Re-engaging lapsed donors: Effective strategies to reignite support

Kate Kramer: Welcome, everybody, to our first fundraiser focus week of 2025. We are so excited to be doing this. I know that we have a lot of you guys in the waiting room, so I do wanna give it a few minutes and let you guys get in. While you’re waiting, why don’t you drop in the chat what the weather’s like where you are. I’m in Virginia, and today, it’s lovely. But tomorrow, we’re gonna get seven inches of snow. So it’s gonna be a wintery week for me.

Oh, cloudy and chilly in Denver. Oh, I’m jealous of the sun in Florida. I know, April, you’re joining from Texas. Right?

Dr. April Willis: I am. I was putting in the chat too. Dallas, Texas is cold and rainy right now. It is not pretty.

Kate Kramer: Yuck. Well, we do have a short time today. We only have thirty minutes, and so I don’t want to take much of April’s time. So I’m gonna jump right on in.

As always, we are recording this webinar. We’re gonna send out the recording and slides later today. We are not taking questions live today, but please still put them in that Q&A box because we’re gonna answer them all at Thursday’s panel with tomorrow’s speaker, Wednesday’s speaker, and Rachel Muir will be our host. I will be drawing an Uber gift card at the end, so stay on so that I can see your name to pick a lucky winner.

For those of you who aren’t familiar, Bloomerang is an online platform for all of your donor management, auctions, events, emails, peer to peer, and much, much more. We are still offering this wonderful special with the purchase of our CRM. You get Giving Plus for free for two years. I think you have to purchase by the end of April on that. You can scan the QR code on your screen to get more info, or there’s gonna be a poll at the end, and you can let us know then as well.

Let’s see. Good. I only used two minutes. So, April, that still gives you twenty-eight. So I’m so excited to welcome to Bloomerang webinars Dr. April Willis. Welcome, April.

Dr. April Willis: Thank you so much. I appreciate the opportunity to be able to share a little bit about how we can possibly support all of the incredible nonprofit leaders we have on this call today with resources that we’ve developed.

I am the founder of the National Nonprofit Collaborative. We launched last year in January, so we are now at a year and a month strong, and we are only growing. We really came as a response to organizations who really needed nonprofit consulting services but couldn’t afford them. So we are able to provide access to a massive resource library for only $9 a month or $95 a year. But I am not here to pitch you. I am here to give you free resources today. So that was just a little bit about who I am and why I’m the one talking to you today, but we are actually talking about reengaging lapsed donors. I wanna share with you some effective strategies to reignite support. So we are going to hit the share button and get started.

Okay. We are going to give you a little introduction to donor reengagement. Basically, I want you to understand the importance of being able to reengage lapsed donors because did you know that the average donor retention rate is only around 45%, but it can cost you five times more to acquire a new donor than to retain an existing one? This is really important because we know it takes time, it takes money, it takes effort to get somebody who is a donor of your organization to continuously want to engage. We want those people who you have invested your time in. You’ve gone through the donor stewardship process with them and now you’re ready to see that ROI. If you go through an entire donor stewardship process and you don’t see anything at the end of it, that means there are gaps that need to be addressed or there are some areas in which you’re falling short. And we wanna make sure then, rather than having to start from scratch every single time to get a new donor, you keep those strong donors involved in your organization. It is really important that we find opportunities to reengage those lapsed donors and build or rebuild those long-term relationships. This is going to help us boost those donor retention rates.

So when it comes to identifying lapsed donors, here’s just a quick three-step overview of what we’re looking for. One, we wanna define what is a lapsed donor. It’s simply going to be a person or an organization that has previously donated, but maybe they haven’t been active in your organization in terms of making another contribution within a certain amount of time. Usually, we say one year. So if a full year has come and gone and you haven’t seen any new donations from them, you can usually consider that a lapsed donor. Now depending on the size of your organization, that time frame might be adjusted. There might be larger organizations that say, no, we consider them a lapsed donor if six months have gone by and we haven’t heard from them. But in order for that to be a reality, that means that your donor stewardship process must be very high touch. We are looking for every opportunity to reach out to somebody.

