Generated by All in One SEO Pro v5.0.1.1, this is an llms-full.txt file, used by LLMs to index the site. # Avid The Fundraising Operating System ## Posts ### [Treasure Coast Food Bank Increases Donor Conversion by 103% Using Avid's Propensity Model](https://avidai.com/blog/treasure-coast-food-bank-increases-donor-conversion-by-103-using-avids-propensity-model/) **Published:** September 1, 2026 **Author:** Karina Rodríguez **Excerpt:** See how Treasure Coast Food Banks increased donations by 103% using Avid's propensity models. **Content:** ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/Treasure-Coast-Food-Bank-Logo.webp)[Treasure Coast Food Bank](https://stophunger.org/) runs a summer match campaign every year. It’s a straightforward ask: A matching gift is on the table, and it’s a chance to bring back the donors who already believe in the mission. But every campaign has the same open question. *Who else looks like they’d give, if only they were asked?* Working with their agency partner, [Brad Cecil & Associates](https://cecilcommunication.com/), Treasure Coast used Avid’s **propensity model** to find out. #### The Results ## Avid Identifies High-Likelihood Donors Before a Single Email Goes Out Avid’s propensity model audience led to **a 103% increase in campaign donations**—leveraging data across Treasure Coast’s fundraising tools to find the most likely donors. ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/TreasureCoast_Blog_Stats-1024x540.png.webp)- 103% increase in conversion rate over the standard donor list - 57% conversion rate among donors surfaced by Avid’s propensity model - 88% increase in average gift size among those donors - 96.9% level of confidence in the result With no changes to the campaign itself, Avid’s propensity model alone was the difference between a good campaign and a great one. ### What is a propensity model?+ A propensity model uses data from all your sources—your CRM, donation platform, email engagement, and more—to create an audience of people most likely to take an action. This is not just a “prediction.” It’s an analysis of behavioral patterns to find your next most likely donors. #### The Challenge ## Knowing Who’s Likely to Give, Beyond the Usual List Every summer match, Treasure Coast Food Bank sends the same campaign to the same core group: people who gave to the match in previous years. It works, but it also leaves an obvious question unanswered: ***Which donors would have given if they had just been asked?*** Somewhere in the broader donor file are people who never gave to last year’s summer match, but who look a lot like the donors who did. The challenge was finding them before the campaign launched, not after, when it’s too late to include them. **Without Avid, this would mean manually pulling donor history**, mapping giving patterns, and building a model by hand for every campaign. Brad Cecil & Associates needed a faster and more effective way to identify these donors for Treasure Coast Food Bank. #### The Solution ## A Propensity Model Built to Find Lookalike Donors in Minutes ### 1. Avid Built a List of Likely Donors ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/TreasureCoast_Blog_Edna-830x1024.png.webp) Brad Cecil & Associates gave Avid one input: everyone who gave to Treasure Coast’s 2025 summer match. This audience can be built by simply prompting [Edna](https://avidai.com/meet-edna/)—the fundraising agent inside of Avid: “Create an audience of donors who gave to the appeal named 2025 Summer Match Campaign.” Then, used that list to build a propensity model—identifying donors in the broader file who hadn’t given to the previous year’s match, but shared the giving patterns of those who had. ### 2. The Test Stayed Clean To isolate the model’s impact, Treasure Coast changed nothing else. Same emails, same copy, same donation page—all sent to both the propensity list and the standard donor list. Any difference in results would come down to one thing: whether Avid could correctly identify who was likely to give. ### 3. The Model Found Donors the Standard List Missed 57% of the donors that Avid identified made donations. That’s more than double the 28% conversion rate of the standard list. In total, that is **a 103% increase in donations**, with a 96.9% level of confidence behind it. **The donors that Avid identified also gave 88% more.** Average gift size among donors Avid surfaced came in 88% higher than the standard list. The model wasn’t just finding more donors, it was finding some of Treasure Coast’s most generous ones. **Without Avid, generous donors would have been left off the list entirely.** Instead, the Avid propensity model allowed Treasure Coast to reach more donors who converted and gave generously. ## What’s Next Having proven the model on digital, Treasure Coast and Brad Cecil & Associates are now looking at applying the same propensity model to [direct mail](https://avidai.com/components/directmail/), where finding the right people to give has a higher impact on costs and ROI. ## Use Avid’s Propensity Models for Your Next Campaign Traditional modeled audiences are expensive. They often take a data scientist or a 3rd party contractor weeks to create. And they’re often limited to only the most sophisticated fundraising programs. With Avid, your modeled audiences are ready in minutes. No extra fees. No waiting on a contractor. Just generate the list. Sync it to your channels. And launch your campaign. Want to see how Avid’s propensity models work with your tools? [Schedule a tour of Avid to learn more »](https://avidai.com/book-your-demo/) **Categories:** Customer Stories --- ### [Your Year-End Fundraising Plan | Webinar Recap](https://avidai.com/blog/your-year-end-fundraising-plan-webinar-recap/) **Published:** August 21, 2026 **Author:** Nathan Hill **Excerpt:** Revenue is up. Individual gifts are larger. But fewer people are giving every year. See how you can reverse the trend this year-end. **Content:** Revenue is up. Individual gifts are larger. Acquisition is climbing. By every headline metric, the state of fundraising looks pretty good right now. But there’s a number hiding underneath all of that — one that doesn’t make the front page of the [Giving USA report](https://givingusa.org/) — and it’s the number that should be keeping every development director up at night. **Donor participation has declined for five straight years.** Compounding, every single year. That’s not a typo. And it’s not a blip. How do you get ahead of this in your year-end plans? **Teams that are seeing growth embody this core belief:** *The donors you already have are the ones that matter most.* ### Watch the full conversation with [Nathan Hill](https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathan-peter-hill/) & [Karina Rodriguez.](https://www.linkedin.com/in/karina-rodriguez-0ba358105/) --- ## Revenue Looks Good. But Generosity is Down. Giving USA data from 2025 tells an optimistic story on the surface. Individual giving was up 4.1%. Foundations up. Corporate giving up. Even bequest giving made a dramatic comeback. But when you adjust for inflation, that 4.1% becomes 1.4%. We’ll take it — but let’s not confuse it for major momentum. More importantly, the growth that happened wasn’t broad. It was concentrated. A significant portion of the increase came from major and affluent donors. When growth in giving is isolated to major and mega donors, you don’t have a healthy fundraising sector. You have a fragile one. When we look at [Avid’s real-time benchmark data](https://avidai.com/blog/the-latest-nonprofit-fundraising-benchmark-insights-march-2026/) — pulled directly from over 1,000 organizations representing more than $14 billion in annual giving — the same tension shows up. Average gift is up 7.1% since the start of the year. Revenue per donor is up 8.6%. The people who are giving are giving more generously. **But fewer people are giving.** Active donors are down 1.8% over the trailing twelve months.And that’s on top of a 3.5% decline in 2025, 3.9% in 2024, and 4% the year before. ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/Fewer-people-are-giving-each-year-1024x580.png.webp)These aren’t independent data points. They’re compounding. Every year, we lose ground — and then we lose more ground on top of that. Acquisition is actually up significantly — in some cases by as much as 50%. And it still isn’t enough to offset the donors walking out the back door. Let that sink in. More people coming in. Even more leaving. And the ones leaving? They gave more, gave longer, and were worth far more to your program than the ones just arriving. --- ## Here’s the Belief We Keep Coming Back To > **The donors you already have are the ones that matter most.** Not because acquisition doesn’t matter — it does, and you should keep doing it. But because we’ve built an entire sector culture around chasing the next donor while quietly letting the current ones drift away. Someone who has already given to your organization has already done the hardest thing: they raised their hand. They said, *I believe in this mission enough to put money behind it.* That moment of trust is extraordinarily valuable — and far too often, we don’t treat it that way. We send the welcome email. Maybe the receipt. And then the next thing they hear from us is another ask. Thirty-three percent of nonprofits send [zero cultivation](https://www.nextafter.com/online-donor-retention-report/) in the first ninety days after someone gives. That’s the honeymoon period — the window when a new donor is most open, most excited, most ready to deepen the relationship. And a third of us are silent. This is where the back door starts to open. --- ## What Investing in Your Donors Actually Looks Like The good news is that the things that work here aren’t complicated. They’re just easy to deprioritize because the ROI isn’t immediate and obvious. Here’s what the data actually supports. ### **1. Start with cultivation before the ask.** Before year-end season hits — before Giving Tuesday, before the December push — your donors need to hear from you in a way that has nothing to do with money. A story from the field. A piece of content that’s actually useful to them. A simple thank-you that doesn’t have a donate button at the bottom. One organization committed to this kind of **multichannel cultivation** — no asks, just value — and saw **a 19% increase in recurring donor retention**. That’s not a coincidence. That’s relationship-building paying off when it counts. A simple ratio to aim for: three cultivations for every one ask. If you’re sending more appeals than value, you’re training your donors to stop opening your emails. ### **2. Segment like you know who they are — because you do.** One-size-fits-all messaging is the enemy of retention. Your recurring donors are not the same as your lapsed donors. Your most engaged subscribers are not the same as the people who haven’t opened anything in six months. Lifesavers Wild Horse Rescue is a small team. Segmentation was always on the to-do list — and always getting bumped. When they finally used Avid to version their monthly appeal for different donor groups, they saw a [130% increase in appeal revenue.](https://avidai.com/blog/how-lifesavers-saw-a-130-revenue-increase-through-smarter-segmentation/) **Same message. Better targeting.** That’s the whole unlock. For year-end, consider these three segments worth prioritizing: **Your recurring donors.** Don’t suppress them from the campaign because they’re “already giving.” Version the email to acknowledge what they do, thank them for it, and invite them into something above and beyond. You’ll be surprised how many say yes. **Your lapsed donors.** Talk to them like you know they were there — because they were. Acknowledge the gap. Invite them back. Don’t pretend it didn’t happen. **Your engaged versus unengaged list.** Send to your engaged file first. Let the open rates and click rates build the signal. Then send to the unengaged list an hour or two later. You’re warming the room before opening the doors. ### **3. Find the next best donor inside the file you already have.** This is where the data gets genuinely exciting. One Avid customer ran a propensity model on their existing file — looking across CRM data, donation history, email engagement, ad behavior — to identify who was most likely to give to their summer match campaign. Not new prospects. Not cold lists. People already in their database they just hadn’t asked. They tested it against their normal segmentation. **The result: 103% increase in donor conversion rate.** Higher average gifts too. The donors were already there. The data just found them. This is what propensity modeling actually is — not prediction, not guesswork. Recognition. Looking at the patterns across thousands of programs and thousands of campaigns to say: here’s who, based on everything we can see, is most ready to give. And doing it before year-end, not during the sprint. --- ## The Infrastructure Problem Nobody Talks About Here’s the uncomfortable truth underneath all of this: **none of it works if your data is trapped in silos.** Your transaction data is in your CRM. Your email engagement is in your email platform. Your ad data is somewhere else entirely. Your direct mail results? Probably in a spreadsheet. No one has a full picture of the donor. Which means no meaningful segmentation. No propensity model. No ability to act on what you know about the people who already believe in your mission. Most fundraising teams don’t have too few tools. They have too many — and they don’t connect. **Every new platform adds complexity instead of clarity.** The data gets more fragmented. The manual work of syncing lists and pulling reports grows. Want to see where the gaps are with your fundraising tools? [Take the free assessment »](https://avidai.com/fundraising-tools-or-system-assessment/) [![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/Fundraising-Tools-or-System-Assessment-1024x535.png.webp)](https://avidai.com/fundraising-tools-or-system-assessment/)You can’t get ahead of the work if you’re buried in the infrastructure maintaining the work. This is the problem a fundraising operating system is designed to solve — not by replacing your CRM or your email tool, but by running across all of them. Connecting the data. Keeping the segments in sync. Surfacing what’s actually happening with your donors in real time, so when the year-end season hits, you’re not starting from scratch. --- ## The Donors Are Already There Here’s the thing about the declining participation numbers: the donors who walked out the back door didn’t leave because they stopped believing in the mission. Most of them left because we stopped making them feel like they mattered. They gave. We cashed the check. And they waited to hear back. The fundraising teams that grow aren’t the ones who launch the most appeal campaigns. They’re the ones who make the investment in making their existing donors feel known — so that when the ask finally comes, it lands with someone who already feels like a partner. **The donors you already have are the ones that matter most.** Start there. --- *Not sure if your tools are set up to do any of this?* *[Take Avid’s free fundraising infrastructure assessment](https://avidai.com/fundraising-tools-or-system-assessment/) — it takes about six minutes and gives you a personalized read on where your current setup is helping, and where it’s getting in the way.* **Categories:** Fundraising Benchmarks, Fundraising Strategy --- ### [Year-End Fundraising: An AI-Driven Campaign Playbook](https://avidai.com/blog/year-end-fundraising-an-ai-driven-campaign-playbook/) **Published:** October 10, 2025 **Author:** Nathan Hill **Excerpt:** Successful year-end fundraising takes more touch points than ever before. Learn how an AI-driven playbook can help you keep up and grow giving this year-end. **Content:** Year-end fundraising season is the biggest giving season of the year. But it’s becoming increasingly difficult to activate and reactivate donors. Why is it getting so difficult? Our donors’ expectations have changed. Donor communication needs to be personalized. Segmented. Cross-channel. During a given campaign, **a donor might interact with 5, 6, or 7 different touch points** before choosing to give. For instance, they might: 1. See a **social post** from you on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, or LinkedIn. 2. Read a **cultivation email** from your in their inbox later. 3. Find a **direct mail** piece from you in their mailbox. 4. See a few **display ads** about your campaign while they’re reading a news article. 5. Get a **voicemail** from you letting them know about the campaign. 6. Ultimately **donate** from an **email appeal**. 7. **Every touchpoint matters—even if it didn’t directly lead to the donation.** But our budgets, teams, and resources haven’t kept up. The scale needed to achieve fundraising growth today is [more than any fundraiser or team can keep up with](https://avidai.com/blog/modern-fundraising-is-unsustainable/ "Modern Fundraising is Unsustainable") on their own. The only way to meet donor expectations this year-end season is with an AI-driven playbook. Looking for help with Giving Tuesday? Check out the [AI-driven Giving Tuesday playbook here](https://avidai.com/blog/giving-tuesday-ai-driven-fundraising-playbook/ "Giving Tuesday: An AI-Driven Fundraising Playbook"). ## Year-End Fundraising Trends at a Glance There are a million and one metrics you could analyze to try and understand what’s happening in year-end fundraising. But there are a few critical metrics worth focusing on to shape our year-end fundraising playbook. ### 1. Year-End Giving is on the Decline Looking at year-end giving from year to year can paint an unrealistic picture of results. There are **many factors that can influence year-end giving.** Major economic shifts. Election cycles. Natural disasters. All these major events can cause significant ripple effects in year-end giving. But even **seemingly small things can impact results**. In fact, the day of the week that December 31st falls on plays a big part in when results come in. If it’s a weekday, you’ll see better results. If it’s a weekend, giving is usually a bit lower. #### **Looking at the 5-Year Trend** When trying to understand the true trajectory of year-end giving, it’s best to look at a longer trend. Using Avid Benchmarks, we’ve looked at the past 5 years of year-end giving. And the result is a bit bleak. There are up years. There are flat years. But the 5-year trend is that **year-end giving is on the decline.** ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-2.png)### **2. Year-End Donor Acquisition is Down** When you look at year-end fundraising trends as a whole, donor acquisition is falling off. **Year-end donor acquisition has decreased year-over-year for the past 4 years.** There used to be a time where an event like year-end was heralded as a significant time for new donor acquisition. By and large, there is **still a lot of new donor acquisition that happens during year-end**. But the trend is that year-end acquisition is on the decline. ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-1.png)Are we getting worse at acquiring donors in December? Are fewer new people giving in general? The way we see it, donor behavior is shifting. There is a lot more acquisition activity that happens throughout the year—especially with such a big push towards recurring donations. **We can’t rely on new donors to be the only method to grow our year-end results.** ### **3. Omni-Channel Strategies are Driving Up Fundraising Revenue** If we zoom out to look at trends beyond just year-end, there is another opportunity. **The more contactable a donor is, the more likely they are to upgrade** and have a higher annual value. ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-3.png)But this isn’t purely about having more of their contact info. It’s about donor behavior. Even if donors only ever give in a specific channel, they’re interacting across channels all the time. Direct-mail-only donors are still online. They interact on social media channels. Many of them read their email religiously. They watch TV like anyone else, and can be influenced by media channels like CTV, Youtube ads, and more. During the most chaotic and noisy season of the year, **we have to be present in as many channels as possible** to have a chance at getting their attention. ## The AI-Driven Year-End Fundraising Playbook ![Year-End Fundraising - AI-Powered Campaign Playbook ebook Cover](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Avid-AI-Powered-Campaign-Playbook-eBook-2_Page_01-791x1024.png)What does an AI-driven year-end campaign actually look like? It incorporates an omni-channel approach. It has touch points that both cultivate and activate. Each touch point has robust segmentation. An AI-driven playbook is not designed to be simple. It’s designed to keep up with increasing donor expectations. To pull this off during a season as busy as year-end, you’ll need an **AI-powered fundraising operating system like Avid**. Keep reading below to take a closer look at all the channels, touch points, and audience that go into creating an effective year-end campaign. [You can also download the free AI-powered year-end playbook here »](https://avidai.com/ai-powered-year-end-fundraising-playbook-download/ "Get the AI-Powered Year-End Fundraising Playbook") Let’s take a closer look at the Channels, Touch points, and Audiences. ## Early to Mid-December Touchpoints ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Playbooks-Touchpoint-Icons-Donation-Pages.svg)### **Donation Pages & Landing Pages** #### **Year-End Donation Page** Your year-end donation page is the cornerstone of your campaign. Even your direct mail outreach can lead to people finding your year-end donation page from printed URLs or from a quick search. This page should make it clear that it’s about year-end giving. It should unpack your full value proposition for the campaign, **focusing on the impact of giving—not just the tax deduction.** At the same time, it should clearly highlight the urgency of the year-end deadline as well as any other donation incentives you may have. #### **Free Content Offer Funnel** ##### **Landing Page | Free Content Offer** As with the Giving Tuesday campaign, you’ll want to have a free content offer at the ready throughout the year-end season. Consider offering an **eBook, video series, or other unique content** that helps potential donors connect deeper to the cause and the impact of your organization. You’ll leverage this both for new donor acquisition as well existing donor activation. ##### **Automated Email | Free Content Offer Delivery** A small, but critical touch point. Make sure to create an automated email that sends instructions on how to access the free offer. This should be sent as soon as someone fills out the “Free Content Offer” landing page form. ##### **Instant Donation Page | An Opportunity to Give Right Away** This is a modified version of a confirmation page for the free offer. Like a normal confirmation page, it should thank the user and confirm that the offer is on its way to their inbox. Then, it should immediately **pivot towards a donation ask tied to your year-end campaign**. Give a strong appeal on the page, making connections between the value of the offer and the impact of a donation. Include a donation form on the page to give right away. ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Playbooks-Touchpoint-Icons-Ads.svg)### **Advertising** #### **Pop-Ups & Web Banners** You may use a variety of different types of pop-ups and website banner placements throughout December. Here are some options to consider: ##### **Homepage Banner** Your homepage is a primary place to include a direct donation ask in a web banner. Don’t shy away from copy here. Consider **a Wikipedia-style donation ask** with significant copy communicating why someone should give. And include a gift array right on the banner. ##### **In-line Article Ads** Add year-end giving calls-to-action and ad placements within articles and blog pages on your website. Donation conversion rates are high during the month of December, and these ads are a great way to **draw attention to giving opportunities** from your motivated organic traffic. ##### **Abandon Donation Pop-Ups** When someone visits the donation page but doesn’t complete their gift, use pop-up or slide-in banners to remind them to finish donating. Just because they didn’t finish donating doesn’t mean they didn’t want to. They **may have been pulled away or distracted** from giving for many different reasons. This type of ad placement can draw them back in and boost your year-end donations. #### **Paid Social Advertising** ##### **Acquisition Advertising** Advertise your free content offer to known email subscribers and web traffic who are not yet donors. Consider targeting a “lookalike” audience of Meta users who have similar behaviors as your most valuable donors. ##### **Direct-to-Donation Advertising** Use direct-to-donation ads to remind existing donors of the opportunity to participate in year-end giving. Consider focusing these ads on **re-targeting donation page traffic** through the month of December. You might also ratchet up the budget of these ads the closer you get to the last week of the year when urgency is higher. #### **Google Performance Max Ads** A Google Performance Max campaign should be focused on reminding donors, followers, and website traffic of the opportunity to participate in year-end giving. These ads are best **focused on a direct donation call-to-action** for likely donors. You may also consider using strong video creative for Youtube and CTV ads that showcases the impact donors can make with their gift as a primer for appeals coming later in the season. ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Playbooks-Touchpoint-Icons-Email-Touchpoint.svg)### **Emails and Other Timely Outreach** #### **Email 1 | Main Year-End Overview** The first year-end fundraising appeal. It is typically reflective, highlights the impact of giving, and introduces a direct ask. Use this email to **set the stage for your whole campaign**—including things you’ve accomplished this year, goals for the year ahead, and any special incentives to give before the end of the year. **Send Date:** End of 1st Week, After Giving Tuesday #### **Email 2 | Testimonial** This email shares a testimonial from someone impacted by your organization. It’s designed to **reinforce the impact of a gift, build credibility, and cultivate** the potential donor. You may include a soft donation ask in a P.S. But the main focus of this email should be to prepare the reader for future appeals. **Send Date:** End of 1st Week, Start of 2nd Week #### **Email 3 | Free Content Offer** This email should promote your free content offer. Include your email subscribers who have never given in this email. You can even use it to help activate existing donors who have yet to give to your year-end campaign. Don’t ask for a donation within this email. Instead, **focus it entirely on the free offer**—letting the Instant Donation Page help lead to donation conversions. **Send Date:** Middle of 2nd Week #### **SMS | Free Offer Reminder** Use an SMS message to promote your free offer as well. The high open rates of your SMS guarantee visibility of your offer. Give a clear call to action to get access to the free offer. **Send Date:** Middle of 2nd Week, Same Day as Your Free Offer Email #### **Email 4 | Accomplishments** This email is focused on helping the potential year-end donor understand how the organization has made strides and impact this year. It helps **boost confidence in future giving** and builds trust with the donor. Be sure to give some ideas of future goals and the need for year-end donations to continue the impact. Close with a clear call to action to give. **Send Date:** End of 2nd Week #### **Email 5 | Executive / Board Member** This email should be sent from an executive leader at your organization or even a board member. The purpose is for donors to **hear from a key leader of the organization to establish greater trust** and show the investment in future impact from every level of the organization. Send from your CEO, Executive Director, or Board Chair. Make it personal and give their own unique perspective on the year ahead. Make a clear donation ask. **Send Date:** Beginning of 3rd Week #### **Email 6 | Mid-December Reminder** The Mid-December Reminder email is a chance to recall the primary reasons for the year-end campaign. **Reiterate the core value proposition**, additional incentives to give, and the goals for the year ahead. Remember, the average email is only opened by 20% of your subscribers. So it’s likely that many missed your original year-end overview email. **Send Date:** End of 3rd Week #### **Slybroadcast | Cultivation Voicemail** A [Slybroadcast](https://www.slybroadcast.com/) sends a voice message directly to your recipient’s voicemail. Use this as a chance to share a story or testimonial with the potential year-end donor. Don’t make a heavy-handed donation ask. Instead, **create an inviting cultivation message that increases their confidence** in the impact they can make when asked to give later on. Consider adding a holiday greeting if relevant to your audience. **Send Date:** End of 3rd Week ## Last Week of December Touchpoints ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Playbooks-Touchpoint-Icons-Donation-Pages.svg)### **Donation Pages & Landing Pages** #### **Year-End Donation Page** Keep the same year-end donation page as you had in early December, but with a few modifications. Consider adding a **countdown clock** that ticks down to the end of the day on December 31st. If you have any **unique incentives** for the last week of the year, call those out in a **high-contrast design** to ensure donors see them. ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Playbooks-Touchpoint-Icons-Ads.svg)### **Advertising** #### **Pop-Ups & Web Banners** ##### **Banner Updates** Update your existing banners and ads to include a **countdown clock** now that the deadline is within sight. Tweak your copy to **focus specifically on urgency**, driving traffic directly to your donation page. ##### **Homepage Takeover** During the last 24-48 hours, consider **replacing your homepage with a dedicated year-end giving page**. Use conversational language, a countdown clock to show the urgency, and include a donation form right on the page. Don’t forget to include a link for visitors to bypass the page if they are on the website for some other reason. #### **Paid Social | Direct-to-Donation Ads** In the final stage of your campaign, consider shifting all of your advertising to direct-to-donation ads. You can **update your ad creative to have higher urgency** and mention the coming year-end deadline. #### **Google Performance Max Ads | Direct-to-Donation Ads** Make similar updates to your Google ads as well. **Focus your creative around the urgency** to give before the year-end deadline. ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Playbooks-Touchpoint-Icons-Email-Touchpoint.svg)### **Emails and Other Timely Outreach** #### **Email 7 | Holiday Greeting** This email is purely **cultivation and relationship building**. It should not ask for a donation. If your donors are likely to celebrate a particular December holiday, you can lean into a tailored holiday greeting that aligns with their celebration and shared values. Make this a warm, personal note. You can even link to **a personal video** celebrating the season, the accomplishments of the year, and what’s ahead in the new year. **Send Date:** December 23-24 #### **Email 8 | Just a Few Days Left** This email should begin to ratchet up the urgency. Use this email as your last primary touchpoint to share the value proposition for your year-end campaign. Focus on the **impact a gift will make in the new year**, but don’t dive into too many details. Highlight the deadline to give that’s coming soon. Remind recipients of any incentives to give—and introduce any additional incentives you have for the last week. End with a clear donation call to action. **Send Date:** December 26 #### **SMS | Last Week to Give** Support your “Just a Few Days Left” email with **a corresponding SMS message**. Provide clear reasons why a gift is impactful, remind of any incentives, highlight the upcoming deadline, and give a clear donation call to action. **Send Date:** December 27 #### **Email 9 | December 30th Reminder** The day before the deadline, send a kind and personalized reminder to give. Keep it relatively short—2 to 3 quick paragraphs—and **focus the reader’s attention on the deadline to give**. Consider including a countdown clock graphic to further increase urgency. **Send Date:** December 30 #### **Slybroadcast | Deadline Reminder** Support your last few emails with another Slybroadcast message sent directly to your potential donor’s voicemail. This time, **focus on the impending giving deadline**, and give a clear way for the recipient to respond with a donation. **Send Date:** December 30 #### **Email 10 | December 31st AM, Reminder** On the morning of December 31st, send a short and personal note to remind recipients that today is the final day to give. Remind them of any incentives to give. Don’t go into great detail about the campaign and impact of giving. This email is **designed to be short, to the point**, and capitalize on the good will you’ve built up with prior cultivation. **Send Date:** December 31, Early AM #### **SMS | Last Day to Give** Support your email campaign on this final giving day with a short, quick SMS reminder. Give a clear call to action to give and highlight the deadline. **Send Date:** December 31, Late AM #### **Email 11 | December 31st PM, Deadline** This final email is all about the deadline. Consider making it look like **an email forward**, including your email from the morning at the bottom. Add a short note letting the potential donor know you wanted to make sure they saw this opportunity before the deadline. Give a clear call to action to give. **Send Date:** December 31, PM #### **Email 12 | Celebration and Thank You** Don’t forget to celebrate! Thank your donors and other supporters, celebrate what your organization will be able to accomplish in the new year, and **give the donor the credit** for the impact. **Send Date:** First Week of January ## Using AI to Build Your Campaign A year-end fundraising playbook of this magnitude likely feels like too much to handle for most fundraisers. And we haven’t even covered [segmentation within your campaign](https://avidai.com/blog/15-segmentation-ideas-for-your-year-end-fundraising/ "15 Segmentation Ideas for Your Year-End Fundraising"). **Avid can actually build your entire year-end campaign for you in the Launch Lab.** All your copy. Every touch point. Every channel. And every segment. See how **the Year-End Launch Lab** uses AI and data from 8,000+ fundraising tests to build campaigns proven to raise more. **[Apply for a Year-End Launch Lab Session ](https://avidai.com/year-end-launch-lab/)** **Categories:** AI & Automation, Fundraising Strategy --- ### [The Latest Nonprofit Fundraising Benchmark Insights](https://avidai.com/blog/the-latest-nonprofit-fundraising-benchmark-insights-march-2026/) **Published:** March 31, 2026 **Author:** Nathan Hill **Excerpt:** Avid + Wiland's nonprofit fundraising benchmark is built on real data from 1,000+ nonprofits. See the latest trends and opportunities. **Content:** ## Trends from the Largest, Real-Time Fundraising Benchmark Featuring 1,000+ Nonprofits Most nonprofit fundraising benchmarks read like a history lesson. By the time you get to see the data, it’s already 6 months out of date. To make matters worse, even many of the most respected nonprofit fundraising benchmarks are based on survey data—not actual performance pulled straight from the source. The Avid+Wiland fundraising benchmarks are built differently. **Real data.** Not surveys. **1,000+ Nonprofits.** $14B in Annual Revenue. **Filterable to your peers.** Not generic insights. Today, we’re going to look at the latest trends, challenges, and opportunities as of March 2026. To view the most up to date nonprofit fundraising benchmarks, [activate free access to the](http://app.avidai.com/register/wiland)[ Avid + Wiland benchmarks here »](http://app.avidai.com/register/wiland) ### Get free access to the largest real-time fundraising benchmarks. [Explore the data](https://app.avidai.com/register/wiland) ## Nonprofit Fundraising Snapshot The nonprofit fundraising benchmark snapshots below represent trends from the past 12 months—March 1, 2025 through February 28, 2026. The snapshot you see below represents 1,003 nonprofits averaging $13.7M in annual donation revenue. ![Benchmark universe panel: 1,003 nonprofits with $13.8M average revenue and 41,046 average active donors](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/image-4.webp)### **Nonprofit Donation Revenue** Nonprofit donation revenue is up 3.9% over the past 12 months. - **Average Gift Size**: $113 - **Average Annual Revenue** **Per Donor**: $362 ![Bar chart: yearly revenue change slowed after 2022, dipped to -5% in 2024, then recovered to modest growth](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/image-6.webp)### **Number of Donors** The number of total active donors is down by 2.5% over the past 12 months. ![Bar chart: year-end revenue swung from a 40% jump in 2021 to declines, down 8.9% in 2024](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/image-2.webp)### **Acquisition Rates** New donor acquisition rates are up by 50.4%over the past 12 months. ![Bar chart: new-donor counts fell from 2022 to 2024, then turned positive and jumped 50.4% in 2026](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/image-5.webp)*Special Note: Acquisition rates are being heavily skewed by 2 specific cause areas. See how organizations in your vertical and revenue size are performing by* [*activating your free access to the Avid + Wiland benchmarks »*](https://app.avidai.com/register/wiland) ### **Retention Rates** Retention has seen a slight decline, sitting at 50.7%. That is down 2.3% from 12 months ago. - **Mid-level donor** retention rate: 66.9% - **Major donor** retention rate: 71.7% ### **Reactivation Rates** Reactivation rates continue to fall dramatically, sitting at 4.6% overall. This is down 11.5% from 12 months ago. ![Line chart: donor retention holding roughly flat near 50% from 2022 through 2026](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/image.webp)### **Upgrade Rates** Mid-level donor upgrade rates are at 0.069%, a 10.3% decline from 12 months ago. ![Bar chart: year-end new-donor acquisition fell 14.9% in 2024 after several mostly down years](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/image-1.webp)Major donor upgrade rates are 0.008%, an 11.1% decline from 12 months ago. ![Two bar charts: donors reachable by email, mail, and phone give more per year and upgrade far more often](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/image-3.webp)### **Giving Levels** - **Broadbase donors**: 97% of donors - **Midlevel donors:** 2.7% of donors - **Major donors:** .28% of donors ## Avid’s Top 10 Nonprofit Fundraising Benchmark Trends Below you’ll find 10 of the most interesting insights from the latest nonprofit fundraising benchmark trends. Want to see a full breakdown of these insights? Check out the full webinar on [The State of Fundraising in 2026 »](https://avidai.com/the-state-of-nonprofit-fundraising-in-2026/) ### **1. Revenue is growing—but fewer donors are giving.** Active donors declined 2.5%, while total revenue increased 3.9%. The result: nonprofits are raising slightly more money from a shrinking donor base. ### **2. Donors who remain are giving more.** Average revenue per donor increased to $362 from $350 12 months ago. Fewer donors are contributing, but those who stay are making larger gifts. See how this breakdown changes based on organization size in the full [Avid + Wiland benchmarks »](https://app.avidai.com/register/wiland) ### **3. Mid-level and major donors are carrying more of the load.** Organizations are more reliant on mid-level and major donors than in previous years, with mid-level donors increasing to 2.7% of donors (from 2.2% in ‘22) and major donors rising to 0.28% (from 0.25% in ‘22). ### **4. Retention of high-value donors is declining.** Even as organizations depend more on larger gifts, retention is slipping: - Mid-level retention fell to 66.9% (from 69.5% in ‘22) - Major donor retention fell to 71.7% (from 75.3% in ‘22) ### **5. The pipeline for future major donors is weakening.** Upgrade rates into higher giving tiers are declining, suggesting fewer donors are progressing into mid-level and major giving—a potential risk for long-term fundraising growth. - **Major Upgrade Rate:** fallen by 33% since ‘22 - **Midlevel Upgrade Rate:** fallen by 46% since ‘22 ### **6. Donor acquisition is surging.** Nonprofits acquired 50.4% more new donors year-over-year, but not every vertical is seeing growth. Out of the 8 key verticals in the [Avid + Wiland benchmarks](https://app.avidai.com/register/wiland), half of them saw a decline in acquisition in the past 12 months. 2 verticals saw marginal acquisition growth, while 2 others are significantly skewing the average with massive spikes in donor acquisition. ### **7. New donors are increasingly coming from online channels.** Online acquisition sources jumped to 65.4% of new donors, up from 51% the previous year, signaling a major shift in donor behavior toward digital giving. This shift is not just relevant to acquisition—it has implications for how fundraising teams approach onboarding, stewardship, cultivation, and more over time. ### **8. Reactivation is declining—especially offline.** While overall retention remains relatively stable (50.7%), reactivation rates are falling, particularly through traditional offline channels (4.6%, down from 7.9% in ‘22) ### **9. Multi-channel donors give more and upgrade more often.** Donors that are reachable across email, mail, and phone generate higher revenue per donor ($198) and are more likely to upgrade their giving. Contacts with email/postal/phone are 408% more likely to upgrade than postal only. The ability to engage across multiple channels is becoming a key driver of growth. ### **10. Recurring donors are dramatically more valuable.** Recurring giving continues to rise, now reaching 23.1% of donors (up from 20.2% 12 months ago). These donors deliver significantly stronger results: - Annual value: [See these rates in the full benchmark »](https://app.avidai.com/register/wiland) - Retention: [See these rates in the full benchmark »](https://app.avidai.com/register/wiland) - Upgrade rate: [See these rates in the full benchmark »](https://app.avidai.com/register/wiland) ## You’re Missing the Most Important Insights! The nonprofit fundraising benchmark snapshot above is looking at the overall trends. But the most important insights come from comparing to organizations like yours. When you activate your free access to the Avid + Wiland fundraising benchmarks, you can see fundraising performance by vertical and by revenue size. ![Avid Benchmarks home screen listing benchmark reports by donor segment, retention, and channel (illustrative)](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/image-7.webp)Use this to compare your performance to your peers—giving you more specific insights that you can turn into action. [Activate your free access to the Avid + Wiland fundraising benchmarks here »](https://app.avidai.com/register/wiland) Plus, you’ll find a deeper dive on key metrics related to: - Recurring Giving - Donor Lifecycle Trends - Donor Contactability - Multi-Channel Trends - And more! \#blog-content-container img:not(.elementor-avatar) { border-radius:20px!important; padding:20px!important; } **Categories:** Fundraising Benchmarks --- ### [Parrish Snyder joins Avid as CRO. Erik Tomalis named Chief Community Officer.](https://avidai.com/blog/parrish-snyder-cro-erik-tomalis-chief-community-officer/) **Published:** May 27, 2026 **Author:** Stephen Boudreau **Excerpt:** Parrish Snyder joins Avid as CRO and Erik Tomalis is named Chief Community Officer. Two leadership moves that signal where Avid is headed. **Content:** Avid made two leadership moves this week. Together, they point in the same direction. Parrish Snyder, who spent nine years building go-to-market at OneCause, joined us as Chief Revenue Officer. And Erik Tomalis—one of Avid’s earliest leaders—stepped into a new role: Chief Community Officer. ## Parrish joins Avid For nine years at OneCause, Parrish built the sales organization for one of the nonprofit sector’s leading fundraising platforms. He scaled teams across the US and Canada. He helped grow a customer base managing over $8 billion in giving. He learned what it takes to get nonprofit teams to adopt mission-critical software—and keep using it. He understands nonprofit fundraising. Not theoretically. From years of being inside it. And he looked at what Avid is building and chose to come. When someone of that caliber makes that choice, it tells you where the company is headed. ![Parrish Snyder, Chief Revenue Officer, quote on joining Avid alongside Erik Tomalis](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/PressRelease_Blog_Parrish.png)## The community work ahead Erik has been one of Avid’s earliest and most influential voices. He’s built relationships with customers. He shows up at every major conference. He speaks. He’s earned the trust of the sector. That work deserves his full attention—and now it has it. What Erik does best is move through this industry, build partnerships, and bring people along. It’s the relationships and conversations that move the sector forward. Chief Community Officer is a new role, built around exactly that. ![Erik Tomalis, Chief Community Officer, quote on his new role and Parrish joining Avid](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/PressRelease_Blog_Erik.png)## Why this matters Parrish brings operational depth from years inside nonprofit fundraising software. He knows the difference between software a team buys and software a team uses. Erik brings credibility and presence across the sector, earned in the conversations that shape what’s possible. Together, they’re what nonprofits need: a company that knows how to build software for fundraisers, and a voice that knows what fundraisers actually care about. **Categories:** News --- ### [Nonprofit Fundraising Software: A Complete Guide to Every Category (And the Agent That Makes Them Work Together)](https://avidai.com/blog/nonprofit-fundraising-software-a-complete-guide-to-every-category-and-the-agent-that-makes-them-work-together/) **Published:** June 30, 2026 **Author:** Nathan Hill **Excerpt:** There are too many nonprofit fundraising software tools to count. This guide breaks down the most popular tools—and shows you how Avid brings them all together. **Content:** Most nonprofits don’t have a software problem. They have a capacity problem. The average fundraising team runs **between five and eight different tools** — a CRM, an email platform, a donation form, ad accounts, a direct mail vendor, a text platform, and a donor enrichment tool or two. Each does its job. **None of them talk to each other** without someone in the middle manually moving data between them. That someone is usually an experienced fundraiser — spending their week on imports, exports, list pulls, and suppression files instead of the work that actually moves the needle. Donors who lapsed three months ago get flagged today. Segments built for Monday’s email are already two weeks stale. Integrations break the week of a major campaign. The spreadsheet holding everything together gets passed around like a document no one quite trusts. This guide covers **every category of nonprofit fundraising software** — what each one does, what it’s uniquely built for, and how Avid — an AI fundraising agent — connects and acts across your entire stack. --- > **TL;DR:** Nonprofit fundraising software spans seven categories: donor CRM, email marketing, online giving, digital advertising, direct mail, SMS, and analytics. Most organizations run tools from all seven — but without a coordination layer, the space between tools costs more than the tools themselves. Avid is the AI fundraising agent that connects your stack, keeps data current across every channel, and acts on what it sees — so your team spends its time on relationships, not imports. --- ## What Is Nonprofit Fundraising Software? Nonprofit fundraising software refers to any digital tool used to manage donor relationships, execute fundraising campaigns, process gifts, and measure program performance — spanning donor databases, email platforms, digital advertising tools, direct mail systems, text messaging platforms, and analytics dashboards. Most organizations use tools from multiple categories simultaneously. **The challenge isn’t finding software — it’s making it work together.** **Avid** is an AI fundraising agent that connects your entire software stack, builds a unified record of every donor across every channel, and uses that data to surface opportunities and execute campaigns — replacing the manual coordination overhead that consumes 20–30% of most fundraising teams’ capacity. --- ## Nonprofit Fundraising Software at a Glance CategoryWhat It DoesCommon ToolsBest Org Size[Donor CRM](#crm "Donor CRM")Stores donor records, gift history, relationshipsBloomerang, DonorPerfect, Raiser’s Edge NXT, SalesforceAll sizes[Email Marketing](#email)Sends appeals, automation sequences, newslettersMailchimp, Constant Contact, Klaviyo, ActiveCampaignAll sizes[Online Giving](#online-giving)Processes donations, recurring gifts, peer-to-peerFundraise Up, DonorBox, GoFundMe ProAll sizes[Digital Advertising](#advertising)Acquires and reactivates donors via paid channelsMeta Ads, Google Ads, LinkedIn AdsAll sizes[Direct Mail](#direct-mail)High-value appeals, acknowledgments, acquisition mailAgency-managed / AvidEstablished programs[SMS / Text](#sms "SMS / Text")Immediate outreach, appeals, stewardshipTatango, Powered By Text, HustleMid-to-large[Analytics & Intelligence](#analytics "Analytics & Intelligence")Performance data, predictive scoring, benchmarksDataro, Kindsight, Tableau, Power BIMid-to-large--- ## The 7 Categories of Nonprofit Fundraising Software ### 1. Donor CRM Software (The System of Record) #### Which donor CRM is best for nonprofits? ##### **What it is a CRM:** A donor CRM — customer relationship management system — is the database at the center of your fundraising program. It stores donor profiles, gift history, communication records, pledge tracking, and relationship notes. Everything that has ever happened between your organization and a donor lives here. ##### **Common CRMs for nonprofits:** DonorPerfect, Virtuous, Raiser’s Edge NXT, Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud, Bloomerang, Little Green Light, eTapestry, Blackbaud CRM. NameTop FeaturesStarting PriceBest Org Size[DonorPerfect](https://www.donorperfect.com/)Gift processing & pledge tracking. Built-in Constant Contact integration. Grant management.~$99/monthSmall-to-mid[Virtuous](https://www.virtuouscrm.com/)Behavioral trigger automation. All-in-one CRM + giving + volunteer. Responsive fundraising philosophy.Contact for pricingMid-size[Raiser’s ](https://www.blackbaud.com/)[E](https://www.blackbaud.com/)[dge NXT](https://www.blackbaud.com/)Major gift & planned giving tracking. Grant management. Sophisticated reporting.Contact for pricingMid-to-large[Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud](https://www.salesforce.com/nonprofit)Enterprise customization. Massive integration ecosystem. Cross-department workflows.Contact for pricingLarge[Bloomerang](https://www.bloomerang.com/)Donor engagement scoring. At-risk donor alerts. Built-in email + forms.