In 2026, six million fewer people donated to charity than a decade ago (CAF). With fewer donors in the pool, it’s now more competitive, and the charities that can compete are the ones that will grow their income.
We’re used to competition. We spent decades helping businesses in competitive markets to succeed, and it’s that experience we bring to the charity sector.
Competition requires nonprofits to do two things that they aren’t always good at: they need to make it known that they are worth supporting, and they need to make supporting them easy.
And they have to do this because when people are engaged with charities, they support them more generously and, for many, they want to feel part of something greater than themselves.
Earning support
This requires focus, brand clarity, content, and communications.
Are people discovering you? Can they find you? Do they understand what you do and why it matters? Does your digital presence build the kind of trust that makes someone think “yes, I want to give to them”? The CAF data is unambiguous here: donors with high trust give (on average) more than twice as much as those with low trust, and are significantly more likely to give.
If there’s no trust, there will be no income.
Making support easy
This involves close attention to the mechanics; revenue & donation flows, campaign pages, stewardship sequences, CRM, data.
Are you making it easy for someone who’s ready to give to go through with it?
If you offer online retail, is it easy to buy from you?
Are you making them feel good about having done it?
Are you giving them reasons to come back?
All of this, and more, has to work together. A frictionless donation page means nothing if nobody knows about you, cares, or trusts you enough to use it. Perfect brand communications mean nothing if the donate button leads somewhere with overly complex forms that don’t work well on mobile, your visitors will leave before they complete. it’s 2026 and I still find forms without ApplePay or GooglePay.
And if once they do donate, if you don’t acknowledge it, & maintain that relationship, someone else will step-in and get their next donation.