“Retention is the new acquisition” is a modern fundraising mantra for good reason. As a leader of a small to midsized nonprofit with a limited staff and budget, you’re probably well aware that keeping existing supporters is more efficient than bringing new ones into the fold. In fact, it’s a nonprofit rule of thumb that acquiring a new donor can cost five to ten times more than retaining one.
What you may not fully realize, however, is that a good basic digital giving platform can be your donor retention superpower. While you might think of them as strictly donation capture and payment processing tools, many digital giving platforms include a number of features that can be activated and used strategically to boost donor retention.
In this article we’ll review how donor retention efforts tied to digital giving can firm up base funding for your nonprofit and help you achieve better ROI on fundraising. With some strategic planning and a little creativity, you’ll find that your digital giving platform can help you express gratitude, build relationships, communicate regularly, lock in recurring giving, segment and personalize, and even bring in more donors.
Speaking of good basic digital giving platforms, we’re Roc Giving, powered by Payroc, a leading payments solutions company. Roc Giving specializes in serving small to midsized nonprofits. It’s our goal to support your mission by providing an affordable digital giving platform with intuitive tools, just the right amount of features, transparent pricing, and modern reporting and user interfaces.
Now let’s walk through some of the best ways to use your digital giving platform to help you shore up donor retention and grow funding.
Successful nonprofits know that thanking supporters is an essential first step in the donor retention process. Acknowledgment creates a positive feedback loop: the donor makes a gift, the nonprofit express gratitude for the gift, the giver feels acknowledged and affirmed for the good they are doing, those positive feelings encourage continued giving, the nonprofit expresses gratitude for the next gift—and the cycle tends to naturally perpetuate.
Showing gratitude supports donor retention by:
What to do: After a gift has been made, be sure to thank the donor promptly, within 48 hours whenever possible. Personalization also matters. In your thank-you, use the donor’s name, confirm the amount given, and mention what the donation will be used for and how it will make an impact. Handwritten thank-you notes can be particularly effective at conveying genuine gratitude.
Digital tools: You can use your organization’s digital giving platform to automate various steps in the process of expressing appreciation for donations.
If donor retention is the foundation of nonprofit success, then relationships are the foundation of donor retention. Always remember that your goal is not simply to thank and communicate with donors—it’s to build relationships with them so that they feel a part of your mission.
Psychologists will tell you that all relationships are built on three pillars:
As you consider how to build and strengthen relationships with your donors, keep these three pillars in mind. For example, attendance at in-person gatherings, such as donor recognition events and volunteer opportunities (which also do double duty as quality-time moments), helps supporters feel close to your organization. You can also foster the feeling of proximity from afar with digital tools like impact videos and social media posts with real (not stock) photos recognizing donors.
What to do: Work with your team to create a donor relationship-building process that is sustainable for our organization. Come up with ways to nurture and grow the bond through proximity, repetition, and quality time.
Digital tools: Leverage your organization’s digital giving platform to help you nurture donor relationships.
Earlier we mentioned the importance of repetition in building relationships with donors. Regular communications get your organization in front of your donors with enough frequency to keep you top of mind and connected emotionally.
Plan a cadence that works for your donors and your organization. You’re trying to land in the Goldilocks zone—not too often, not too infrequent, but just right. Here is an example timeline:
|
Frequency |
Purpose |
Channel Examples |
|
Immediately |
Gift acknowledgment & thank-you |
Email or text + mailed note |
|
Monthly |
General updates, stories, mission news |
E-newsletter, blog post, video—all w/text links |
|
Quarterly |
Impact report, donor highlights, financials |
Print newsletter, digital report |
|
2–4 times/year |
Donation appeals |
Email, text, social campaigns |
|
Annually |
Year-in-review, tax receipt, donor survey |
Personalized letter or email |
What to do: Create a donor journey with intentional touchpoints. In addition to the communication purposes noted above, you might also build in personalized touchpoints like birthday messages, anniversary-of-giving notes, exclusive updates for tiered givers, and more. Remember that many of these communications can be brief and simple.