~$99/monthSmall-to-mid[Little Green Light](https://www.littlegreenlight.com/)Unlimited users. Stripe, PayPal & Mailchimp integrations. Simple setup, transparent pricing.$45/monthSmall[eTapestry](https://www.blackbaud.com/)Blackbaud ecosystem access. Scales to Raiser’s Edge NXT. Cloud-based simplicity.Contact for pricingSmall[Blackbaud CRM](https://www.blackbaud.com/)Multi-entity support. Major gift portfolio management. Enterprise reporting.Contact for pricingEnterprise**DonorPerfect**![Blue lowercase letters 'dp' forming a logo on a white circular background.](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/donorperfect.png)A comprehensive donor management system built for small-to-mid-sized nonprofits. Strong on gift processing, pledge tracking, and grant management, with a built-in integration with Constant Contact for email. One of the most widely used CRMs in the sector, known for its depth of fundraising-specific features and long track record. *Best for: small-to-mid nonprofits. Pricing: starts ~$99/month.* **Virtuous**![Virtuous CRM](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/virtuous_logo_square.webp)A “responsive fundraising” platform that combines CRM, online giving, volunteer management, and AI-powered donor outreach in one suite. Built on Microsoft Azure. Virtuous’s differentiator is its philosophy of treating every donor as an individual — using behavioral signals to trigger personalized outreach rather than batch-and-blast communication. *Best for: mid-size organizations focused on donor-centric engagement.* **Raisers’s Edge NXT**![Raiser's Edge NXT](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/raisersedge_logo_square.svg)Blackbaud’s flagship cloud CRM for mid-to-large nonprofits and higher education. The long-standing industry standard for major gift programs — strong on grant management, planned giving tracking, and sophisticated reporting. *Best for: established development offices, mid-to-large organizations.* **Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud**![Salesforce](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/salesforce_logo_square.svg)Salesforce’s nonprofit-specific CRM built on the world’s leading enterprise platform. Highly customizable with a massive integration ecosystem. Ideal for organizations that need flexibility, complex workflows, or connections across departments beyond fundraising. The tradeoff is implementation complexity and cost. *Best for: large organizations with dedicated IT or Salesforce admin capacity.* **Bloomerang**![Bloomerang logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/bloomerang_logo_square.svg)A donor retention-focused CRM built for small-to-mid-sized nonprofits. Bloomerang’s defining feature is its engagement scoring and retention analytics — it surfaces which donors are at risk before they lapse. Includes built-in email, donation forms, peer-to-peer fundraising, and volunteer management. *Best for: retention-focused small-to-mid organizations. Pricing: starts ~$99/month.* **Little Green Light**![Little Green Light logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Little-Green-Light-logo-1024x968.webp)An affordable, cloud-based donor management system trusted by 10,000+ small nonprofits. Unlimited users, transparent pricing, integrates with Stripe, PayPal, Mailchimp, and Constant Contact — with no setup fees. *Best for: small nonprofits under 5,000 donors. Pricing: starts $45/month.* **eTapestry**![eTapestry logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/eTapestry-logo.png)Blackbaud’s entry-level cloud CRM for smaller organizations that want Blackbaud’s ecosystem without enterprise pricing. A common first step before scaling into Raiser’s Edge NXT. *Best for: small nonprofits planning to grow within the Blackbaud ecosystem.* **Blackbaud CRM**![Blackbaud Raiser's Edge NXT logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/blackbaud-raiser-s-edge-nxt.webp)Blackbaud’s enterprise-level solution for large nonprofits, healthcare organizations, and higher education institutions. Designed for multi-entity complexity, large major gift portfolios, and sophisticated reporting. *Best for: enterprise-scale organizations.* ##### **What CRMs do well:** A good CRM is the institutional memory of your fundraising program — organized, searchable, and accessible across your whole team. When a major donor calls, your CRM should tell you everything you need to know before you pick up. ##### **What CRMs do not do well:** Your CRM remembers what happened. It doesn’t tell you what to do about it. Identifying a lapse forming in real time — or spotting that a mid-level donor is primed for an upgrade ask — requires sophisticated reporting skills or a lot of time staring at data that was already old when you pulled it. Switching CRMs to solve this is every fundraiser’s nightmare: 8–12 months of migration, overpromised features, and a stalled program. ##### **How Avid works with your CRM:** Avid connects directly to your CRM and reads your donor file continuously — building the Golden Record, a unified always-current view of every donor across every channel. Edna, Avid’s fundraising intelligence, works this file around the clock: surfacing the donor who’s about to lapse before they do, identifying the segment that’s ready for an upgrade ask right now, flagging the second-gift window that’s open this week. **Avid ensures you don’t have to keep switching CRMs.** It connects your CRM to every other tool — and uses the data to orchestrate what happens next. > *“Your CRM remembers what happened. Avid works the file. You make every call.”* --- ### 2. Email Marketing Platforms (The Outbound Channel) #### What is the best email platform for nonprofit fundraising? ##### **What is an Email Marketing Platform:** Email marketing platforms handle the delivery, design, and automation of email communication to donors and prospects — list storage, template building, send scheduling, open and click tracking, and automation sequences. ##### **Common Email Marketing Platforms for nonprofits**: Constant Contact, Mailchimp, Kit (formerly ConvertKit), Klaviyo, ActiveCampaign, Salesforce Marketing Cloud, HubSpot. NameTop FeaturesStarting PriceBest Org Size[Constant Contact](https://www.constantcontact.com/)Easy-to-use email editor. Nonprofit discounts. CRM integrations (esp. DonorPerfect).~$12/monthSmall-to-mid[Mailchimp](https://www.mailchimp.com/)Strong free tier. Automation + audience segmentation. Landing pages + basic CRM.FreeSmall[Kit (formerly ConvertKit)](https://www.kit.com/)Subscriber tagging. Behavioral automation. Free up to 10,000 subscribers.FreeSmall-to-mid[Klaviyo](https://www.klaviyo.com/)Deep behavioral segmentation. Revenue attribution. Donor action—triggered emails.Free tier availableMid-size[ActiveCampaign](https://www.activecampaign.com/)Complex automation builder. Built-in CRM layer. Donor journey sequences.~$29/monthMid-size[Salesforce Marketing Cloud](https://www.salesforce.com/marketing)Native Salesforce integration. Multichannel donor journeys. Enterprise automation at scale.Contact for pricingLarge[HubSpot](https://www.hubspot.com/)Free CRM + email + forms. Landing pages. Content marketing tools.FreeAll sizes**Constant Contact**![Constant Contact logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/constant-contact-logo-icon-1021x1024.webp)One of the most widely used email platforms in the nonprofit sector. Known for its ease of use, strong customer support, and nonprofit discounts. The default email integration for many nonprofit CRMs, particularly DonorPerfect. *Best for: small-to-mid nonprofits, simple programs. Pricing: starts ~$12/month; nonprofit discounts available.* **Mailchimp**![Mailchimp logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/mailchimp.svg)A popular general-purpose email platform with a strong free tier. Offers automation, audience segmentation, landing pages, and basic CRM features. *Best for: small nonprofits growing their email programs. Pricing: free tier available; paid plans from ~$13/month.* **Kit (Formerly ConvertKit)**![Kit Logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Kit-Logo.svg)A creator-focused platform built around subscriber tagging and behavioral automation. Strong for nonprofits that produce regular content or want to segment donors by interest without complex technical setup. *Best for: content-driven nonprofits and online communities. Pricing: free up to 10,000 subscribers.* **Klaviyo**![Klaviyo logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Klaviyo-logo-1024x304.png)A data-driven email and SMS platform known for deep behavioral segmentation and revenue attribution. Built for organizations that want emails triggered by specific donor actions — a lapse forming, an upgrade threshold reached, a new online gift. *Best for: data-sophisticated mid-size organizations.* **Active Campaign**![ActiveCampaign logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/active-campaign.webp)Email and marketing automation with a built-in CRM layer. Strong automation builder for complex donor journeys without enterprise-level cost. *Best for: mid-size nonprofits with complex follow-up needs. Pricing: starts ~$29/month.* **Salesforce Marketing Cloud**![Salesforce](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/salesforce_logo_square.svg)Salesforce’s enterprise email and automation platform, tightly integrated with Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud. Enables sophisticated multichannel donor journeys at scale. *Best for: large organizations already running on Salesforce.* **Hubspot**![Hubspot](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/hubspot_logo_square.svg)A full marketing and CRM platform with email, landing pages, and forms — with a robust free tier. *Best for: nonprofits with content-heavy programs. Pricing: free tier available.* ##### **What Email Marketing Platforms do well:** Email remains one of the highest-ROI channels in nonprofit fundraising. Automation sequences — welcome series, acknowledgment flows, lapsed donor re-engagement — can run continuously once set up correctly. ##### **What Email Marketing Platforms do not do well:** Email platforms don’t know what’s happening in your CRM or donation data in real time. Segmentation typically requires exporting from your CRM, cleaning in a spreadsheet, importing, and hoping the data is still accurate by send time. Many CRMs are built to integrate with only one email platform — locking you into a tool that may no longer fit your program. ##### **How Avid works with your Email Marketing Platform:** **Avid syncs audiences to your email platform automatically** — no exports, no spreadsheets, no manual imports. Edna builds segments from live donor data, pushes them to your email platform, and drafts campaign copy for your review. If your CRM’s preferred email tool no longer fits, Avid breaks that dependency. > **Case Study:** Avid identified a data sync issue between Luther Seminary’s CRM and email platform that was silently blocking 75% of lapsed donors from receiving messages — then automated the fix, driving [a 308% increase in donor reactivation.](https://avidai.com/blog/luther-seminary/) --- ### 3. Online Donation & Giving Platforms (The Transaction Layer) #### What is the best online donation platform for nonprofits? ##### **What is an Online Donation & Giving Platform:** Online donation platforms handle the mechanics of accepting gifts digitally — donation forms, recurring giving programs, peer-to-peer fundraising pages, and tax receipts. They process transactions, generate acknowledgments, and store gift records. ##### **Common Online Donation & Giving Platforms:** Fundraise Up, GoFundMe Pro, DonorBox, Funraise, GivingFuel, Anedot, Stripe. NameTop FeaturesBest Org Size[Fundraise Up](https://www.fundraiseup.com/)AI ask amount optimization. 78% recurring donor retention rate. Real-time upgrade prompts.Large[GoFundMe Pro (Formerly Classy)](https://www.classy.org/)Peer-to-peer fundraising. Crowdfunding + event registration. GoFundMe network access.Mid-to-large[iDonate](https://www.idonate.com/)Multi-channel giving (online, text, streaming). Non-cash & stock giving. Faith-sector focused.Faith-based / all sizes[DonorBox](https://www.donorbox.org/)Recurring giving tools. Matching gift integration. Easy website embed.Small-to-mid[Funraise](https://www.funraise.org/)All-in-one platform (CRM, email, SMS). AI fundraising intelligence. 26% avg. online revenue growth.Mid-size[GivingFuel](https://www.givingfuel.com/)All-in-one CRM + marketing. $1B+ raised on platform. High-touch human support.Small-to-mid[Anedot](https://www.anedot.com/)No monthly fee. Recurring giving + one-click checkout. Fast setup.Small-to-mid[Stripe](https://www.stripe.com/)Custom donation infrastructure. Recurring billing. Developer-friendly API.Technical teams**Fundraise Up**![FundraiseUp logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/fundraiseup_logo.webp)An AI-powered platform that optimizes ask amounts and recurring upgrade prompts in real time. Reports a 78% recurring donor retention rate versus the 11% industry average. Trusted by UNICEF, the Canadian Red Cross, and the Salvation Army. *Best for: large organizations prioritizing conversion and recurring giving. Pricing: 1.5% platform fee.* **GoFundMe Pro (Formerly Classy)**![GoFundMe Pro logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/GoFundMePro-1024x182.png)A feature-rich fundraising platform for mid-to-large nonprofits. Strong on peer-to-peer fundraising, crowdfunding, and event registration. *Best for: mid-to-large organizations running complex multichannel campaigns.* **iDonate**![iDonate](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/idonate-square-1024x997.webp)A multi-channel digital fundraising platform combining online giving pages, peer-to-peer, text-to-give, live event streaming, and non-cash/stock giving in one place. Particularly strong in the faith-based sector. *Best for: faith-based organizations and nonprofits running event-based or multichannel campaigns.* **DonorBox**![Donorbox logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Donorbox-logo.png)An affordable, easy-to-deploy platform with recurring giving, matching gift integration, crowdfunding, and peer-to-peer. Embeds directly into existing websites with minimal setup. *Best for: small-to-mid nonprofits. Pricing: free tier + 1.5% platform fee on paid plans.* **Funraise**![Funraise logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/funraise-logo-30301f.svg)A complete nonprofit platform — donation forms, peer-to-peer, events, auctions, recurring giving, built-in CRM, email, SMS, and AI fundraising intelligence in one. Organizations using Funraise grew online revenue 26% on average in 2025. *Best for: mid-size organizations seeking a unified platform.* **GivingFuel**![GivingFuel logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/givingfuel-logo.png)An all-in-one fundraising, CRM, and marketing platform with 15+ years in the sector and $1B+ raised. Known for high-touch support and straightforward pricing. *Best for: small-to-mid nonprofits who value simplicity and human support.* **Anedot**![Anedot logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/anedot-1.webp)A fast-setup donation platform known for competitive processing rates, strong recurring giving tools, and no monthly platform fee. Popular with nonprofits, churches, and advocacy organizations that want reliable online giving without a complex implementation. *Best for: small-to-mid nonprofits prioritizing simplicity and low cost. Pricing: no monthly fee; standard transaction fees apply.* **Stripe**![Stripe logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/stripe-logo.png)Payment processing infrastructure used by developers and platforms to power donation forms and recurring billing. The payment backbone behind many nonprofit giving tools. *Best for: technical teams building custom donation experiences.* ##### **What Online Donation & Giving Platform**s** do well:** Online giving platforms dramatically reduce friction at the point of donation — conversion-optimized flows, smart recurring upgrade prompts, and peer-to-peer tools that turn donors into fundraisers. ##### **What **Online Donation & Giving Platform**s don’t do well:** Gift data almost never flows automatically into your CRM. A new online donor may not appear in your CRM for days — meaning the acknowledgment goes out late, the cultivation sequence doesn’t start, and the second-gift window opens and closes before anyone notices. ##### **How Avid works with your giving platform:** Avid pulls donation data into the Golden Record in real time. When a first-time donor gives online, Edna sees it immediately and can trigger the follow-up sequence, flag the donor for personal outreach, or identify them as a recurring upgrade candidate — before the second-gift window closes. > **Case Study:** Because Avid connects directly to their donation platform, Tarrant Area Food Bank could instantly see who gave and at what level — enabling a personalized onboarding series that [tripled retention from 11% to 33%.](https://avidai.com/blog/fundraising-automation-increases-retention-by-200/) --- ### 4. Digital Advertising Tools (The Acquisition and Reactivation Channel) #### How do nonprofits use digital advertising to find new donors? ##### **What are Digital Advertising tools for nonprofits:** Digital advertising tools include paid social media platforms, search advertising, and programmatic display — used to acquire new donors, reactivate lapsed ones, and keep your organization top of mind during active campaigns. ##### **Common Digital Fundraising tools:** Meta Ads (Facebook and Instagram), Google Ads (including Google Ad Grants), LinkedIn Ads, Microsoft Ads, The Trade Desk. NameTop FeaturesBest Org Size[Meta Ads](https://business.meta.com/)Custom + lookalike audiences. Retargeting. Highest-reach social platform.All sizes[Google Ads](https://ads.google.com/)Search, display + YouTube. Ad Grants: $10K/month free. Intent-based targeting.All sizes[LinkedIn Ads](https://business.linkedin.com/marketing-solutions/ads)Job title + industry targeting. High-capacity donor reach. Corporate philanthropist audiences.Major gift programs[Microsoft Ads](https://ads.microsoft.com/)Google Ads campaign import. Higher-income demographic reach. Lower CPC competition.All sizes[The Trade Desk](https://www.thetradedesk.com/)Programmatic display + connected TV. First-party audience targeting. Premium open web inventory.Large**Meta Ads (Facebook & Instagram)**![Blue circular app icon with a white infinity loop, representing the Meta logo.](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/meta.png)The dominant social advertising platform for nonprofit donor acquisition and reactivation. Custom audiences built from your donor file, lookalike audiences from your best donors, and retargeting for website visitors and online donors. One of the highest-reach channels for nonprofit advertising when audience data is current. *Best for: all sizes. Pricing: performance-based.* **Google Ads**![Google Ads](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/google_ads_logo_square.svg)Search and display advertising across Google’s network, including YouTube. Google Ad Grants provides qualifying nonprofits with up to **$10,000/month in free search advertising**. Paid campaigns extend reach and enable more sophisticated targeting. *Best for: all sizes. Pricing: Google Ad Grants free for qualifying nonprofits; paid campaigns performance-based.* **LinkedIn Ads**![Linkedin Ads logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/linkedin-ads.svg)Professionally segmented audiences targetable by job title, seniority, industry, and employer. Effective for major gift campaigns, planned giving programs, and events targeting high-capacity donors and corporate philanthropists. *Best for: major gift and planned giving programs.* **Microsoft Ads**![Microsoft logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Microsoft-logo.png)Reaches an older, higher-income demographic that over-indexes for charitable giving, with lower competition and often better CPCs than Google. Campaigns import directly from Google Ads. *Best for: organizations with existing Google Ads campaigns seeking complementary reach.* **The Trade Desk**![The Trade Desk logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/the-trade-desk-logo.jpg)A programmatic platform giving nonprofits access to premium display, video, and connected TV inventory across the open web. Extends campaigns using first-party donor data and modeled audiences beyond social platforms. *Best for: large organizations running sophisticated multichannel campaigns.* ##### **What Digital Advertising tools do well:** Digital advertising is one of the most scalable acquisition channels available to nonprofits. A well-targeted Meta campaign can reach hundreds of thousands of people who look like your best donors. A well-executed reactivation campaign can bring back lapsed donors at a fraction of new donor acquisition cost. ##### **Where Digital Advertising tools do not do well:** Effective advertising depends on fresh audience data. Most nonprofits update their Meta or Google audiences quarterly — because building and uploading a current list is manual, time-consuming work. The lookalike model running your acquisition campaign is operating on data three months old. ##### **How Avid works with digital advertising tools:** Avid pushes audiences to Meta and Google continuously and automatically — no manual list pulls, no uploads. When Edna identifies a segment that needs a reactivation push or acquisition run, she builds the audience and syncs it directly to your ad platforms through Avid Pathways. > **Case Study:** Avid unified Bible League Canada’s CRM and donation data to automatically model and sync high-value audiences directly into Meta — resulting in [a 20% lower cost per donor and 63.9% more clicks.](https://avidai.com/blog/bible-league-canada/) --- ### 5. Direct Mail and Offline Channels (The High-Value Channel) #### How do nonprofits manage direct mail campaigns? ##### **What it is:** Direct mail remains the highest-revenue channel for most established nonprofits — appeal letters, newsletters, acknowledgments, and acquisition mail. But unlike email or digital ads, there’s almost no widely adopted software built to manage it. What exists is either proprietary to agencies, buried inside enterprise platforms, or built by someone who left three years ago. ##### **The software gap:** For most nonprofits, direct mail doesn’t run on software — it runs on relationships, with a print vendor, a mail house, or an agency. Many organizations outsource the entire process: audience selection, data hygiene, print production, and drop coordination. The agency manages it all, often using proprietary models and list-selection logic the organization never fully sees. Those who keep direct mail in-house typically rely on one person who knows how to work the data. That person knows which lapsed segments to pull, how far back to go, which suppression logic to apply, and how to format the output file for the mail house. The problem is that this knowledge lives in their head — and the process takes days, not hours, to execute every cycle. ##### **Where it falls short:** Even well-run direct mail programs struggle with two structural problems. The first is **list quality**. Mail campaigns built on a CRM export are already aging by the time the appeal drops. A suppression list that’s two weeks stale means recently lapsed donors — or recently deceased ones — receive an appeal. These are some of the most costly, relationship-damaging mistakes a program can make, and they’re almost entirely a data timing problem. The second is **measurement**. Direct mail reporting is notoriously difficult. Did that appeal letter drive the online gift that came in the following week? Most organizations can’t answer without a dedicated analyst, a BI tool, and a custom matchback process that takes weeks to run — long after the campaign is over and decisions for the next one are already being made. ##### **How Avid works with direct mail:** Edna can build and export a mail-ready audience in minutes — pulling from your live donor file with any combination of segmentation logic: recency, frequency, giving level, lapse window, channel behavior, upgrade potential. No list-pull specialist required. No stale CRM export. Suppression is automatic. After the campaign drops, Avid’s **matchback reporting** closes the loop. By matching your mail file against subsequent giving across every channel — online, check, phone — Avid gives you a clear picture of what that direct mail campaign actually drove: which segments responded, which gave online after receiving the letter, and what the true cost per dollar raised was. Campaign intelligence that most organizations only achieve with a BI team — surfaced automatically, without waiting weeks for someone to run the analysis. > *“Direct mail has always been your highest-value channel. Avid makes it your most efficient one.”* --- ### 6. Text and SMS Fundraising Platforms (The Immediate Connection) #### Which SMS platform is best for nonprofit fundraising? ##### **What are SMS platforms:** SMS platforms enable text-based donor communication — appeals, event reminders, impact updates, and conversational outreach. Text reaches donors in a channel with dramatically higher open rates than email, and can serve as a rapid-response vehicle during time-sensitive campaigns. ##### **Common SMS tools for nonprofits:** Powered By Text, Tatango, Hustle, Ascend, Signal Vine. NameTop FeaturesBest Org Size[Powered By Text](https://www.poweredbytext.com/)Two-way texting + MMS. Dedicated strategy specialist. 