Earning Donations This Year and The Next 

Nonprofit fundraising teams have reason to feel encouraged right now. Giving USA reported that charitable giving in the U.S. reached an estimated $617.20 billion in 2025, up 5.7% in current dollars. Online fundraising also had a strong year. M+R Benchmarks found that online revenue for the average nonprofit increased 15% in 2025, with one-time giving up 17%.

Those numbers are welcome. They also hide a harder truth: many organizations are still working with fragile donor pipelines.

The Fundraising Effectiveness Project reported that total dollars grew while the number of donors fell. Overall retention edged up only slightly, from 43.1% to 43.3%, and new donor retention remained essentially flat. In plain terms, nonprofits are raising money, but too many first-time donors are leaving before the relationship has a chance to grow.

For teams running fundraising campaigns, galas, walks, runs, rides, peer-to-peer programs, or community events, this creates a clear opportunity. The first gift is not the finish line. It is the beginning of a supporter journey that needs timely follow-up, useful context, and a system that helps staff act on what they already know.

First-Time Donors Need a Clear Next Step

A first-time donor is often responding to a specific moment. They may give because a friend asked, because an event participant shared a personal story, because a campaign felt urgent, or because they attended an event and felt connected to the mission.

That initial motivation is useful, but it fades quickly when the follow-up feels generic.

A donor who gave through a marathon participant should not receive the same next message as someone who bought a gala ticket, made a year-end gift, joined a membership program, or supported a peer-to-peer fundraiser. Their entry point tells you something about what moved them. The next message should build from that signal.

This does not require a huge communications operation. It starts with knowing:

• how the supporter entered your community
• which campaign, event, or participant influenced the gift
• whether they gave once, registered, attended, fundraised, purchased, or volunteered
• what message or mission area they responded to
• what next action makes sense for them

When those details live in disconnected systems, staff end up guessing. When they are connected, the team can treat first-time donors with more care and more precision.

Events Give Nonprofits Donor Context They Cannot Get From a Gift Alone

Events are often treated as revenue moments. They bring in registrations, sponsorships, donations, merchandise sales, and fundraising pages. But they also generate a deeper view of supporter behavior.

An endurance event participant who fundraises for a cause brings a network with them. A gala attendee may have employer connections, sponsor potential, or a history with the organization that is not obvious from a single transaction. A peer-to-peer donor may have a close relationship with the participant, even if they have no prior relationship with the nonprofit.

Each of those details can shape follow-up.

A donor who gave to support a friend might be invited to learn why the participant cares about the mission. A participant who hit their fundraising goal might be asked to return as a team captain. A ticket buyer who also donated during an auction might belong in a higher-touch stewardship path. A sponsor contact might need a relationship plan that lives outside the event checklist.

The challenge is that many nonprofit teams collect this information in one place and steward supporters in another. Registration, fundraising, CRM, email, reporting, and e-commerce tools often operate as separate systems. Staff then spend the busiest weeks of the year exporting lists, cleaning spreadsheets, and trying to figure out who needs what.

That manual work slows down the exact follow-up that helps turn a first action into a second one.

Connected Data Helps Teams Move While the Moment Is Still Warm

The first few days after a gift or event are a valuable window. Supporters remember why they acted. Participants are still energized. Staff still have fresh context. The next message can feel natural.

But timely stewardship depends on access.

If a development manager has to wait for an export, reconcile duplicate records, or ask another department for event data, the moment gets weaker. The message may still go out, but it arrives later and often says less.

A connected system gives teams a better starting point. It can help them see the full supporter record, segment based on behavior, and trigger follow-up without rebuilding the process each time.

That might look like:

• a thank-you path for first-time donors tied to a specific event
• a second-gift appeal for donors who supported a participant but have not engaged again
• a fundraiser recognition email based on goal progress
• a membership invitation for repeat event participants
• a sponsor follow-up list tied to actual event engagement
• a report showing which campaigns produced donors who returned

This is where technology should reduce staff burden. The goal is not to automate away the relationship. The goal is to give the team enough clarity to make the relationship feel considered.

Small Segmentation Choices Can Improve the Second-Gift Path

Nonprofits do not need dozens of complex journeys to improve retention. A few thoughtful segments can make follow-up stronger.

Start with first-time donors. Separate them by source: event donor, peer-to-peer donor, campaign donor, ticket buyer, auction donor, membership donor, or general online donor. Then tailor the next step to the reason they showed up.

Next, look at supporters who took multiple actions. Someone who registered, fundraised, and donated is showing deeper commitment than someone who only clicked once. That person may be ready for a volunteer role, team captain invitation, committee conversation, or recurring gift ask.

Then look at lapsed event participants or donors. These supporters already know the organization. A smart reactivation message can reference their prior involvement and offer a specific reason to return.

Finally, give monthly giving a clear place in the journey. M+R found that monthly giving accounted for 27% of online revenue in 2025. For many organizations, recurring giving is one of the clearest ways to make revenue less dependent on campaign spikes. The best moment to introduce it depends on behavior, timing, and motivation.

A participant who just completed a meaningful event may be ready to sustain the cause. A first-time emergency donor may need more mission context first. Connected data helps teams tell the difference.

The Better System Is the One Staff Can Actually Use

Retention work often gets framed as a communications problem. It is also an operations problem.

A nonprofit can have strong messaging, a compelling mission, and a dedicated team, yet still miss follow-up opportunities because the system makes the work too slow. When staff have to pull data from five tools to answer one basic question, supporter engagement becomes harder than it should be.

The right setup helps teams answer practical questions quickly:

• Which first-time donors came through our last event?
• Which participants raised money last year but have not registered this year?
• Which donors gave to a participant and then gave directly later?
• Which supporters are tied to memberships, merchandise, fundraising, and event attendance?
• Which campaigns are producing donors who come back?

Those answers help teams spend less time assembling information and more time using it.

For lean nonprofit teams, that difference is real. Better data will not replace strong fundraising strategy. It will help the team carry out that strategy with less friction.

Turn Event Support Into Lasting Supporter Relationships

haku helps nonprofit teams bring fundraising, events, marketing, and supporter engagement into one connected system. With flexible tools for registration, peer-to-peer fundraising, CRM, reporting, automation, and more, haku gives teams a clearer view of their supporters and a better way to act on the moments that move them.

Ready to turn first-time support into longer-term engagement? Let’s talk.

‍