What your donor's last gift doesn't tell you about donor generosity

Ann Fellman: Bloomerang presents Fuel Impact, the podcast that powers your next fundraising breakthrough. This is where we have real conversations with fundraising leaders, technology innovators, and fundraising experts.

In this episode of Fuel Impact, I spoke with Lynne Wester, principal and founder at Donor Relations Group, where we covered everything from donor experiences and donor gratitude. Lynne and I had an opportunity to talk about positive disruption and the fundraising world, popcorn eaters and non-popcorn eaters, and how that relates to donors, as well as even potpourri eating.

We covered things from donor loyalty and the ways to make the most of it, as well as the extreme importance of the six months following a donor's gift. That's especially important as you're getting ready for end-of-year appeals. So if you work with nonprofits or fundraising teams, or you're a fundraiser yourself, this episode really matters because donors are evaluating the experience they have with your organization. Here's my conversation with Lynne Wester.

Welcome to Fuel Impact, where I sit down with the people helping nonprofits push their fundraising impact higher. I'm Ann Fellman, Chief Marketing Officer at Bloomerang, and today I am joined by Lynne Wester, principal and founder at Donor Relations Group. Lynne's been shaking up the fundraising world for more than 20 years. Lynne, you are a positive disruptor and a donor relations expert, and you've really been pushing nonprofits to put as much into that donor relationship and experience as the ask itself. So Lynne, thank you for being here and let's get into it.

Lynne Wester: So excited. You know, I kind of feel like it's a little bit of tough love, right? The best professors, the best family members were those that loved you through also pointing out that sometimes you had an opportunity to grow. And you don't grow unless you're uncomfortable. So let's get uncomfortable.

Ann Fellman: That's so true. Lynne and I have done many webinars, podcasts, all kinds of things. And I just really love the realism that you bring to the table, because I think it gets everybody to kind of sit up and think, "You know what, that's a good idea."

So on that, Lynne, let's just pretend we've never met each other and I'm running into you at a conference. So in one sentence, who are you and what do you do, Lynne?

Lynne Wester: I am a human being who's absolutely obsessed with nonprofit and fundraising and the work that we do. And I'm really obsessed with holding on to and retaining and loving on our donors and giving them the best in class charity experience that they can have, so that they will provide more resources for our organizations to do more good.

Ann Fellman: Some of the innovations and insights that you've shared over our conversations have just been fantastic. You've given a lot of advice, but right now, at this moment in time, what are your top three pieces of advice for nonprofits?

Lynne Wester: I think the first thing is that the future of fundraising is human, and it begins with gratitude. We have a lot of AI talk. I think tools and software and tech are fantastic, but fundraising is a relationship business, and human beings have relationships with other human beings. So starting with gratitude is the first and most important thing I think we can all do to help raise money for our causes. In all the hustle and bustle, don't get lost. Behind every charitable act is a soul, a person who wants to make a difference. And it's our honor and our privilege to help them make that difference. So gratitude is the least that we can do.

Number two, what I'm hearing right now is that donors want to feel like their help matters. So what are we doing to make sure that every single human being who gives generously to our organization matters? That's in the vocabulary of how we speak to people, like stopping talking about "low dollar donors" or "low hanging fruit," all the way through to understanding that we actually owe donors an accounting of what their money did, that we spent it responsibly and wisely, and then telling them the impact they've had. So if we start with gratitude, we must then tell them what their money did.

And the third one is something that Bloomerang has been speaking about for a long time, honoring Jay Love and Steven and many of the people who came before: retention is more important than acquisition. Not only is it more important, it makes more business sense. Holding on to our donors is the true measure of our work, not acquiring and seeing how many people we can collect. It's really about building long lasting, deep and meaningful relationships.

I was recently at a conference where there was a presentation on five naming gifts, all $25 million or more, at a university. Every single one of those donors started with a gift of less than $500. So if we don't treat people well when they give us small, meaningful amounts, they're never going to become our transformational donors in the future.

Valuing everyone and valuing retention over time, not acquisition and the hamster wheel of fundraising, notice I didn't speak of specific tactics or dollar amounts you have to spend. To me, fundraising is really about a mindset and a lifestyle, not just numbers and dollars in the door.

Ann Fellman: There's two things you hit on. One is being a positive disruptor, and I love the gratitude component, expressing that gratitude from a place of being truly grateful for the engagement your donors are bringing.

