3 Key Considerations for Cultivating Mid-Level Donors

While small-dollar donors continue to be important for nonprofits, supporters making larger gifts are critical pieces of the revenue puzzle. Lower-dollar donors contribute 64% of nonprofits’ overall revenue, while mid-level donors and major donors disproportionately provide 30% and 7%, respectively, Matt Frattura, chief strategy officer at Moore, shared during the 2025 Nonprofit Fundraisers Symposium, hosted by Direct Marketing Association of Washington (DMAW) and The Nonprofit Alliance, in Washington, D.C.

During the “Building a Bridge to Mid-Level Giving” panel session, Frattura highlighted data from Moore’s survey of nearly 200 nonprofits. The survey found that over three consecutive years, these organizations experienced low rates of donor upgrades.

“The percentage of donors who are upgrading from a lower-dollar definition to mid-level is a little more than 0.5% — small number,” Frattura said. “And then the percentage of folks who are upgrading from our mid-level definition to major: 1.75 percentage point.”

However, the survey identified a concerning trend of downgrading among both mid-level (those contributing between $1,000 and $9,999) and major donors (contributing $10,000-plus).

“Forty percent of annual mid-level donors are downgrading to the lower value of giving,” Frattura said. “The number has been shockingly consistent for three consecutive years: 39.6%, 39.9%, 39.8%.” 

Meanwhile, 27.5% of major donors dropped to mid-level, according to the data.

To help your organization identify, cultivate and retain these crucial mid-level donors, here are three key insights from the panel to consider.

1. Implement Omnichannel Communication

Most nonprofits are using multiple channels to communicate with their donors. When it comes to omnichannel communication, however, making sure your channels work in tandem to create multiple touch points for your donors can help unlock an upgrade to mid-level giving.

Shriners Hospitals for Children’s gift officers or field officers would sometimes “claim” a mid-level prospect by marking their record with a “do not solicit” code, Alan Stininger, the nonprofit’s executive director of direct response marketing, said. This kept those donors from receiving communications that were major drivers of donations — namely direct mail.

“We did an analysis, and that was impacting our revenue, because they would have those one-on-one relationships, but we didn't see an increase in giving — we actually saw a decrease in giving,” Stininger said. “They weren't getting the patient stories that [other donors] were getting through our direct response.”

This was an issue that has now been addressed, Stininger said.

It also would be unwise to leave donors out of certain communications just because it’s not the channel they donated through, Ishmam Rahman, director of audience and donor strategy at International Rescue Committee, added.

“For online donors, they still should receive direct mail, because we've seen in mid-level that online donors’ giving lifts — even though they're not giving through offline means — because we’re sending them something in the mail,” Rahman said.

2. Focus on Stewardship

Stewarding your supporters after they make a donation should be a given.

“I really think for mid-level donors, retention really comes from what the post-gift journey is like and how authentic and quick and engaging it is,” Rahman said. “It doesn't matter if the donor doesn't engage back with you, but they are seeing that you are reaching out to them.”

This is especially important for those who show indications for upgrading to mid-level. Devi Vat Ho, senior manager for mid-level gifts at USA for UNHCR, The UN Refugee Agency, said that this is a huge focus for her team in 2025.

“What we're focusing on this year is identifying the right mid-level prospects in our [individual giving] file who are those donors that we're going to take and segment and put on a donor journey for at least 12 months, and … [give] them some mid-level treatment — different appeals, more impact reporting — to see if those donors, over time, will upgrade,” Vat Ho said, “We know the response rate will probably be lower, but the donor lifetime value and average gift will be a lot higher.”

Another part of stewardship is expressing gratitude for your donors’ gifts. At Shriners Hospitals for Children, Stininger explained that some donors who came through direct mail were already making mid-level-size donations. So, the organization moved them into its mid-level community and made sure they knew their donations were appreciated.

“We spend a lot of time establishing a welcome series,” he said, “and what does that journey look like, welcoming these donors that have upgraded and are now part of this society? We utilized AVM — automated voice messages — which were personalized messages from our chief philanthropy officer. We've seen that be very impactful.”

3. Explore Branding Opportunities

Creating a community of mid-level donors can help them feel close to your cause, and coming up with a brand for your mid-level donors may help.

For instance, the International Rescue Committee created the Rescue Collective, which comprises donors giving more than $1,000 (Rescue Collective Leaders), planned giving donors (Rescue Collective Changemakers) and sustainers (Rescue Collective Partners).

“When we were forming this and doing research across the board, we were seeing that a lot of people have giving programs that are very divorced from the primary brand, and you don't want that,” Rahman said. “You want your secondary brand to ladder up to your primary brand, so that everything echoes each other. So, Rescue Collective is a callback to the [International Rescue Committee] rescue community, and the brands work for each other; they're reinforcing each other.”

And as previously mentioned, Shriners Hospitals for Children built a community via its Hope and Healing Society to help reach more of its mid-level prospects.

“Making that connection to ‘hope and healing’ was something that our donors were already seeing in a lot of their communications,” Stininger said. “But then being very intentional, too, with how do we want to position our communication pieces to look different than our standard [individual giving] communication pieces that are going out? How do we make them feel elevated? How do we personalize them more and make them feel more specialized?”

While USA for UNHCR does not currently have a branded program, Vat Ho said it’s something worth looking into.

“I've been on the fence about it because we're not a membership-based program, and if we branded it, I feel like it should come from the top,” she said. “It should be all of USA for UNHCR because mid-level donors overlap in a lot of spaces. They're planned giving donors, they're also sustainers, they move on to be major gifts. So, if we branded the mid-level program, but didn't make it cohesive among all the different programs, then the donor experience with us is a little disjointed. But we are researching it this year.”