Choosing Where Your Personal Attention Goes

Sep 30

3 min read

Last month I wrote about why an acknowledgment letter is only the start of stewardship, and why a personal interaction (call, text, email, meeting, tour, etc.) can surface the one thing your CRM usually can't: the reason someone gave.

This month picks up with the next question. Once you know why, what do you actually do with it?

Most fundraising databases are built to answer a different question. They'll tell you when someone last gave, how often, and how much. That's useful. It's how we sort donors into major, mid-level, first-time, reactivated, and lapsed.

But those numbers only describe behavior. Knowing someone gave $5,000 tells me about their capacity. Knowing they gave $5,000 because their mother received services from your organization tells me what they need to hear from us next. The second fact is the one that builds a relationship, and it's the one most fundraising plans leave out.

You can't personally cultivate everyone

A lot of segmentation advice reads as if every nonprofit has a ten-person development team. Most don't. That's why it can feel overwhelming, and it's why the most important factor usually gets skipped: capacity.

In many small to mid-sized nonprofits, the entire development “team” is one or two people who are also handling appeals, events, grants, board requests, and reporting. Five tailored donor journeys look great in a strategy document. Trying to run all five alongside everything else usually means running all five poorly.

I'd rather see an organization choose two or three groups to cultivate extremely well, and put everyone else on a thoughtful, more templated track.

So how do you choose? Ask one question of each cohort: does this group need a person, or can a well-built system do most of the work?

Major donors need a person. If someone has made a significant investment in your mission, they should have a relationship with someone inside your organization. That means conversations, updates tied to what they care about, and invitations to see the mission in action.

First-time donors need a person too, even when the gift is small. This is the group most teams underinvest in, and the data is hard to ignore. According to the Fundraising Effectiveness Project's Q4 2025 report, only 18.9% of new donors gave again, compared with 59.3% of repeat donors. The same report found that giving rose about 5% in 2025 while the number of donors fell 3.6%. The sector is raising more, but from fewer people. If you want a healthy donor base five years from now, the weeks right after a first gift matter more than almost any other window.

Mid-level donors are the judgment call. For many organizations, this is the third cohort worth personal attention, because steady mid-level givers are often your future major donors. If your team has room for one more group, start here.

Reactivated and lapsed donors can usually begin with a system. Someone who stopped giving three years ago can start with a thoughtful re-engagement series. The exception is a reactivated donor who comes back with a meaningful gift. That's a signal worth a phone call.

One caveat: if your lapsed file is large, which is common for organizations that grew quickly in 2020 and 2021, a personal recapture effort may be a better use of your third slot than mid-level cultivation. Look at your own numbers before you decide.

The cohort tells you where to look and the donor tells you what happens next.

Start with the next two weeks

If you don't have a cultivation plan today, don't spend three months building one. Start here:

Choose two or three priority cohorts. For most small teams, that's major donors, first-time donors, and possibly mid-level.
Define what personal attention means for each. A call within a week of the gift? A site visit? A quarterly update from a program lead? Write it down!
Template the rest. Build a thoughtful, repeatable series for everyone who doesn't need individual outreach right now.
Give the “why” a home. Pick one place in your CRM to record donor motivation and key conversations, and make logging them a habit.
Let donors move. Revisit your cohorts every quarter so each donor's plan keeps up with how they're actually engaging.