Ten Years of Hope, Hype, and Heartburn
I’ve been poking around in the Agitator attic lately—blowing dust off ten years of posts, decks, podcasts, conference swag, industry reports and other artifacts of our beloved trade. Call it fundraising death cleaning. Call it archaeology with spreadsheets. Either way, it’s a look at what mattered to fundraisers back in 2015, and what matters now in 2025.
The contrast is instructive. Some changes came slow. Some roared in overnight.
Then vs. Now: What’s Actually Changed?
In 2015, the fundraising world was flush with tactical chatter:
- “How many emails per week?”
- “What’s your subject line click rate?”
- “Should we do retargeting on Facebook?”
In 2025, the tools are slicker, the stakes are higher, and the digital debris is deeper. The conversations have matured—slightly:
- “Why are donors ghosting us?”
- “Is AI actually helping or just adding another dashboard?”
- “Where the hell did all the loyalty go?”
But here’s what really caught my eye in digging around:
Exhibit A: The Shiny Stuff In 2015:
- Direct mail was “declining” but still raising 70% of revenue for most orgs.
- Facebook was ascendant. TikTok didn’t exist. Email ruled the land.
- 63% of fundraisers hated their CRM.
- Donor-advised funds (DAFs) were starting to puzzle or scare people. (“It’s a donor Bermuda Triangle!”)
In 2025:
- Direct mail is… still raising 70%-90% of revenue (especially from 65+).
- Facebook is full of bots and boomer arguments. TikTok is where attention lives but rarely gives.
- AI writes better subject lines than most humans.
- DAFs now hold $229 billion in the U.S. and barely trickle into active campaigns.
- 63% of fundraisers still hate their CRM.
Exhibit B: The Donors
- Giving USA (2024) reports that individual giving is down 13% since 2021, even as average gift size climbs. Translation: fewer donors, bigger checks—until those big donors die or get bored.
- Canada’s Imagine Nation report says one in four nonprofits has closed a program in the past two years due to funding instability.
- In the U.K., CAF’s Giving Report shows participation in charitable giving is down to 57%, a ten-year low.
- Meanwhile, U.S. fundraisers are finally realizing that 65+ digital donors do exist—and click faster than you think.
- And two-thirds of all giving still happens between October and December. No pressure.
Exhibit C: The Fundraisers
Back in 2015, we worried about:
- “Too much to do, not enough time.”
- “The board won’t listen.”
- “Nobody reads our newsletter.”
In 2025, we worry about:
- Burnout (68% of fundraisers report emotional exhaustion).
- Diversity without inclusion (“We hired, but didn’t listen.”)
- Automation panic (“Will AI take my job—or just make it worse?”)
- Still: “The board won’t listen.”
And if you think this industry hasn’t gotten weirder, here’s a stat: DonorVoice research shows that the #1 driver of donor loyalty is still how well the donor feels known by the organization. Not your killer campaign. Not your open rates. Just old-fashioned “You see me” stuff.
Which brings me to a brief word about why you keep seeing so many behavioral science -based posts in the Agitator–you know, about identity and personality traits.
It’s not because Kevin and the behavioral science team at DonorVoice are locked in a sensory-deprivation chamber mainlining data through a straw. It’s because the emotional experience of the donor remains the single most predictive—and underleveraged—factor in fundraising. Ignore it at your peril.
Or, like 63% of fundraisers, grumble about your CRM and move on.
The Agitator’s Take: Ten Years, No Filters
Over the past decade while much of the industry focused on tactics, tech, or demographic panic, The Agitator marched to a somewhat different beat. Our posts often read like postcards from the edge—scribbled by fundraisers who’ve seen some things and lived to rant about.
In 2015, while other outlets catalogued symptoms—low retention, high staff turnover, under-investment—the Agitator covered those ills, but also explored a deeper malaise. We warned that fundraising’s future looked “bleak” because of chronic short-term thinking, under-investment, a “leaking lifeblood” of donors, risk aversion and a willingness to accept underperformance. We called for a radical commitment to donor experience and “substantial investment in staff and systems.”
We, along with fellow travelers like Ken Burnett and Giles Pegram, CBE and their Commission on the Donor Experience also took leadership to task—excoriating sector heads who scapegoated call-center vendors in a telemarketing scandal, when the real failure lay with boards and CEOs setting unrealistic goals and ignoring donor voices. That moral critique—holding leadership, not front-line fundraisers, responsible—stood out amid procedural fix-it talk elsewhere.
Today, as we have for 10+ years we’re still banging the drum on retention, but with a sharper tool: behavioral science. In The New Acquisition: Don’t Miss Out in 2024, we urged nonprofits to stop over-soliciting and start trusting donors to give when ready. Kevin’s Hand Size and Fundraising Success busted myths about more asks equaling more revenue, and showed how donors act to soothe emotional discomfort—meaning emotion is the destination, not just the bait.
We dug into cultural change, too. our Breaking Free of the Past likened fundraising to journalism—both trapped by old habits. We pushed for values-driven engagement, beyond transactional asks. In Make it Relevant. Helpful? we differentiated targeting (group-level) from tailoring (individual-level), showing the latter boosts relevance and trust.
