Nonprofit Leadership Podcast · Dr. Rob Harter

Fundraising Trends You Need to Know for 2026

·38 min·2 clips

"I don't believe in donor fatigue. I believe that donors are fatigued from being manipulated."

1. The Nonprofit Leadership Podcast episode on fundraising trends for 2026 centers on a $52 billion figure from Giving Tuesday Data Commons and on why small-dollar donor counts keep declining. 2. Host Dr. Rob Harder interviews Julia Campbell, who has worked in the nonprofit sector for about 20 years, hosts the Nonprofit Nation podcast, and runs an annual online social media conference. 3. Campbell's thesis is that nonprofits under-ask, under-communicate and treat donors as transactions, and that the fix is to invite people into the mission rather than worry about annoying them. 4. She cites Woodrow Rosenbaum, chief data officer of Giving Tuesday, as saying nonprofits leave $52 billion on the table, and she urges recurring giving programs because consumers already hold subscriptions, with about 20 on her own account. 5. She says overall giving is up because of major gifts while the number of individual donors is down, and she recalls that during COVID food pantry clients saw need rise "50% to 100%" yet hesitated to email donors. 6. She rejects "donor fatigue" in favor of manipulation fatigue, naming the Suzanne Somers ads and the Sarah McLachlan ASPCA commercial, and criticizes bought email lists and thank-you-free small-dollar donor databases. 7. For impact storytelling she praises Plummer Youth Promise in Salem, Massachusetts, which places foster children in "forever homes" and shares an update from a 19-year-old making his first donation, and Amirah, which shares staff and program stories about women in New England. 8. She advises treating corporate sponsors as partners, with video interviews instead of logo posts ("No one cares about that"), and recommends telling donor-advised fund donors that the charity accepts DAFs, drawing on a conversation with Mitch Stein. 9. On technology, she suggests using ChatGPT to turn a 25-page annual report into LinkedIn and Instagram posts, and she notes the American Red Cross and American Heart Association sent Giving Tuesday Facebook DMs and some charities sent SMS messages she welcomed as friendly reminders. 10. Nonprofit fundraisers, development staff and small-organization leaders rethinking donor communication would get the most from it.

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