Some of you are probably familiar with receiving, if you’ve ever donated to an organization before, a birthday card. And they usually say, “Happy birthday to you. Wouldn’t you like to do something good? Could you support us with another $5?” Have you also received those anniversary of your giving cards where they send you a card in the mail or an email or give you a phone call and say, “It’s been one year since you’ve last donated. We can’t wait to see if you’re willing to continue your impact with us. Here are some examples of where your dollar has gone before.” Now those are two of the easiest, most common ways to engage those donors. But today, we’re going to dive into ten more ways that will hopefully help you engage or reengage those donors again.

Now the next step in this process, after you’ve defined what it is by length of time that they’ve been active with your organization, we’re now going to segment those donors. You can oftentimes segment them based on their giving history. Also look at gift size. We’re only going to focus on those who have given $1,000 or more or $10,000 or more. And then, of course, that last engagement is critical when we’re talking about reengaging lapsed donors. If you let somebody go for eight years, you might want to have a different starting point than if it’s just been twelve months. And then finally, we’re talking about data sources. So we are looking at your donor management platform like Bloomerang. We are looking at any of those databases in which you are tracking donation history and identifying those reengagement opportunities.

It’s also something I think is worth talking about before we go into those ten strategies: understanding why donors lapse. So potential reasons could be that they ran out of money. They had financial constraints. Maybe you’re looking at a foundation and it was a one-and-done type of sponsorship. Or maybe it was an opportunity for them where, “We had this money given to us. We granted it to you, and now we’re done.” If it’s an individual, it could be, “I came into a lot of money, and then I spent it.” I was the heir to something and now it’s all gone, or it could be lack of follow-up. I have all this money available, but I only want to engage with organizations that make me feel like I’m actually making a difference, or maybe their priorities have shifted. There have been other nonprofits that have come in and cannibalized the giving that they had available for you. So we want to try to identify the reasons that people are leaving because if we can get in front of them, sometimes we can help mitigate the loss that we might experience.

For example, if we understand that somebody is new in their business and they have an opportunity to make a difference on behalf of the company that they work for, rather than look at this as a one-and-done, look at it as, “Oh, maybe the company can’t engage anymore, but can you as an individual be put on a monthly plan of only $10 a month?” So coming up with ways for us to get in front of any potential roadblocks.

A feedback loop is also something that I think is important to pay attention to, like the importance of gathering insights on why they’ve stopped giving. This means that we’re not brainstorming potential reasons, we’re actually hearing it from them. Do you have an opportunity to send out a survey, to hop on the phone, or to even have coffee with a previous larger donor and just have an open conversation? “Can you tell me what’s going on? What could we do to bring you back in?” And then these key insights of addressing donor concerns directly can lead to more effective reengagement efforts. So it’s one thing to guess or to throw the spaghetti at the wall. It’s another thing to know exactly where the challenge lies so that you can approach it head on.

Now this is good information for you as you’re strategically planning going into the new year, but what we’re about to talk about is ten strategies you can walk away with and decide if you want to implement today. Not all of these are going to apply to every organization. Some of you are newer than others. Some of you are much larger, and some of these might look like small potatoes. Wherever you are and whatever organization you’re with, I assure you something in here will be able to be applied to you in your role. So let’s jump right in with the first of ten unique and innovative strategies to reengage these lapsed donors.

The first one is an emotional memory lane campaign. The idea here is that you’re going to create a memory lane series in which you can remind donors of specific impacts from their past contributions. This is really helping you tap into storytelling, pull on those heartstrings, let people feel like you’ve got compelling reasons for them to come back and give their dollars to you. This might look like sending a custom email or video, reminding that one particular person of an impact that they were able to be a part of. You can do this with photos, stories, other videos, awards, or achievements that all tie back to their original gift. Now what we’re doing here is we’re tapping into the nostalgia and we’re reinforcing this positive past experience with your organization that hopefully will rekindle their emotional investment in what it is that you are doing.

So this one can take a little bit more time because we are talking about custom emails or custom videos, really saying, “Look, you gave us $5,000 last year. And because of that, we were able to do all of this.” And what this could look like in execution is, one, there are programs out there that help streamline custom components of video creation. So you have a solid video, and then you really just edit the beginning and you edit the end so that you can plug in people’s names or grantor names or organization names at the beginning and end, but the meat of the video stays the same. So that’s one example of how you could potentially make it look like it’s a custom video, but you’re really essentially sending a similar video to most people.

