The Social Impact Solutions Podcast · Social Impact Solutions

The Evolution of Fundraising: Donor Insights with Matt Bowe

·44 min·3 clips

Sarah sees a flood story at night, tries to donate, and the failed checkout makes her stop.

The conversation starts with the show’s core promise: helping mission-driven leaders measure and market their social impact so they can raise more money and do more good. Lauren and John Martin introduce Matt Bowe from FundraiseUp and frame the discussion around the Pulse of the Donor report. Matt is described as the Director of Strategic and Enterprise Customer Success at FundraiseUp, with over 11 years of experience driving growth and retention for high-impact organizations. From there, the episode turns to donor behavior and why the report matters for nonprofits planning for 2026 and beyond. The hosts encourage listeners to read the report in the show notes or on FundraiseUp’s website. The discussion then lands on a simple idea: donor journeys can be designed, not just observed after the fact. One of the main threads is that recurring donors should be treated as a journey, not just as a one-time donation followed by cancellation. Matt uses FundraiseUp’s Pause to Cancel feature as a concrete example. That example gets compared to a consumer subscription analogy. Matt points to the rapid rise of pause-to-cancel and pause-to-resume behavior in consumer subscriptions, with Netflix cited as a leader in that space, and says the increase is on the order of 300 percent. The point is that donor behavior now includes similar expectations around flexibility and continuity. Lauren puts the tradeoff plainly: an organization may choose to give up some immediate revenue if that creates more long-term value. The episode treats that choice as strategic. As the conversation continues, the speakers connect these ideas to the growth of social channels and the wider donor population. They suggest that those forces will make individualized journeys even more important. Near the end, Lauren asks whether this is a short-term shift or something deeper, and Matt says there is no reason to assume it is short-term and that they are seeing the beginning of several trends. The episode closes by pointing listeners back to the report and by reinforcing the show’s practical goal: turn clearer donor insight into better decisions for real organizations.

As heard by us

A practical donor-strategy episode that turns FundraiseUp's report into usable planning guidance.

This episode uses FundraiseUp's Pulse of the Donor report to ground donor behavior in concrete terms for nonprofits. Matt Bowe, FundraiseUp's Director of Strategic and Enterprise Customer Success, joins the hosts to walk through what the report suggests about donor journeys and…

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

If you want a grounded read on the Pulse of the Donor report before planning 2026 campaigns, start here.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from The Social Impact Solutions Podcast