300%+ reported partner ROI.Large[Tatango](https://www.tatango.com/)High-volume compliance. CRM integrations. Political + nonprofit track record.Mid-to-large[Hustle](https://www.hustle.com/)Peer-to-peer texting. Staff + volunteer powered. Conversational outreach at scale.Advocacy / mid-size[Ascend (Formerly Strive)](https://www.goascend.com/)Donor stewardship via text. Recurring giving focus. Relationship-based engagement.Small-to-mid[Signal Vine](https://www.signalvine.com/)AI-powered two-way texting. Personalized outreach at scale. Higher ed + nonprofit focus.Mid-to-large**Powered By Text**![Powered By Text logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Powered-By-Text-Logo-1024x307.png)An enterprise SMS platform built specifically for nonprofits, churches, and broadcast media, with 20+ years in the space. Mass texting, two-way texting, MMS, automated messaging, and weekly strategy sessions with a dedicated specialist. One partner (KCBI) reported 300%+ ROI and engagement nine times higher than email. *Best for: large nonprofits and media organizations.* **Tatango**![Tatango logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Tatango-logo-1024x536.png)A high-volume SMS fundraising platform for large nonprofit and political programs. Strong on compliance, CRM integrations, and segmentation. *Best for: high-volume programs at mid-to-large organizations.* **Hustle**![Hustle logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Hustle-logo-1024x347.png)A peer-to-peer texting platform enabling staff and volunteers to send personalized, conversational texts at scale. *Best for: advocacy organizations and campaigns requiring personal outreach.* **Ascend (Formerly Strive)**![Ascend logo: black wordmark on a purple background with a rounded black shape containing a white star next to the word ascend](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Ascend-logo-1024x580.png)SMS engagement platform focused on donor stewardship and recurring giving through text. *Best for: organizations building ongoing donor relationships via text.* **Signal Vine**![SignalVine logo with a green wave icon on the left and the text SignalVine on the right.](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Signal-Vine-logo.webp)An AI-powered text messaging platform for personalized, two-way conversations at scale. Originally built for higher education, expanding into broader nonprofit use. *Best for: organizations prioritizing conversational, personalized outreach at scale.* ##### **What SMS tools do well:** SMS creates an immediacy that email and mail can’t replicate. A text sent on GivingTuesday morning reaches donors on the device they’re already using. For high-urgency campaigns — matching gift deadlines, disaster response, year-end countdowns — text can drive meaningful revenue in hours. ##### **What SMS tools do not do well:** SMS almost always operates in complete isolation from the rest of your fundraising stack. A donor who gave online yesterday, responded to your email last week, and received a direct mail piece last month looks like a new contact in your SMS platform. There’s no coordination logic connecting what’s been said across channels — making it easy to over-contact a donor, deliver contradictory messages, or text a reactivation ask to someone who already gave three days ago. ##### **How Avid works with SMS tools:** Avid coordinates SMS with your CRM, email, and donation data so every channel reflects the same current picture of each donor. A donor who gives online doesn’t receive a reactivation text two days later. Every message goes out as part of a coordinated multichannel program — not an isolated blast. --- ### 7. Analytics and Intelligence Tools (The Insight Layer) #### What analytics tools do nonprofits use for fundraising? ##### **What are analytics and intelligence tools for nonprofits:** Analytics tools surface performance data about your fundraising program — retention rates, acquisition costs, campaign results, donor lifetime value, and trends over time. Benchmarking tools compare your performance against the broader sector. Predictive and propensity tools score donors based on likelihood to give, lapse, or upgrade. ##### **Common analytics and intelligence tools** for nonprofits**:** Dataro, DonorSearch AI, iWave, Wiland (propensity modeling), Tableau, Power BI, Google Looker Studio. NameTop FeaturesBest Org Size[Dataro](https://www.dataro.io/)AI propensity scoring. CRM-native integration. Lapse + upgrade predictions.Mid-to-large[DonorSearch AI](https://www.donorsearch.net/)Wealth screening. Philanthropic giving history. Major gift capacity scores.Major gift programs[Kindsight](https://kindsight.co/)Prospect research + wealth screening. Philanthropic ratings + capacity scores. Capital campaign prep.Mid-to-large[Wiland](https://www.wiland.com/)Cooperative giving database. Sector-scale propensity models. Giving signals.Mid-to-large[Tableau](https://www.tableau.com/)Custom BI dashboards. Cross-department data visualization. Board-ready reporting.Large[Power BI](https://powerbi.microsoft.com/)Microsoft ecosystem integration. Affordable BI + custom dashboards. Self-service reporting.Mid-to-large[Google Looker Studio](https://lookerstudio.google.com/)Free BI + dashboards. Google Analytics integration. No technical setup required.Small-to-mid**Wiland**![Wiland logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/WilandLogo_202501.png)A cooperative database and propensity modeling service for nonprofit fundraising. Models trained on what actually drives giving across thousands of organizations, not just your own patterns. Also the data engine behind Avid’s live benchmarking. *Best for: mid-to-large organizations seeking sector-scale modeling.* **DonorSearch**![DonorSearch logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/DonorSearch-logo.png)Wealth screening and AI-powered prospect intelligence — combining philanthropic giving history, wealth data, and biographical information to identify major gift capacity and affinity. *Best for: major gift officers and development teams.* **Dataro**![Bold black lowercase wordmark logo reading 'diablo'.](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Dataro-logo-1024x574.png)An AI propensity scoring platform built specifically for nonprofits. Integrates directly with major CRMs to score donors on likelihood to give, lapse, upgrade, or respond to specific appeals. *Best for: mid-to-large organizations seeking predictive intelligence without a data science team.* **Kindsight**![Kindsight logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Kindsight-1024x256.webp)Comprehensive prospect research and wealth intelligence — philanthropic ratings, capacity scores, and affinity data. *Best for: major gift identification, planned giving programs, capital campaigns.* **Tableau**![Tableau logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Tableau-Logo-1024x576.png)Leading enterprise BI and data visualization. Highly flexible, board-ready dashboards connecting fundraising data with program and finance data. *Best for: large organizations with dedicated analytics staff. Pricing: starts ~$70/user/month.* **Power BI**![Brand logo: the text 'Power BI' in brown beside overlapping gold gradient bars on the right.](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Power-BI-logo-1024x486.png)Microsoft’s BI platform, tightly integrated with the Microsoft ecosystem. *Best for: organizations already invested in Microsoft tools. Pricing: ~$10/user/month.* **Google Looker Studio**![Looker logo with a multicolored linked-ring icon on the left and 'Looker' in gray text to the right.](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Looker-Studio-logo-1024x272.webp)Google’s free BI and reporting tool, integrated with Google Analytics, Sheets, and BigQuery. An accessible entry point for organizations that want custom dashboards without enterprise software investment. *Best for: small-to-mid organizations. Pricing: free.* ##### **What analytics and intelligence tools do well:** Analytics give fundraising teams the evidence they need to make smarter decisions. Benchmarking turns an internal number (“we retained 43% of donors this year”) into a meaningful signal (“we’re seven points below the sector median — and we can still do something about it”). ##### **What analytics and intelligence tools do not do well:** Analytics tools show you what happened. Predictive tools tell you what’s likely to happen. Neither does anything about it. The insight and the action are still two separate jobs. An organization might have a beautifully designed dashboard showing a segment at high lapse risk — without anyone who has the hours to build the reactivation campaign before the window closes. ##### **How Avid works with fundraising intelligence tools:** Avid includes live fundraising benchmarks built with Wiland — updated monthly, covering 1,000+ nonprofits and $14 billion in annual giving, filterable by vertical and organization size. But the more important difference: in Avid, the insight layer and the action layer are the same system. Edna doesn’t just surface the finding — she builds the campaign. You ask a question in plain language, she reads the file, shows her reasoning, and stages the campaign for your review. The distance between “I see a problem” and “I’ve addressed it” collapses from days to minutes. --- ## The Real Cost of a Disconnected Fundraising Stack Every category above does something valuable. The problem isn’t the tools — it’s the space between them. **The same donor, counted as three.** Your CRM has one record. Your email platform has another. Your donation form has a third. No one is quite sure which is true. When you contact that donor, you’re guessing. **The lapse you learn about too late.** By the time a donor surfaces as “lapsed” in a standard report, the reactivation window has often already closed. Identifying a lapse forming — before it becomes a lapse — requires watching your file continuously, not quarterly. **The integration that breaks the week of the campaign.** Every fundraising team has this story. The API connection fails on December 26th. The export format changed. The campaign goes out on a list that was accurate three weeks ago. **The spreadsheet that’s holding it together.** Someone on your team — usually an experienced fundraiser — is the human middleware between your tools: running exports, building lists, suppressing duplicates, coordinating timing. That work should be invisible. Instead, it’s eating the week. **The agency that walks out the door.** Every cycle they run, agencies learn more about your donors. When the retainer ends, that learning leaves with them. The cumulative cost is real: **nonprofit fundraising programs typically spend 20 to 30 cents to raise every dollar.** Avid’s mission is to drive that down — not by replacing tools, but by eliminating the coordination overhead that makes the current system so expensive to run. --- ## What a Connected Fundraising Stack Actually Looks Like A connected fundraising stack doesn’t mean one tool that does everything. It means a layer that runs across the tools you already have, keeps them synchronized, and acts on what they’re telling you — continuously. Avid runs four continuous operations: **Aggregate.** Every channel — CRM, email, donation forms, direct mail, ads, SMS — feeds into one current record per donor. The Golden Record isn’t a nightly batch job. It’s a living picture of your program, updated as the data moves. **Visualize.** Four numbers tell you what’s structurally true about your program right now: retention, acquisition, reactivation, and upgrade — alongside live benchmarks so you know where you stand relative to the sector while you can still act on it. **Identify.** Edna reads your file continuously and surfaces what should happen next — in plain language, with reasoning cited so you can trace every answer to the data behind it. She’s seen patterns across 8,000+ fundraising experiments and 650 million+ donor interactions. **Deploy.** Once Edna identifies an opportunity, she builds the campaign: the audience, the message, the sequence — staged and ready for your review. You make the call. You hit send. The relationship and the final judgment never leave your hands. Running across this system is **LockStep** — Avid’s embedded team of fundraising specialists included in every plan. Not an onboarding team that disappears after go-live. Not an agency on a retainer that ends. A team of real humans that show up inside your program, invested in what happens next. **Want to see how it works**? *[Watch a 6-minute tour of Avid »](https://avidai.com/activate-your-tour-of-avid/ "Activate Your Tour of Avid")* [![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Screenshot-2026-06-24-at-2.56.21-PM.png)](https://avidai.com/activate-your-tour-of-avid/) --- ## Real Fundraising Teams. Real Results. **Hope for the Heart** was flat to declining before Avid. In their first full year on the platform, annual revenue doubled — from $309,700 to $793,600. Reactivation rate increased 131%. New donors acquired grew 45%. **Lifesavers Wild Horse Rescue** [increased monthly appeal revenue by 130% ](https://avidai.com/blog/how-lifesavers-saw-a-130-revenue-increase-through-smarter-segmentation/)— by finally having the capacity for personalized segmentation they’d always known they needed but never had the hours to execute. **Bible League Canada** unlocked [a 20% decrease in cost to acquire a new donor](https://avidai.com/blog/bible-league-canada/) — by aggregating their data and tools to power smarter new donor targeting. **Cook Children’s Health Foundation** saved “hours, if not days” creating a multichannel campaign — and saw higher conversion rates than campaigns they’d spent far more time building. These aren’t anomalies. They’re what happens when a team stops spending its hours on coordination and starts spending them on the work the tools were never able to do alone. --- ## Frequently Asked Questions **What is the best CRM for small nonprofits?**For small nonprofits, the most commonly recommended CRMs are Bloomerang (strong retention analytics, starts ~$99/month), Little Green Light (most affordable at $45/month, unlimited users), and DonorPerfect (deepest fundraising feature set). The right choice depends on your primary need: retention focus, affordability, or fundraising feature depth. **What’s the difference between a donor CRM and a donation platform?**A donor CRM stores your relationship history — every gift, interaction, and note over time. A donation platform processes transactions — it’s the form your donors see when they give online. They serve different functions and most nonprofits use both, often from different vendors. The challenge is getting them to share data automatically. **How much does nonprofit fundraising software cost?**Costs vary widely by category and org size. Donor CRMs range from $45/month (Little Green Light) to enterprise pricing for Salesforce or Blackbaud. Email platforms like Mailchimp and HubSpot have free tiers; paid plans start at $12–30/month. Donation platforms like DonorBox and Fundraise Up charge 1–1.5% platform fees. Analytics tools like Google Looker Studio are free; Tableau starts at ~$70/user/month. Google Ad Grants provide $10,000/month in free search advertising for qualifying nonprofits. **What is the Google Ad Grant for nonprofits?**The Google Ad Grant provides eligible 501(c)(3) nonprofits with up to $10,000 per month in free Google search advertising. Organizations must meet Google’s eligibility requirements, maintain a 5% clickthrough rate, and operate a qualifying website. It’s one of the most underutilized resources in nonprofit digital fundraising. **What is matchback reporting in direct mail?**Matchback reporting matches a direct mail list against subsequent giving records to determine how many recipients gave after receiving a mail piece — including gifts made online or by check after the appeal dropped. It connects offline campaign activity to cross-channel revenue, giving a truer picture of direct mail’s impact than response rates alone. Avid automates this process without requiring a dedicated analyst or BI tool. **How many software tools does the average nonprofit use?**The average fundraising team runs between five and eight tools simultaneously — typically a donor CRM, email platform, donation processing platform, digital advertising accounts, a direct mail vendor, an SMS platform, and one or more analytics or enrichment tools. The challenge isn’t the number of tools — it’s the lack of real-time data sharing between them. **What is the best nonprofit email marketing platform?**The best platform depends on your program’s complexity. Constant Contact works well for straightforward appeal and newsletter programs. Mailchimp offers a strong free tier for organizations starting out. Klaviyo and ActiveCampaign are better suited for behavioral automation — emails triggered by specific donor actions. Salesforce Marketing Cloud is the right choice for large organizations already on Salesforce. **What is Avid?** Avid is an AI fundraising agent that connects a nonprofit’s entire software stack, builds a unified record of every donor across every channel, and uses that data to surface opportunities and execute campaigns. Avid includes Edna (its fundraising intelligence), Avid Pathways (for audience sync to ad platforms), Avid Playbooks (for campaign execution), and LockStep (an embedded team of human fundraising specialists). It works alongside your existing tools rather than replacing them. --- ## You Don’t Need a New CRM. You Need a Fundraising Agent. The fundraising software landscape keeps expanding. New tools, new categories, new promises. **The problem was never a shortage of tools.** It was a shortage of capacity — and adding more software to a disconnected stack doesn’t solve a capacity problem. It deepens it. What changes things is a layer that sits across your entire stack, keeps every tool synchronized, and works the program between campaigns — not just during them. A layer that knows your donors, not just your data. That sees every channel as one continuous picture, not seven separate dashboards. That’s what Avid is. Not another tool to manage. The fundraising agent that manages the rest. [**Schedule a time to see how Avid works with your specific tools →**](http://avidai.com/demo) **Categories:** AI & Automation --- ### [Nonprofit Email Marketing Statistics for 2025—and What to Do With Them](https://avidai.com/blog/nonprofit-email-marketing-statistics/) **Published:** April 25, 2025 **Author:** Avid Team **Excerpt:** Discover the latest nonprofit email marketing stats—and what they reveal about engagement, growth, and where your strategy might need a refresh. **Content:** In 2025, email continues to be one of the most powerful tools in a fundraiser’s toolkit. But blasting out updates or newsletters a few times a year? That’s not a strategy. The most successful teams are using email as a **data-driven, revenue-generating, relationship-building engine**. This blog breaks down the latest nonprofit email marketing statistics so you can benchmark smarter, optimize faster, and understand how real teams are using email to inspire action. ## **Key Nonprofit Email Marketing Stats in 2025** Email marketing continues to be a cornerstone for nonprofit organizations aiming to engage supporters and drive donations. The following statistics highlight current trends and benchmarks in the sector:​ ### **Engagement Metrics** - **Open Rates**: Nonprofits experience an average email open rate of **28.59%**, surpassing the for-profit average of 21–21.5%. [*\[Neon One\]*](https://neonone.com/resources/nonprofit-email-report/) - **Click-Through Rates (CTR)**: The average CTR for nonprofit emails stands at **3.29%**. [*\[Neon One\]*](https://neonone.com/resources/nonprofit-email-report/) - **Click-to-Open Rates (CTOR)**: Nonprofit emails have a CTOR of **10.2%**, indicating effective content engagement. [*\[The Nonprofit Times\]*](https://thenonprofittimes.com/marketing/nonprofit-email-open-rates-jumped/) - 74% of new subscribers expect **welcome email** after joining a newsletter and these messages have an average open rate of 202% higher than traditional email campaigns. [*\[Classy.org\]*](https://www.classy.org/blog/nonprofit-email-marketing-9-examples/) Want to know if your emails are working? Start here. 👇 Open rates, click-through rates (CTR), and click-to-open rates (CTOR) are your baseline for email performance, and knowing how you compare to industry benchmarks can help you refine what’s working and fix what’s not. **Here’s what you can do:** - **Use open rates** to test subject lines, sender names, and timing. Test subject lines weekly. A/B testing just the subject line is one of the easiest ways to improve open rates. - **Use CTR** to evaluate the strength of your content and calls to action. Stick to one CTA per email. Multiple asks = lower CTR. - **Use CTOR** (clicks divided by opens) to understand if your message is landing once it’s read. Use CTOR as your storytelling check. If opens are high but clicks are low, your message might not be compelling or clear enough. **Benchmark your metrics quarterly.** You don’t need to chase perfection. You need to know what’s improving. If your CTOR is high but your CTR is low, you might need better subject lines. If your open rate is strong but CTOR is weak, it’s time to sharpen your content or tighten your ask. Your metrics may vary significantly by segment (new donors vs. recurring, for example), so tracking performance by segment is a good idea. It’ll show you where to double down. ### **Email Frequency & List Management** - **Email Volume**: In 2024, nonprofits sent an average of **62 email messages per subscriber**, marking a 9% increase from the previous year. [*\[M+R Benchmarks\]*](https://mrbenchmarks.com/) - **List Growth**: Email list sizes grew by **4%** in 2024, a slight decline from the 6% growth observed in 2023. [\[*HubSpot*\]](https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/personalized-calls-to-action-convert-better-data) - **Subscriber Management**: Only **38%** of nonprofits regularly remove unengaged subscribers, potentially affecting overall engagement metrics. ​[\[Nonprofit Tech for Good Report\]](https://www.nptechforgood.com/101-best-practices/email-marketing-statistics-for-nonprofits/?utm_source=chatgpt.com) The average nonprofit sends over 60 emails per subscriber per year. That’s more than one email per week. But more doesn’t always mean better. Volume without strategy can lead to unsubscribes, disengagement, or worse, getting ignored entirely. And your list? It’s only as strong as the engagement it generates. If you’re not managing inactive subscribers, you’re hurting deliverability, skewing your performance metrics and wasting precious energy on people who aren’t listening. **Here’s what you can do:** - **Audit your email cadence.** More emails aren’t bad, but they need to be valuable, not just frequent. - **Segment based on engagement.** Send more frequent updates to active readers, and slower nurture tracks to quieter subscribers. - **Clean your list regularly.** Inactive subscribers drag down open rates and increase spam risk. - **Use re-engagement campaigns.** Give disengaged contacts one last shot with a focused, personalized email series. - **Prioritize quality over quantity.** List growth is good. List *health* is better. ### **Fundraising Impact** - **Donor Influence**: Email is the most inspiring channel for **33%** of donors, surpassing social media (29%) and websites (17%). [*\[2025 Online Donor Feedback Survey\]*](https://www.nptechforgood.com/2025/02/15/the-communication-giving-preferences-of-641-online-donors/) - **Revenue Generation**: In 2024, email campaigns accounted for **11%** of all online revenue for nonprofits, a decrease from 14% in 2023. [*\[M+R Benchmarks\]*](https://mrbenchmarks.com/) - **Fundraising Efficiency**: Nonprofits raised an average of **$58 for every 1,000 fundraising emails** sent in 2024. [*\[M+R Benchmarks\]*](https://mrbenchmarks.com/) - **Donor Value & Retention:** Donors with an email address give more. Even if they never give through an online channel. [*\[Avid Benchmarks\]*](https://avidai.com/benchmarks) - **Donors with an email address retain better.** Even if they only give offline. [*\[Avid Benchmarks\]*](https://avidai.com/benchmarks) ![Chart of annual revenue per donor by channel: multichannel donors give $383, more than double offline-only at $139](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/AD_4nXcuqJDuls8vdqS8i_Zauaa9KQ5xrEQbdF73hn_IVXBHsJEYLwrYccHVH_OQ9ocuYjXJZNLRL9krHyUb7neOoarQHVRyQNtHeBnlczQ-HF8kHDntLjlCL7ZQYtWzdtgfXU3BqtY0aA.webp)Email remains one of the top drivers of donor action, and it’s because they *influence*. One in three donors say email is the reason they gave. But the channel’s share of online revenue is shrinking, and return per message is down. That doesn’t mean email’s broken. It means the bar is higher. Generic appeals won’t cut it. Smart targeting, strong creative, and campaign-level strategy are what move donors today. **Here’s what you can do:** - **Double down on what’s working.** If email inspires more giving than social or your site, treat it like your primary channel, not an afterthought. - **Segment fundraising asks.** Don’t send the same CTA to lapsed donors, major donors, and first-timers. Customize journeys and giving prompts. - **Invest in testing.** Headlines, CTAs, visuals, time of day; small optimizations can make a big difference in response. - **Measure cost per gift, not just open rate.