The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the growth of fundraising programs targeting mid-level donors, a report from fundraising consultancy Sea Change Strategies finds.

Based on data from nineteen nonprofits — whose definitions of "mid-level donor" ranged widely, from $1,000 to $1 million in annual giving — the report, The Missing Middle Part III: A Snapshot of Middle Donor Fundraising Late 2020/Early 2021 (22 pages, PDF), found that the social-distancing measures necessitated by the pandemic accelerated the transition to digital fundraising conducted via email, virtual gatherings, and social media and helped many organizations reach new supporters. Fundraisers also reported increasing outreach efforts targeting mid-level donors through handwritten notes, phone calls, and Zoom visits.

With a surge in donations in response to the public health crisis, especially from mid-level donors, the organizations in the study saw an opportunity to restructure their fundraising programs and hire additional mid-level staff to strengthen their efforts to steward, retain, and upgrade "emergency" donors to major donors. According to the report, organizations are encouraging increased coordination and alignment between mid-level and major gift teams, as well as between direct marketing and major gifts teams. In addition, many organizations are investing in professional development for their mid-level fundraising teams, including coaching and leadership development.

The study found that an effective mid-level program combines aspects of a one-to-many direct response program with the one-to-one attention of a major gifts program. As the pandemic wore on and organizations grew concerned about donor retention, mid-level fundraisers adapted their online engagement efforts and paid more personal attention to donors by, for example, inviting donor groups to provide feedback on their work or having internal volunteers make stewardship calls.

The report notes that on the down side, "even as the murder of George Floyd brought new awareness to the corrosive effects of systemic racism, it's possible that the urgent focus on adapting programs to the pandemic distracted from addressing the disturbing relationship between American philanthropy and white supremacy."

"All in all, the pandemic may have helped the bottom line as much as it hurt. Mid-level fundraising teams transformed their digital strategies and most had successful years financially," the report's authors write. "Now, perhaps attention can turn to another challenge that was spotlighted in 2020, namely the foundation of white supremacy on which most fundraising is built. Decentering whiteness will be an enormous, complex, and difficult transformation — and an urgent one."

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