Who Will Give $5,000 Next Year?

20 Apr Who Will Give $5,000 Next Year?

21 April 2026

By David Allen, Development for Conservation

1. We need a strategy for reaching $5,000 prospects. Let’s focus our new marketing campaign on recruiting $5,000 prospects!
2. We need to recruit $5,000 donors on our Board. Let’s focus our recruiting work on attracting donors who can give $5,000 or more!

Before I go on, let me make two quick points about $5,000. The first is that I am avoiding using the term “major donor” because in my opinion, the word “major” should never be used to describe a person. It’s a major “decision,” not a major donor, and decisions become major because of how difficult they are to make, not how large the value of the gift is.

The second is that I am not necessarily talking about “rich” people. Think about the number of $5,000 decisions regular Americans make every year – starting with cars. Rich people aren’t the only ones who have cars. I use $5,000, because that number implies both a capacity to give that crosses into the “substantial” realm and a deep interest in the organization or project being supported.

Now back to the statements above. How many of us – how many land trusts – start out strategic discussions with either one of those to statements? How many even include $5,000 in our proposed giving strings?

Answer: very few.

We don’t have a problem at the other economic extreme. We offer student, senior, and introductory memberships at amounts less than $35 and worry that even that amount might be a barrier to participation. We recruit economically-squeezed Millennials and Gen-Zs onto our Boards.

Please don’t get me wrong, here. We SHOULD be sensitive to these things.

But we should also be working at the other end of the economic spectrum.

The reality right now is that low-dollar philanthropic constituencies are contracting. According to numbers aggregated by Nonprofit Quarterly, the nonprofit sector saw a 3.5 percent increase in fundraising dollars and a 4.5 percent decrease in the number of donors giving in 2024 compared to 2023.

That’s not our fault. It’s our world.

And according to Nonprofit Atlas, the wealthiest 0.3% of donors accounted for 45% of all donations from 2015 to 2022, while smaller donors – those giving under $100 – accounted for less than 3%. (The $5,000 donors were somewhere in between!) My guess is that the same is true for your land trust.

The amount of money given away is increasing.

The average gift is increasing.

But the number of donors is staying the same or decreasing, and the median gift – the gift in the middle – is decreasing as well.

BUT – at the very moment when we should be focusing on strengthening relationships with people giving more than $250 or $1,000 and who have the capacity to give $5,000 and more, we are focusing on digital marketing, outreach events, and Giving Tuesday. We’re focused on small-ball fundraising.

For example:

Many of us offer four or five options less than $100 in our ask strings. We fail to put big visions on the table – visions that might attract big money. We reach for digital because it’s cheaper and more efficient. We talk a lot about what we have done instead of things that need to be done. And we do so without ever clearly showing how would-be donors might make a difference.

And we fail to ask.

When we fail to put out a bigger vision and ask for money to help make it real – when we list five options less than $100 or leave the decision completely up to the donor – we send the message that the dollar amount they decide on doesn’t really matter. Buried in our messaging that no gift is too small, we send the message that we don’t actually need money.

And when we do that, the $5,000-capacity donors hear that message as well. The hospital, the library, the Children’s Museum, and the Food Bank get $5,000. We get their $100 instead.

So, what can we do?

We NEED to keep spreading the word, but we need to get better as converting event participants into donors.

We NEED to put a bigger vision on the table – one that will touch, move, and inspire donors at all levels – including the $5,000 level.

We NEED a bigger vision that will touch, move, and inspire potential $5,000 Board members, too. Because we need Board members who lead, and that includes leading by giving.

We NEED to ask.

We NEED to communicate clearly that donors are an important part of an important mission. That their gifts are making a difference.

And we NEED a strategy for reaching $5,000 prospects. Let’s focus our new marketing campaign on recruiting $5,000 prospects!

• Identify, build relationships with, solicit, and steward potential $5,000 donors. Start small. Start Now. Just Start. In all likelihood, your best $5,000 prospects are already giving money to the organization. Start with them.
• Put a long-term vision on the table and practice articulating it. You want to double the number of protected acres in the County? Say so. You want every fifth grader to have native plant restoration in their curriculum? Say so. And learn to talk about the kind of organization YOU need to be to bring that future about.
• Institute Board term limits and use them to diversify the Board. And diversity includes economic diversity.
• Focus SOME direct communication on your donor audience instead of to the world at large. Learn to talk about the opportunities donors have to make a difference instead of just the organization’s accomplishments.
• Limit the ‘by the numbers” approach in favor of a more personal “story-based” approach.

The amount of money being giving away is increasing. The number of donors giving it is decreasing. That means the amount of attention we spend on attracting attention from $5,000 (and more!) donors needs to increase.

Cheers, and Have a great week.

-da

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 Martin Willer courtesy of Pixabay