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Nov 11, 2019

A Cautionary Tale of Stopping New Donor Acquisition

As I’ve shared before, one of our most common analyses, sadly, is projecting what happens to a donor file’s active counts if an organization decides to discontinue new donor acquisition – after all, new donor acquisition is just too expensive.

Well, today’s graph is not a projection . . . but a real-life example of what happens to donor file when an organization stops acquiring new donors for just two years.

Figure 1: Active Donor Counts

Not sure I need to say anything else. What a total unmitigated disaster.

In just two years of not acquiring new donors, this organization’s active donor counts were cut in half.

This organization now faces the dim prospect of having to invest more in new donor acquisition over the next several years just to get back to where they were in FY17.

So unnecessary.

If you (or your client) is considering such a decision, please, please, show them this graph.

Part VI: The Environmental Impact of AI

Up to this point in our AI blog series, I have been discussing (some might say ragging on) the practical implementational challenges of AI in the nonprofit sector. In today’s blog, I’m shifting the focus on a more global issue: Is using AI environmentally sustainable?...

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First-half of 2025 Trends in Fundraising

I have four graphs that summarize what we are seeing across the fundraising arena. These come from our newest analytical report, The Single Largest Gift - Cohort Analysis (SLG-CA). I know, its name is a mouthful, but its insights are plentiful. Basically, the SLG-CA...

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