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Is 2026 The Year of the Small Donor?
Check out these trends from Nonprofit Power 2025: 2026 is the year of the small donor, DIY fundraising is rising, and messy data systems are a top pain.
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Key Trends We Heard at Nonprofit Power 2025
Coming back from Nonprofit Power 2025, one thing was clear above all else. There is very real excitement around the importance of small donors as we head into 2026. Small donors weren’t the only topic of excitement, but amongst those nonprofits we spoke with, it was a consistent theme, along with the growing importance of DIY fundraising and frustrations around data systems.
In this blog, we’ll dig a little more into what we heard, and what the key takeaways were from Nonprofit Power 2025.
How Small Donors Have Become More Than Just a Segment
As we mentioned earlier, we heard a recurring sentiment about small donors. The phrase that stuck was that 2026 is shaping up to be “the year of the small donor.”
What Makes 2026 the Year of the Small Donor?
A few things are converging that make small donors feel less like a “segment” and more like the foundation of sustainable fundraising.
1) A real incentive for everyday donors (US).
Starting with tax year 2026, the US brings back an above the line charitable deduction for people who do not itemize. In plain terms, more of your everyday supporters can give and still see a tax benefit without jumping through itemizing hoops.
2) Retention pressure is forcing a mindset shift.
A lot of nonprofits are feeling the squeeze on donor retention, and small-dollar donors tend to be the most fragile part of the file. To succeed, you need to develop strategies to support welcome journeys, recurring giving, consistent stewardship, and clean segmentation that does not exhaust your team.
3) P2P and DIY giving are having a moment.
Even outside any single campaign, there is clear energy around broad participation: small gifts, peer-to-peer asks, community challenges, and volunteer-driven momentum. This aligns tightly with the increased interest in DIY fundraising as well.
With increased interest in DIY fundraising, P2P, and retention, and the new universal charitable dedication coming into place, the hope is that more small and first time donors will become activated as nonprofit supporters.
So why does this matter? Well, based on what we heard, leading nonprofits are treating small donors not only as end-of-year volume, but rather as a way of compounding community strength. Small gifts represent participation and identity, but even more than that, they represent a wider base of advocates and future major donors.
More than one conversation echoed a familiar truth in fundraising: many major donations start small. Given that most million dollar donations start as smaller gifts closer to $500, it just makes sense to invest in small donors, whether they turn into major giving opportunities or not.
Community-Powered Growth: DIY, Increased Engagement, and Voice of the Donor
Going hand in hand with growing small donors is the concept of empowering individual supporters in the community to become drivers of nonprofit fundraising growth.
We heard from several organizations that they want to leverage their community more through DIY. Do it yourself fundraising basically enables supporters and donors to run events and campaigns without heavy staff overhead. This can mean chapter leaders who want to execute locally, activating community members who want to do more than donate, or even giving thousands of individuals or groups affiliated with their church the tools they need to succeed.
Community-powered growth also requires that you engage directly with your community on every level. That means aligning your communications with your mission so that your supporters feel like your mission is integral to their own identity and values. Be sure to:
- Provide opportunities for hands on involvement
- Develop personalized/well segmented welcome paths
- Clear communication around how DIY fundraising impacts the mission
The other side of engagement is understanding. We heard several organizations are starting to do more to ask donors what they think. This is a great idea. Not only can you develop surveys pre- and post- donation, but you should invest in personal outreach, speaking with donors at events, and building relationships with your donor community.
Data Challenges and Workflow Concerns
Small donors and DIY conversations were headline themes throughout the event, but over the course of Nonprofit Power, we heard a lot of frustration about data quality.
Not just “our data is messy,” but a deeper anxiety about what it costs to fix it. In fact in a breakout session lead by haku’s Ethan Bradeen, 89% of participants indicated that they use 5 or more tools to accomplish their daily fundraising, stewardship, and volunteer management work and they identified that "searching across platforms to piece together donor history" was the #1 painpoint.
Across conversations, the recurring struggles were strikingly consistent. They sounded like different problems, but they often had the same root.
Teams described:
- Systems that do not share data cleanly, which leads to duplicate work and reporting gaps.
- Workflows that feel clunky and fight the way teams actually operate.
- Switching fear, including worries about losing history, breaking processes, and absorbing the internal cost of change management.
Final Thoughts
Whether or not you were at Nonprofit Power 2025, you likely are seeing many of the same themes we discussed in this article emerging at your organization. If you’re interested in building a better process for small donors, for expanding your ability to support DIY fundraising efforts, or managing your data, haku can help.
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