The other thing you hit on, Lynne, that I found interesting, and we have recent data from a study we've done, a giving signals report, is that donors feel their help matters. Can you help showcase or demonstrate that their help matters, whatever size contribution that might be? That's really important with these new generations coming in as supporters. They want to feel a real sense of belonging no matter what their gift is, and there are young donors testing out organizations today with small gifts who may have had a wealth transfer in their family. So it's really, really important, and even more so now than we've ever seen as fundraisers.

Lynne Wester: I think we really have to appreciate those who choose to be generous. A lot of nonprofits spend a lot of time trying to convince people to be generous, and I think that might be a misplacement of some of our work.

A long time ago, I got to see the CEO of Cinemark speak, and a young man in the audience was brave enough to ask him, "How come popcorn's so expensive at movie theaters?" And the CEO didn't miss a beat. He said, "Because there are two types of people in the world: popcorn eaters and non-popcorn eaters. The popcorn eaters feel that popcorn eating at the movie theater is so essential that I can charge them whatever I want and they will buy it. The non-popcorn eaters, I could give away the popcorn for free and they wouldn't take it."

So what I take from that is that donors are our popcorn eaters. There are people who, no matter what cause, what tragedy, what disaster, what thing they care about, will not solve that problem by giving money, time, or resources. Those are not our popcorn eaters. We're not going to focus on coming up with new flavors of popcorn to try to convert them. We're going to focus on the kernel eaters, the popcorn people, and make them happy, because they'll eat more popcorn. I think it's a fundamental misalignment sometimes that we're trying to convince non-generous people to give.

Ann Fellman: On the flip side, Lynne, what's something about this work that you believe that maybe not everybody agrees with?

Lynne Wester: That the dollar amount of a donor's last gift is the least important thing we know about them.

When I left a career at Walt Disney World, I was handed a chart building a donor relations department. It said, at $50 we do this, at $500 we do this, at $5,000 we do this, at $5 million we do this. The chart equated the more they gave, the better person they were, and the more we did for them. And I said, "Ew, gross." That's not a great way of looking at people, first of all, and we claim to be inclusive, we claim to embrace diversity, equity, and inclusion. It's also not a great way to include people, even though they're being generous.

A $50 gift may be a larger portion of someone's worth than someone else's $5 million gift, and we know that to be true in the United States especially. We base a ton of our behavior, our signals, our reports, on the dollar amount a donor gave us last. I think that's just as shallow a metric as hair color, eye color, or age alone.

One single measure of a human being at any given time would tell you, for example, that I'm a hundred-dollar donor, "low-hanging fruit," or a low-value donor, when in reality I've given over six figures in my lifetime to different organizations. That might have been my test gift, or we were just getting to know each other.

But if you look at behavior, first-time donors, donors who increase their gifts, donors who lapse and come back, we need to look at donor behavior. That's a collection of data points, and judging someone on any one single factor is how people have built an entire industry, putting donors in buckets based on dollar amount, like "major gifts." But what if a hundred dollars is a major gift to that donor?

Ann Fellman: It's still a big gift from their perspective, and we should celebrate and recognize that.

Lynne Wester: It's really caused our industry to stop almost at a certain data point. "Okay, this is what I know about them, they're a hundred-dollar donor," and we stop being curious after that. We don't look at all the different factors.

Like, that $1,000 came from a donor advised fund. Well, now I have a $1,000 donor who gave their first gift from a DAF. That means they have money under management, and that should lead me down a path of curiosity. We just stop at that dollar amount, and that's how we categorize. It's like sorting Legos when in reality people are round and complex.

So that's my hot take: the least important thing we know about a human being is what came out of their wallet or their account.

Ann Fellman: I think that's really important, to not stop being curious. As organizations start thinking about end-of-year planning or annual fundraising, what are some of the biggest mistakes you see nonprofits make, and how do you fix them?

Lynne Wester: One of the things I took away from Disney is that the experience begins far before someone's visit. So, friction in your giving website. If I have to do a CAPTCHA, if you ask me "How did you find out about us," just take my money. It's a six-step, two-click process for people to give money, but on Amazon I can order a goat to mow my lawn and have it delivered in 30 minutes. We may not have the same resources, but we need the same mindset, that the entire experience matters, from the invitation to the parking lot to the ticketing to everything.

So when I think about year-end giving, I think about how we can reduce friction, and how we can let donors know that we know who they are. It's 2026 as we're recording this, and I'm still receiving emails that aren't personalized to me with basic tokens or data fields, like my first name. Tough love: there's no excuse for that. Every single tool has it built in now. I think "well, we've always done it this way" is the beginning of the book on failure.

