Donor Acquisition: A proven strategy for nonprofits

Nonprofits need new donors to grow, but acquisition is one of the hardest and most expensive parts of fundraising. Rising costs, shrinking attention spans, and competition from every corner make it tough to get noticed, let alone win a first-time gift. Worse, many organizations waste limited resources chasing the wrong prospects with generic outreach that doesn’t convert.

To acquire donors effectively, your nonprofit needs a smarter, data-driven strategy. It needs a strategy that targets the right people, delivers timely messages, and builds real relationships from the start.

What is donor acquisition?

Donor acquisition is the process of gaining new donors for your nonprofit. It involves identifying potential donors (typically using prospect research software), reaching out to them, and securing a gift. It’s one of the most critical fundraising tasks for nonprofit growth and sustainability.

Nonprofits typically use email, social media platforms, direct mail, and events to attract donors. The donor acquisition process can take days or years, depending on gift size and strategy. Timing and touchpoints vary, but the goal remains consistent: build meaningful new donor relationships.

Effective donor acquisition starts with understanding who your ideal donors are and what motivates them to give. Prospect research helps you identify high-potential supporters and tailor your outreach accordingly. That alignment boosts both conversion rates and long-term donor value.

Donor acquisition rate explained

The donor acquisition rate measures how many new donors your nonprofit gains over a set period. It is calculated by dividing the number of newly acquired donors by your total number of donors.

Tracking this rate helps you evaluate how effective your donor acquisition strategies are. A rising rate shows growth. A declining rate signals the need to improve your outreach or messaging.

Example: If your organization had a total of 1,000 donors last year and 250 were new, your donor acquisition rate is 25%. [(250 ÷ 1,000) × 100 = 25%]

According to the Fundraising Effectiveness Project, the average first-year donor retention rate is just under 20%, while multi-year donor retention is closer to 60%. That means for every 10 new donors, only 2 typically give again. This statistic highlights why smart donor acquisition must pair with strong donor stewardship.

Donor acquisition cost explained

Donor acquisition cost is the amount you spend to gain one new donor. It includes marketing, staff time, technology, and other outreach expenses.

Tracking this metric helps you budget smarter and prioritize cost-effective strategies. To calculate it, divide your total acquisition costs by the number of new donors gained.

Example: If you spent $5,000 on a campaign and acquired 100 donors, your acquisition cost is $50 per donor. ($5,000 ÷ 100 = $50)

Acquisition is often unprofitable in year one unless you’re targeting mid-level or major donors. For many nonprofits, break-even occurs only after the second or third donation, making donor lifetime value a critical metric.

Why many donor acquisition strategies are unprofitable

Many donor acquisition strategies fail because of three key challenges: struggling to find the right donors, scaling outreach, and deepening relationships.

Let’s break each one down.

Challenge #1: Identifying great donor prospects

Many donor lists fail because they’re based only on wealth. To acquire donors who give, you need to target people with affinity, capacity, and propensity—not just deep pockets.

Mission affinity is key. Donors won’t give if they don’t care about your cause. That’s why copying supporter lists from other random nonprofits doesn’t work. Just because they’ve given to another nonprofit, doesn’t mean they will give to yours.

To boost donor acquisition, find prospects that have shown that they have an interest in your specific cause. Understanding their motivations gives you a better shot at building early interest and trust.

However, it is not easy! People rarely show clear affinity if they have not given before. Later, we’ll show you how to estimate affinity using alternative data most nonprofits overlook.

Challenge #2: Scaling donor connections

Personalized outreach helps improve donor response rates, but many nonprofits struggle to scale it. Writing individual messages takes time and limits how many prospects you can reach.

That time investment also pulls your team away from higher-value tasks. Instead of nurturing existing donors or refining strategy, your team is busy writing emails to prospective donors. The tradeoff does not always deliver a clear return.

Some teams try to increase volume with templated messages. But those often convert poorly. Even if you send more messages to prospective donors, but they aren’t targeted in some way, the total number of new donors may not increase.

Labor costs further complicate things. Manual outreach, whether personalized or templated, drives up expenses and often makes donor acquisition efforts unprofitable.

That’s where a generative AI tool for nonprofits can help. It can generate segmented, personalized, unique emails and direct mail based on prospects’ profiles and giving scores (or another metric is your choosing). Your team just reviews, edits if need be, and sends, saving hours while still connecting meaningfully.

Challenge #3: Nurturing existing donor relations

Retaining donors is cheaper than acquiring new ones. However, many nonprofits lack a consistent donor retention process to keep supporters engaged. Without regular, meaningful touchpoints, donors lose interest and stop giving.

Some organizations rely on one team member to send occasional updates. However, outreach is inconsistent and easily forgotten without a structured stewardship plan.

Donors often disengage when they don’t see the impact of their gifts. This shortens donor lifetime value and increases donor acquisition costs. To maintain revenue, your team has to constantly find and convert new donors.

