For nonprofit fundraisers, building trust with donors is essential.
Donor relationships built on trust and engagement lead to more consistent and larger gifts over time.
However, many organizations struggle to make the case for investing in engagement. A recent podcast featuring fundraising experts Louis Diez and Ron Cohen provides data-driven insights on how trust pays off.
Diez and Cohen’s analysis of nearly 10,000 donors from multiple organizations found a clear correlation between donors’ level of engagement and lifetime giving.
Donors who reported interacting with an organization at least five times in the past year and said they felt “always” or “very often” valued gave at higher levels. For example, donors who gave between $2,500 to $10,000 were twice as likely to be highly engaged as the average donor.
Highly engaged donors were five times more likely to have made gifts over $100,000.
Extrapolating from these findings, Cohen estimates that increasing the number of highly engaged donors—even modestly—could result in over $1 million in additional lifetime revenue. Of course, revenue generation is not guaranteed, but focusing on engagement and trust-building strengthens relationships in a way that motivates giving.
How can organizations build trust and increase engagement? Cohen and Diez recommend reporting back to donors on surveys and campaigns to show their impact, acknowledging all gifts sincerely, and inviting more touchpoints that make donors feel valued.
- For major donors, that may mean in-person meetings.
- For annual fund donors, sharing stories of how gifts were used can help build emotional connections.
While relationships take work, focusing on engagement and trust pays long-term dividends.
Diez urges organizations not to see engagement as a “wishy-washy feel good thing” but as a strategic imperative.
By valuing and cultivating supportive communities, organizations build goodwill that generates revenue and spreads through advocacy and word-of-mouth.
Though soft on the surface, trust produces hard results.
The data shows engagement matters—and building trust leads to dollars.
Get the full recording for this Donor Participation Project session in our resource library!