The other thing when it comes to year-end, in addition to friction and personalization, is: what's the plan not just to acquire donors, but once you have them, what are you going to do to make sure they know they're a valued member of your community and that they belong? It's not enough to recruit them, it's also how do you get them to stay.

So if I'm thinking about year-end, I'm also thinking about the six months following the ask and the successful gift, and what that behavior is from my organization, and whether my organization is committed resource-wise. A lot of resources go into year-end fundraising. I'd ask that everybody take 10% of those resources and move them to donor retention and donor experience post-gift.

Ann Fellman: Back to your third point, that retention is so important. Speaking of that, and thinking about donor behavior, we're seeing it in a lot of data sets, especially with younger generations coming in. From your point of view, working with clients, how have you seen donor behavior change in the last couple of years, and what do you think that means for a nonprofit?

Lynne Wester: We've gotten more and more charities, and the donor pool is staying the same. So competition, whether we like it or not, is here. That doesn't mean you put down one hospital to lift up another. What I mean is the donor experience becomes more and more important.

What we're hearing from donors is that they're giving more, larger amounts, to fewer charities, because they're not having great experiences when they give to many charities. So they're deepening their giving. They may go from a $200 gift to a $500 gift, but if that charity doesn't notice, they're moving on. Loyalty is something to be earned by us. We owe it to our donors to earn their loyalty, just like other brands do. Nonprofit is a tax classification status, not a way to run a business. I think rewarding loyalty with extra care and concern is important.

The other thing the data is telling me is that appetite for putting up with nonprofit shenanigans is lessening. It's 2026, spell my name correctly. If I give you a gift online, why on God's green earth are you sending me a hundred envelopes with envelopes inside for me to put a check in? Not saying direct mail is dead, but if I write you an email and say "please stop sending me mail," are we listening? If I send back the tchotchkes you gave me, what are we doing? We have individual people, and we're not acknowledging that when we treat them with a blanket approach.

I was working with a large multinational nonprofit whose average donor age is 73. The average lifespan of a human in the United States is 78. That's not a shining hallmark of a program, or of not spinning up a great monthly recurring giving program right now. Donors are saying they want to join us and walk alongside us every month. How easy do you make that on your giving website?

All of these factors, the data is telling us. What I refuse to believe is that people are less charitable, or that nonprofits are flailing or failing. I believe the data is telling us we have not kept up with the pace of change, and have long relied on a scarcity mindset of "well, we can't do that, we're just a little nonprofit." A small business doesn't say that, and yet they have to adapt to their audience. I encourage everybody to take a step today to overcome that fear. Donors are telling us they expect a good experience, and being a nonprofit doesn't exempt you from providing one.

Ann Fellman: I think that's so important. You hit on the tools and technology out there to make that easy, they're there, so stay curious and go learn them, you may have them right at your fingertips. Understanding your donors' preferences and the experience they desire, like, if I'm giving online only, why do you keep sending me mail appeals? There are so many ways we can enrich the experience for our donors.

And you're right, donors are looking for responsible nonprofits, ones that are listening, in tune, and keeping pace with what we all expect from the consumer experiences we have. We know the good consumer experiences and the not-so-good ones, and donors look at that too when they're going through the giving process with a nonprofit.

So speaking of nonprofits, I'd love for you to share a nonprofit story you're particularly proud of. What was their situation, what did you do, and what changed for them?

Lynne Wester: We were honored to be called by the Hawai'i Community Foundation to help them with the aftermath of the Maui fires. Right now we're facing huge devastation in Spokane and Washington State as well. Natural and human-made disasters are happening now more than ever.

We were able to come in and help them build a plan for donor communications to retain people who'd never given before, this is a community foundation that normally has one or two thousand donors and suddenly had hundreds of thousands. But they were committed to responsible spending, to transparency, and to an amazing donor experience. I think it's a lesson for all of us.

One of the first things we did, other than get out the thank-yous, was make sure donors knew the money was going into the field, to the human beings, the 3,000-plus families who'd been impacted. The second or third thing we did was send a survey to their brand-new donors asking how often they wanted to hear from us, what topics in this disaster mattered most to them, and how we were doing so far.

It was shocking, even to me as a consultant, that they wanted to hear from us monthly. I think there's this misnomer in donor communications that we'll inundate people if we communicate often. We won't, if we send great short communications that are snacks, not three-course meals. Kind of like girl-dinner grazing, the way all of us do in between, in the car, on the go, with our trail mix, when we're expecting people to sit down for a three or four course dinner and spend three hours with us. That's just not realistic.