The solution is a data-driven donor stewardship strategy. With the right tools, your team can track activity, automate personalized updates, and strengthen donor relationships over time.

Profitable step-by-step donor acquisition strategy

A clear donor acquisition strategy helps nonprofits grow their donor base without wasting time or resources on unfruitful donor acquisition efforts. Here is a step-by-step plan to acquire new donors and generate sustainable revenue.

Step 1: Set a clear donor acquisition goal

Setting a clear donor acquisition goal gives your team direction and helps you build a profitable fundraising plan. Without a specific target, campaigns become unfocused and results unpredictable.

Start by answering three questions:

1. How much do we need to raise?
2. By when?
3. Based on past results, how many donors and at what average gift size will it take?

With these answers, you can reverse-engineer your outreach plan and assign clear actions to your team. This makes it easier to stay on track and hit your fundraising goal.

Step 2: Identify giving capacity and propensity

Start by identifying individuals who both can and want to give. Using your fundraising goal and target gift size that you defined in Step 1, you need to find individuals who match that financial profile and show signs of philanthropic intent.

Many nonprofits begin with LinkedIn Sales Navigator to find high-net-worth individuals. But net worth alone doesn’t reveal whether someone is likely to support your cause. A wealthy individual isn’t necessarily a generous one, so relying solely on LinkedIn often produces low-quality leads and poor response rates.

Don’t rely on net worth alone

Instead, use tools that combine wealth screening with charitable giving history. Donor prospect research software helps you build accurate donor profiles by uncovering individuals who not only match your financial criteria but also have a proven history of giving to similar causes.

This approach ensures your outreach is focused on people who are both financially qualified and likely to respond. It also reduces the risk of over- or under-asking, which can hurt conversion rates.

By building your list with real giving behavior, not just assumptions, you’ll improve your odds of finding the right donors and acquiring them more efficiently.

Step 3: Identify giving affinity

Donors are more likely to give when they feel personally connected to your mission. That connection (giving affinity) is the most overlooked piece of the donor acquisition puzzle. And it’s the hardest to spot if someone hasn’t donated to your nonprofit before.

Why demographics aren’t enough

Many teams guess affinity based on loose signals like job title, profession, zip code, or general interests. However, assumptions lead to wasted outreach and poor conversion rates. Even wealthy donors won’t give if they don’t really care about your cause.

Some nonprofits target donors who support similar organizations. This can work—but only until those donors are overwhelmed by identical appeals. Your message then gets lost in a sea of sameness.

To stand out, you need to detect affinity. That means identifying alignment based on behavior, not just demographics. Fundraising intelligence makes this possible.

Use behavior-based insights to find true alignment

Using a fundraising intelligence platform helps you find prospects with strong mission alignment by:

• Identifying individuals affiliated with foundations that share similar affinity to your nonprofit.

Example: A board member at a foundation that funds youth mental health programs, aligning with your nonprofit’s focus on teen suicide prevention.

• Surfacing people already giving to aligned causes—even if they haven’t heard of you yet.

Example: Someone who donates annually to an environmental nonprofit working on ocean conservation, while your organization focuses on coastal restoration.

• Flagging donors who support you modestly but give more generously to your peers.

Example: A donor who gave your animal rescue $50 last year, but gave $10,000 to a national humane society.

Comprehensive fundraising intelligence doesn’t just surface new leads—it helps you prioritize them. When you layer affinity with capacity and propensity, you stop guessing and start targeting donors with real potential. You know who cares, who can give, and who’s likely to take action.

This approach lets you invest your outreach where it counts. You avoid wasting time on uninterested names and focus instead on donors who are both aligned and ready to give. That’s how you increase conversions while lowering acquisition costs.

Step 4: Set a reasonable ask

Your ask should match each donor’s capacity to give. Asking too much risks scaring donors away. Asking too little leaves generous gifts unclaimed.

Unclear or mismatched asks cause friction and delay decisions. Even willing donors hesitate when the gift level feels arbitrary or disconnected from their giving habits.

Instead of guessing, use data. Fundraising intelligence platforms allow you to filter prospects by past donation amounts and access detailed wealth screening insights.

This helps you tailor the ask to each donor—so you do not under-ask or overreach. You will maximize donations while preserving donor trust and comfort.

Step 5: Craft a personalized outreach message

Personalized messages dramatically increase your chances of engaging high-quality donor prospects. The first outreach should spark interest—not ask for a donation. Focus on building a connection and highlighting shared values with your potential donors.

This is the top of your donor funnel, the stage where awareness begins. A strong message helps move potential donors from passive observers to active prospects by drawing them into your mission and prompting further engagement.

Writing unique messages for each person is ideal but time-consuming. Instead, use a generative AI tool with dynamic personalization. This lets you create one strong template and auto-personalize messages using donor data, saving you time and still making every outreach feel tailored.

Use storytelling to spark emotional connection

Include emotional storytelling to deepen resonance with potential donors. People give when they feel moved; stories often transform passive readers into enthusiastic supporters.

