If You Want to Increase Donor Loyalty, Stop Focusing on Retention
A look at what charity: water's FY2025 paid media strategy can teach every nonprofit about growing a monthly giving program.
In a lot of nonprofit fundraising circles, retention is the golden metric. Keep your donors. Steward them well. Reduce churn. You get the point.
And yes, all of that matters. A monthly giving program with a leaky retention rate has a real problem that needs addressing.
But there is another problem I see just as often, and it gets far less airtime: nonprofits so focused on holding onto the donors they have that they put less time into strategizing how new people find them in the first place.
I recently audited a $1M monthly giving program quietly struggling with exactly this. Their retention rate was very healthy. But new monthly donors were not coming in fast enough to outpace the ones who are leaving. And over time, even a small churn rate will win out if new donors aren’t coming in.
This is the pipeline problem. And charity: water recently shared a case study that gets right to the heart of it.
What charity: water Did in FY2025
charity: water's Head of Growth shared a detailed breakdown of a significant strategic shift their team made in FY2025. Instead of optimizing their paid media spend for conversions, they shifted toward reach. The goal was pure brand awareness: getting their mission in front of more people, including people who were not yet ready to give.
Here is what the shift looked like:
They spent 23% more overall on paid media. But the bigger change was where that money went. Top of funnel investment increased by 308%, with TV receiving the bulk of that increase. Bottom of funnel spending, the kind focused on getting donations today, decreased by 9%. They were intentionally pulling back on conversion-focused tactics to prioritize awareness.
That shift helped them reach significantly more people at a lower average cost per impression, down about 28%.
On paper, that is a counterintuitive move for a nonprofit. And by some measures, it did not look great initially.
The Results (Including the Uncomfortable Ones)
Before getting to the wins, it is worth being honest about what did not go as hoped, because the nuance matters.
For one-time donors acquired through paid, the average gift dropped 27% for new donors and 29% for returning donors. For monthly donors (charity: water's program is called The Spring), new donor average gifts dropped 19% and returning donor average gifts dropped 21%. Acquisition costs spiked initially before coming back down over time. New donors coming in through reach campaigns were, in their words, "less qualified," meaning they were newer to the mission and less primed to make a significant financial commitment right away.
So why is this worth studying?
Because here is what else happened:
53% more new one-time donors acquired through paid
23% more repeat one-time donors
41% increase in one-time donor retention
6% more new Spring (monthly) donors
16% more repeat Spring donors
Monthly donor retention increased by 2%
Over time, acquisition costs came back down
They went broader. And loyalty improved.
Their key takeaway (by Brady Josephson): if you want to increase loyalty, you might need to stop focusing on loyalty.
Why Reach Affects Retention
This result feels counterintuitive at first. How does investing in brand awareness make existing donors more likely to stay?
The answer has to do with how donors build commitment over time.
When someone sees your nonprofit for the first time through a conversion-focused ad, they are being asked to make a financial decision before they have any real relationship with your mission. Even if they give, their connection to the cause is thin. They responded to an ad, not to years of knowing and trusting your work. That kind of donor is more likely to give once and not return, or to cancel a monthly gift within the first few months.
Brand awareness content works on a different timeline. When someone encounters your mission through awareness-focused content, nothing is being asked of them. They are learning what you do. Over repeated exposures, familiarity builds. And when they eventually encounter a donation opportunity, they are not strangers. They recognize you. They have some sense of your values and your work. That familiarity is what produces both better initial conversion rates and stronger long-term retention.
The donors who arrive already knowing your mission are the ones who stay. The ones who signed up without that foundation are the ones quietly canceling six months later.
This also explains the tradeoff charity: water saw with average gift size. Donors acquired through reach campaigns gave smaller gifts because they were newer to the organization. That is not a failure of the strategy. It is a natural consequence of widening the pool. Those donors have the potential to grow into larger, longer-term supporters over time, but that outcome is not guaranteed, and it requires intentional stewardship.
Where Monthly Giving Fits Into This
For anyone building or growing a monthly giving program, this is where the real conversation lives.
Monthly giving has a structural retention advantage over one-time giving. A recurring donor has to actively cancel rather than simply not give again. That matters. But it is easy to mistake that structural advantage for a substitute for a genuine connection to the mission.
A monthly donor who signed up without much familiarity with your work, maybe through a high-pressure campaign or a conversion-optimized ad, is more likely to cancel in the first year. The mechanics of monthly giving buy you some time, but they do not replace the need for donors who actually care.
The programs with the strongest retention rates I have seen share something in common: their monthly donors knew the organization before they joined. They were already volunteers, event attendees, email subscribers, social followers, or beneficiaries. They had been in the orbit of the mission long enough to feel a real connection. When they joined the monthly program, it felt like a natural next step, not a transaction.
That pipeline of warm, mission-connected people does not appear out of nowhere. It is built over time through consistent awareness activity. Which brings us back to the pipeline problem.
Even a well-run monthly giving program loses donors over time. Life changes, financial circumstances, shifting priorities. That is normal and expected. The programs that grow are the ones where new donors are consistently entering the pipeline at a rate that exceeds churn. And for that to happen, people need to find you.
What This Means If You Do Not Have a charity : water TV Budget
charity: water has resources most nonprofits do not. The scale of their paid media experiment is not replicable for the majority of organizations in this space. But the underlying principle scales down.
The question worth asking is not whether you can run TV ads. It is whether your nonprofit is investing any energy in helping new people learn that you exist, separate from asking them to donate.
Some ways to build awareness with a smaller budget:
Leaders active on LinkedIn: When the people behind a nonprofit share their work and expertise publicly, it creates awareness that no ad budget can fully replicate.
Google Ad Grants: Eligible nonprofits can access up to $10,000 per month in free Google search advertising. This is such an underutilized tool in the nonprofit space.
Organic social content focused on mission storytelling: Not every post should be a fundraising ask, or happen when there is an urgent need. Content that simply shows what your work looks like builds the kind of familiarity that converts later.
Paid social with a reach objective: Running ads optimized for reach and views rather than clicks or conversions is significantly cheaper per impression, and plants seeds with audiences who are not yet ready to give.
Podcast appearances and local media: Getting your leaders or your story in front of other audiences is a low-cost way to reach new people.
Email list growth: Building a list of mission-connected subscribers gives you an owned channel to nurture people over time toward their first (or next) gift.
That said, awareness alone does not convert anyone. Getting new people into your orbit is only half of the equation. The other half is having something worth converting them to. That means a monthly giving program with a clear identity, a compelling reason to join, and a consistent habit of invitation built into your communications. It means an email list you are actually nurturing, not just growing. It means that when someone who has been following your work for six months finally feels ready to give, there is a clear, easy path to becoming a monthly supporter.
Awareness fills the pipeline. Your program and your follow-through are what move people through it.
None of these is a quick win. Brand awareness is a long game, which is why it is easy to de-prioritize when you’re working with a small budget and limited staff time. But it is the game that makes everything else, including retention, lifetime value, and monthly giving growth, work better over time.
The Takeaway
Loyalty is an output. Reach is the input.
If you are trying to grow a monthly giving program and the focus is entirely on retention strategy, that is not wrong, but it may be incomplete. Retention work matters deeply. But a program cannot grow on retention alone.
The pipeline has to be fed. New people need to find your mission, learn to trust it, and eventually be invited to support it in a sustainable way. That process takes time, and it starts with awareness, not always with a donation ask.
The charity: water case study is a great reminder that the organizations growing long-term are not just the ones working harder on keeping donors. They are the ones consistently making sure new people know they exist.