And in The Case of the Disappearing Donors, we even confronted mortality. The Silent Generation and Boomers are vanishing. Their replacements won’t show up unless we build relevance, family legacy, and belonging.
Our summary of the 2024 Generosity Commission’s findings, didn’t just note the drop—from 65% of U.S. households giving in 2008 to fewer than half now—we offered human-centered solutions: personalize, prove impact, leverage community trust, and yes, sometimes give small incentives or surprises.
In short, while some tracked shiny objects, we tried to track the soul of the donor. We hope we reminded you and others (including ourselves) that fundraising isn’t about the next big thing. It’s about honoring people—past, present, and future—and building relationships that endure.
Roger
P.S. Cue the Bridge Conference
Right now, as this post hits the ether, the annual Bridge Conference is underway in Washington D.C., a joint gig between the Direct Marketing Association of Washington and the Association of Fundraising Professionals.
We scanned the schedule so you don’t have to. A few things stood out:
- AI is front and center. At least four panels promise to reveal how the robots will save us.
- Planned giving is having a moment, which tracks with the Boomer exit ramp.
- Retention? Barely mentioned. This is like hosting a dentist conference and skipping floss.
12 responses to “Ten Years of Hope, Hype, and Heartburn”
Behavioral Science Q & A
Thanks so much for raising this. Yes, capturing donor information can be helpful for stewardship like newsletters, thank-you letters, impact updates. But how you ask matters. Forcing full data capture introduces friction that can significantly depress conversion, many donors may simply abandon the process. Beyond the friction itself, required fields also shift the emotional experience […]
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Unlike holidays that everyone already knows, Giving Tuesday is a created event. Many donors recognize the name but not the exact timing, so referencing it becomes a helpful cue. It serves as a reminder and taps into social norm activation (“everyone’s giving today”), which boosts response. However, we still want it paired with the mission, […]
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When a subject line leads with the match (“Your gift matched!”), it risks triggering market-norm thinking: the sense that giving is a financial transaction rather than an act rooted in values, identity, and care. This shift reduces intrinsic motivation and, over time, can weaken donor satisfaction and long-term engagement. It also makes the email indistinguishable […]
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There’s no evidence that QR codes suppress mid-value giving; all available research suggests they either help or have no negative effect. In fact, behavioral and usability research consistently shows the opposite: reducing friction at any point in the donation process increases completion rates and total response. And that has nothing to do with capacity and […]
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What you’re experiencing is very common. Resistance often isn’t about capability, but about motivation quality. If board members feel pushed into fundraising, that triggers controlled motivation (low quality motivation) i.e. obligation, guilt, or fear of judgment, which often results in avoidance. Instead, we need to create conditions for volitional motivation (high quality motivation) by satisfying […]
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That’s a really thoughtful question, and you’re not the first to raise it. Many of our clients have been cautious about placing the ask at the very end. To address their concern, we’ve tested both approaches, and the results are clear: when the ask comes last, even if that means it appears on the second […]
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Love the floss metaphor Roger! Keep banging the drum and some will hear…
Appreciate you as always, my friend. At this point, you and I have spent at least three decades ( 60 years if you combine ’em) in the same foxhole, shouting ourselves hoarse about retention, donor care, and the audacity of giving a damn. And still, half the room’s hypnotized by click-through rates, while the other half’s stuck trying to remember their DonorFunnel360-Turbocharge login.
We’ve rolled the same rock up the same hill so many times, Sisyphus himself will soon file a cease-and-desist.
But every now and then, a metaphor sticks. Maybe the floss line will finally get folks to realize that retention isn’t optional hygiene—it’s how you keep the whole damn mouth from falling out.
And yeah, I keep thinking about that old Kristofferson line:
“If you waste your time a-talkin’ to the people who don’t listen
To the things that you are sayin’, who do you think’s gonna hear?”
Maybe nobody.
But hell, maybe just enough.
Roger awesome… I’ve been doing a lot of fundraising death cleaning lately too and will work on something focused on recurring giving in that soon. As you mentioned, this Bridge conference this time does not have much focus on retention and not much on recurring giving unfortunately, certainly not where it should be.
The silos are holding people back, and since the rise of digital giving, even more so than before!
But just like the little boy walking on the beach was throwing the starfish back into the ocean, all of our combined work will make a difference to some… cheers Erica
Thanks as always Erica. Indeed, the silos are a menace. If one more organization tells me “we’ve got a digital team for that,” I might … well, I’m not sure what I might do but whatever it is I’ll then let it fend for itself in the wild. It’s like our trade is now made up of little fundraising fiefdoms, guarding our turf with spreadsheets and buzzwords, while donors get treated like they’re walking wallets who accidentally signed up for three newsletters and a welcome series from 2019.
Digital supposed to better connect us. Instead, it built new walls—with popups. We’ve got channel teams that don’t talk, reports nobody reads, and meetings to plan meetings to talk about meetings. Meanwhile, retention and recurring giving—the twin engines of long-term sanity—are left rusting in the shed behind the gala invitation printer.