We’re also, on this one though, tapping into this memory lane component of it, because you’re gonna hear another strategy in the rest of this that sounds a little similar. The memory lane idea really does walk people down step by step: “Hey, do you remember back in 2017 when we opened our doors and you were one of our very first donors? We wouldn’t be where we are without you. Do you remember how a year later there was this catastrophic disaster in the community and you decided to step up and volunteer with us? Here’s a photo of you hands-on in the field getting your hands dirty. Then do you remember two years later this happened? You weren’t there, but we knew you were there in spirit.” So you’re tying in all of those opportunities where this person has donated their time, their talent, their efforts, and hopefully their dollars.

Alright. Let’s talk about number two, the donor experience audit. We like to call this the DE audit. This is offering donors an opportunity to give structured feedback on their journey with you. And what you’re doing is you’re giving them a voice at the table. You’re showing respect. You’re encouraging loyalty to your mission. So if you say, “Hey, we are conducting a donor experience audit, and it would mean so much to us if you would give us forty-five minutes of your time or an hour of your time so that we can ask you all of the questions that we would love to have answers to as to your experience of being a part of our organization. What have you appreciated most? What are some areas of growth that you see for us? What could we do to bring you into the fold at a higher level?” People want to be heard. It doesn’t matter who you are, donor or receiver. You want a voice at the table. You want to be heard. You want to know that what you’re doing is seen, and this is really putting the spotlight on your donors.

Now here, one of the challenges is going to be time. You’re gonna have to have the capacity to be able to engage in these conversations at large with an x number of donors that you’re trying to reengage. This is going to take more time than likely a normal development director might be able to invest. So what I would encourage you to do is create a list of the donors and then prioritize them. Who do we need to bring in for conversation soonest based on likelihood to reengage? So maybe it hasn’t been too long. Maybe they really have some skin in the game. Maybe they have a child who’s been a recipient of the work that you’ve done. Whatever the case may be, there is an opportunity for you to create a prioritized list and be able to bring in a lot of the voices of the donors that you want to use as you strategically plan what donor engagement looks like moving forward.

Alright. Number three, personal impact recap. This is similar to number one. Remember I said you’re gonna hear another one that’s going to resemble it but not be the same thing. This one’s a little bit quicker to deploy because we’re not going to be using the video component or photos. This is more infographics. Custom data points can happen, but are not necessarily required of this one. Those personalized videos that quantify impact over time are listed on here, but it doesn’t have to be. These are all suggestions again for you to take your organization and be like, “Oh, we can do this. Maybe not that, but we can do this.”

What we’re trying to do here is show people tangible results. So rather than pulling on heartstrings like we did with the memory lane, this one with infographics is really shining a light on quantitative data. We wanna see numbers. How many people did you serve? How many pounds of food did you give away? How many puppies did you place in foster homes? Those infographics, along with some custom data points that maybe have to do with a particular region or a city or a town that this donor has impact in or a personal connection with. Some people respond better to numbers. They want to know, “Okay, you talk a nice talk, but what does it actually mean? How many people did we save? How did we make this world a better place?” Those quantitative people are going to react so much better to infographics than they would the memory lane, which really pulls on the heartstrings and is more about storytelling. Not everybody likes or appreciates the stories, not everybody likes or appreciates the infographics. So whenever you have opportunities to merge the two, it’s wonderful, but again I know it comes down to capacity.

Alright. Next one, we are talking about inviting lapsed donors to join you in exclusive visionary groups. This is so important because we have seen larger nonprofits do this. Larger nonprofits are going to identify visionaries and say, “We would like for you to raise $30,000 in your community by getting the word out.” That’s one example of how we’ve seen visionaries used in other nonprofits. You might know which one I’m talking about specifically. There are a few that come to mind that use the visionary strategy. You don’t have to take it to that extent. If you are a much smaller nonprofit, it might seem unlikely or unreachable for you to be able to identify a visionary in your neighborhood, multiple ones at that, who can raise $30,000 on their own. But what you can do is invite lapsed donors to join as an exclusive visionary group in which they will give you feedback and input, but they also work as thought partners that have the opportunity to feel empowered enough to own the mission and spread the word.

