joined by Mikhaela Reid, marketing director at Doctors Without Borders, and Jennifer Bielat, EVP of client strategy at Pursuant, to chatter about trends and challenges in mass-market fundraising. 

You’ve done everything right. You’ve accepted the major gift principle that not all donors, who meet a financial metric, want to relate to you. You’ve laboriously gone through a larger list of donors who meet your major gift criteria.

Good news! Monthly giving is one of the few groups of small donors that is (still) growing. Not surprisingly, because organizations have started focusing on it over the past few years...