But messaging isn’t just about inspiration. It also needs to reflect what donors want from nonprofits: to feel understood, respected, and appreciated from the start.

Expand beyond email

Personalized messaging isn’t limited to email. Social media platforms like Instagram, LinkedIn, and TikTok can also support your donor outreach. This is especially true for engaging younger or first-time supporters. Tailor your content on each channel to reflect your mission, voice, and audience interests.

Don’t overlook direct mail

Don’t underestimate direct mail. It remains one of the highest-performing acquisition tools, with open rates reaching 90% in some campaigns. A well-crafted letter that tells a moving story and includes a personal touch stands out in ways digital messages often don’t.

Step 6: Reach out at an opportune moment

Donors are more likely to give when your outreach aligns with a major life or financial event. However, tracking these moments manually is time-consuming. Furthermore, nonprofits often miss them because they are relying on outdated or static data.

Fundraising intelligence tools solve this by monitoring real-time donor activity and alerting you to key triggers. Key triggers include a recent gift to a similar cause, a property purchase, or a professional milestone.

Outreach timed to real-time donor signals, such as recent gifts to similar causes, has been shown to significantly outperform non-targeted outreach. With the right signals in place, you can connect when donors are most engaged and before your competitors do.

Step 7: Nurture the relationship

Donor acquisition rarely happens after just one message because the relationship needs to be nurtured. Building trust takes time, especially with major donor prospects.

Invite prospects to events. Share stories that showcase your mission’s impact. Keep your organization at the top of a prospect’s mind through personal outreach, email marketing, and retargeting ads.

Consistent follow-up with potential donors is critical. Donors are busy and often forget—even if they care about your cause. Stay visible, stay relevant, and guide them toward deeper engagement with your nonprofit.

Tip: Consider peer-to-peer fundraising to scale your reach. Empowering existing donors to share your mission within their networks introduces your cause to new, values-aligned prospects.

Step 8: Measure results

Track what is working and identify patterns that consistently lead to strong outcomes in order to refine your donor acquisition strategy. Reinvest your time and budget into tactics that perform well to scale results efficiently.

Identify what’s driving conversions

For example, if a large percentage of your donors also gave to another nonprofit organization, that insight will guide future prospecting. You can prioritize donors with similar giving histories, knowing they are more likely to resonate with your mission.

Valuable metrics to track include:

• Behavioral signals (e.g., giving overlap, ties to specific foundations)
• Campaign data (e.g., email open rates, ad conversion rates)
• Trigger events (e.g., recent real estate purchases, job changes)

These points give you a clearer picture of what drives conversions.

Optimize by cutting what doesn’t work

Equally important is identifying what is not working. If an ad campaign consistently underperforms or an email sequence yields no engagement, pause or optimize it before spending more money. This helps you avoid wasted resources and keeps your acquisition strategy profitable.

Tip: Don’t overlook your donation page. Simplifying the giving process can dramatically improve your conversion rate. Make sure the donation experience is fast, mobile-friendly, and clearly aligned with your messaging.

Step 9: Retain and grow your existing donor base

Strengthening your relationships with donors increases donor lifetime value and builds a more sustainable fundraising base. The key is showing donors the direct impact of their gifts to keep them emotionally invested in your mission.

For example, if a donation helped fund construction, send photos or videos from the build site. If a donation contributed to food security, share images of stocked fridges and data on how many families were served. When donors see the impact their donation made in the real world, they’re more likely to give again—and give more.

After sharing an update, present a new project they can help fund. Aligning an ask with a tangible outcome they helped create reinforces their sense of purpose and increases the chance of another gift.

Deepen relationships beyond donations

Beyond donation requests, deepen relationships through thoughtful, non-monetary touchpoints. Send a holiday card, or even a birthday gift, without asking for anything in return. The more seen and appreciated donors feel, the more likely they are to remain loyal to your nonprofit’s cause.

At its core, giving is emotional. Reignite that emotion by showing donors their impact and reminding them they’re part of something meaningful. For more strategies to build long-term loyalty, explore our donor retention guide.

Donor acquisition, done right

A successful donor acquisition strategy takes more than a strong list. It demands thoughtful planning, data-driven decisions, and personalized outreach at every stage. That’s how you cut waste and drive real results.

Each step supports better targeting and stronger engagement—from setting clear goals to refining your list by capacity, affinity, and timing. The right strategy, backed by fundraising intelligence tools, helps you reach ideal donors with precision. It’s about getting the right message to the right people at the right time.

But acquisition is only the starting line. Long-term value comes from retaining and growing donor relationships through consistent, thoughtful stewardship. That’s how you maximize lifetime value and build lasting trust in your mission.

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Bre Alexander

Bre Alexander is a writer and marketer focused on helping nonprofits, healthcare organizations and higher-education institutions improve their fundraising and advancement efforts to fuel their mission.