So they told us they wanted frequent communications, and they'd flagged certain areas that were important to them, so we went back and told those stories. We told them what we did with the money. We also told them that disaster recovery takes 10 to 20 years, and that we were holding back funding rather than giving it all out right away.

That work makes me particularly proud because of the level of trust the community foundation placed in us. They knew we cared deeply about Hawaii, I care about the Aloha community. We're best as a firm when opportunity or crisis arrive, I thrive in it for some weird reason, thinking on my feet, helping folks.

But the most important part of all of that work was listening: the donor survey, listening to the people impacted, listening to the nonprofits doing the direct work about what kind of money they needed. They said they needed sustainable money, so the first ask we put out after our thank-you journey was a monthly ask. We even had a donor step up and give $10,000 a month.

That longstanding support was really crucial throughout the recovery from the Maui wildfires, so that when the government stepped back and pulled its funding, the funding stream was already there waiting. Communicating the impact of people walking alongside those facing this disaster was one of the honors and privileges of my career.

Ann Fellman: That's a fantastic client story, and the support, knowledge, and understanding they got from their supporter community through that survey will live on for a long time for them. There is generosity out there, you just have to tap into it the right way by listening to your donors and what they want and value.

I want to shift gears now, Lynne. We can't not talk about AI. I'd love to get your take on how you're advising fundraisers to think about AI tools.

Lynne Wester: The future of fundraising is human, I want to say that very clearly. We at DRG believe we should never use AI to generate content for our donors. I like to call it, instead of artificial intelligence, assistive intelligence. Companies like Bloomerang and mine have the responsibility to use AI in a way that helps our organization and our people get stronger.

Bloomerang has Penny. We created DRGrader, drgrader.ai, a tool that doesn't generate content. What it does is take content you've already written for your donors, the draft you're working on, and score it, kind of like an old-school report card, against all of my teachings from the last 25 years. It gives you scores, coaching tips, and if you want, it'll help you rewrite based on what you originally wrote. Because fundraising is human, it takes us fundraisers to do this work. I strongly believe people give to people.

AI can help us as a wonderful tool, it can analyze data that would take me three months, it can tell me my grocery shopping is in the wrong order and which aisles to go down. It can do a lot of things. What I don't want us to do is replace who we are and our humanness with AI.

I've worked over the last two and a half years, like a lot of us have, to understand AI. There's a lot we don't understand about it. What I want us to do is work alongside it, assistive intelligence, not artificial intelligence. I think it's no longer okay to say "I'm not going to use AI, I don't believe in it." You have to find how it works for you and your nonprofit, because there's a lot of slop out there being written by AI.

People don't have time to learn a whole new language of prompts. I've embraced learning about it so I could understand it, a lot of reading, a lot of listening, like anyone does when they encounter something new. It's part of our culture now, whether you enjoy that part or not. But our donors deserve a better experience, so what we're doing is taking AI and using it to make us better, by coaching us, giving us leads and hints, helping us, but not replacing our own human-born intelligence.

I've spent 25 years in this profession, like many of you have, and AI will never understand what to do when a donor eats potpourri at your event the way I will, because it happened to me. Fundraising is 90% emotional. AI can handle the rational part, but it will never draw donor tears the way a human being can, and I'm in it for that.

Ann Fellman: I couldn't agree more with you. I love the changing of "artificial" to "assistive," because that's something we believe really strongly at Bloomerang, from a principal's perspective.

Lynne Wester: Yes.

Ann Fellman: Humans are the ones with the taste, the experience, and the knowledge, so you want to oversee it. Just like you have a new employee, you wouldn't let them run off and do things, you'd want to check, coach, and guide. That's a really important component when you're looking at these technologies, where can you make up time so you can spend more of it on the relationships and fundraising, but you still have to coach it.

If you haven't looked at drgrader.ai, that's where you can grade and score your original thoughts, take last year's appeal you put out there, pop it in, and see how you did. You might surprise yourself, or find some things that could be even better. There is generosity out there, and that's what's exciting.

So Lynne, when we think about Donor Relations Group and how you're working with nonprofits, who's the best fit for both Donor Relations Group and DRGrader, and what kind of organization should be picking up the phone or heading to your website for help?

Lynne Wester: Organizations that want to make a difference and change. We're not the kind of firm that's going to help you maintain mediocrity, we're not it. We're going to push you, make you a little uncomfortable, walk alongside you, help convince your leadership if that's what you need. We're all practitioners who have actually done the work, we're not pontificators. We're educated, but we believe you have to have actually done the work in order to help guide people to do the work, that's a core fundamental of ours.

