Donor love is measurable, and in this lively discussion, guest Lynne Wester, Principal and Founder of Donor Relations Group, brings the receipts. Drawing on data from her seventh global donor relations survey, conducted every two years since 2013 with more than 1,000 participants, Lynne shows us why retention, not the next big campaign, is where the real money is.
Her core message is blunt and refreshing: we obsess over the ask even though it represents a tiny slice of our contact with supporters. As Lynne puts it, “Retention is the secret sauce of fundraising.” Most organizations still pour staff time and budget into events and tactics with weak ROI, while reporting that they are only able to share impact with less than 20 percent of their donors. That gap is not just operational; it is a revenue problem.
The survey findings expose a pattern. Many donor relations teams sit under a mountain of tasks but lack a strategic plan, making them vulnerable to “seagulling” requests that fly in, drop work, and disappear. At the same time, donor relations professionals tend to stay in their roles four to nine years, while frontline fundraisers churn in about 16 months. The people who understand donor experience best often have the quietest internal voice, and Lynne’s work is about giving them data to change that.
She shares how longitudinal data helped the sector mostly abandon donor honor rolls: today, over 80 percent of nonprofits no longer produce donor lists that were costly and not meaningful. The survey is now pushing similar change around giving societies, the split between receipts and acknowledgements, and the use of AI. Lynne is candidly concerned that many organizations use AI tools without organizational policies, even as donor databases at major institutions have been compromised. For her, donor confidentiality and the Donor Bill of Rights demand guardrails before automation.
Perhaps the most poignant remark is Lynne’s insistence that gratitude and listening are not “extras” but performance drivers. Retaining a donor is five to seven times less expensive than acquiring a new one, and organizations that cared for donors as human beings during crises like the 2008 downturn and COVID raised twice as much as those that just kept asking. She argues that if a donor is not “worth a stamp,” the organization does not deserve the gift.
Lynne leaves viewers with a challenge wrapped in encouragement: use data to question tradition, ask donors for their opinions, and treat stewardship as strategic fund management, not a courtesy. When you align technology, policies, and human connection around gratitude and impact, you are not just being nice—you are building a durable, scalable fundraising engine.
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