** Email should deliver more than engagement. Track how many gifts, and how much revenue, it actually drives. ### **Personalization & Design** - **Personalization Usage**: Approximately **63%** of nonprofits incorporate personalization in their email marketing efforts. [*\[Nonprofit Tech for Good Report\]*](https://www.nptechforgood.com/2023/02/01/announcing-the-2023-nonprofit-tech-for-good-report/) - **Subject Line Effectiveness**: Emails with personalized subject lines are **26% more likely** to be opened. [*\[Campaign Monitor\]*](https://www.campaignmonitor.com/resources/glossary/personalization/) - **Visual Content**: Including videos in emails can boost click-through rates by **65%**, and emails with graphics have a **1.12% higher** CTR than those without. [*\[Unlayer\]*](https://unlayer.com/blog/email-graphics) - **Personalized calls to action convert 202% better** than default calls to action. [\[*HubSpot*\]](https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/personalized-calls-to-action-convert-better-data) Most nonprofits are already adding some level of personalization, but “Hi \[First Name\]” isn’t enough anymore. Personalization today means sending the right content, with the right visuals, to the right person at the right time. Design also matters more than ever. But not always in the way you think. Supporters *experience* your emails. And how it looks (and feels) directly impacts whether they click, engage, or donate. **This is what you can do:** - **Personalize beyond the name.** Use donor behavior, giving history, location, and preferences to shape content, not just greetings. - **Segment subject lines.** A personalized subject line can make the difference between getting ignored and getting opened. - **Add visuals that serve a purpose.** Use video and graphics *only* when they reinforce your message and guide action. - **Test everything.** A/B test your images, CTA formats (buttons vs links), your sender, and your messaging to see what increases clicks, not just opens. - **Communicate like a human.** The most effective emails build better relationships. Write copy and use design that conveys authenticity & trust. ## **Email Marketing Is Still Underused in Nonprofits** For all its proven impact, email is still treated like an afterthought by too many organizations. - Only **68%** of nonprofits use email marketing at all. - Just **63%** personalize their messages. - Only **38%** clean their lists regularly. - Only **28%** use website popups to collect emails. \[[Nonprofit Resource hub\]](https://nonprofitresourcehub.org/nonprofit-marketing-trends-for-2025-staying-ahead-of-the-curve/) - Just **13%** use gated content to grow their list. There are still lots of missed opportunities. If email is where 1 in 3 donors say they’re most inspired to give… …then leaving these tactics on the table means leaving donations, relationships, [and retention](https://avidai.com/blog/the-donor-retention-crisis-why-fundraisers-need-to-sound-the-alarm-now/) behind too. Every unpersonalized email lowers engagement. Every unclean list hurts your deliverability. Every missing signup form slows your momentum. Email isn’t underperforming. Most teams aren’t giving it the structure and attention it deserves. If you want better results from email, you need to do it smarter, system-first, and supporter-focused. ## **And Here’s the Problem: Consistency Is Hard** [You can have the data](https://avidai.com/blog/collecting-nonprofit-data-isnt-enough/). You can know the benchmarks. You can even write the perfect emails. **But doing it all**, segmentation, optimization, testing, sending, reporting, **takes time**. And most nonprofit teams don’t have it. That’s why even [great strategies break down in execution](https://avidai.com/blog/fundraising-isnt-broken-but-it-is-stuck/). ### **What High-Performing Fundraisers Are Doing Differently** They’ve stopped treating email like a siloed tactic and started treating it like infrastructure. For them, email is a signal. A way to surface intent, deepen relationships, and drive action across everything they do. They’re using email to: - Pinpoint the moment someone is ready to upgrade. - Trigger a thank-you before the impact fades. - Reactivate a lapsed donor the second engagement drops. Not manually. Not with static workflows. With *systems* built to think, prioritize, and execute. They’re building smarter fundraising engines, ones that run in the background while their team focuses on strategy, creativity, and connection. Email is still one of the most cost-effective, high-return channels for nonprofit fundraising in 2025. But the gap between teams who are getting results, and those who aren’t, isn’t knowledge. **It’s execution.** That’s why we built [Avid](https://avidai.com/how-avid-works/), a **fundraising intelligence and automation** system [powered by AI](https://avidai.com/blog/how-ai-is-powering-fundraisers/) and [Playbooks based on 7,000+ fundraising experiments](https://avidai.com/ai-powered-playbooks/). We call it [the first fundraising agency in the cloud](https://avidai.com/blog/fundraising-agency-in-the-cloud/). ## **Avid Helps Nonprofit Marketers Actually Do What Works** [Avid](https://avidai.com/blog/built-for-fundraisers/) is the fundraising intelligence system that turns your email strategy into action, automatically, at scale, and without burning out your team. It’s [not another nonprofit CRM](https://avidai.com/blog/avid-vs-nonprofit-crm-bi-tools/) or workflow builder. It’s your fundraising execution engine. Here’s how [Avid](https://avidai.com/) helps: - **Unifies your stack** connecting your CRM, email platform, donation tools, and ad channels into one intelligent system. - **Identifies high-impact segments** in real time, like at-risk donors, second-gift candidates, or recent engagers. - **Launches pre-tested campaigns** automatically, like reactivation journeys, upgrade prompts, or welcome series. - **Optimizes send timing, cadence, and content** based on performance, no switching platforms or rebuilding logic. - **Surfaces daily insights and automates next steps**, so you’re not stuck analyzing data or reinventing the wheel. It tells you what happened and shows you what to do next (and does it for you). With [Avid](https://avidai.com/pricing/), your emails reach the right person, with the right message, at the right time, without your team having to set up new rules, filters, or workflows every week. It is *strategy, segmentation,* and *execution*, all in one system, built exclusively for fundraisers. Want to see how **Avid** helps fundraising teams act on insights, automatically? [Book a demo here.](https://avidai.com/demo/) **Categories:** Nonprofit Marketing --- ### [Luther Seminary Increases Donor Reactivation by 308% Using Avid](https://avidai.com/blog/luther-seminary/) **Published:** May 1, 2025 **Author:** Nathan Hill **Excerpt:** Discover how Luther Seminary used Avid to uncover hidden opportunities with their lapsed donors—and increase reactivation by 308%. **Content:** ![Luther Seminary logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Luther-Seminary-Logo-2.png)Donor retention is an ongoing issue for nonprofits. Budgets are often focused on bringing new donors in the door. But when donors don’t give again in the next year, they fall into a category called “lapsed.” A donor can lapse for many reasons. **Some give due to a momentary crisis** or disaster that hits particularly close to home. While we appreciate their gift—this type of giving doesn’t always lead to a long-term affinity. **Others might start giving a monthly donation**, but then later find themselves in a tighter financial position—forcing them to reduce some of their giving. **Still others give an initial gift to a meaningful cause**, but don’t ever feel thanked, welcomed, and invited into a community of donors. As a result, they choose to give their money elsewhere now. **What can you do when your donors stop giving?** - How do you know what caused them to lapse? - Can you actually win them back? - How much does reactivation really impact revenue? This is the question that [Ardee Coolidge](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ardee-coolidge/) and [NextAfter](https://www.nextafter.com) set out to answer along with the fundraising team at Luther Seminary. Watch the LinkedIn Livestream below as Nathan Hill and Ardee Coolidge discuss how [Luther Seminary](https://www.luthersem.edu/) increase donor reactivation—or keep reading below. ## The Problem: Every Donor Segment Was Down “Everything is down, and we’re just not sure why.” **Every fundraiser has faced a dilemma like this at some point.** You might try a new channel, hope for the best in your next campaign, or test a slightly updated messaging strategy. Maybe you even make that call to the one major donor you have in your back pocket who you know can close the gap for you if you really need it. ![Bar chart of donors by fiscal year showing a three-year decline: new down 37%, retained down 7%, reactivated down 12%](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcP-Hh4BIFcAnl0WM_4Jtqeka2rPcTplwGYtDc65Sdp6DZa2_3D6PEN-0A85U7Df4_Ua8nEmFTKBJPmvjTXHCInkYZtnJK93GXV-MCjefqvGjRAh-YBdf3vVg76PJc05K0w-0UQHQ?key=22BrPUe_Q3kxycbtxXjLuwxk) Oftentimes we get stuck in these dilemmas because we don’t understand *why*. ***Why* is everything is down?** *Why* are donors not retaining? *Why* are lapsed donors not coming back? This lack of understanding isn’t because fundraisers are lacking the skills. It’s because they’re lacking the system: - The system to unify all their data. - The system to make sense of what’s happening. - They system to deliver insights on what to do next. Ardee Coolidge, his team at NextAfter, and the fundraising team at Luther Seminary didn’t get stuck here. > “You can’t get frozen by either a green or a red arrow. You have to let them be a launching point to the next step.” > > Ardee Coolidge, NextAfter In fact, they radically turned their results around. They were able to diagnose the root cause. ## The Discovery: Lapsed Donors Shared an Alarming Trend To discover what’s happening under the hood of your data, you usually need some heavy lifting: - Big data exports from all your various tools - Dumping data into spreadsheets, Looker Studio, maybe even Power BI - Finding some magical way to normalize all your donor & contact records to make them talk to each other If you’re lucky enough to have those skills on your team and you stick with it, you might find some interesting insights. But getting **these insights usually take days, weeks, or even months.** Because most [nonprofit fundraising software](https://avidai.com/blog/nonprofit-fundraising-software-a-complete-guide-to-every-category-and-the-agent-that-makes-them-work-together/) doesn’t talk and your data gets trapped in silos. Let’s be real–—most fundraisers should be spending their time on relationships. Not spreadsheets. For the Luther Seminary team, **Avid simplified this process.** In an instant, they drilled in to see exactly what was happening under the hood. ### **Email Engagement Was Falling Off a Cliff** Because Avid was connecting their CRM to their email automation tool, Luther Seminary had instant insights into a hard-to-spot trend. Roughly half of existing donors and **75% of lapsed donors had not opened an email in over 7 months.** Yikes. ![Chart showing about half of existing donors and three-quarters of lapsed donors hadn't clicked an email in 7+ months](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXekdNNow5SlX-dI1z0EathvFkAe-vxsV-QktaVBDHd75i1uHZhuPv3u7OebYfXYDgA2JFX_tNwns4CFoS2Uv9N_WcCvlReLugYVI_iYubboLSNdFEy9X_SgYzxRlq-38Q_Yt1P8UA?key=22BrPUe_Q3kxycbtxXjLuwxk)Now it would be tempting to think these donors simply got bored of the emails they were receiving. But Ardee and his team dug deeper and found a checkbox field in the email tool that was keeping a large chunk of donors from receiving emails altogether! Double yikes. This sent Ardee and the NextAfter team to work on building a plan. ## The Plan: Using Ads to Re-Engage A traditional approach to reactivate these lapsed donors might be to send them a dedicated email appeal in the next campaign. But Ardee and the team knew that emailing these donors out of the blue would result in lots of unsubscribes and emails marked as spam. **They had to be re-engaged before they could be re-activated.** ### **Step 1: Create the Pathway in Avid** It was a matter of seconds before Ardee and his team had all the audiences ready to target with new ads and emails. **Without Avid, it may have taken days** to target, export, deduplicate, clean, and upload the right audiences to the right tools. **With Avid, it took a few clicks to create a custom audience** for these un-engaged lapsed donors. And with **one extra click, these donors were live in Facebook Ads manager**, ready to be targeted in a brand new re-engagement campaign. All of this was done in a matter of seconds. Not hours. Not days. It was instant. And this audience was **kept up to date automatically every day**. ### **Step 2: Launch the Re-Engagement Campaign** The plan for the campaign was to offer these lapsed donors a free piece of content to engage with. Once they engaged and downloaded the offer, they would be opted back into the email list. They also would be given an opportunity to give right away—as well as in future emails. ![Three Luther Seminary Facebook ads offering free Bible study guides for Romans, Acts, and Exodus](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfu6K5LtLkcY8DGvyRRuWA0DynGUKM3yIMvJCHBZbQobEJY5GNBTXw7ePqUGLkBc5yUGTDKNMfYsuvYO54o7CIARInHuDN5YiHHEKmCQ3hMD6591nrRW9XMwV9UsloNODpFzUl8?key=22BrPUe_Q3kxycbtxXjLuwxk)Avid was able to keep both their Facebook Ad and email audiences up to date—refreshing the data daily to suppress newly re-activated donors. This constant data sync from **Avid helped keep ad costs low and performance high**. ## The Result: A Little Goes a Long Way When Luther Seminary first noticed their issue with Lapsed Donor reactivation, their reactivation rates were down by 12%. After running this new re-engagement campaign for 3 months, they used Avid to analyze how the progress. The result? ***Lapsed donors reactivated, big time. There was a 308% increase in reactivation from where Luther Seminary had started at their last check-in.*** ![Results graphic: new donors improved 76%, retained donors 56%, and reactivated donors 308%](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfET9Icvsc0ZYGHkJcelREoZ7B4-lfqPmqx007aJLifj1LOdAFC5HYDTYCgSW9iMbBZnDgo_eryfPLVdjQ6ugLb1w8IMdIfEkf-1wLJ66syRRraFtSdJlwihRUqum_9rh-zl4Nbzg?key=22BrPUe_Q3kxycbtxXjLuwxk)In fact, Luther Seminary now had **more reactivated online donors than at any other point in the previous 5 years**. ## Forecasting: Understanding the Impact Over Time To understand the true impact of a metric like lapsed donor reactivation, we often have to look to the future. In the case of Luther Seminary, they saw a major impact on their fundraising right away. But the **long term projection is where the biggest impact lies**. A tool like Avid puts predictive analytics at your fingertips to help you make better strategic decisions right now. With the flick of a slider, you can see how **even a small uplift in reactivation can improve your organization’s fundraising revenue** over the course of the next 3 years. Without these predictive analytics, you’re left flying blind—hoping that decisions you make today will pay off in the long run. **Avid gives you a clear line of sight** to make decisions that ensure you can have an even greater impact on your mission for years to come. ## Features: The Tools That Fueled the Win for Luther Seminary ### **Connections: Bringing All the Data Together** Avid’s “Connections” allowed Luther Seminary to bring all their tools into one cohesive system: - Their CRM data - Their Email performance - Their Advertising tools ### **Insights: Analyzing the Biggest Changes** Avid’s “Insights” served up the biggest changes happening with Luther Seminary’s fundraising program—allowing them to identify concerning trends before they got out of hand. ![Screenshot of Avid Insights](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Avid-Insights-Top-Five-Insights-Screenshot-1024x449.png) ### **Pathways: Building and Syncing Audience** Avid’s “Pathways” tool allowed Luther Seminary to instantly push their target audiences out to their email and advertising tools. Plus, Avid kept these audiences updated every day—avoiding the need for ongoing manual work. ![Screenshot of Avid Pathways pushing an audience to Facebook](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Avid-Pathways-Push-Audience-Screenshot.png) ### **Scorecard: Predicting Impact Over Time** Avid’s Scorecard allows Luther Seminary to see the long-term impact of their work—ensuring better organizational health and mission impact. ![Screenshot of the Avid Fundraising scorecard showing impact over time](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Avid-Scorecard-Screenshot-1024x497.png) ## Ready to See What’s Possible? Luther Seminary didn’t just clean up data. They unlocked a smarter, faster way to fundraise—with clarity about what matters most and a system that helps them act on it. That’s what Avid makes possible. Whether you’re navigating a complex CRM migration, trying to re-engage lapsed donors, or just tired of feeling stuck in reactive mode, Avid gives you the clarity to act and the confidence to move. Let’s stop patching tools together. Let’s start building momentum. 👉 [See Avid in action](https://avidai.com/demo/) **Categories:** Customer Stories --- ### [How Lifesavers Saw a 130% Revenue Increase Through Smarter Segmentation](https://avidai.com/blog/how-lifesavers-saw-a-130-revenue-increase-through-smarter-segmentation/) **Published:** June 23, 2026 **Author:** Karina Rodríguez **Excerpt:** Lifesavers sent one appeal per month—with no segmentation. When they used Avid to power personalized appeals—they saw a 130% increase in revenue. **Content:** ![Lifesavers Wild Horse Rescue logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Lifesavers-Wild-Horse-Rescue-Logo.webp)## About Lifesavers Wild Horse Rescue Lifesavers Wild Horse Rescue is dedicated to one of the most urgent missions in animal welfare: saving wild horses from slaughter. With a lean team and an unwavering commitment to their herd, Lifesavers operates the way most nonprofits do––with more good to do than hours to do it in. Effort has never been the constraint. Capacity is. ## The Challenge Before working with Avid, Lifesavers Wild Horse Rescue sent one appeal per month. The same email. The same message. Sent to everyone on their list. What looked like segmentation from the outside was really batch sending––the same content going out in staggered waves, not tailored to different audiences. Current donors, lapsed donors, and supporters who had never given received identical messaging with no acknowledgment of where they were in their relationship with the organization. ![Avid sidebar with the Edna panel open: 'Need answers? Ask Edna.' above a chat input (illustrative)](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Snippet_Edna-Menu-911x1024.png) The team knew they should be personalizing their communication. But like many small teams, **batch sending was all they had capacity for.** Edna—Avid’s fundraising agent—promised to give them the capacity to scale segmentation. But the team was skeptical. - Could Edna write copy that actually sounds like them? - Would she capture the urgency and heart of a wild horse rescue? - Would the copy feel generic, like it could have been written for anyone? ## The Experiment For their April appeal, Lifesavers decided to try something different. Using Avid, they built **three distinct versions of the same campaign**: ![Mobile app screen titled 'Audiences' with colorful rounded card outlines and audience entries showing name and stats (Contacts, Type).](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Snippet_Audiences-911x1024.png) - one for current donors - one for lapsed donors - one for supporters who had never given Each version was shaped around where that audience stood in their relationship with the organization. April was a non-emergency appeal. No dramatic rescue. No immediate crisis. In a way, this made it the perfect test. If segmentation could move the needle without a compelling news hook, it would prove the strategy worked on its own merits. **Edna built the whole campaign in minutes**––pulling **every segmented list**, personalizing the message for **each audience**, orchestrating the full **campaign sequence**. All of this was staged, ready to review by the Lifesavers team—able to be launched at a moment’s notice. ## The Results This experiment would have been a win even if it was a flat result. The time savings alone would give their team capacity back to focus on the work only they can do. The stewardship. The donor relationships. But this experiment led to more than just time savings. > The April appeal—written by Edna—**outperformed every comparable campaign** in Lifesavers’ history. ### It generated 130% more revenue. Revenue increased **130% compared to similar non-emergency campaigns**. A routine monthly appeal became one of their strongest performers of the year through Edna’s ability to scale their personalization. ### It increased donor engagement. Overall **open rates increased 50%** compared to prior non-emergency appeals. The current donor segment reached a 45.2% open rate––well above their historical baseline of roughly 30%. ### It activated recurring donors. This was the **first non-emergency appeal to generate new recurring donors** for Lifesavers. With Edna handling the segmentation, it was possible to speak directly to where each supporter was in their journey. ### It reactivated lapsed donors. Lapsed donors came back at a rate **500% higher than in prior non-emergency campaigns**. The message Edna wrote met them where they were––acknowledging the gap, not ignoring it–– and they responded. ## A Turning Point for their Team Leadership came in skeptical. Could Edna really capture their voice—let alone help them achieve better performance? After the campaign, they were convinced. Edna produced copy that sounded like Lifesavers. It wasn’t a template—it was personalized to their voice, their brand, and their donors. Leadership’s hesitation turned to enthusiasm. As one team member put it*:* > ***“This makes your job a little easier so you can focus more on your supporters.”*** That’s the point. Edna doesn’t replace an organization’s voice. She works from it, reads it, and extends it across every segment and campaign without the team having to start from scratch each time. You stay in complete control of the message. Edna takes care of the rest. ## Greater Capacity. Better Results. This 130% increase in revenue is just the beginning. Lifesavers didn’t overhaul their fundraising program. They ran one segmented appeal. Powered by Edna, this deeply segmented appeal took less time than their standard one-size-fits-all appeal would have taken. Segmentation has a reputation for being complicated. It often requires dedicated staff, sophisticated platforms, and a level of technical infrastructure some teams don’t have capacity to maintain. Avid changes that equation. **Avid connects to the [nonprofit fundraising software](https://avidai.com/blog/nonprofit-fundraising-software-a-complete-guide-to-every-category-and-the-agent-that-makes-them-work-together/ "Nonprofit Fundraising Software: A Complete Guide to Every Category (And the Agent That Makes Them Work Together)") and tools your organization already uses**, shapes strategy, builds your audiences, drafts your campaigns, and adapts as the program moves. For Lifesavers, the result was a non-emergency appeal that **outperformed expectations across every metric that matters**: opens, revenue, recurring giving, and lapsed donor reactivation. Not because the cause got more urgent in April. Because **Avid gave Lifesavers the capacity to match the message to the audience.** #### Want to see how Avid can help your team finally get ahead of the work? [Schedule a tour to see how Avid can be your team’s fundraising agent.](http://avidai.com/demo) **Categories:** AI & Automation, Customer Stories --- ### [How DonorPerfect Fundraisers Improve Their Email Fundraising Using Avid](https://avidai.com/blog/how-donorperfect-fundraisers-improve-their-email-fundraising-using-avid/) **Published:** September 17, 2025 **Author:** Nathan Hill **Excerpt:** You need to improve your donor emails, but your data is stuck in DonorPerfect. Avid connects your CRM to your email tool of choice—powering better fundraising. **Content:** There are a million and one email tools—each with their own sets of pros and cons. Some are better at automations. Others are better at building lists, segmentation, or email design. [DonorPerfect](https://www.donorperfect.com/) integrates with ConstantContact out of the box. For fundraisers sending basic email communications, this is usually sufficient. **But what if you need a more advanced email tool like Mailchimp?** Kit? Or even HubSpot? **Avid + DonorPerfect lets you use whichever email tool you like**—with full access to all your DonorPerfect data to build targeting lists and automate your donor communications. ## **The Problem:** Your Donor Data is Stuck Inside of DonorPerfect Many nonprofit teams looking to level up their email communications will bring on a more advanced tool like Mailchimp, Kit, or even HubSpot. **The common problem: donor data is stuck in your CRM.** This is not a unique challenge with DonorPerfect. This is a problem nearly every fundraiser faces with their CRM. Some nonprofits end up sending all their marketing emails and newsletters from a more advanced tool. But their fundraising emails are stuck. ![DonorPerfect connected to one email tool while Mailchimp, Kit, HubSpot and more sit grayed out](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/DonorPerfect-Email-Limitations-1024x744.webp)In the case of DonorPerfect, your fundraising emails are stuck in ConstantContact. When your fundraising emails are stuck in a limited email tool, you risk: 1. Sending impersonal emails 2. Missing automation opportunities that drive donor engagement 3. Poor list hygiene that suppresses deliverability 4. Limited customization that can drive fundraising growth ## **The Opportunity:** Donors Expect a Personalized Email Experience In modern fundraising, donors expect that you know them. They expect your communications to address them personally. To understand their interests. To engage them in a timely, relevant manner. When your donor data is stuck in your CRM and your email tools are limited, you put your donor relationships at risk. There are many **proven tactics to increase email engagement and donations** that are nearly impossible when your donor data is stuck in your CRM: 1. Triggering an automated, personal, and customized **new donor welcome series.