Our team of experts is excited to share what we know will bring you fundraising success in 2025 and what you should leave behind in 2024. Leave us a comment below to let us know what you think is in or out in for fundraising this year!
OUT |
| Generic Outreach: Mass email blasts are solely generated by AI without personalization or segmentation. Taking the time to customize and personalize is almost always worth the effort. |
| Overreliance on Galas: High-cost fundraising events with limited ROI and simply tone-deaf to the mission and spirit of an organization. |
| Single-issue messaging: The messaging lacks the whole, richer picture of the organization's impact on the community. |
| Print-Only Campaigns: Ignoring the digital-only donor demographic who view the paper as a waste of time and harmful to the environment |
| Opaque Financial Reporting: Donors expect more clarity on how funds are utilized. A simple profit and loss with assets and liabilities as a snapshot and trend is all you need. |
| One-Time Gifts Focus: Prioritizing new donor acquisition over long-term retention. A short-term strategy that can result in a gift but not a long-term commitment to make an impact. |
| Traditional "Cold Calls": Donors increasingly prefer digital or asynchronous communication (without human interaction, perfect when someone wants a quick answer). |
| Ignoring Small Donors: Overemphasis on major gifts at the expense of broad support. The millionaire next store often gives test gifts or wants to see the relationship grow before considering a major gift. |
| Top-Down Decision-Making: Exclusion of community voices in program development. |
| Overlooking Gen Z Donors: Missing out on younger, cause-driven audiences by not engaging in how, when, and communications ways they respond to. |
| Doing more with less: There's no such thing as 100% all the time. Burnout among fundraisers is due to too many priorities, fragmented focus, and the board’s pet projects. |
| Inflationary pressures: for now, prices are stable so no need to fear donor conversations . . . truth is, we should never fear conversations with donors. |
IN |
| Impactful Storytelling: Tailored narratives that align with donor values and your organization/institution’s mission that resonate emotionally. Bonus points: segmenting the audience to improve engagement (ex., First-time donors, loyal, planned giving committed, donor’s area of interest, etc.). |
| Donor-Advised Funds (DAFs): Leveraging DAF growth for long-term funding strategies. |
| AI-Driven/Assisted Campaigns: Saving precious staff time to personalize outreach using machine learning to predict donor behavior, generate language, qualify prospects, and other ways to leverage your time. |
| Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Goals: Focused initiatives to address systemic inequities with outcomes that align with institutional goals should always be in and never out. |
| Recurring/Subscription Giving Programs: Subscription-style giving models for sustained engagement are used to grow the base of donors and their engagement and develop interest in major and planned giving. |
| Digital-First Events: Virtual events with innovative audience engagement tools that utilize the strengths of virtual engagement without being a substitute for in-person engagement. |
| Generative AI for Content Creation: Assist in writing grant proposals, crafting emails, and marketing content efficiently. |
| Climate Action Funding: Rising donor interest in addressing environmental issues, particularly in light of increased intensity and public exposure of the damage caused (ex. Los Angeles fires). |
| Transparency in Impact: Real-time reporting of outcomes via dashboards, scorecards, apps, and other digital interfaces to prompt decisions and actions. |
| Collaboration Across Sectors: Partnerships between nonprofits, corporations, and governments for larger-scale impact. |
| Doing better with what you have: being more strategic, intentional, and focused. |
| Abundance Mind Set: concentrate on opportunities for growth and lead with optimism. |
| Empowering Social Media: Engage donors or prospective donors in honest conversations, polls, and invitations to become part of your organization by participation, volunteering, and of course, giving. |
| Donor Surveys: to understand their thoughts, feelings, and how they wish to interact with your organization. |
| The Rule of 95/5 is still in effect: ninety-five percent of giving will be from five percent of donors. |
| Growth in net worth for the top 5% wealthiest: Make sure your most capable donors know the giving opportunities available to them. |
| Estate giving: driven by the growth of assets/net worth over the last few years. |
| Corporate giving: growth in GDP and S&P+ lower taxes and more access to capital = room for philanthropy. |