We like to have fun at work, and we like to be innovative, but not for innovation's sake, sometimes the blocking and tackling is what we do best when it comes to helping you relook at the way you do things.

At the core of everything, we have a simple mantra: if it doesn't benefit the donor, we don't do it. Not the organization, not the bottom line, the donor. We don't do golf tournaments, auctions, or galas, that's not our jam, our focus is the donor experience.

So we love working with people who want to make their donor experience better, whether that's auditing your funds, assessing your program, or walking alongside you through change management. Change is tough, and some days we're half therapist, half fundraising professional, because we can laugh and cry right alongside you, we've done it.

We tend to be supremely authentic, we tell the truth all the time. Whether that hurts sometimes, or is a little ouchy, that's okay, integrity is one of our hallmarks. If you want to do innovative stuff and make a difference for your donors, hang out with us, follow us.

We also believe knowledge should be accessible, so it doesn't cost any money to talk to us, or for a lot of our resources. We partner with companies like Bloomerang and others on free webinars and free content at conferences, generosity is one of our core values, we're constantly giving back. There are over 15,000 samples on our website for you to download and steal. Great fundraising advice should be accessible, so you have access to everything, including me, you can email and we'll set up a meeting anytime. It's the gift we give back to the profession that's given so much to us.

Ann Fellman: I can speak from my own personal experience, that positive disruption and telling it like it is is a real value add, because too many people are maybe too nice and don't tell you where your growth opportunities lie and what can be better.

Lynne Wester: We're going to tell you when you've got spinach in your teeth. We're going to tell you your direct mail piece isn't it, but we're not going to fake it with you. We should all be kind to our donors too. If their gift doesn't match our nonprofit, the kind thing to do is tell them to put it somewhere else.

Ann Fellman: So organizations can just get better, in terms of what they're doing.

Lynne Wester: Absolutely.

Ann Fellman: When you have that clarity, that this area needs focus or work, and I love that you call it what it is, part therapist, part fundraising expert, what keeps you doing this work? How do you stay motivated and energized?

Lynne Wester: I'm motivated by the fantastic human beings who give so generously to nonprofits, those with the least give the most, and I'm continually inspired by people making sacrificial gifts of themselves, their time, talent, or treasure.

Second, the people who work in this industry do it because it's their vocation, their calling, not their job. That's what keeps me inspired, and there's so much opportunity for good change here, because we're the folks who need to take a moment and look in the mirror, and I get inspired by that.

When I'm having a really bad day, I do one of two things: I either write a handwritten thank-you note to someone, or I go online and make a gift to a new nonprofit or a client because I know they're doing good work. That refocuses my energy on the why behind what we're doing, and I think we all have a big why, Simon Sinek would be proud of us for having one.

But the why can sometimes hide behind "we're down in donors," or "this didn't get approved," or "my board member is doing this," or "I just don't have it in me." So go give it to someone else, and that'll refill your pot. We all have vulnerabilities, and nobody is sunshiny happy 100% of the time. If they are, that's not authentic either.

Ann Fellman: You're absolutely right. Well Lynne, one last thing before we sign off, I have hot takes for you, five questions, one word or one line answers, we'll do this rapid fire. Number one, the most underrated fundraising tactic.

Lynne Wester: Handwritten thank you note.

Ann Fellman: Most important fundraising skill.

Lynne Wester: Listening.

Ann Fellman: One word for the future of fundraising.

Lynne Wester: Human.

Ann Fellman: Fill in the blank: the nonprofit sector needs more...

Lynne Wester: Gratitude.

Ann Fellman: Coffee or tea?

Lynne Wester: You don't want me to have caffeine, so herbal tea.

Ann Fellman: One word your team would use to describe you.

Lynne Wester: Driven.

Ann Fellman: You heard it here first, from Lynne Wester, founder and principal of Donor Relations Group. We covered everything today, and I think the biggest thing is, if you want to strengthen that donor relationship, that donor experience, and make it more human, the best place to go is donorrelations.com.

If you're ready to get some positive, disruptive feedback, try drgrader.ai, you'll surprise yourself. Lynne, thank you so much for joining us today, as always, it was a blast. Thanks, Lynne.

Lynne Wester: Thank you, Ann. Thanks to the folks at Bloomerang for always being great partners. It's always nice to work with people you can have fun with.

Ann Fellman: Thanks for watching Fuel Impact. Subscribe for more real conversations with leaders shaping the nonprofit sector. Learn more at Bloomerang.com.