** 2. Asking donors for **custom donation amounts** based on their giving history. 3. Sending **tailored cultivation emails** based on a donor’s content preferences. 4. Including custom calls-to-action based on a **donor’s lifecycle stage**. The list goes on and on. **How do you get your data out of DonorPerfect and into your email tool of choice?** ## **The Solution:** Avid Connects DonorPerfect to Your Preferred Email Tools Avid + DonorPerfect is an essential pairing to get your CRM data into your email tools of choice. No more manual CRM exports. No more cleaning your data and lists in Excel spreadsheets. No more custom list imports into your email platform. Avid works inside of your entire fundraising tech stack to make all your tools work together. ![Benchmark universe panel: 1,003 nonprofits with $13.8M average revenue and 41,046 average active donors](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/image-4-1024x758.png)Want to connect a new **email tool**? Use a stand-alone **donation platform**? Connect your **advertising channels**? With Avid as your fundraising operating system, all of this is possible without having to switch CRMs. Let DonorPerfect do what it does best: collecting and housing your most essential donor data. Then use Avid to integrate your email tool of choice—powering more sophisticated fundraising campaigns the drive the growth you need to increase your impact. ## **Going Deeper:** Other Ways to Use DonorPerfect Data to Power Better Fundraising Results Integrating your email tool of choice using Avid + DonorPerfect is only the beginning of what’s possible when you’re using Avid as your fundraising operating system. Once you start running your fundraising with Avid, you’ll unlock even more capabilities including: - AI-powered insights to tell you where to focus next - Advanced fundraising reporting in a simplified user experience - Intelligent playbooks to create and deploy campaigns in minutes - Advanced segmentation blending data from all your fundraising tools In one example, a nonprofit [increased recurring donor retention by 19% using Avid](https://avidai.com/blog/how-kcbi-lifted-recurring-donor-retention-by-19-using-avid/) as their fundraising operating system. Avid **connected all their tools**: their CRM, email platform, advertising, and more. It gave them **instant insights** to spot a retention problem creeping in. It **automated lists and segments** to deliver personalized cultivation at the right times. All this is possible when all your fundraising tools work in sync. ## **Take Action:** Use Avid to Supercharge DonorPerfect and Improve Results [![DonorPerfect + Avid - Supercharge Your CRM for Fundraising Growth | Resource Image](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/DonorPerfect-Avid-How-to-Supercharge-Your-CRM-and-Unlock-Greater-Fundraising-Growth-232x300.webp)](https://avidai.com/download-donorperfect-avid/) Avid + DonorPerfect allows you to use the best tools available. It allows you to use your DonorPerfect data to power more impactful emails, advertising, automation, reporting, and segmentation. See how Avid + DonorPerfect can save you time and drive greater fundraising results using the best fundraising tools available. [DonorPerfect + Avid | Supercharge Your CRM for Fundraising Growth](https://avidai.com/download-donorperfect-avid/ "Download DonorPerfect + Avid | Supercharge Your CRM for Fundraising Growth") [Get the Free Guide](https://avidai.com/download-donorperfect-avid/) **Categories:** AI & Automation **Tags:** DonorPerfect --- ### [Giving USA 2025: What the Latest Trends Say About the Future of Fundraising](https://avidai.com/blog/giving-usa-2025-insights/) **Published:** June 27, 2025 **Author:** Erik Tomalis **Excerpt:** Giving hit $592.5B in 2024—but complexity is rising. See what the data means, what’s changing, and how smart fundraisers are getting ahead in 2025. **Content:** In 2024, total charitable giving in the U.S. reached an all-time high: **$592.5 billion.** That figure alone might suggest a banner year for fundraising. But beneath the surface, the data tells a more complicated (and more urgent) story. While generosity remains strong, the **composition of giving is changing**; participation continues to decline, and the pressure on nonprofit teams to operate with precision, transparency, and efficiency has never been higher. This is a record-setting year and a turning point. The [*Giving USA 2025*](https://givingusa.org/) report offers fundraisers a clear signal of where fundraising is heading, and what nonprofits must do now to succeed in this new era. Let’s break down what the latest numbers reveal and what today’s nonprofit teams need to do differently. ## **Let’s Take A Closer Look at the Numbers** Here’s what the latest data from *Giving USA* shows: - **Total giving:** **$592.5 billion – Up 6.3% over 2023. – Up 3.3% when adjusted for inflation. – When adjusted for inflation, 2021 remains the best giving year on record. – Mega gifts totaled $11.72 billion, consistent with recent years. - **Giving by individuals:** **$392.45 billion – 66% of total giving. – Up 8.2% year over year (5.1% after inflation). – Annualized growth over the last five years: 5.4%. - **Giving by foundations:** **$109.81 billion – 19% of total. – Up 2.4% year over year. – Annualized growth over five years: 8.5%. - **Giving by corporations:** **$44.4 billion – 7% of total. – Up 9.1%. – Represents 1.1% of pre-tax profits—the highest share in 40 years. - **Giving by bequest:** **$45.84 billion – 8% of total. – Down 1.6% from 2023. - **Donor-Advised Funds (DAFs):** Continued rapid growth and significant institutional giving influence. - **Inflation:** Around 3%, down from previous years. - **Consumer sentiment:** Up from 2023, but still low historically. ## **Where The Charitable Dollars Went In 2024** Giving remained diverse across sectors, with religion receiving the largest share at $146.54 billion (23%), followed closely by human services and education, each capturing 14% of total giving. Education in particular saw notable growth, up 13.2% year over year. Foundations and public-society benefit organizations each received 11% of contributions, with the latter jumping 19.5% over 2023. Health organizations drew $60.51 billion (10%), while international affairs giving increased 17.7% to $35.54 billion. Contributions to arts, culture, and humanities rose by 9.5%, and environmental and animal causes grew 7.7%, reflecting steady donor interest in mission-driven causes. The only major decline was seen in giving to individuals, which fell by 11.9% to $23.59 billion, continuing a long-term downward trend. ![Chart of 2024 charitable giving by sector: religion leads at 23% ($146.5B); nearly every sector grew over 2023](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/where-fundraising-money-went-in-2024-1024x859.webp)## **What This Means for Fundraisers in 2025: Revenue Is Up, Complexity Is Higher** The headline number, $592.5 billion, makes it tempting to celebrate. But growth alone doesn’t guarantee sustainability. In fact, this year’s numbers reflect a **growing disconnect between total dollars raised and the systems nonprofits are using to raise them**. Let’s unpack the deeper signals fundraisers need to act on now. ### **1. Individual Giving Is Still the Backbone, but It’s Under Strain** At **66% of total giving**, individuals remain the core of philanthropy. But compare that to **82% in 1984**, and the long-term trend is clear: the individual giving base is narrowing. The sector is increasingly reliant on a smaller set of larger gifts from a shrinking pool of donors. Acquisition is harder. Churn is rising. And mass, untargeted campaigns? They’re not built for today’s donor reality. #### **How to Take Action:** Move from one-size-fits-all campaigns to lifecycle-specific journeys. Treat new, recurring, and lapsed donors differently, not just by message, but by channel, cadence, and ask. Use impact reporting as a systemized retention lever, not a one-time story. When you build donor engagement as an always-on system, retention stops being a guessing game and starts becoming a growth engine. ### **2. Corporate Giving Is Reentering the Conversation** Corporate giving rose by 9.1%, the fastest growth of any giving source. At 1.1% of pre-tax profits, it reached its highest share in four decades. Corporate giving is back, but today’s donors want alignment, not just a logo on a flyer. #### **How to Take Action:** Shift your corporate strategy from transactional to transformational. That means reworking your pitch decks to center shared values and measurable outcomes, not just brand placement. Equip your team to report results in the language business leaders use (outcomes, reach, return) not just feel-good moments. And use campaign data to tell a story that makes renewal feel like momentum, not obligation. ### **3. Foundation Giving Is Strong, but It’s Not a Safety Net** With $109.81 billion in giving, foundations hit an all-time high. But that doesn’t make them a fallback. Foundations can’t make up for lost individuals, especially when their dollars come with restrictions, timelines, and reporting overhead. #### **How to Take Action:** Build a system that lets you manage foundation relationships at scale, without burning out your staff. That starts by automating reporting touchpoints, tracking restriction terms, and integrating funder data into your planning cycle. Foundations are reliable, but they’re not agile. Diversify now, and treat foundation income as part of a broader, multi-segment funding model, not a fallback plan. ### **4. Donor-Advised Funds (DAFs) Require a New Stewardship Playbook** DAFs are growing fast, but they behave differently than typical donors. DAF contributors are often strategic, long-term thinkers who prioritize alignment over urgency. DAF donors are planning their giving years in advance, and if you’re not in their plan, you’re not in their portfolio. #### **How to Take Action:** Treat DAF donors as planners, not givers. They need trust, transparency, and time. Build a stewardship cadence that reflects that: share long-term goals, mid-year pivots, and mission-aligned milestones, not just donation appeals. Use system-based tagging to isolate DAF donors in your CRM, track engagement over time, and create content that reinforces alignment, not urgency. ### **5. Inflation Still Eats at Real Gains** While nominal giving rose 6.3%, the **real growth (adjusted for inflation) was only 3.3%**. As operational costs rise, many nonprofits are being asked to deliver more results with less net revenue. Your totals may be up, but if your team’s capacity is flat, your margin for impact is shrinking. #### **How to Take Action:** Don’t wait for inflation to stabilize, optimize now. Invest in infrastructure that reduces waste: centralize donor data, automate key workflows, and standardize segmentation. Focus every campaign around efficiency and clarity. When your fundraising system operates with fewer inputs and smarter outputs, economic volatility doesn’t stop growth, it sharpens it. ## **What the Most Successful Nonprofits Will Do Differently in 2025** The fundraising organizations best positioned to grow in 2025 share one key behavior: they treat donor retention as a core strategy, not lagging data. Here’s how you can do the same: ### **1. Make Donor Retention a Frontline Strategy** Individual giving may still account for two-thirds of total revenue, but its long-term decline means you can’t afford to treat any donor like a temporary boost. Retention is no longer a reporting metric. It’s your revenue engine. **Double down on:** - Lifecycle-based segmentation. - Automated re-engagement journeys/ - Systematic impact reporting, not just thank-you notes. Donor retention is a strategy, not a scoreboard. Build it into your daily operations, not your annual report. ### **2. Invest in Infrastructure That Powers Growth** The nonprofits that scale in 2025 won’t just tell better stories, they’ll build better systems. Clean CRMs. Connected tools. Segmentation that works. **Focus on:** - Centralizing donor data. - Automating manual lift. - Personalizing communication without reinventing the wheel every time. Infrastructure *is* strategy. A compelling message means nothing if your team can’t deliver it consistently. ### **3. Bridge the Generosity Gap** Giving isn’t dying. It’s just showing up in new places, from new people, with new expectations. Modern donors are values-driven, identity-aware, and digitally native. To reach them, nonprofits need to move beyond mass outreach and embrace message-market fit. **Try:** - Digital-first campaigns that speak to identity and impact. - Segmentation based on motivations, not just gift size. - Real-time optimization, not batch-and-blast schedules. Generosity is evolving. Meet your donors where they are—and speak their language once you arrive. ### **4. Lead with Transparency, Not Perfection** Donors want to believe in your work and that belief is built on trust, not polish. Your wins matter. But so do your pivots. And so do your challenges. **Build trust by:** - Sharing impact data that connects dollars to outcomes. - Telling real stories, not just success stories. - Offering visibility into your process, not just your results. Vulnerability is a differentiator. In a crowded space, honesty earns the long-term gift. ### **5. Support the People Behind the Mission** The pressure on fundraising teams hasn’t eased. Burnout remains high. And no system (not even [Avid](https://avidai.com/how-avid-works/)) can replace the energy of a healthy, supported, and well-equipped team. **What helps:** - Clear roles and realistic goals. - Mental health and workload support. - Training on tools *and* strategy, not just execution. Donor retention starts with fundraiser retention. A strong team is your most valuable asset. ## **This Is a Key Year for Fundraisers** The numbers in *Giving USA 2025* are predictive. They tell us where the sector is heading and what will divide the organizations that grow from the ones that stall. Retention will rise or fall based on what you automate. Personalization will succeed or fail based on how you segment. And campaign ROI will depend on how well your tools actually work together. In a world of record-breaking generosity and record-high complexity, fundraisers don’t need more tactics. They need a system. ## **The Future Belongs to System-First Fundraisers** Giving isn’t dying, it’s evolving. Donors are still generous. But they’re more discerning, more strategic, and more digitally native than ever before. To thrive in this next era, nonprofit teams need more than new campaigns or platforms. They need systems that think, adapt, and act, systems that eliminate guesswork and reduce friction at every step. That’s what [Avid](https://avidai.com/for-fundraisers/) was built to deliver. Let’s stop reacting to reports. Let’s start acting on them. ### **👉 Want to See How Avid Helps You Operationalize Every Insight In This Report?** [Book a demo](https://avidai.com/demo/) and we’ll show you how fundraisers are using Avid to: - Unify donor data across platforms. - Surface high-value segments automatically. - Launch retention, upgrade, and reactivation campaigns without the manual lift. **Categories:** News, Nonprofit Marketing --- ### [Giving Tuesday: An AI-Driven Fundraising Playbook](https://avidai.com/blog/giving-tuesday-ai-driven-fundraising-playbook/) **Published:** October 10, 2025 **Author:** Nathan Hill **Excerpt:** Giving Tuesday grows every single year, but donor expectations are growing as well. This AI-driven playbook will help you keep up and raise more money. **Content:** Giving Tuesday grows every single year. Since its inception in 2012, this giving day has expanded to a world-wide event and become an integral part of the holiday season—a philanthropic rebound to the consumer-focused Black Friday and Cyber Monday. But **how do we make the most of Giving Tuesday** when donor expectations are higher than ever? This Giving Tuesday playbook is designed with two goals in mind: 1. Acquiring new donors 2. Activating your existing donors With as much hype that Giving Tuesday receives, we want to be present in front of our donors and supporters when Giving Tuesday arrives. This means we need to **start early and get out ahead** of it. ## Giving Tuesday Trends That Impact Your Fundraising Strategy Year-end giving on the whole is on a 5-year decline. Now, it’s still a powerhouse season for giving. It could represent anywhere from 25-50% of your annual fundraising revenue. But **giving behaviors are shifting.** There are fewer active donors. Acquisition is harder. Offline giving is down. Giving Tuesday, however, has lots of reasons for optimism. First and foremost, Giving Tuesday continues to grow every single year. And it’s expanded to be a global phenomenon with [105 official national movements](https://www.givingtuesday.org/about/impact/). ### **Giving Tuesday Acquisition is on the Rise** One of the biggest Giving Tuesday trends that should impact your strategy this year is what’s happening with acquisition. Looking at the year-end season overall, new donor acquisition is on the decline. But **Giving Tuesday acquisition is surging.** ![Line chart: donor retention holding roughly flat near 50% from 2022 through 2026](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-1024x508.webp)Over the past 5 years, there has only been one year when acquisition took a dip. And that was after an anomaly year in 2021 where acquisition grew by 233%. With overall year-end acquisition on the decline and Giving Tuesday acquisition on the rise, our year-end strategy should change. Don’t throw donor acquisition away during year-end. But plan to **center your new donor acquisition efforts around Giving Tuesday.** There is lots of natural giving activity, and benchmarks suggest this is a prime time for bringing new people in the door. ### **What Does Acquisition Look Like During Giving Tuesday?** Fundraisers have varying views of what acquisition looks like on Giving Tuesday. For some, there is a notion that acquiring new donors on Giving Tuesday requires a massive social media presence. Having millions of social followers certainly doesn’t hurt! But it’s not the only way to see success. Part of acquisition on Giving Tuesday looks like **activating your existing email subscribers who have yet to give**. You can directly ask them for donations when the excitement about Giving Tuesday is at its peak. But you can also activate them in other more sustainable ways. #### 3-steps to Turn Email Subscribers into Donors **1. Create a Free Content Offer** A content offer is any form of content that someone has to fill out a form in order to access. Common examples include: an ebook, a video series, an online course. Even a quiz, survey, or petition can serve as a form of content offer. For Giving Tuesday, **share a free content offer with your email subscribers** as a way to give back to them first. Send them to a landing page to read more. They can fill out a simple form right there to get access to the offer. **2. Create an Instant Donation Page** After someone fills out your form, send them to an Instant Donation Page. An Instant Donation Page is a type of confirmation page. But instead of saying ‘Thank You’ and asking them to share the offer on social media, **you can ask them for a gift right away.** Use this format for your page: - Thank them and let them know their offer is heading to their inbox - Pivot to a Giving Tuesday donation appeal - Include a form on the page for them to give instantly Instant donation pages can have varying conversion rates, but they average about a [4% conversion rate](https://benchmarks.nextafter.com/#:~:text=Instant%20Donation%20Pages,type%20of%20page%3A). **3. Advertise Your Offer to Likely New Donors** Use your free content offer as an advertising offer. It’s a primary way to activate your known email subscribers. But you can use this as an **ongoing acquisition offer around Giving Tuesday**, during year-end, and beyond. - Pull together a list of your active donors from your CRM (or [use Avid to power this fundraising automation](https://avidai.com/blog/fundraising-automation-increases-retention-by-200/).) - Generate a Lookalike audience in Meta / Facebook ads manager. - Create a few versions of ad creative. - Deploy your campaign and optimize for donations. #### Creating a Comprehensive Giving Tuesday Fundraising Plan Giving Tuesday is a primary time for new donor acquisition. And it can be a great day to activate and reactivate existing donors. It’s also, however, a really noisy and busy day. Most every nonprofit is looking for your donors to give to them. So we have to **find ways to stand out and win our donors’ attention.** A primary strategy to win our donors attention and donation is through an omni-channel approach. Develop a holistic, omni-channel campaign. Even if your donors only ever give through one specific channel, they can be influenced by every other channel. Email your direct mail donors. Mail your email donors Target any type of donor with online ads to ensure visibility. ## The Giving Tuesday Playbook ![Year-End Fundraising - AI-Powered Campaign Playbook ebook Cover](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Avid-AI-Powered-Campaign-Playbook-eBook-2_Page_01-791x1024.webp) What does a Giving Tuesday campaign actually look like? The following playbook outlines Channels, Touch points, and Audiences. We’ll give you an overview of which Channels we recommend. We’ll outline each key Touchpoint of the campaign. And we’ll recommend key Audiences to consider sending segmented messaging. Keep in mind: this playbook is not designed to be simple. It’s **designed for fundraisers using an AI-powered system** like Avid to help execute all the segmentation and required creative. [You can also download the full AI-powered year-end fundraising playbook here »](https://avidai.com/ai-powered-year-end-fundraising-playbook-download/ "Get the AI-Powered Year-End Fundraising Playbook") ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Playbooks-Touchpoint-Icons-Landing-Page.svg)### **Donation Pages & Landing Pages** #### **Donation Page | Primary Giving Tuesday Page** This is the primary donation page for your Giving Tuesday campaign. It highlights the urgency to give, but provides significant reasons why someone should give to make meaningful impact. #### **Free Content Offer Funnel** ##### Landing Page | Free Content Offer A landing page can be used for many purposes. For Giving Tuesday, use **a dedicated landing page to promote a free offer**—usually an eBook, a video series, or other content that a user must fill out a form to access. This will become an important asset for activating both new and existing donors. ##### Automated Email | Free Content Offer Delivery A small, but critical touch point. Make sure to create an automated **email that sends instructions on how to access the free offer**. This should be sent as soon as someone fills out the “Free Content Offer” landing page form. ##### Instant Donation Page | Give Before the Giving Tuesday Deadline This is a modified version of a confirmation page for the free offer. Like a normal confirmation page, it should thank the user and confirm that the offer is on its way to their inbox. Then, it should **immediately pivot towards a Giving Tuesday donation ask**. Give a strong appeal on the page, making connections between the value of the offer and the impact of a donation. Include a donation form on the page to give right away. ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Playbooks-Touchpoint-Icons-Ads.svg)### **Advertising** #### **Pop-up / Web Banner** Giving Tuesday is one of the best days of the year for converting website visitors into donations. Use Pop-Ups or other Web Banners to **show website visitors the opportunity to give.** Your web banners and ads should count down to the Giving Tuesday deadline and give a clear call-to-action to donate now. These can run across your website starting as soon as the Sunday before and go all the way until the deadline. #### **Paid Social** Paid social advertising has many roles to play in a campaign. Around Giving Tuesday, we’ll use it for two purposes: 1. To show our offer to potential new donors 2. To remind existing supports to give before the deadline ##### Acquisition Advertising Advertise your free content offer to known **email subscribers and web traffic who are not yet donors**. Consider targeting a “lookalike” audience of Meta users who have similar behaviors as your most valuable donors. ##### Direct-to-Donation Advertising Additionally, use direct-to-donation ads to **remind existing donors of the opportunity to participate** in Giving Tuesday by donating to your organization. Focus these ads around the last 48 hours of the campaign. #### **Google Performance Max Ads** A Google Performance Max campaign that is focused on reminding donors, followers, and website traffic to give to you on Giving Tuesday. **Start running this at least the day before**, but it could run for the full week before as a primer. ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Playbooks-Touchpoint-Icons-Email-Touchpoint.svg)### **Emails and Other Timely Outreach** Even though Giving Tuesday is just one day, we’ll use a variety of touchpoints to prepare donors beforehand and activate them on Giving Tuesday. Email is the primary driver of conversions in any digital-centric campaign. But it needs support. Organic social posts rarely convert donations directly, but they increase the visibility of your campaign. SMS reminders can both increase visibility and drive direct donations. #### **The Sunday Before Giving Tuesday** ##### **Email 1 | Giving Tuesday is Coming** Sent on the Sunday before Giving Tuesday to **educate donors and build anticipation**. Don’t ask recipients to mark their calendars—ask them to give right away to the campaign. ##### **Organic Social | Giving Tuesday is Coming Soon** An organic social media post that reminds followers that Giving Tuesday is coming soon. Consider sharing more about what Giving Tuesday is about and any specific impact goals you have. #### **The Day Before Giving Tuesday** ##### **Organic Social | Tomorrow is Giving Tuesday** An organic social media post that reminds followers that Giving Tuesday is tomorrow. Consider sharing a story of impact or testimonial. ##### **SMS | Giving Tuesday Reminder** An SMS message reminding donors of the opportunity to participate in Giving Tuesday. Give a clear call to action to donate and a URL. #### **The Day of Giving Tuesday** ##### **Email 2 | Free Content Offer** Sent on the morning of Giving Tuesday, focused on **giving donors something of value before asking them to give**. Ask them to get free access to a content offer like an eBook, video series, online course, or other content by filling out a form. ##### **Organic Social | Giving Tuesday is Here** An organic social media post that highlights Giving Tuesday and the opportunity to give. Explain the impact a gift makes and call people to give right away. ##### **SlyBroadcast | Voicemail Reminder** An automated voicemail message reminding donors of the opportunity to participate in Giving Tuesday. Send this out in the early afternoon. For larger lists, you may need to start it in the morning to ensure timely delivery. ##### **Email 3 | Last Chance to Give for Giving Tuesday** Sent in the late afternoon of Giving Tuesday, focused on urgency and driving donations before the deadline. Use a clear call to action and be straight to the point. ## Audience Segmentation Ideas There are countless ways you can divide up your audiences and create targeted outreach around Giving Tuesday. Here are a few audiences to consider unique messaging for across your channels in order to activate unique donor segments and drive greater giving. #### **Existing Donors** Existing donors are going to be the **lifeblood of your year-end campaign as a whole**. They should always be given the opportunity to give to your Giving Tuesday campaign—taking advantage of the natural excitement about giving. #### **Email Subscribers, Non-Donors** With Giving Tuesday being a primary time for donor acquisition, specifically talk to your email subscribers that have not yet given to you. Use your Free Content Offer Funnel outlined above as a means of engaging these non-donors, and **setting them on a path towards giving**. Consider offering unique incentives like a gift matching opportunity just for these supporters who are considering making their first ever donation. #### **Lookalike Audiences** Use Facebook/Meta ads to create a lookalike audience of your most valuable donors. Import a list of your high-value donors to Meta Ads, and it can create a modeled audience of Meta users who have similar online behaviors. Target this list with your **free content offer as a means of acquiring them as a new donor** during the lead up to Giving Tuesday. #### **New Donors** Donors who have given for the first time this year are hard to retain. But if you can get them to give a second gift during this same year, their **likelihood of retaining increases dramatically.** Create targeted messaging for these donors, incentivizing them to give again. Use urgency language, incentives like a match or unique content, and custom donation asks based on their original donation. #### **Frequent Donors (3 or More Donations in the Past 12 Months)** Donors who have given 3 or more times in the past 12 months may be a likely audience to upgrade to a recurring donation. Consider targeting these donors with **a specific recurring upgrade appeal on Giving Tuesday**, asking them to give monthly in order to increase their impact. **Looking for more segmentation ideas?** [Here are 15 unique segmentation ideas for your year-end fundraising.](https://avidai.com/blog/15-segmentation-ideas-for-your-year-end-fundraising/ "15 Segmentation Ideas for Your Year-End Fundraising") ## Using AI to Run Your Giving Tuesday Campaign A quick browse through this Giving Tuesday playbook outline may feel overwhelming. And it should, unless you’re using AI to assist in your campaign creation. **No team can keep up with the demand** and scale their organization needs for success. But an AI-powered fundraising operating system like Avid makes this possible. Avid creates the play. Build your segments. Syncs your audiences. It even shows your real-time, cross-channel performance with clear visuals and a simple interface. See how **Avid can give you the AI-assist you need** to drive better results this Giving Tuesday. **Schedule a strategy call with an Avid expert »** .no-image-background img{ box-shadow:none!important; background-color:#FFFFFF00!important; margin-bottom:-30px!important; margin-left:-5px; } **Categories:** AI & Automation, Fundraising Strategy --- ### [Fundraising Isn’t Broken. But It Is Stuck.](https://avidai.com/blog/fundraising-isnt-broken-but-it-is-stuck/) **Published:** April 8, 2025 **Author:** Stephen Boudreau **Excerpt:** Fundraising isn’t broken—just stuck inside tools that don’t talk to each other. Here’s what changes when you finally have a system. **Content:** Most fundraisers aren’t failing because they lack strategy, talent, or effort. They’re stuck—doing all the right things inside all the wrong systems. And the result isn’t failure. It’s friction. Every step feels harder than it should. The plan is strong. The team is sharp. But the tools? Disconnected. The data? Scattered. The campaigns? Slower than the moment demands. Fundraising isn’t broken. It’s just been forced to run on infrastructure that can’t keep up. ## The Treadmill Trap Think about how most fundraising teams work today: Plans are made. Campaigns are launched. Reports are pulled. And then… everything starts over. It’s not a lack of effort—it’s a lack of effective systems that can transform hard work into tangible progress. Fundraisers are stuck in what we call the **fundraising treadmill**: - Tools that don’t talk to each other - Lists pulled manually, over and over - “Personalized” campaigns that still feel generic Strategic plans that stall at the point of execution And it’s not just exhausting—it’s expensive. Donor acquisition costs keep climbing. Retention keeps slipping. Teams burn out trying to make progress without the infrastructure to support it. > **“If every campaign feels like a sprint, and every report is already out of date—then that’s not a strategy. It’s a cycle.”** And when the end-of-year push is over? There’s no momentum. Just recovery. Most fundraising teams aren’t falling behind because they’re doing something wrong. They’re falling behind because they’re doing too much, **inside a patchwork of tools that were never built to work together.** ## What Happens Without a System When fundraising tools don’t work together, it’s more than a minor inconvenience—it’s a barrier to growth. Disconnected platforms slow down execution, make reporting a headache, and create gaps in donor engagement. Campaigns take too long to build. Reports arrive after the moment has passed. And personalization becomes a guessing game, not a strategy. Without a real system in place, even the most experienced fundraising team is forced to operate in reactive mode—always catching up, never getting ahead. ![Table contrasting scattered tools with a unified system across data, insights, execution, pace, and scale](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Tools-vs-System-Avid-Software.png)## It’s Not Your Team—It’s Your System Most fundraising teams aren’t underperforming—they’re under-supported. They’re using smart strategies, working long hours, and doing everything they’re supposed to do. But they’re stuck using disconnected tools that were never designed to keep up with the pace, complexity, and personalization fundraising now demands. Think about it: - Your CRM stores data—but it can’t tell you what to do next. - Your email platform sends campaigns—but doesn’t show you which donors are at risk of lapsing. - Your reports tell you what happened—but not how to improve next time. > **“Most platforms show you what happened. Avid shows you what to do next—and then helps you do it.”** The best fundraising teams today aren’t doing more—they’re doing things differently. They’re working inside systems that unify their data, surface opportunities in real time, and execute campaigns automatically across channels. That’s not hype. That’s the reality for teams already working inside systems like Avid. ![Diagram of the tools-only workflow: CRM exports, manual segments, broad campaigns, ending in 'I hope this works'](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Using-Just-Tools.webp)## What a Better System Looks Like Imagine logging in—not to a dashboard, but to a system that already knows where to focus. **Your donor data?** Already unified. **Your top opportunities?** Already surfaced. **Your next campaign?** Already mapped to the right donors, across the right channels, with messaging that adapts in real time. This is what happens when strategy, data, and execution finally live in one place—where they belong. Instead of spending hours pulling lists, toggling between tools, and hoping the timing is right, your team is free to do the work that actually moves the mission forward. ![Diagram of the Avid system flow, from unified data to automatic next best actions — 'this feels like fundraising'](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/The-Avid-System.webp)**And this isn’t just theory—it’s already happening, with real-world results.** - [**Bible League Canada**](https://avidai.com/bible-league-canada/) reduced their cost per donor by 20%—and eliminated manual segmentation—by moving to a unified, AI-powered system. - [**One national nonprofit**](https://avidai.com/leading-nonprofit-achieves-12x-growth-with-data-driven-fundraising/) saw **12x growth** in fundraising after replacing disconnected tools with a system designed for speed, clarity, and scale. That’s the power of a true fundraising system. Not someday—today. That’s the shift Avid enables. ![Diagram of execution and insight tools wrapped by a system layer that finally makes them work together](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/A-System-Gets-Them-Working-Together.png)Fundraising is evolving faster than most teams can keep up with. Donor expectations are rising, digital channels are multiplying, and competition for attention is fiercer than ever. Meanwhile, budgets are shrinking and burnout is building. That’s why moving from disconnected tools to a true system isn’t just an upgrade—it’s essential. The organizations that thrive in today’s landscape won’t be the ones working harder—they’ll be the ones equipped to move faster, adapt smarter, and act in real time. > **“The future of fundraising won’t be built on more effort—it will be built on better infrastructure.”** ## What to Look for in a Fundraising System If you’re wondering what makes a real fundraising system different from just another tool, here’s what to look for: - **Real-time data unification** across CRMs, email platforms, and donation tools - **Built-in recommendations** that tell you exactly where to focus - **Automated campaign execution** across email, ads, and more - **Smart segmentation** that adapts to donor behavior—not just static lists These aren’t just features. They’re the core building blocks that shift your team from reacting to leading. From running on fumes… to running with precision. > **“The best teams aren’t working harder. They’re working inside a system that finally works for them.”** ## What Comes Next If this sounds like the shift your team’s been waiting for, you’re not alone. Fundraising isn’t broken—but the old way of doing it is. In our latest ebook, *Fundraising, Rebuilt*, we go deeper into the shift from tools to systems—why it matters, how it works, and how real teams are using it to raise more, retain more, and react less. 👉 **[Download the ebook](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/)** and explore what’s possible when your fundraising finally runs on a system built for you. **Categories:** Fundraising Strategy --- ### [Fundraising Benchmarks, Rebuilt for the Way Fundraising Really Works](https://avidai.com/blog/fundraising-benchmarks-rebuilt-for-the-way-fundraising-really-works/) **Published:** March 10, 2026 **Author:** Stephen Boudreau **Excerpt:** Avid and Wiland launch the largest nonprofit fundraising benchmark ever created—giving fundraisers free, instant access to up-to-date performance data from peers like them. **Content:** **Avid and Wiland**™** launch the largest nonprofit fundraising benchmark ever created—giving fundraisers free, instant access to up-to-date performance data from peers.** **Dallas, TX — March 10, 2026 — Avid,** the Fundraising Operating System built for hands-on fundraisers, today announced a new partnership with **Wiland**™****, a leader in predictive audience intelligence and marketing analytics, to launch the largest, most up-to-date nonprofit fundraising benchmark ever made available to the sector. For the first time, nonprofit fundraisers can see how they’re performing *right now*—using real, continuously updated data from peer organizations—rather than waiting months for survey-based reports that describe a world that no longer exists. The new benchmark represents fundraising performance from 1,000+ nonprofits and over $14 billion in annual donation data, updated monthly. Access is free and available today. “Fundraisers don’t struggle because they lack commitment or creativity,” said **Ray Gary**, CEO of Avid. “They struggle because insight arrives too late, in the wrong format, or disconnected from the work itself. This benchmark is a concrete example of what Avid exists to do: remove the friction between understanding and action, so fundraisers can focus on building trust and sustaining relationships.” ### Get free access to the largest real-time fundraising benchmarks. [Explore the data](https://app.avidai.com/register/wiland) ## A Benchmark Built on Reality, Not Surveys For decades, nonprofit benchmarking has relied on annual surveys and static averages—useful in hindsight, but poorly suited to the pace and complexity of modern fundraising. The Avid + Wiland benchmark is built on real nonprofit fundraising performance and refreshed monthly. The result is a living, dynamic view of the sector—one that reflects how fundraising actually works today, and delivers clarity while decisions can still be made. ![Avid and Wiland Benchmarks welcome screen showing industry-wide organization, donor, and revenue totals (illustrative)](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Avid-Wiland-Fundraising-Benchmarks-Announcement.webp)Key features of the benchmark include: - Always up-to-date insights, with monthly updates - The largest dynamic nonprofit fundraising benchmark available, representing over $14B in annual donations - Real performance data, not self-reported survey averages - Sophisticated metrics across revenue, acquisition, retention, upgrades, donor lifecycles, and contactability - Customizable views, with filters by vertical and organization size for more relevant comparisons “Data only creates value when it’s usable in real time,” said **Mike Gingell**, CEO of Wiland. “By integrating Wiland’s data into Avid, this benchmark gives fundraisers a level of accuracy and scale that allows insight to inform and drive execution.” ## From Insight to Action, Without the Waiting The Avid + Wiland benchmark marks a shift from benchmarking as a retrospective exercise to benchmarking as part of the work itself—supporting decisions while momentum still exists. This is the same principle that underpins Avid’s Fundraising Operating System. It coordinates data, decisions, and execution continuously, so teams spend less time waiting, reworking, and resetting, and more time showing up at the right moments, deepening trust, and sustaining generosity over time. In a sector built on trust, clarity isn’t just helpful; it’s foundational. The benchmark is available at no cost to any nonprofit that registers. Organizations using Avid gain additional value through direct integration with their own fundraising data, enabling faster prioritization and more confident action. ## Free Benchmark Access The Avid + Wiland nonprofit fundraising benchmark is available today, for the first time. **Get free, instant access to the benchmark:** ## Dive Deeper Avid + Wiland are hosting a live preview of the new benchmark on March 31st, 2026 at Noon CT. Reserve your spot for the preview to see the current challenges and opportunities that fundraisers are facing in 2026. **Reserve your spot for the free, live Avid + Wiland benchmark preview:** ## About Avid Avid is the Fundraising Operating System that coordinates data, decisions, and execution continuously—so fundraisers can spend less time waiting, reworking, and resetting, and more time showing up at the right moments, building trust, and sustaining relationships over time. When coordination replaces complexity, costs are reduced at scale. ## About Wiland Wiland, Inc. is a data science company that helps brands and nonprofits find, keep, and grow their best customers. Powered by advanced predictive analytics and machine learning, our solutions transform extensive consumer spending and intent signals into precise audiences and actionable insights. The result is smarter marketing that drives profitable acquisition, stronger retention, and greater customer lifetime value across every channel. With a foundation of ethical data practices and privacy-first innovation, Wiland delivers the intelligence organizations need to achieve measurable outcomes with confidence. **Categories:** News, Product Updates --- ### [FOS 4 is here — and it runs on need, not the calendar](https://avidai.com/blog/fos-4-is-here-and-it-runs-on-need-not-the-calendar/) **Published:** June 24, 2026 **Author:** Stephen Boudreau **Excerpt:** FOS4 helps fundraising teams finally get ahead of the work—running off your needs, not a fixed calendar. See how FOS4 makes Avid your new fundraising agent. **Content:** For as long as anyone can remember, fundraising has run on a calendar. You plan the year in January — the spring appeal, the summer lull, the year-end push — and then spend the next twelve months trying to keep up with a plan you made before you knew what the year would actually hold. But donors don’t give on your calendar. The lapse forms in March. The second-gift window opens in July. The major donor who gave once and went quiet needs a call *now* — not in the slot you blocked out six months ago. Today we’re launching **[Fundraising Operating System 4 (FOS 4)](https://avidai.com/fos4 "Fundraising Operating System 4 (FOS 4)")** — the biggest release in Avid’s history, and a real shift in what the software does. FOS 4 stops waiting on your calendar. It looks below the surface of your program, finds the opportunity, builds the audience, and drafts the campaign to act on it — so the work is already started when you log in. It’s the difference between software that shows you your data and software that does the work. And it’s how a team finally gets ahead of the work, instead of buried under it. “FOS 4 is a step toward *we’ll do it for you*,” says Kevin Peters, Avid’s founder. “It was never about consuming more data. It’s about taking action on it — and a human still makes every call.” ## What’s new in FOS 4 **Suggested Audiences — Avid stops informing and starts acting.** This is the headline. Every month, Avid looks across your entire program, finds an opportunity beneath the surface, and builds a ready-made audience waiting for you at login. It comes complete: who’s in it, the evidence for why it surfaced, and what to say to them. It’s built for *your* program’s specific need this month — not pulled off a shelf of generic models. Save it, export it, or turn it into a campaign in a click. Act on one, and the next is already building. ![Panel titled Current FY Major Donors with 565 contacts sourced from Edna and Export/Save actions.](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Edna_Audience-1024x262.png) **Smart Plays — just describe it, and Edna builds it.** Avid’s Playbooks catalog is full of proven campaigns you can pick from. But sometimes the moment calls for something that isn’t in the catalog. Now you don’t go hunting — you just tell Edna what you need. *“Build me a reactivation campaign for our lapsed recurring donors, themed around year-end.”* She builds the whole thing: the strategy, the audience, and every touchpoint, drafted in your voice and ready for you to review. ![Edna home screen with a history of past questions and a prompt to ask Edna anything (illustrative)](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Edna-Home-1024x669.png) **A sharper sense of what matters.** FOS 4 weighs far more about your program than before — the biggest change over recent months, how fast it’s moving, how much it matters — and, for the first time, it tells you *why*. Why a metric that moved 1% is your top priority while another that jumped 5% isn’t. That’s the line between “here’s what changed” and “here’s what to do about it.” **Your Dashboard.** A home screen that’s actually yours. Pin the charts, audiences, and views you care about — with your filters saved — and they’re there every time you open Avid. Build up to five boards for different programs or pushes, share them, schedule them to your inbox, or export one to a slide deck for the board meeting. It loads instantly, and it’s built around your role from the first time you log in. ![A multi-panel dashboard UI with a left vertical app rail and several rounded cards showing a welcome card, notifications, a donor retention chart, and audience insights.](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Avid-Dashboard-1024x663.png) **Edna, elevated — and now in your inbox.** Edna has her own home in Avid now: one place for the conversation and for everything she does across your program, plus image generation for your campaigns. And she’s no longer only in the app. FOS 4 turns your weekly or monthly digest into a conversation — built around your dashboard, and something you can reply to. Ask Edna a question right from your inbox — *“How much did we raise last month, and from how many donors?”