A Dozen Strategies for Hanging onto Donors

07 Sep A Dozen Strategies for Hanging onto Donors

8 September 2026

By David Allen, Development for Conservation

Renew a donor this week.

Renewal Rate is one of the five most important metrics you can use to measure the health of your fundraising ecosystem. The calculation isn’t difficult, but allowing the results to guide your future fundraising seems to be beyond a lot of people.

I think the problem lies in the paradigm that renewal rates happen to you. Like hitting a series of red lights. Just our current reality – unlucky today. What can we do?

Renewal rate is a metric evaluation of your donor communications program. Pick a date on the calendar – the exact date shouldn’t matter as long as you are consistent. (I have always chosen January 9 to allow gifts intended for 12/31 to be fully counted.) Count how many donors made gifts of any size during the 365 days beginning on that date and divide the result into the number of those same donors who made gifts of any size during the 365 immediately following. The ratio is your renewal rate.*

Renewal Rate doesn’t happen to you. You create it. And changing the result is entirely within your control. Here are a few levers of your power:

• A renewal rate of 70 percent and greater is completely possible – if you don’t believe this, you will never get there.
• Follow-up is the key to success – most people don’t fail to renew because they decide not to renew. They fail to renew because they never got the message, or maybe simply because they forgot. Reminding them is a courtesy.
• As organizationally expensive as renewing someone might be, replacing them with someone making a first gift costs far more.
• At any given time, as much as a third of your current donors will be brand new – meaning first-or second year. If your database is running with a higher percentage of newbies, expect a lower overall renewal rate. If you have a lower percentage of newbies, expect a higher renewal rate.
• Do your donor communications help donors feel like important contributors to an important mission? If so, your renewal rate will reflect it.

I am writing this because I believe 70% renewal is possible. So in my opinion, most organizations with 50% and 60% renewal rates are underperforming. They should not be satisfied with these results.

If you are one of them, here’s a dozen strategies for improving your metric:

1. Start early – The objective is to secure their renewal gift BEFORE its due. Not to squeeze every hour out of their membership first. You can certainly start the month before, and I would start two months before.
2. Follow-up – Don’t expect the first letter to do all the work. Send letter reminders at least every 5 weeks or so, and email reminders every 5 days. Keep following up until you reach 70%.
3. Use multi-channel approaches – Use letters, email, phone calls, texting – everything. Not everyone responds to the same channel. If one channel isn’t working, use another one.
4. Call BEFORE the renewal gets sent. Use volunteers (Board members?) to call donors with the message that THEY are personally mailing the renewal request – putting it in the mail that day. Mississippi Valley Conservancy is the ONLY land trust doing this that I know of. MVC has an 80% renewal rate even with a steady stream of new donors.
5. Use Lift Notes on the Envelope – A lift note is a personal note written by hand on the request letter. They are very effective in that they make the request more personal. But they won’t work if the donor never opens the envelope. Have volunteers sign the outside of the envelope as well as writing a lift note inside, so the recipient knows it’s coming from a real person.
6. Talk about shared values – Use letter or email messages to talk about organizational values instead of accomplishments. We believe …
7. Member Since – Remind them in the letter how long they have been investing in the mission through their membership.
8. Use first person – Either write the entire request as a testimonial (this is why I am renewing this year) or provide an extensive testimonial quote.
9. Simplicity – Minimize the number of decisions they have to make before giving. Most of the oversized remit envelopes I see are one-size-fits-all that ask for everything from planned gifts to volunteer preferences. Same for on-line giving pages. Complexity isn’t necessary and won’t improve results. Keep It Simple Stupid (KISS).
10. QR Codes – Use QR codes printed near the bottom of your letters that direct donors to a simple landing page.
11. Matching gift – Matching gifts work. Get creative! Match every dollar they give more than they gave last year. Match every donor giving $365 this year. Match 2:1 instead of 1:1.
12. Handle complainers – Someone along the way will complain – that you just asked last week, that you are asking for $365, that you are asking at all. They are tired of being asked! But then weigh the number of gifts you receive against the number of complaints and stop thinking about changing your asking policy. I love Jeff Brooks’ advice, and I will quote him instead of making something else up:

“Give them what they want. If they want less mail, or mail only the third week in October, or never to hear from you again – just do what they ask. And do it quickly. This is how you can either keep them as donors or stop wasting money on them.”

The number of donors you have will be related to how many you recruit and how many you renew – both. But the more you can renew, the faster you will grow and the higher your ceiling will be.

Cheers, and have a great week.

-da

* Mathematical purists will note that choosing just one date for this calculation is problematic, because someone giving on the first day of one 365-day period and the last day of the next will technically have “renewed,” but they will have gone virtually two years between gifts. To get around this, you could pick four dates, calculate the renewal rate four times, and average the four values. Or choose twelve dates. Or 365 … But IMHO, the additional information you get from that work will not justify the cost.

PS: Your comments on these posts are welcomed and warmly requested. If you have not posted a comment before, or if you are using a new email address, please know that there may be a delay in seeing your posted comment. That’s my SPAM defense at work. I approve all comments as soon as I am able during the day.

Photo by Gerhard Eichstetter courtesy of Pixabay.