Fewer donors, falling acquisition, lousy retention. And the industry response seems to be, chase harder.  Fundraising has become a high-volume solicitation machine—and yet, the two most statistically likely outcomes for a new donor are:

• Never give again
• Give 1x/yr.

The vast majority of your donors fall into the zero or 1 bucket.  Does a strategy of relentless, high-frequency solicitation match this 0 or 1 reality?  We’re spending loads of money on ineffective, bottom-of-the-funnel chasing while failing to build a pipeline of future donors.

It’s time for a fundamental reset.

The Core Problems: Two Simple but Not Easy Truths.

1) People don’t give because we ask.

2) People are different.

Sounds obvious, right? Then why is everything in fundraising designed as if neither of these were true?  The entire fundraising industry operates on a fundamental lie:

If we just ask more, we’ll raise more.

This is the original sin of fundraising.  It’s why response rates have been circling the drain. People don’t give because they were asked. They give because they see giving to you as a way to further their story, values and goals.

And yet—how do most fundraising strategies operate?
❌ More asks, more volume.
❌ More urgent language, more deadlines.
❌ More follow-ups, more guilt, more chasing.

Fundraising is trying to force people to give instead of making them want to give.  Proof of this?  88% of acquisition mail is either premium, match or faux supporter card.   That leaves 12% focused on real connection.  Persuasion is impossibly hard. Attraction is what works.

Which brings us to the 2nd major failure of fundraising:  Another big unspoken belief in fundraising:

All donors are the same.

We build every campaign around one question: “Who should we send this appeal to?” Wrong question.

The right one?  “What appeal do I send to this person?”

“Best practice” is finding the generic message that wins on avg but loses for most and send it to all.

This leads to the bigger, system-wide issue keeping this cycle in place: Addiction to the Bottom of the Funnel

Almost every fundraising budget looks the same – 90%+ of the dollars are spent at the bottom of the funnel, chasing the same dwindling pool of people over and over.

Way too many charities have no brand strategy.

Ask the average nonprofit why they don’t invest in brand, awareness, and future donor demand, and you’ll hear this:

❌ “We need results now.”
❌ “Brand doesn’t drive immediate revenue.”
❌ “We don’t have the budget for long-term plays.”

And so the cycle repeats.

• Endless investment in bottom-of-the-funnel tactics
• More dollars poured into acquisition that doesn’t replace all the lost donors.
• Retention programs that chase donors into the ground
• And no money left to build future demand.

The Growth Path Fundraising is Ignoring

The biggest opportunity in fundraising right now is combining brand and direct response.

Not brand vs. direct response.  Not long-term vs. short-term. Both, together. Because direct response without brand investment is like trying to catch fish in a lake that’s drying up. And brand without direct response is just nice storytelling with no action.

How to Fix This: A New Fundraising Model

1) Shift some fundraising dollars UP the funnel.

• Put 25% (at least) of fundraising dollars on brand ads
  • Build awareness, memory structures, and recall (Note: direct response, especially the external, premium, match, faux urgency kind, does not build brand)
• Invest in demand creation before the ask.

2) Stop optimizing for volume.

• Move from “Who do I send this to?” → “What message do I send to this person?”
• Stop bookend fundraising—where the brand is on one end, the cause on the other, and nothing in between.
• The middle is the donor’s story. Their connection. Their identity. Make it about them, not you.
• Pulse your mkt/fundraising, not continous always-on.  Off-on.  Repeat.
• Shift 15-25% of your 4th quarter spend to other parts of year.

3) Treat fundraising like donor growth, not donor extraction.

• Not just getting gifts now but building a larger pool of future donors.
• Not asking harder but making people want to give.

The Necessary Reset.  

Fundraising is at a crossroads. We can keep playing the shrinking pie game—pouring more money into acquisition just to replace lost donors, blasting more emails, chasing more people until they all quit.  Or we can change the game.

That means:
✅ Brand + Direct Response.
✅ Opposite of More is Less + Better
✅ Building future demand, not just chasing today’s dollar.

Because fundraising isn’t about asking more. It’s about becoming something people want to say yes to. That’s the rethink and it’s the only path forward.

Kevin

P.S. This is happening, it’s not theoretical or wishful thinking or shouting into abyss.  Real charities and real change.  If you and your organization want to see the detailed, tactical roadmap and execution to pull this off, email me directly, kschulman@thedonorvoice.com