What do you get if you add a stewardship disaster, two skilled fundraisers, and a complete bunch of Valentine’s Day puns? RNL’s February webinar, after all! Earlier this 12 months, RNL hosted an hour-long dialog that includes Miranda Fagley and Becca Widmer, the place they unpacked their methods for creating significant moments by stewardship.
A tricky heart-to-heart: The present state of the world
With geopolitical battle working rampant, a rocky financial state, and a quickly shifting home political panorama, it’s no marvel donors are cautious of the longer term. Throughout this powerful heart-to-heart, we unpacked the varied elements that may make donors hesitate earlier than opening their wallets in 2025, and took a deep-dive into how the state of the world is impacting our donors, and due to this fact impacting the state of philanthropy as we all know it. From generational variations and the extra {dollars}/fewer donors development we’ve got all experiences to evolving donor expectations, development leaders are dealing with unprecedented challenges because the goal-line appears to maneuver yearly.
The center of all of it: A take a look at the donor information
Leaping into the “coronary heart” of our dialog, we went straight to the supply—donor expectations gleaned from RNL’s 2025 National Alumni Survey. We observed a number of alarming tendencies when evaluating this donor expectation information with the 2024 Giving USA report, which analyzed giving tendencies when accounting for inflation throughout our sector. Whole giving declined by 2.1% when adjusting for inflation and, whereas greater training noticed a 6.7% enhance in total giving, even when accounting for inflation, donor numbers throughout the board had been down. There’s additionally an apparent mismatch between donor expectations and actuality, as seen in our comparability of RNL’s 2024 Advancement Leaders Speak report with the 2025 Nationwide Alumni Survey. Take, for example, the truth that 66% of donors indicated that understanding the affect of their giving is necessary to them. This turns into a difficulty when 43% of development leaders reported that their outlets have issue speaking the affect of particular funds. Storytelling is the secret, and it’s changing into clear that speaking affect is a key piece of the donor acquisition and retention puzzle.
The damaged hearts membership: Below-stewarded donors
Many development outlets are unknowingly leaving a path of broken-hearted donors within the wake of annual campaigns. Why is considerate stewardship necessary?
- Connecting donors to your mission and educating them on the affect of their giving is essential to holding donors all in favour of your priorities.
- Telling your story by a “thanks” is an effective way to distinguish your trigger and your want compared to different organizations on this more and more noisy world.
- The straightforward act of reminding donors of your affect is an effective way to retain donors and transfer them by your pipeline. The extra you possibly can encourage donors to see themselves in your mission and necessary work, the extra doubtless you might be to get them onboard as true donor-partners.
On the flip-side, we unpacked that may occur in case you don’t steward your donors properly, together with a shrinking pipeline, extreme spending if you do resolve to try to reacquire them, and the lack of each short- and long-term income. Don’t be a heartbreaker!
Uncovering donor love languages: Have you learnt your donors?
Phrases of affirmation. High quality time. Acts of service. These are just some love languages from Gary Chapman’s The 5 Love Languages. Do you know donors have love languages too? It’s our job as mission-centric, donor-focused fundraisers to study these love languages and lean into them by stewardship, relationship-building, and even solicitation.
In our exploration of donor love languages, we unpacked the primary level- generational variations. Hearts are damaged generationally when we don’t take note of context and communicated want. Whereas not at all times “the reply,” generational segmentation and a slight shift of message is usually a easy method to get to the “coronary heart” of what a majority of your donors need and wish out of your stewardship outreach. And, as we proceed to expertise generational shifts and the good wealth switch, leaning into generational values will develop into much more necessary to attracting and retaining donors.
One other layer of affection language exploration comes from you going straight to the source- your particular person donors and what their giving historical past can let you know. We checked out one in all RNL’s options for additional discovering donor love languages, the RNL360, which provides a possibility to dive into your database. By illustrating historic AND current tendencies in giving and interplay, the RNL360 can offer you a greater understanding of giving and retention by donor kind, an evaluation of consistency and efficacy of your varied giving channels (hi there, good funding in instruments and campaigns!), and may also help set up baseline metrics which might inform purpose setting and future fundraising and engagement targets.
We will theorize all day about what donor expectations are, however the purest supply of fact is taking a look at donor information and asking donors to let you know what they need and wish. That’s the place RNL’s Market Analysis resolution comes into play. A complementary part of the RNL360, this extra resolution permits you to hear immediately out of your donors by means of a personal, however not nameless, survey administered by RNL, the place you possibly can study extra about your donors’ philanthropic priorities, communication preferences, and sense of connectedness.
With regards to efficient stewardship and solicitation, data is energy.
Engagement methods with coronary heart: RNL specialists share their takes
Our two specialists shared their tackle stewardship and engagement with coronary heart, with overlapping themes of getting private, telling your story, and taking the time to essentially take heed to what donors are telling you they wish to hear from you.
Miranda’s take
- Get particular: steward in methods solely YOU can.
- “Single” out your society members with a particular ‘thanks.’
- Take the time to survey your donors- perceive what you THINK will resonate and get suggestions/affirmation from them.
Becca’s take
- Put gratitude on repeat.
- Flip generosity to belonging.
- Hold affect entrance and heart.
- Asking is omnichannel, so thanking needs to be too.
Our principal takeaways?
- Take into account the panorama: context is all the things
- Take a tough take a look at donor information:
- Perceive the “why” behind stewarding annual donors: Inform. Your. Story.
- Get to know your donors’ love languages: ask your donors immediately
- Steward in methods solely YOU can: don’t be afraid to get slightly wacky
Need to study extra concerning the RNL360 and Market Analysis to uncover your donor love languages and steward extra thoughtfully? Connect with an RNL fundraising expert today!
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