As for the Bridge conference? Well, if retention were a missing child, you’d barely find it on the back of a milk carton. Recurring giving got a cameo, somewhere between “optimizing AI tone clusters” and “emerging immersive donor experiences.” (Translation: more dashboards, fewer thank-yous.)
But you’re right about the starfish. Each time one of us cuts through the noise and actually builds a relationship, it matters. Even if we’re ankle-deep in sand and bureaucracy. Keep chucking ’em back into the surf, my friend.
Grateful for this post. Trying to keep nonprofits focused on RELATIONSHIPs amidst all the new shiny tools is challenging and we appreciate you beating that drum. Also, why is nobody making the connection that so many new tools is precisely WHY fundraisers are burned out. Running more types of campaigns in more channels takes MORE staff. But staff sizes have not grown. Thanks for always keeping the conversation going!
Kathy, thank you—and you’re absolutely right.
After years of wrestling with small staffs, large staffs, and teams that resemble a stack of Post-its with job titles, I settled on what I thought was the perfect strategy: a computer on every desk, and just one desk.
But alas… the tech keeps multiplying like raccoons at a landfill, and the desks? Still one. Usually wobbly; held together by duct tape and hope.
You nailed it. Burnout isn’t just emotional, it’s arithmetic. More campaigns + more channels + the latest DonorFunnel360‑Turbocharge™ = someone crying in the breakroom under a pile of Slack notifications.
We keep getting told these new tools will save us. But when nobody adds more humans to the team, all we end up doing is trying to run a campaign on more caffeine and an intern.
Thanks for always calling it like it is. We’ll keep beating the drum for real relationships—while ducking the next software solution promising to “optimize engagement” by Wednesday.
Love it Roger!
” It’s because the emotional experience of the donor remains the single most predictive—and underleveraged—factor in fundraising. Ignore it at your peril.”
Who would have thought?
Death cleaning should be compulsory for all fundraisers at least once each year.
Keep agitating! It may never get through, but must be good for the agitator’s soul.
Ken 🙂
You got it Ken. If soul-polishing were a line item in the fundraising budget, we’d all be a little richer in spirit and a lot more focused on the donor. Alas, most outfits treat emotional connection the way they treat donor surveys—nice in theory, glowingly analyzed, ignored in practice, and conducted again, but only after a catastrophic collapse.
You also nailed it: death cleaning should be mandatory. Call it the Marie Kondo of donor retention. If it doesn’t spark joy—or at least a meaningful “thank you”—toss it in the bin with last year’s CRM upgrade pitch deck.
As for your bit about soul… well, it turns out banging the same damn drum for thirty years does build calluses in the right places. Maybe it never gets through, but it keeps us from turning into spreadsheets and pivot tables.
Keep fighting the good fight—and don’t forget to label the boxes before you throw them out.
Roger,
What a fascinating view of the past decade. Your note that “the emotional experience of the donor remains the single most predictive—and underleveraged—factor in fundraising” jumped off the screen for me. So much more could be achieved if our causes paid more attention to the emotional journey of their audiences.
Relates I think to another shift over the last decade — too much faith and effort being put into tactics, analytics and program design absent a parallel emphasis on messaging that leads with emotion and connects to the personal identity of the folks we’re trying to engage.
Don’t give up. We all need to keep pushing.
Frank—thank you for weighing in. And for continuing to light the fuse with your Path to Persuasion Substack. Your line stuck with me:
“When messages are authentic and emotionally resonant, people are more likely to feel invested and motivated, rather than simply tolerating outreach for the sake of the cause.”
If only the Digital Dem crowd would carve that onto their dashboards—preferably right next to the “Save Democracy by Midnight!” countdown clock that seems to reset every 37 minutes.
Maybe then we’d get fewer emails that read like caffeinated ransom notes for democracy’s last breath, and a little more actual persuasion. You know—emotion, narrative, truth… all that pesky human stuff that makes people care, instead of just hitting the delete key faster than a feral cat on a touchscreen.
Appreciate you, your ObrienOnMessage.com and your Substack,PathToPersuasion.substack.com. Keep shaking the trees—we’ll try not to just count the coconuts.
Wait, wait…hold on a minute…
So, you’re telling me that how the donor feels about all this matters?!? And that donor experience exists on a continuum? But what about our tactics? Don’t they appreciate how we’re investing our time and energy into new designs and tools?
*Sigh* No wonder we’re not talking about retention…to our (and our missions’) peril.
As always, Roger, grateful for your presence in this crazy sector that we share.
Heather—thank you for the comment and for bringing a much-needed squirt of sarcasm into the room, like a spritz of lemon zest in a stale strategy meeting.
Yes, I regret to inform you that donors are still stubbornly human. They keep feeling things. And worse, they’re not especially dazzled by our 27-slide decks on button color tests and animated GIF openers.
Turns out “how the donor feels” isn’t just a quaint notion—it’s the oxygen of retention. But instead of oxygen, too many shops are inhaling nothing but tactics. No wonder everyone’s lightheaded.
Always grateful for your clarity (and gallows humor). May we one day live in a world where donor experience isn’t treated like a side salad… or worse, like those donor surveys—gloriously analyzed, promptly shelved, and never spoken of again.
Onward through the fog!