This would be an example, if you’re familiar with the give-get approach within your board, where, for example, you say every board member to serve must either give or get $500 a year to be a part of our board. That’s one approach for revenue generation or fundraising within your nonprofit. Similarly, you can reengage lapsed donors by saying, “We understand it’s been a minute, but we would love to bring you on as a visionary and give you the opportunity to spread the word to your network. And we are going to empower you.” You can give them a few things that make them feel very special. They can get a name tag. They can get a T-shirt. They can get swag, branded bags. You’d also give them a notebook or a binder with just a few key highlighted points that your development director could create and say, “This is how you start a conversation with a community partner. This is how you start a conversation with a potential board member. Here are some frequently asked questions people might give you about the organization.” So prepare them to work almost as a visionary volunteer who will go out into the community, spread your mission, and hopefully bring in more money, even if they don’t have the capacity to bring more money in. But key point here: if you give them a dollar amount, like, “We just need you to raise $5,000,” if they get to $4,000, you have greatly increased their sense of, “Well, I’ll just throw in the last thousand myself.” So there’s definitely a sense of obligation embedded in this particular approach.

Alright. The impact benchmark challenge. This is where you send a campaign update with past impact metrics and then you just encourage donors to do more. You just say, “Hey, you know what? This time last year, we were able to serve this many meals or support this many children or get this many people into transitional housing, whatever that looks like. Now will you help us increase it to this number?” By framing the ask as a challenge, you’re really adding excitement and a sense of urgency and hopefully inspiring those donors to be like, “Okay, I can give a little bit more. It’s not all on me.” And you can put the wording, “If every single person who gets this email only donates an extra $10 a month, we will get there. Will you give us that $10 a month?” If you make it to where it is challenging yet achievable, you have excitement, you have urgency, you are much more likely to have people say, “I’m on board with that. I can do that.”

Alright. Number six, an innovative voice note thank-you. I don’t know if any of you have been utilizing this newer feature that we see in text messaging now, but rather than just sending a text, you can actually send a voice recording as a text. So if you have somebody’s mobile phone number, instead of sending them an email or instead of calling and leaving a voicemail, you can actually text a really quick voice note. This is going to be something that’s more likely to elicit a kind of obligation to respond because they know that they’ve seen it. If it’s an email, it could have been deleted. If it’s a voicemail, they might never listen to it because people don’t listen to voicemail anymore, but they are still receiving these. So this is just an increased chance that you’ll be seen and that hopefully they’ll respond.

A one-time renewal appeal. We like to do these especially with people that we think are on their way out. They have no reason to continue working with us, so you frame it as this one last time. I see this work most commonly when you have people who worked for the organization and maybe they moved on to another job. You know that they had a passion for your mission at one time, but they have no reason to continue giving. They’re working somewhere else. Maybe you send an appeal to them and say, “We know you really love the work. We loved your work. You were so wonderful. We are really trying to get to this one milestone and we would so appreciate it, as a final show of your commitment to our mission, if you could put in $500,” or whatever amount you think is appropriate for that person. So this is a lower-stakes one-time ask. It reduces pressure because we’re not asking them to give monthly. We’re not telling them that we’re gonna come back every birthday or giving anniversary. It’s a one-and-done. And hopefully, they’ll do that and still be like, “Oh no, I would love to continue giving. You are doing such important work.”

Alright. An interactive impact map. This is kind of fun. If you’ve seen a heat map before or one like this image that I have here where it’s got the little pins showing all the places that we’ve been, this is another way where you can show donors who really appreciate tangible impact. Let them know we have been able to reach this many countries or these many cities or this many whatever area you’re trying to reach. You can show all of that with a map. Again, it’s closer to reaching the quantitative people as opposed to the touchy-feely emotional side of things. This is saying we are making an impact and we wanna grow our impact. So my hope would be, if you’re making a request like that, that you are highlighting a new area you’re trying to grow in and say, “We’ve been in all of these places with pins, and we are now trying to go here, but we can’t do it without your support.”

Number nine, a personalized mission update from the CEO or founder. Again, I know we’ve talked about impact reports. We’ve talked about making things customized in terms of videos and photos and emails and infographics. What if, instead of your development director doing all of this, you’re able to get an impact report or mission update from your CEO or founder? This hits a little differently because it’s not coming from the person who they have hired to put in the spot to raise the money, but it’s coming from the person for whom this is their baby. This is the thing that they live and breathe for. They wake up every morning for it. They are excited about it, and when you feel like you have a direct line to that person, it feels elevated. It lets people know that you are not unattainable. You are still a very approachable, relatable person who has a heart for serving others, and they want to hear it from you.

