How to Bring Lapsed Donors Back to Your Nonprofit

When it comes to fundraising, the ultimate goal is to find donors who will give to your nonprofit again and again.
However, donors who don’t give within 12 months of their last donation are considered lapsed, and anyone who hasn’t made a gift in 25 months or more is “deeply lapsed,” Joe Frye, senior integrated strategy director at TrueSense Marketing, said.
If you can get donors to make another donation, they’ll have a higher lifetime value and will be more impactful for your organization in the long run compared to one-time donors since they already have a connection to your organization. So, it’s important to make sure they return.
“It's also important, as we look at overall health of donor files, keeping what we call multi-year donors around,” Frye said. “Part of that is making sure that donors that do lapse, we reactivate — and a lot of times those donors can become our cause champions. … When we look at overall long-term value of donors, multi-year donors, of course, are the best. But once we get into the reactivated donors, we see a higher long-term value than we do with new donors coming on, so it's oftentimes a better place to invest.”
Here’s how you can encourage lapsed donors to renew their commitment to your nonprofit.
Related story: How to Increase Retention by Creating a Sense of Belonging for Your Donors
The Basics for Identifying Lapsed Donors
While the standard time since a lapsed donor’s last gift is 12 months, there is some nuance in timing when it comes to recurring giving.
“If they sign on to be a monthly donor and they miss a month, I wouldn't consider that to be lapsed,” Caroline Chick, partner and managing director at CCS Fundraising, said. “There might be a particular reason why they missed that month. I think the important question is: Did they start giving again after that month?”
There are several reasons donors might stop giving to your organization. Some of these include:
- Not feeling engaged with and connected to your organization.
- Shift in philanthropic priorities.
- Feeling oversolicited or inappropriately solicited by your organization.
- Organizational changes within your nonprofit.
- Major life transitions.
- Financial hardship.
- Forgetting to give or being behind on giving.
- Competition for discretionary spending.
As a fundraiser, knowing which of these factors has led a donor to lapse can be key to informing your reengagement strategy. So how do you identify the reason? The fact of the matter is that it’s difficult to puzzle out the exact reason.
“I test a lot more in reactivation than I test across most other donor segments because we're trying to rekindle a fire that has gone out for some reason,” Frye said. “We maybe have some data that tells us it went out because they just stopped looking at our stuff. Maybe we stopped sending [emails] to them. Maybe their inbox filtered it into their promotions tab instead of their general tab all of a sudden.”
When it comes to larger-dollar donors, however, the simplest way to find out why they’ve stopped giving is to just ask.
“There might be a data-driven answer to that, but, by and large, it's a conversation or some kind of communication between the fundraiser and the donor themselves,” Chick said. “If the relationship supports it, it's a fair question to ask in the right way, in the right environment and in the right circumstance. Meet with the donor to say, ‘Thank you so much for all the support you have given us over the years. We continue to evolve and grow as a result, and I’m just curious: What caused you to stop giving?’ That can be done again in a very tactful way, but it's not more complicated than that to ask the question.”
The Priorities in Lapsed Donor Renewal Efforts
Lapsed donors of all levels are important to reengage, but it can be difficult to manage a reengagement strategy for every donor — especially if you have limited resources — time, staff, etc. So, where should you focus your efforts?
Chick said major donors play a huge role in fundraising, so make sure to key on these donors. You should complement your major donor reengagement by also focusing on donors who could fit into your planned giving file.
Across giving levels, Frye added that newly lapsed donors may be more responsive than those who haven’t given in more than two years, so reaching out to them may be most effective.
He also suggested looking at why someone gave in the first place to gauge how likely they are to give again. For instance, if someone made their first gift in response to a premium item offering — like a stuffed animal or something similar — they may not be a great fit for your mission, and it might be more difficult to renew their gift.
The Strategies for Lapsed Donor Reengagement
When it comes to renewing lapsed donors, it’s important to adjust how often you’re communicating with them.
“If they haven't given in two fiscal years, that doesn't mean you should stop asking them for money, but the point at which you want to engage — to try to maintain their giving — is within two years of their last gift,” said Sharon Tiknis, chief client experience officer at Alford Group, said. “So, if you have created a strategy to try to retain that donor and you have … attempted over 18 to 24 months to reconnect with that donor and not either reconnected or received a gift, then I would move that donor into another category of ‘continue to communicate, continue to invite to give,’ but that's not where your time is going to yield higher results.”
Chick added that you also need to assess how much a lapsed donor has given in the past.
“If it's somebody that has been lapsed for a year, it might just mean an uptick on communications — some kind of personal outreach, whether it’s email or phone call, inviting them to events, that type of thing — and try to reengage them that way,” Chick said. “If it's a donor that hasn't given in several years, but it's a high-level donor or potential high-level donor, that really requires a nuanced personal approach. All of philanthropy should be personal, but, [for] some of it, you go a little deeper in that personal nature than other circumstances.”
If you find out a donor has stopped giving for a particular reason — say, because they can’t afford to make a gift right now — you can use that to your advantage.
“If a donor is communicative enough to say, ‘I’ve fallen on difficult financial times. I'm not able to give this year,’ then strategizing around how to, A, engage them in another way, perhaps in a volunteer capacity, and B, continue the communications to stay in front of them and top of mind and feeling connected,” Chick said. “I would advise on both of those strategies, but certainly there are ways to keep donors or former donors connected.”
Most importantly, you should be trying to keep donors from lapsing in the first place.
“We start trying to retain them the day they donate,” Frye said. “And if we don't do that, we should be doing that.”
In other words, your retention strategy is your first line of defense against donor lapses. This includes everything from sharing impact reports to celebrating donor-versaries.
And, above all, don’t stop communicating with a donor — or worse, remove them from your database — just because they haven’t made a gift in a while.
“Keep them on your mailing list to receive impact reports; maybe ask them once a year for a donation, but don't keep on asking them for a donation every two weeks,” Tiknis said. “... They're going to unfriend you or unsubscribe to your mailing list if they feel like you're asking for money every two weeks, and they’ve already demonstrated ‘you're no longer a philanthropic giving priority for me.’ So don’t stop talking to those donors who haven’t given, but don’t keep soliciting them at a high rate.”

Kalie VanDewater is associate content and online editor at NAPCO Media.