Face-to-face fundraising and the first year after the yes

In 2025, nonprofits raised more money from fewer people. Data from the Fundraising Effectiveness Project shows total dollars grew an estimated 5.0% on 2024, while the number of donors fell 3.6%, a decline that has run every year since 2021. Retention of new donors stayed essentially flat.

The project’s Q4 2025 report calls turning a first gift into a second “the most consequential unsolved problem in the donor pipeline.” Face-to-face fundraising has to answer that problem directly, because every person a street or event campaign signs up is a new donor.

Why the ask is monthly

In the US, face-to-face programs ask for monthly gifts. Erica Waasdorp, president of A Direct Solution, wrote in 2019 that the channel was growing partly because it brings in younger donors, and that more organizations were signing new donors straight into monthly giving instead of trying to convert one-time donors later.

Monthly donors stay longer than one-time donors. Neon One’s 2026 Recurring Donor Report, built on three years of transaction data from 4,107 nonprofits, put 2025 retention at 79.11% for recurring donors and 32.41% for non-recurring donors. The average recurring donor stayed 7.5 to 8 years; the average one-time donor, 1.5 to 2.

The face-to-face number

Signing someone up monthly does not keep them. In the same 2019 piece, Waasdorp put the average retention rate for face-to-face monthly donors at 33% in 2017, the lowest of any channel for monthly donors, and nearly twice the 19% rate for new one-time donors from direct mail. She also reported that organizations running face-to-face programs for longer saw much higher retention, with the top programs keeping better than 80% of these donors.

Both figures describe the same channel. The difference between 33% and 80% sits in how the programs were run.

What we do after the yes

The last step of our approach is building lasting donor relationships. In practice that means thank-you touchpoints, onboarding written with retention in mind, and reporting you can read.

It starts before the sign-up. Representatives are briefed on your cause and give clear information and honest asks, so a donor knows what they are supporting when they agree to a monthly gift.

Then it gets measured. We report acquisition, retention and cost per donor back to you, so retention for the donors a campaign signed sits in the same report as what each one cost to acquire.