Now if you are a small startup nonprofit, chances are your CEO and founder has been doing a lot of the talking already. In that case, great. Keep it up, because we do want people to continue to see you not necessarily as the face of the organization, but as the heart behind it. It says a lot when you have the big wigs talking to the little people. It looks good even in a nonprofit world. We talk about optics a lot in both corporate and nonprofit, and this is definitely an example of optics playing a role.

Now I know I have been chatting with you so quickly. I have been on turbo speed, but it is because I have ten awesome strategies I wanted to get out in less than thirty minutes. So before we get to this last one, I need to give a shout-out to Kate. Hey, Kate. If you can do that Uber drawing now, that would be wonderful. So while Kate is looking up poll responses, we’ll go to number ten.

Kate Kramer: Yep. Let me throw up a poll really quick before April does number ten. This is your chance to let April know if you wanna hear more from her. I’ll share that with her. If you’d like a demo of Bloomerang or a self-guided tour, you can let me know that. Or if you already use us, but maybe you wanna talk about additional features, you can let me know that. You keep going. I’ll pick a winner, and I’ll come back.

Dr. April Willis: Thanks so much, Kate. Okay. I’m gonna pop that off. So number ten, a gratitude wall for lapsed donors. The idea here is that you can create either a virtual one or, if you have a physical space and people come into your building, you can actually have a physical gratitude wall. I’ve seen these before. They are beautiful. We are just publicly thanking lapsed donors by name, encouraging them to rejoin and be a part of the mission’s future. And what this looks like virtually is it can actually be a page on your website. It can also be on your social media pages. You can create an external link on Canva, for example, and share that link on everything. It can be in your email signature, your website, your social media, your newsletters. Have people go there, and on there, you can thank people by name or by organization. And then, of course, I would say merge this with items number one and three, for example, and say, “Here are some stories of what we’ve done in the past few years. Here are some quantitative data about what we’ve accomplished because of donors like you.” So you’re able to really just show your appreciation and offer a chance for those lapsed donors to add their names and hopefully reengage.

There’s always gotta be a call to action. You’ve heard me say it, I’m pretty sure, at the end of all of these, but the CTA, or call to action, is to ask them to give you more money. Or if it’s not always money that you’re seeking, sometimes you’re asking them to reengage their time or their talents. Maybe they were doing in-kind donations of some sort. Whatever it is, we want to make sure that it is very clear why you’re reaching out to them. People do not want to feel like you’re just wasting their time. They want to know, “So what do you want me to do with this information?” And you should be very clear about what you want them to do. Oftentimes that means you’re gonna provide a few buttons. Maybe you’re gonna direct them to your donate page and those buttons already exist, like a monthly donation, a one-time donation. When they click either of those, there should always be a suggested donation. I should see several to choose from because people again want to know, “Am I even in the right ballpark?” And, of course, you always have an “other,” but guide them in how much you’re looking for. For example, if you’re doing a capital campaign, I should not click “donate now” and then see options for $5, $25, $50, and $100. Those are not capital campaign dollars. If we’re gonna do a capital campaign, they need to be in the thousands: $10,000, $25,000, $100,000. We’re looking for people to donate space. If you donate $100,000, we’re gonna name an entire room after you. So that’s different than program sponsorships, for example, or “Could you feed a child for a week? It costs this much.”

So, anyway, I hope this is helpful for you. I wanna thank you for being here, and I also wanna let you know that the National Nonprofit Collaborative is only $9 a month or $95 a year. If you join, you can actually use the code Bloomerang on the checkout page. Get your first month free. And we have identified the top ten high-need areas that most nonprofit leaders need support in, including fund development, board development, strategic planning, community partnerships, and so much more. If you want access to all of that and our webinars, I hope you’ll consider joining today. And we have less than a minute left. Thanks, Kate.

Kate Kramer: Perfect. Thank you so much, April. That was such a great webinar.

So a few things. I did draw the Uber winner. It is Sarah Kennedy. Sarah, I’ll be emailing you in just a little bit, so be on the lookout for that.

Several people asked about the slides. You are gonna get those. Check your inboxes later today. You’ll get the slides. You’ll get the recording. I hope to see the rest of you guys tomorrow and Wednesday, and then please join us on Thursday. I have all of your questions in the Q&A box, and we will get those answered on Thursday. Thank you again, April, and thank you all for attending.

Dr. April Willis: Thanks. Bye.

Kate Kramer: Bye.