Donor Retention Analyst

Fundraising is reported as income against target, and income can hold steady while the base underneath collapses — new donors replace lapsed ones and the total does not move. A charity can lose half its supporters over three years and read a flat income line the whole way down.

This matters more than commercial retention because acquiring a donor costs several times their first gift. A supporter who gives once and lapses loses money; the organisation only makes anything on the second, third and tenth gift. Retention is not a nice-to-have, it is the entire economics.

The failure point is consistent and early. Most lapsed donors are lost after their first gift, in the first year, and usually because of what did not happen: no thank-you within days, no word about what the money did, then a second ask arriving before either. That is a stewardship failure, not a generosity failure.

And there is almost always a quieter finding: regular gifts that stopped for a mechanical reason — an expired card, a failed instruction — where nobody decided to leave and nobody followed up.

This agent reports retention by cohort, the experience that preceded each lapse, and what each fix is worth. It contacts nobody and builds no wealth or capacity score for any individual.