Losing donors hurts all nonprofit -- food banks included. In Q4 2024, only 41.9% of U.S. donors stayed, and over 80% of new donors left within a year. This means you’re always hunting for new supporters.

This endless cycle is tiring. You pour your heart into fighting hunger, but replacing donors costs five times more than keeping them. It’s frustrating to watch donors slip away, unsure how to make them stay with fundraising ideas like email marketing.

Be hopeful—there’s a fix! Use proven email marketing tricks from for-profit businesses to keep donors.

Email brings in 14% of online funds and boosts retention by 29% for offline donors, supporting monthly giving (36% of food bank revenue).

Learn simple email strategies for Welcome, Education, Upsell, and Winback campaigns to hold onto donors. Read on for fundraising ideas you can use today!

Businesses today send emails using pre-set sequences.  Each sequence has a set number of emails that are sent, in order, to the recipients over a space of time.  The topics of the emails vary depending upon the purpose of each sequence.

The advantage of using automated email campaigns is that it offloads the burden of having to manually create and send the exact same email every hour or every day for the exact same reason.

Offloading this routine task to automated email campaigns leaves the email marketer free to focus their attention upon one-off campaigns promoting special events.

Welcome campaigns are the most basic type of automated email campaigns.  These emails are called a “Welcome Campaign” because they thank new subscribers right after they share their email. 

The first email of the Welcome Campaign should do the following:

The typical Welcome Campaign is 3 to 5 emails long.  But I’ve seen shorter and I’ve seen longer. 

As the donor manager of a non-profit foodbank, use the Welcome Campaign to tell the story of your organization from its beginning to present day. 

The more they know about your organization, the more they trust.  The more they trust, the more likely they are to donate.

Send at least 3 emails to take readers through your organization’s history. After the first email, wait a day, then send the second. This one shares how your food bank began. Who started it? When? Why? What’s the human story behind it?

The next emails highlight key moments in your food bank's history. Each one shares a special human story.

The final email describes your food bank today. Include details like how many people you feed each week or how much food (pounds or tons) you give out. Name big organizations that donate to you.

For-profit businesses use Education Campaigns to show customers how to get the most benefits out of using their products. Non-profits need a different plan. Your donors give money but don’t get the direct benefits.

Still, use Education Campaigns for your audience. Education Campaign emails start after someone donates.

The benefit of giving is feeling good about helping others. Your Education Campaign’s goal is to keep that good feeling going.

Send emails with stories about how donations save lives.  Invite them to actively experience the good feelings by volunteering.

Upsell and Replenishment Campaigns are used to convert Buyers into Repeat Buyers.

The goal of an Upsell Campaign is to get someone to buy a more expensive version of the product they just bought or to get them to purchase accessories for that product.

A Replenishment Campaign is used for things that people use up and need to replace like cosmetics, pet food, and household cleaners. Replenishment Campaigns are also used to convert one-time buyers into subscription buyers.

Likewise, Upsell and Replenishment Campaigns turn one-time donors into repeat donors.

An Upsell Campaign encourages donors to give more next time. It shows how a bigger donation feels even better.  Use an Upsell Campaign to ask donors to increase their gift. Explain how giving more helps more people.

A Replenishment Campaign turns one-time donors into monthly donors. Recurrig donations are the best for fundraising because they're predictable. Use a Replenishment Campaign to get donors to give monthly. Offer big donations split into small monthly payments. Smaller amounts feel easier to give.

A Winback Campaign isn’t about winning back donors.

It’s about cleaning your email list by removing people who don’t read your emails.

Email providers notice when people ignore your emails. The number of non-readers affects how many of your emails land in inboxes or spam folders.

Every email counts. You want most emails to reach inboxes. That’s why you need a Winback Campaign running all the time.

Add people to your Winback Campaign if they haven’t opened your emails in 60 days or more.

Be careful with these non-readers. Don’t send too many emails at once. Send 100 to 150 emails to them each day.

Send up to 3 emails. Each one shares your food bank’s story and the good you do.

Make the emails tug at their hearts to help others. After the 3 emails, add anyone who still hasn't read any of them to your Do Not Mail list.

You can stop donor loss and build trust with email marketing.

Use Welcome, Education, Upsell/Replenishment, and Winback campaigns to keep donors giving longer.

These for-profit strategies, adapted for your food bank, turn one-time donors into loyal supporters.

Feel hopeful!  Your work fighting hunger grows stronger with every email.

Start these fundraising ideas today to boost donor retention. Don’t wait! Test one campaign this week and watch your donors stay.