Everyone knows year-end giving isn’t going wherever. Actually, M+R reviews that almost all nonprofits raised 10% of their income over the past week of 2025 alone.
Nevertheless, when you’re ready till the tip of the yr to have interaction and steward your donors via e-mail, you’re lacking out on extra donation alternatives and significantly hindering your relationship constructing.
As an alternative of simply asking them for an end-of-year present, you possibly can construct stronger retention charges via year-round emails that invite your donors to be part of one thing bigger.
The State of Nonprofit Emails
The excellent news: nonprofits are seeing important alternatives with e-mail proper now.
In 2025, income from emails elevated by a mean of 16%. And organizations raised a mean of $2.40 per subscriber, which was up 28% from 2024.
These emails weren’t all squeezed into the final quarter of the yr. Nonprofits despatched a mean of 50 emails per subscriber – 62% of which included fundraising messaging.
If you happen to haven’t already arrange a year-round e-mail program that nurtures donor relationships and invitations them to take part in methods past monetary giving, now’s the time to behave.
Why You Ought to Ship 12 months-Spherical Emails
It might sound apparent, but it surely’s true: donors give as a result of they need to be part of your mission.
If all they hear from you is one thank-you message and a year-end attraction, they aren’t invited in to be a part of your group’s journey. They usually’re much less more likely to really feel like their present mattered, which implies they’re much less possible to present once more.
Constant e-mail outreach, then again, results in larger engagement, which may enhance each your retention price and the quantity of donations you obtain all year long.
And it pays off: 33% of donors report that e-mail is what conjures up them to present.
The right way to Handle 12 months-Spherical Donor Stewardship Emails
In case your e-mail calendar provides you a way of dread, this part is for you. Possibly you assume you don’t have the capability to ship common emails. Possibly you assume your quarterly e-newsletter does sufficient of the heavy lifting for you. Or possibly you’re simply undecided what to ship out.
Right here’s tips on how to flip the concept of year-round e-mail outreach right into a actuality.
1. Simplify what you ship
Take some strain off by simplifying your outreach.
Not each donor e-mail must be polished and extremely designed. Actually, plain textual content emails – the sort you ship to your teammates – can typically outperform HTML-designed emails.
Simplified emails really feel extra private and direct, and might even earn higher inbox placement.
Moreover, think about methods to simplify the content material to make common emails a better carry for you and your staff.
All year long, your emails ought to:
- Educate donors about your actions and what their present supported.
- Invite donors to take part in different methods, like volunteering or signing a petition (extra on this in a bit).
- Share thrilling information, like new partnerships or grants.
- Inform attention-grabbing tales that exhibit your affect.
When you establish the varieties of issues it’s worthwhile to ship out to donors, planning to create and repurpose content material turns into simpler.
2. Observe frameworks that work
You’ll be able to’t copy the emails different nonprofits ship to their donors. However you possibly can depend on tried-and-true frameworks to learn from what has labored for different fundraisers.
For instance, Lee O’Connell, a nonprofit strategist, shares her most well-liked framework to construct supporter connection through e-mail: write from an individual, write to an individual, and write about an individual.
This framework ensures your writing stays centered on folks, which ends up in deeper engagement and extra memorable communications.
This easy three-step framework ensures your e-mail is grounded in humanity and connection, growing your possibilities of engagement.
3. Make totally different sorts of asks
As I discussed earlier, fundraising emails made up 62% of all emails despatched by nonprofits in 2025, in keeping with M+R. Which means the remaining 38% weren’t asking for donations – they have been offering different varieties of worth.
One factor you are able to do to steward donors and make them really feel extra concerned in your trigger is to ask them to become involved.
Invite them to a donor appreciation occasion. Encourage participation at your subsequent volunteer day. Ship them surveys to get their opinions on essential points.
The objective right here is each to grasp your donors higher (and due to this fact construct stronger relationships) and make them really feel like a priceless associate.
4. Automate, automate, automate
Join with donors extra continuously via automated (however not generic!) e-mail outreach.
Darrin Cook dinner, founder and Chief Architect of My Mogul Media, argues that good instruments like automation shield your power.
“Automation is usually misunderstood as a menace to human connection,” he writes. “In actuality, well-designed programs can shield empathy by eradicating friction and creating area for presence.”
Some examples of automated sequence you possibly can leverage embody:
- A welcome sequence to onboard new donors
- A reengagement sequence for lapsed donors
- An engagement marketing campaign round your affect report
Create considerate content material on your automated sequence to simplify your workload and preserve constructing these donor relationships.
Summer time Stewardship Collection Instance
Through the summer time months, additionally recognized endearingly because the Summer time Hunch, figuring out what to ship donors can really feel even tougher.
However with the instruments outlined above, you possibly can create an automatic engagement sequence to impress these supporters and keep in contact.
Right here’s an instance of the cadence and messaging you might automate to nurture donors through the summer time months:
- Early June: Ship a donor survey asking what points they’re most involved about, related to your trigger.
- Mid to Late June: Share a narrative a few volunteer and encourage donors to enroll.
- Early July: Share a narrative out of your affect report and encourage donors to obtain your report back to learn extra.
- Mid to Late July: Share a narrative a few beneficiary to exhibit affect and embody an motion like signing a petition or clicking a hyperlink to study extra.
- Early August: Showcase a particular program you supply and hyperlink to a donation type to gather donations for that program.
- Mid to Late August: Start constructing momentum on your year-end or Giving Tuesday campaigns.
Notice: To make sure donors don’t obtain too many emails, arrange triggers primarily based on e-mail habits. For instance, you would possibly need to ship a follow-up e-mail to somebody who didn’t open your earlier ship (use this sparingly!), or chances are you’ll need to ship particular content material to somebody who clicked a particular hyperlink.
Searching for a platform to make automating donor outreach simpler? Donorbox CRM’s E mail Advertising and marketing software means that you can automate workflows from the identical place the place all of your donor information lives. That makes it simpler to section donors, observe their historical past, and create branded emails multi function place.
Be taught Extra About Donorbox CRM
Ultimate Ideas
E mail will not be a one-and-done resolution. Used accurately, it’s a strong software to steward donors all year long, resulting in extra donations and even growing participation in these year-end campaigns.
So, create a method centered on constructing relationships, and hunt down highly effective instruments to streamline the method and make it be just right for you.
Lindsey Bower
Lindsey Bower is a author and nonprofit marketing consultant with a background in digital advertising, membership administration, and training. At present, she serves because the Content material Advertising and marketing Supervisor at Donorbox, the place she shares her experience with fundraisers via blogs, newsletters, podcasts, and extra.
