Imagine this:

It’s late. You’re at your desk, your coffee’s cold. You’re staring at your donor database, wondering if anyone on your team—hell, if you even have a team—will find time to write the newsletter, segment the list, follow up with last month’s lapsed givers, and maybe—just maybe—figure out where the next new donor is coming from.

You sigh, close the tab, and tell yourself “I’ll get to it tomorrow”.

But tomorrow, like every tomorrow, is already full.

One of the most common refrains I hear from Agitator readers at small and mid-sized organizations is:

“We don’t have the staff.”
“We don’t have the budget.”
“We can barely keep up with what we’re already doing.”

And so the bucket leaks. Donors slip away, unthanked and unasked. Prospective new donors  are never identified, cultivated or asked. And what little capacity you do have gets eaten alive by the same tired cycle: appeal, receipt, repeat.

Well, in my ongoing quest for things—anything—that can save readers time, money, and sanity, I came across something worth a hard look: DonorSpring.

It’s a platform you can think of as an extra set of hands. But cheaper. For somewhere aaroujnd 1/10th the cost of an average staffer, DonorSpring does two things many organizations never find time to do:

1. Acquire new donors.
2. Retain and reactivate the old ones.

And it does both in a way that feels almost—dare I say it—modern.

No Co-op. No Sharing Your Donors. No Gimmicks.

One of the best parts when it comes to acquisition? You’re not dumping your donors into some giant cooperative database where they get passed around like office snacks, neither are you drawing from some overused stagnant pool.

DonorSpring is your platform. The prospects and donors who spring from its acquisition efforts are yours. The list doesn’t get rented, swapped, or diluted. And they flow directly into your own CRM.

Henry Carroll, the CEO and co-founder, comes out of grassroots organizing and fundraising. He’s seen the staffing pressures, the inefficiency up close—saw the same “digital knowledge gap” we’ve

 been ranting about for years—and decided to build something that fixes it.

Here’s how it works:

• Automatic Acquisition in the Background

DonorSpring quietly builds your prospective new donor audience behind the scenes.  It draws from a proprietary bank of 20 million U.S. donors—people who have demonstrably given to charitable causes—and uses that pool to identify the ones most likely to support your mission.

You set the parameters: geography, interests, giving behavior. The platform does the matchmaking.  And crucially: when a donor surfaces, they become yours. They’re fully opted-in. They’re not shared with other clients. They’re not part of any co-op. You own the relationship—and you keep it.

Henry described it this way:
“What the customer sees is, every week, their audience is just getting bigger and bigger. And because we run the acquisition in the background, they don’t really need to worry about it.”

• Ethical Data and Opt-In Standards

I want to be clear—because we’ve covered the issue of data sources in the Agitator more than once: DonorSpring’s acquisition model meets the highest standards of data ethics. Every contact is fully opt-in consented, fully permissioned, and compliant with all opt-in and opt-out regulations. You never have to worry that you’re spamming strangers or buying sketchy lists.

• Smart Alerts for High-Value Donors

Most of the new leads are everyday donors. But when the platform identifies someone with higher-than-average capacity—a foundation trustee, a major donor—you get an individual notification so you or your team can pick up the phone, send a personal note, and start building a relationship right away.

• Done-For-You Content

DonorSpring’s copywriters will draft every email. All of them. You just tweak, approve, and schedule.   As Henry put it: “The average customer spends about two hours a month in DonorSpring.” That’s it.

• Retention That Actually Retains

Instead of quarterly newsletters, DonorSpring helps you communicate more frequently and personally—one email, one subject, higher engagement, higher giving, according to Henry.  If someone misses one message?  No problem—they’ll hear from you again the next week.

• Low Cost

Instead of paying $40–$60 per acquired donor (the norm I’m seeing in direct mail), DonorSpring charges a flat fee—$3,000 for the platform’s year of acquisition, plus a modest per-contact fee, but only after the donor makes a contribution.

Acquisition and Retention—The Twin Black Holes

Here’s the thing:  Most organizations think their problem is money.  It’s not.  It’s time. It’s staff. It’s the capacity to do the basics—find new donors and keep the old ones.

Acquisition is getting harder because co-op lists are tapped out and aging. Retention is getting harder because too few invest the time and skill to communicate consistently and personally.

And too often, both get neglected.

DonorSpring is designed to help remedy that. Not by throwing another shiny tool into the mix, but by multiplying your capacity and automating the things you never get around to.

If you’re wondering whether it’s just for the larger nonprofits of the world—think again. Yes, they serve big organizations. But most of their clients have 1–3 person development teams (or no team at all). The system is simple enough that a volunteer or an intern can manage it—so long as you trust them to hit “send.”

So, if you can’t hire more staff? Maybe you don’t have to. DonorSpring may be the next best thing.

In a sector where everyone is scrambling to replace donors faster than they can lose them, I recommend you take a look.

Roger