Digital tools: Mine your digital giving platform for meaningful donor data.
Recurring giving is the bread and butter for many nonprofits. Monthly donations, in particular, help create stable cash flow and enable effective mission work. What’s more, many donors prefer and are more generous with monthly giving. In fact, monthly donors now give 42% more annually than one-time givers. And according to the M&R Benchmarks study, in 2024, monthly donations accounted for 31% of online fundraising, up from 27% in 2023.
Digital giving is what makes recurring donations possible. Unlike the old-fashioned process of sending a monthly check, which requires the donor to commit time and effort each month, digital payment options allow donors to “set it and forget it,” making recurring giving easy and frictionless.
What to do: Prioritize recurring giving. Find spots in the donor journey for your organization that are effective moments to ask your one-time or occasional donors to become regular givers. Once you have built a base of recurring givers, build in asks for recurring givers to level up their gift amounts in small increments.
Be sure to continue to explain the importance of recurring giving to your organization. Be transparent about your financials. Share impact stories. Demonstrate how steady cash flow enables your organization to be more effective in carrying out your mission.
Digital tools: Use your digital giving platform to make recurring donations easy—preferably with one click. The more seamless you can make the donation capture process, the higher your ROI will be. According to research from nonprofits and digital fundraising platforms, up to 60% of potential donors abandon donation forms before completing their gift. Around 1 in 4 donors say they’ve decided not to donate simply because the process took too long or was too confusing. On mobile devices specifically, conversion rates can drop by more than 50% if the donation form isn’t optimized.
Your supporters are not a monolith. Instead, they are a collection of individuals united in support of a cause but with their own reasons for donating and special interests that keep them engaged. Relationship building with donors becomes more effective when your organization begins to engage with donors based on their unique interests and preferences.
Your organization probably has multiple facets to its overall mission and may support various causes and demographics in various ways. Some of your programs will be more meaningful to certain donors than others, and you can use these preferences to help boost donor retention.
What to do: Analyze donations by earmarked program, specific interest, gift size, giving history, engagement level, and demographic. See what patterns you can find that might open the door to more recurring giving. Using a giving platform that handles both donations and payment processing allows you to easily see all the data in one place.
Digital tools: Use your digital giving platform’s reporting tools to break out donors into meaningful segments, and then target communications and asks for recurring giving.
One of the most amazing things about focusing on donor retention is that it naturally brings in more donors thanks to word of mouth. Happy supporters are powerful advocates. They tell their friends and family, and share their passion on social media.
What’s more, if you create low barriers to entry for recurring giving, such as a $10 monthly donation as a starting point, you cast a wider net, making it possible for even givers on tight budgets to support your mission. Affordable recurring gift levels also feel familiar and accessible to most people in our mobile-first, subscription culture.
And recurring giving programs can also be great storytelling tools. Let’s say you create a Monthly Heroes monthly giving program, and on social media and via text, you regularly communicate brief impact stories to members of this program. The shareability of these stories and the feel-good aspect of being a Monthly Hero can give such programs great momentum and virality.
What to do: As you’re planning your recurring giving programs, consider affordable, “subscription-type” baseline tiers. Give your program a name that will resonate and help people feel acknowledged and connected. Communicate often and well with your recurring givers by sharing impact stories.
Digital tools: Your digital giving platform can help spread the good news of your recurring giving programs.
We hope we’ve convinced you that now is the time for your small to midsized nonprofit to double down on donor retention. It’s the best way to ensure steady cash flow, meet revenue and impact goals, cement loyalty in your community, and even grow your supporter base.
Roc Giving’s digital giving platform includes all the digital tools you need to boost donor retention—without the confusing complexity and high costs you don’t need.
Visit https://payroc.com/solutions/roc-giving/ or contact us at rocgiving@payroc.com to get started. You can also schedule a demo here.