Volunteers Are Your Secret Weapon for Donor Prospecting

U.S. charitable giving reached a record $592.50 billion in 2024 — but the donor base is quietly eroding. The share of U.S. households donating has fallen from roughly two-thirds to below half since the Great Recession. According to the latest full-year Fundraising Effectiveness Project report, the total number of donors declined 3.6% in 2025, with micro- and small-dollar donors shrinking at the fastest rates.

Inflation, market volatility, tax law changes, generational shifts, and more all contribute to this trend. Nonprofits must act now to retain existing donors and acquire new ones. One underused strategy for both short- and long-term growth is deploying volunteers to open doors for new donor prospects. 

Building Your Volunteer Pipeline 

The donor journey involves five steps: identification, quantification, cultivation, solicitation, and stewardship. The same cycle holds true for volunteers — starting with identifying who among your volunteers can open doors for new donor prospects. 

Invite volunteers to learn about fundraising opportunities by attending events, touring facilities, and observing programs in action. Have leadership walk them through the mission and organizational priorities. 

Treat volunteers like donors — recognize their value and reward them for engaging new prospects. Use research to identify strong candidates, and consider inviting significant donors to step into volunteer roles. Remember that fundraising success isn't only measured in dollars raised, but in the number of supporters generated.

Use the framework of time, talent, and treasure to recruit from both internal and external constituencies. Once on board, help volunteers understand that their highest-value role is making introductions that nonprofit staff can then cultivate.

Not all volunteers are alike. Some can identify prospects but lack the skills to motivate others. Others can tell stories but cannot successfully close gifts. But every volunteer brings a personal network — and many are eager to help build the donor pipeline. Your job is to channel that energy into an ongoing win for both the volunteer and the organization. 

Finding the Right Recruits

To find volunteers suited for fundraising, recruit sales-oriented professionals, and use outreach networks such as LinkedIn, corporate, social, and civic organizations. Target service clubs, chambers of commerce and professional associations where members already speak the language of fundraising. Encourage existing volunteers to tap their networks. Clearly define roles and create a committee structure for resource development. 

The National Association of Nonprofit Organizations and Executives outlines best practices for volunteer recruitment, including specific role descriptions, flexibility, training, program impact storytelling, volunteer spotlights, peer recruiting, local media outreach, and business partnerships.   

Train volunteers to lead with personal invitations and peer-to-peer referrals. Pair that with social media options, community partnerships, and recognition incentives — and you have the structure for consistent results.

Think Outside the Box

When I was director of major gifts at St. Vincent Hospital in Indianapolis, I helped develop a major gift club called the Seton Society — named for St. Elizabeth Ann Seton who founded the Sisters of Charity in the United States. The goal: generate greater volunteerism by establishing a new source of funds to underwrite priorities that opened doors each year for new major gift donors. 

We treated members as potential major gift donors, giving them a glass bowl and hosting at least four annual activities, including an annual recognition dinner, a volunteer recruitment event, educational sessions, and site visits to see priorities in action.

Each year, we also asked each member to recruit one new prospect and formed a new Seton Society committee with the newest members. I directed annual training and recruitment, and we established a Volunteer of the Year award. 

After five years, the program had grown to 75 members who actively opened doors for new prospects. Prospects wanted to join, donors were proud to give, and everyone loved seeing their names on the donor recognition wall. That combination is what turned a gift club into a sustained donor-building engine.

Your best volunteers will open doors for donor prospects when they are deeply engaged, well connected, enthusiastic about your mission, and committed to your cause. Every organization already has an array of internal and external representatives who can fill that role — start with your administration, staff, board, current volunteers, donors, and community leaders.

Assign at least one staff member to coordinate the effort. At minimum, establish an ambassador group or development committee focused specifically on opening doors for new donor prospects. The donor base is shrinking. The organizations that reverse that trend will be the ones that put their best people — volunteers — to work building it back.

The preceding content was provided by a contributor unaffiliated with NonProfit PRO. The views expressed within may not directly reflect the thoughts or opinions of the staff of NonProfit PRO.