The Donor Retention Guide: Using Your CRM to Stop the Churn

The nonprofit sector raised 3.5% more money in 2024 than it did in 2023. That’s good, right? However, when you dig a little deeper, the numbers become problematic.

According to the AFP Fundraising Effectiveness Project’s Q4 2024 report, the number of donors dropped 4.5% year over year, and the average retention rate fell to 45%, a 2.6% decline from 2023. This marks the fourth consecutive year retention has declined.

Total fundraising growth is real, but it’s growing because a shrinking pool of major donors are contributing more. If that group contracts, due to the economy, a change in priorities as we saw in the pandemic or a failure to stay connected, organizations will notice the decline immediately.

The answer lies in a resource that you already have: your CRM.

Start With Your Own Numbers

Before any retention strategy makes sense, you need to know the baseline of your fundraising statistics. At a minimum, your CRM should tell you overall retention rate, new donor retention rate, and the giving frequency of your current donors.

The nonprofit sector average for 2024 was 45%. However, the sector average is not as important as your year-over-year reports. If those numbers fell multiple times, you should investigate. If it’s held steady, you also need to dig in. The best plan is to pull three years of data and look at the direction of your retention numbers.

New donor retention deserves special attention. FEP’s Q3 2024 data found that only 13.8% of new donors were retained after a year, a 9% year-over-year decline. The majority of nonprofits lose most first-time donors before they ever give a second time.

Giving frequency is also a better predictor of retention than gift size. Research cited by NonProfit PRO shows retention rates for one-time donors sit at 18.6%, increases to 38.1% for donors who give twice, and reaches 61.2% for those who give three to six times. Getting a donor to make a second gift is not just good stewardship. It’s the tipping point to a long-term relationship.

The 91-Day Window

According to research, the 91 days following the first gift is a critical window. By the end of that period, the donor has made up his or her mind about making a second gift. What happens inside that window, such as a thank-you call, a personal note, or an impact update, determines whether a one-time gift becomes a relationship.

Most CRMs can trigger automated task reminders and communication sequences tied to a gift date. The question is whether your organization has built those sequences deliberately. A CRM without configured retention touchpoints is a contact list with better sorting. The value comes from using it to enforce a stewardship calendar for every new donor segment.

Within Julep, you can set up custom searches to pull recent donors within a specific time frame so that you can follow up with additional communication after you’ve marked them from the Thank You’s Needed feature.

Segment Your File Before You Do Anything Else

Experts at NonProfit PRO recommend at minimum four distinct segments as a starting point:

•          First-time donors

•          Active multi-year donors

•          Lapsed donors

•          Donors who give to a specific program or fund

Each group requires a different message, a different tone, and often a different person signing the letter. Segmentation unlocks personalization, and personalization changes revenue outcomes. Nonprofit Tech for Good cites research showing that frequent, consistent communication with online donors produces a 41.5% increase in revenue. That kind of connection does not come from sending more email. It comes from sending the right message to the right person.

Over time, it’s worth it build additional segments that include donors by consecutive years of giving, donors who have given to multiple programs, and donors who engage through events or volunteer activity. A CRM that tracks the full relationship, like Julep, gives you the raw material to build these segments without guesswork.

Julep’s donor management tools pull communication history, giving history, and relationship notes into a unified record under the People Profile, which is the prerequisite for any meaningful segmentation effort.

NonProfit PRO’s segmentation guidance also recommends reviewing segments annually, especially after a campaign cycle. Donors move between segments. Someone who lapsed two years ago may have re-engaged. Someone who was a mid-level donor may now be a major gift prospect. Keeping your segments current is what makes them useful.

With Julep, you can use the Last Year But Not This Year and Some Years But Not This Year feature to track donors who might have fallen off and need a personal follow up. You can toggle the year and amount given.

Mid-Level Donors: The Most Overlooked Retention Opportunity

Mid-level donors, who are typically defined as donors giving between $1,000 and $10,000 annually, represent roughly 5% of a nonprofit’s file but contribute around 25% of its revenue, according to NonProfit PRO. They are also among the most likely to become major donors. Research shows that two-thirds of major donors start from the annual giving campaign.

Despite that, mid-level donors are frequently treated like upgraded direct mail donors rather than the relationship-stage donors they are. A personal phone call, a no-ask check-in, a handwritten note referencing what they said they care about are all examples of touches that move mid-level donors deeper into the relationship. Your CRM should hold those conversation notes, so anyone on your team can pick up a relationship where it was left off.

Monthly Giving: The Single Highest-Leverage Retention Tool

In recent years, the monthly giving program has become the foundation of online fundraising. According to data from M+R Benchmarks, monthly giving now accounts for 31% of all online giving, which is up from 26% last year, and monthly gifts increased by 5% in 2024 while retention tactic outperforms a well-run monthly M+R Benchmarks data cited byNonprofit Tech for Good shows that monthly giving now accounts for 31% of all online revenue, up from 26% the prior year. Additionally, revenue from monthly gifts increased by 5% in 2024 while one-time gift revenue remained flat.

The retention math is straightforward. A donor who sets up a recurring gift does not need to make an active decision to give again. The relationship continues by default. Research via NonProfit PRO puts the retention rate for donors giving three to six times at 61.2%, compared to 18.6% for one-time donors. Monthly givers operate at the high end of that frequency curve.

The CRM plays a direct role here. A well-configured system can flag one-time donors who have given at least twice and prompt a personal outreach to invite them into a recurring program. It can also track failed payments, an often-overlooked churn driver, and trigger follow-up to update payment information before a monthly donor lapses without knowing it.

Re-Engaging Lapsed Donors

Lapsed donors are not lost donors. They are donors who stopped hearing from you in a way that felt relevant, who got too busy, or who had a life event that interrupted their giving. FEP datashows the number of recaptured donors fell 8.6% year over year in 2024. While recapturing donors is getting harder, it also means organizations that invest have an opportunity.

A lapsed donor segment, as defined as donors who gave at least once in the past two to three years but not in the past 12 months, is the starting point for a re-engagement track. The message to this group should be unique and acknowledge the gap. It should reintroduce the impact of their previous giving history and invite them back with a fresh start.

Your CRM data also tells you which lapsed donors gave at higher levels or more frequently before lapsing. Those donors should get personal outreach rather than a mass email. A phone call from a staff member mentioning a specific gift or program the donor supported in the past carries more weight than any automated message.

Putting It Together

NonProfit PRO’s 2024 Nonprofit Fundraising Study found that 56% of nonprofits lack a formal donor engagement strategy. That gap is not a technology problem. It is a planning and process problem. When you fail to create a plan, you can’t find a process to helps you.

A CRM is the infrastructure for that process. But infrastructure only creates outcomes when it is configured intentionally. Defined segments, built-out communication sequences, regular data audits, and tracked giving frequency are the building blocks. Organizations that put those in place, and review them after every campaign cycle, are the ones who will hold their retention rates as the sector average continues to slip.

The donors who stay five years give 1,519% more cumulatively than donors who give only once. Retention is not just a feel-good metric. It is a compounding financial asset. Your CRM is what makes it possible to manage that critical asset at scale.

Ready to build a retention-first fundraising operation? Julep’s donor management tools are built to help organizations segment smarter, communicate at the right moment, and keep every donor relationship moving forward. Schedule a demo to see how it works.