* — and she answers in minutes, with a secure link to the report behind every number. The email stops being a static report and becomes a way in. ## Built on real fundraising Here’s why all of this can be trusted. Avid isn’t general-purpose AI pointed at fundraising. It’s built on more real fundraising than any single program could ever see — 8,000+ controlled fundraising experiments and 650M+ donor interactions. So it doesn’t just *write* like a fundraiser. It *thinks* like one. And your donors stay protected the whole way. Every recommendation traces back to the data behind it — no made-up stories. Donor details are tokenized before anything reaches the AI, so Edna can answer you by name while the model itself never sees a name. And we never train our models on your data. (Avid is SOC 2 Type II compliant.) ## Getting FOS 4 If you’re already an Avid customer, there’s nothing to install — the new Edna and your new dashboard are waiting in your account. Look for them today. If you’re not a customer yet, [book a guided tour](https://avidai.com/demo/) and we’ll show you FOS 4 working on your own fundraising — not a canned demo. See for yourself what it looks like to get ahead of the work. **Categories:** Product Updates --- ### [Three Powerful New Ways to Drive Smarter Fundraising in Avid](https://avidai.com/blog/february-product-updates-2026/) **Published:** February 26, 2026 **Author:** Avid Team **Excerpt:** New in Avid: AI-built audiences, goal-driven Smart Plays, and embedded ROI reporting—connecting insight to execution instantly. **Content:** Avid has **three powerful new features** designed to help you move faster, act smarter, and invest with confidence: 1. **AI-Assisted Audience Creator** 2. **Smart Plays in Playbooks** 3. **ROI Reporting in Key Campaign Reports** Each one removes friction from your workflow. Together, they turn insight into action, instantly. Watch the video below for an overview of each feature, or keep reading to discover what each feature can do to help make your team more efficient and drive better results. wistia-player\[media-id=’3l2rnjx2nf’\]:not(:defined) { background: center / contain no-repeat url(‘https://fast.wistia.com/embed/medias/3l2rnjx2nf/swatch’); display: block; filter: blur(5px); padding-top:56.25%; } ## **1. Build Advanced Audiences with a Simple Prompt** ![Avid audience builder turning a plain-English prompt into donor filters and a suggested audience (illustrative)](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/AI-Assisted-Audience-Creator-1-1024x457-1.webp)You already have access to all your donor data inside Avid. But sometimes building the right segment can feel complex with so many fields, and so many filters. But now you can just describe what you want. With the **AI-Assisted Audience Creator**, you can type a simple prompt like: “Create an audience who has given at least three times in the past year and has a lifetime value over $1,000.” Edna does the rest. Behind the scenes, Edna: - Identifies the right data sources - Applies the correct logic - Builds the segment instantly - Even drafts a summary of who this audience is and how to speak to them You can refine it. Or save and launch. No more digging through filters or second-guessing your logic. Just faster segmentation and more sophisticated targeting in seconds. ## **2. Launch Fully Customized Campaigns with Smart Plays** ![Avid Smart Play builder creating a lapsed-donor reactivation campaign from a short description (illustrative)](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Smart-Plays-1-1024x283-1.webp)Inside Playbooks, you’ve always had access to proven campaign frameworks. But now, you can create one built just for you. With **Smart Plays**, simply describe your goal: “Create a campaign to reactivate donors who lapsed in the past 12 months using email, SMS, and voicemail.” Edna searches across the entire Playbook catalog, combines best-performing strategies, builds the audiences, customizes the channels, and generates a fully tailored campaign. You get: - A named, structured campaign - AI-generated target audiences - Channel-specific touchpoints - A clear strategic rationale You can refine it, or hit start. Instead of choosing from static templates, you get a dynamic, AI-built strategy aligned to your goals. ## **3. See True ROI, Not Just Revenue** ![Avid report charts comparing ROI and net revenue for each fundraising appeal (illustrative)](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/ROI-Reporting-1024x354-1.webp)Revenue tells part of the story. ROI tells you where to invest next. With new **ROI Reporting** embedded directly into key reports like Matchback and Appeal Analysis, you can now: - Upload cost data - Track spend by appeal, campaign, or package - View net revenue and ROI alongside performance metrics - Identify top-performing investments, not just top-line revenue Now you can answer the questions that actually drive growth: - Which campaigns truly paid off? - Where should we double down? - Which channels are delivering transformational returns? No spreadsheets. No guesswork. Just full financial visibility inside Avid. ## **From Data to Action, Instantly** These features work together to change how you plan, launch, and scale fundraising altogether. They connect your data so you can: - Build the right audience in seconds - Launch a customized, multi-channel strategy - Measure true ROI and reinvest intelligently Not using Avid yet? [Schedule a demo to see these new features at work for your organization »](https://avidai.com/demo/) td { font-weight: normal!important; border:0px!important; padding:20px!important;} **Categories:** Product Updates --- ### [This Is Avid: Built for Fundraisers](https://avidai.com/blog/built-for-fundraisers/) **Published:** April 1, 2025 **Author:** Stephen Boudreau **Excerpt:** See why forward-thinking fundraisers are moving from tools to systems—and how Avid is helping them scale smarter, not harder. **Content:** You’ve tried it all… A new CRM. Another dashboard. That spreadsheet template someone swore would “save the quarter.” You’ve sat through trainings. Pulled reports. Cross-referenced exports. You’ve worked nights just to make sense of the numbers—only to hear, again, that you need to *“do more with less.”* This isn’t about effort. It’s not about talent. It’s that fundraising has been running on infrastructure that was never built for how fundraising actually works. And no matter how many tools you stack, the system still feels broken. ## The real problem was never the tools For years, the sector’s answer to complexity has been more tools. More dashboards. More consultants. More platforms promising clarity. But none of it ever quite clicks. Because tools solve tasks. They don’t solve the system. The real problem isn’t your CRM. Or your reporting tool. It’s that your data lives in one place (or ten). Your strategy in another. And your execution? Still manual, still slow, still separate from everything else. This is what happens when fundraising runs on a patchwork—instead of a system built to bring it all together. ## A system that actually works for fundraisers Avid isn’t another tool in the stack. It’s the system fundraisers have always needed—but never had. It connects what’s been disconnected. Your data. Your strategy. Your execution. All in one place, working together in real time. It’s the difference between managing systems and actually moving your mission forward. Between pulling late-night reports—and having answers before you’re even asked. Between feeling stuck—and finally knowing what to do next. Avid takes the best of what a top-tier agency would do—analyze your donor file, identify the biggest opportunities, map out a plan—and makes it available instantly, inside a platform that fits the way you already work. - No more siloed reports. - No more guesswork. - No more juggling five tabs just to send one email. With Avid, the strategy lives inside the system. And execution is just a few clicks away. ## The foundation that makes it all work Everything Avid delivers—every insight, every campaign, every result—starts with what’s underneath: **Impact Architecture**. ![Impact Architecture logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/iA-Blog-Graphics-1024x576.jpg)This isn’t a feature. And it’s definitely not a buzzword. It’s the foundation that holds the system together, so *you* don’t have to. It’s what unifies your data across platforms—no more copy/paste chaos. It’s what turns insight into action—without needing a separate strategy doc. It’s what drives execution—automatically, intelligently, and without the manual lift. It’s what makes Avid more than a platform—and the system actually work for you, not the other way around. Because without it? - You’re still stitching tools together. - Still juggling spreadsheets and timelines and best guesses. - Still carrying the weight of a system that was never built for how you actually work. But with it? - You get momentum. - You get focus. - You get to lead with strategy—*and trust the system to carry it forward.* That’s the shift. And it’s what every fundraiser deserves. ## You’ve carried the weight. Let the system help. You’ve carried the weight of disconnected systems, shrinking budgets, and rising expectations. You’ve stayed late to pull the report. You’ve built the segmentation list from scratch—again. You’ve made it work with whatever you had, because the mission couldn’t wait. But it shouldn’t be this hard. And it doesn’t have to be. Avid was built for fundraisers like you—the ones doing real work, in real time, with real urgency. We believe the people closest to the mission deserve systems that move just as fast. We believe fundraisers shouldn’t have to choose between personalization and scale, strategy and speed, ambition and capacity. That’s why Avid exists: To help you move more money to mission—by raising more, and wasting less. You’ve done the hard part. Now, let the system help. ## Ready to rebuild fundraising—from the system up? If you’ve been stitching tools together and hoping it’ll all hold—there’s a better way. Avid isn’t just another platform. It’s the system fundraisers have always deserved. Powered by Impact Architecture. Built for how you actually work. Ready to help you do more of what matters—with less of what gets in the way. **This is Avid.** **Categories:** Fundraising Strategy --- ### [Nonprofit Data Management Tools vs. Avid’s Fundraising Intelligence System: What’s the Difference?](https://avidai.com/blog/avid-vs-nonprofit-data-management-tools/) **Published:** July 8, 2025 **Author:** Avid Team **Excerpt:** Stop managing data. Start acting on it. Discover how Avid goes beyond traditional tools to activate your donor information for better fundraising outcomes. **Content:** You’re not the first fundraiser to ask, *“Is Avid another data management platform?”* **The answer is no, and that distinction matters more than you think.** Yes, Avid connects your donor data. But what it does with that data is what sets it apart. Data management platforms are built to clean and store information. Avid is built to interpret it, act on it, and help you drive results in real time. This blog breaks down how traditional nonprofit data management software and Avid differ, what they’re designed for, where they help, and how they can actually work together. ## **What Is Nonprofit Data Management Software?** **Nonprofit data management software** refers to platforms designed to **store, clean, and structure donor data**. Its primary goal is accuracy and consistency across systems (they keep your house in order). Typical capabilities include: - Deduplicating and standardizing donor records. - Storing contact and transaction history. - Running queries and static reports. - Maintaining consistency across systems. **Examples include Omatic, Raiser’s Edge NXT add-ons, and custom databases.** They keep your house in order but they don’t really help fundraisers act because they don’t answer questions like: - “Who’s showing signs of churn?” - “Which donors are re-engaging?” - “Who’s ready to upgrade?” You don’t get decisions from a data management platform; you get exports. And the strategy still has to be built by hand. ### **Where Data Management Tools Fall Short for Fundraisers** **Nonprofit data management systems** reflect the past. Fundraisers need tools that respond to the present. Data management tools weren’t built to: - Track real-time donor behavior across platforms. - Detect live engagement or churn risk. - Build smart segments that update automatically. - Recommend strategic next steps. This creates what we call *the execution gap*: - You’re sending emails to the wrong segment. - Ad dollars keep hitting donors who already gave. - Donors lapse without anyone noticing. - Campaigns slow down because decisions take too long. In short, your data is accurate but inaccessible, slow, and reactive. ## **And What Is Avid?** **Avid is a fundraising intelligence system built for execution.** It connects the tools you already use (your CRM, email platform, donation forms, ads, and events) and turns scattered data into real-time, strategic clarity. Avid activates your donor data. It turns the tools you already use into one connected system that works the way your fundraising team needs. Each donor profile in Avid is: - **Automatically updated** across platforms daily. - **Enriched with live behavioral signals** (churn risk, upgrade potential, etc.). - **Synced to your campaign tools** (email, ads, automation). - **Designed to drive action**, not just display information. Avid isn’t another system to maintain. It’s the connective layer that makes everything else work smarter. ![Diagram of Avid connecting CRM, email, ads, donation, and website data into one fundraising system](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXeRMj2y0Zz3tteejqUZkzO05KabM0iJoaGX5lhu5hWRf9rqhaJhDmsAoV1c9gzv6EBLZec9Nd0hcHZtofG7BqklCC2yLIlNWah50pgNT3nhHLLJXFxJSECy0ZhV6N2IAD14_YGP?key=6poXobIelhV3f7C8T1cT7Mdz)### **Where Avid Picks Up** With Avid, fundraisers don’t need to export lists, rebuild segments, or manually interpret engagement. Instead, they can: - Auto-prioritize donors showing live signals of interest. - Suppress recent givers from ad campaigns to reduce waste. - Trigger reactivation based on website visits or email engagement. - Personalize messaging based on past behavior and campaign response. Avid makes these outcomes possible by powering clarity in real time. For example: Avid detects that 68 lapsed donors clicked on your year-end appeal but didn’t give. You can spin up a reactivation campaign that hits their inbox within hours without rebuilding a list or pulling a report. ## **Avid Doesn’t Replace Your CRM or Data Management Platform. It Works On Top Of Them** Think of Avid as the operating system for fundraising execution, not a replacement tool for your data management platform or CRM. Your CRM stores donor data. Your email platform sends messages. Your donation tool collects gifts. Avid connects the pieces. It tells you which donors to focus on, why they matter, and how to move them forward, automatically. Here’s what that means in practice: - You keep your CRM. Avid makes the data inside it smarter and more actionable. - You keep your email platform. Avid syncs behavior-based segments into it, automatically. - You keep your analytics tool. Avid shows you what to *do* with the trends it surfaces. You keep your systems. Avid makes them work harder for your fundraising strategy. ## **Avid Vs. Nonprofit Data Management Tools: A Side-by-Side Comparison Table** The difference comes down to this: data vs. decisions. - Data management tools show you a list. Avid tells you who to prioritize. - Data management tools reflect the past. Avid reacts to the present. - Data management tools help you maintain your system. Avid helps you drive results. Here’s how they stack up: **Capability****Nonprofit Data Management Tools****Avid**Data storage✅ Yes✅ YesDeduplication & cleanup✅ Yes✅ YesDonor behavior analysis❌ Manual✅ Built-inEngagement signal detection❌ Not included✅ Real-timeSegmentation❌ Static lists✅ Live, smart segmentsCampaign execution❌ Manual exports✅ Integrated syncChurn/upgrade prediction❌ Not included✅ Built-in AI signalsRecommendations for action❌ Not included✅ Built-inGolden Record support❌ Not offered✅ Core featureIf you’re using your CRM for reporting, your email tool for outreach, and your brain for segmentation, you’re doing the work Avid can automate. ## **How to Know If You’re Ready for a Fundraising Intelligence Layer Like Avid** Data management software gives you structure. Avid gives you momentum. You still need clean data and a solid CRM foundation. But if your team is… - Spending hours preparing reports. - Launching campaigns on old data. - Unsure who to target next. …you’re ready for the next layer. **Avid turns your donor data into live, usable intelligence.** It helps you: - Act faster. - Reduce wasted effort. - Reach the right donors with the right message at the right time. And most importantly: it doesn’t ask your team to do more. It gives them more clarity with less effort. ## **Ready to See What Real-Time Donor Clarity Looks Like?** Your next major gift, reactivation, or campaign success is already in your data. Avid helps you find it and move on it. Let us show you what your donor clarity layer could look like. [Book a personalized Avid demo today](https://avidai.com/demo/) to see real segments, real insights, and your next best steps. ## **FAQ:** 1. **What is a fundraising intelligence system?** A fundraising intelligence system connects your donor data across platforms (CRM, email, donations, ads) and turns that information into live signals like churn risk, upgrade potential, and campaign readiness. It helps fundraisers take strategic action in real time, without needing to pull manual reports or interpret static dashboards. 2. **Does Avid replace my CRM or data warehouse?** No. Avid doesn’t store donor data, it activates it. Avid works on top of your existing systems, pulling in behavioral data and translating it into clear, campaign-ready insights for your fundraising team. 3. **What makes Avid different from nonprofit data management software?** Data management software helps keep your donor records clean and centralized. Avid helps you know who to target, when to act, and what’s working based on live donor activity. It’s built for action, not storage. **Categories:** Fundraising Strategy, Nonprofit Marketing --- ### [Propensity Modeling in Avid: See Which Donors are Likely to Give, Lapse, or Upgrade.](https://avidai.com/blog/april-product-updates-2026/) **Published:** April 29, 2026 **Author:** Riley Young **Excerpt:** New in Avid: see which donors are likely to give, lapse, or upgrade — and act on it before the window closes with propensity modeling. **Content:** **The signal is already in your file**. The donor most likely to give next, the lapsed supporter most likely to come back, the segment ready for a specific ask. The question isn’t whether it exists — it’s whether anyone on your team sees it before the window closes. ## **What Avid already knows** Between campaigns, Avid keeps running — the file shifting, patterns forming. By the time your team is ready to act, Avid has already done the work between the work. Now those patterns surface as ranked audiences, ready to act on. The capability is called **propensity modeling** — Avid scoring every donor in your file by how likely they are to take a specific action, then ranking them so the team knows exactly who to prioritize. ![Avid audience menu with 'Create a Propensity Model' highlighted (illustrative)](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Propensity-modeling-image-1.png)The donor most likely to start recurring in the next 60 days, the lapsed supporter most likely to come back, the segment most likely to respond to disaster relief or education or healthcare. Not predicted. Recognized — **Avid knows what your file looked like before donors took those actions, and it knows which donors look like that right now.** ## **From recognition to campaign** The audience is only the start. ![Avid's Create a Propensity Model dialog with a target audience size field (illustrative)](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Propensity-modeling-image2.png)Once Avid identifies who’s ready, the work continues — the segment flows into [Pathways](https://avidai.com/components/pathways/), the campaign takes shape inside [Playbooks](https://avidai.com/components/playbooks/), touchpoints drafted in your voice. And as donors give, lapse, or upgrade, the audiences update themselves. By the time your team is ready to act, the campaign is mostly already there. What’s left is the work only a fundraiser can do. ## **Where it matters most** The recurring conversion ask, sent before the window closes — not after. The reactivation budget spent on the lapsed donors most likely to come back, not the ones who happened to lapse most recently. The appeal that lands because the audience was built around theme affinity, not sent to everyone and hoped for the best. The channel routing that follows what each donor actually responds to. Each one is the same pattern: recognize what’s true now, act on it inside the same system, build on what worked the next time around. ## **The system doesn’t predict. It recognizes and it runs.** Propensity modeling isn’t a standalone feature — it’s one part of how the [fundraising operating system](https://avidai.com/the-system/) works. The system runs continuously, carrying what it knows into every campaign. The window doesn’t have to close before anyone sees it open. Not using Avid yet? [Book a guided tour to see this new features at work for your organization »](https://avidai.com/demo/) **Categories:** Product Updates --- ### [3 Easy AI Plays to Maximize Year-End Giving in 2025](https://avidai.com/blog/ai-plays-to-maximize-year-end-giving/) **Published:** September 20, 2025 **Author:** Avid Team **Excerpt:** Maximize year-end giving with 3 simple AI plays. Reactivate donors, personalize appeals, and boost results—without burning out your team. **Content:** December can deliver nearly a third of your annual revenue—and just as easily drain your team. **Year-end is harder than ever.** Inboxes flood, deadlines collide, and donors expect messages that feel personal and arrive at the right moment across email, SMS, social, and mail… all while your staff deals with everything year-end. **But the solution isn’t more hours; it’s leverage.** And used well, AI is perfect for that. With the right [AI-powered operating system](https://avidai.com/how-avid-works/), you can reactivate lapsed donors and personalize at scale without piling 10× the work onto your team. In this post, you’ll see **where AI creates year-end lift and three plays you can launch now**—without burning out your team. ## **Where Artificial Intelligence Can Create Year-End Leverage** AI isn’t here to replace fundraisers. It’s here to take repetitive work off your plate so you can focus on what matters most: setting the strategy, shaping the story, and building donor relationships. Here’s how AI creates leverage in December: 1. **Reactivating lapsed donors at scale** Lapsed donors are one of your most reliable year-end opportunities, but manually pulling lists, writing variants, and scheduling follow-ups can eat days of staff time. AI can surface the right cohorts, segment them by recency and amount, and draft multiple versions of appeals (gratitude, impact, matching gift) in minutes. This way you get more reactivations with less manual work. For example, we saw **one of our clients reactivated 308% more lapsed donors** with an [Avid AI-Powered Playbook](https://avidai.com/ai-powered-playbooks/) running in the background. 2. **Producing campaign assets in minutes** Year-end requires more content, emails, ads, and thank-yous than any other season. And small teams can’t keep up. An AI system can take your brief and generate a coordinated set of emails, social posts, ad copy, thank-yous, and segment-specific variants in your brand voice. All without late-night copy-paste marathons. You end up with more assets, less rework, and a team that’s freed to execute thoughtfully instead of scrambling. 3. **Personalizing content for higher conversion** Donors respond to simple, personal messages that feel human. AI makes it simple to draft plain-text, personal appeals that often outperform glossy templates. Try it on just one donor segment and see how often people choose “personal over polished.” We’ve found out that in the last 72 hours of the year, plain-text appeals frequently outperform. ## **Don’t give in to “AI paralysis”: 3 AI Plays to Try This Year-End** The best way forward is to start somewhere and learn as you go. Here are three high-impact plays you can launch with AI this December: ### **Play 1: LYBUNT/SYBUNT Reactivation** **When to run it:** Early–mid December (before the final rush). **Goal:** Reawaken donors who gave last year (LYBUNT = *Last Year But Unfortunately Not This*) or the year before (SYBUNT = *Some Year But Unfortunately Not This*). **How to implement with AI:** 1. **Segment automatically.** You could patch this together in a Google spreadsheet and surface donors whose last gift was 12–24 months ago, sorted by gift amount. 2. **Draft the outreach.** Use AI to create 2–3 email variants with different angles: gratitude, mission impact, and urgency. 3. **Build a mini-campaign.** Tell AI to schedule a simple 3-part flow: - Email 1: “We miss you” appeal - Email 2: Reminder with story/impact - Email 3: Final 48-hour deadline 4. **Step in personally.** AI flags any replies or questions so you can personally re-engage those donors. AI can build the reactivation flow for you in minutes instead of you spending hours pulling lists and writing copy. You just review, approve, and respond human-to-human when donors reply. ### **Play 2: Mid-December Upgrade Nudge** **When to run it:** Mid-December, before the year-end deadline messaging ramps up. **Goal:** Invite recent or first-time donors to increase their gift before Dec 31. **How to implement with AI:** 1. **Identify upgrade-ready donors.** Ask AI to pull donors who gave in the past 90–120 days and group them by giving level. 2. **Draft the note.** [Train ChatGPT on your brand voice](https://avidai.com/download-how-to-train-chatgpt-to-write-better-fundraising-appeals/) and have it write a short, plain-text message from your executive director or program lead: *“You moved X forward this fall—here’s what an extra $20 could unlock before Dec 31.”* 3. **Personalize the ask.** AI can suggest a tailored “stretch” amount (e.g., +$20, +$50, +10%) based on each donor’s last gift. 4. **Approve + send.** Review for tone, make any edits, and push it out through email/SMS. AI handles the list-building and copy; you make sure it feels warm, personal, and respectful before it hits inboxes. ### **Play 3: Last-48-Hours Urgency** **When to run it:** December 30–31—the highest-urgency giving window of the year. **Goal:** Capture the natural surge in gifts without overwhelming your donors. **How to implement with AI:** 1. **Pre-build urgency messages.** Ask AI to draft three appeal variants in advance: - *“Tax deadline tonight”* - *“Double your impact before midnight”* - *“One day left to stand with \[beneficiaries\]”* 2. **Set frequency caps.** Tell your system to send no more than 2 emails + 1 SMS per donor. Suppress anyone who’s already given. 3. **Prioritize engaged donors.** AI automatically finds people who opened, clicked, or visited your donation page in the past 30 days and puts them at the top of your urgency send list. AI ensures the right donors get the right urgent messages while protecting trust by not bombarding everyone on your list. ### **TIP: Train ChatGPT to Write in *Your* Brand Voice** Fundraising isn’t just about what you say but *how* you say it. Donors give because your message feels authentic, aligned with your mission, and written in a voice they trust. In [this OneCause webinar](https://www.onecause.com/webinar/recording-moving-up-the-grid-with-ai-smarter-fundraising-for-nonprofit-success/), [Nathan Hill](https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathan-peter-hill/) shared the story of Riley, a teammate who secretly had ChatGPT draft four weeks of emails in his voice. When he read them, he realized they sounded *more like him* than if he’d written them himself. That’s the power of training AI on your brand voice. Instead of generic, “newsletter-y” appeals, you can teach ChatGPT (or Claude, Gemini, etc.) to write like your organization: warm, donor-first, mission-driven. To make it simple, we’ve created a free **Brand Voice Training Guide** with a step-by-step prompt template you can use today. With it, you’ll: - Define your mission, vision, and value proposition for AI. - Upload words and phrases you always (and never) use. - Teach AI to draft appeals, thank-yous, and social posts that sound like *you*. With the right training, AI can become your most consistent copywriter, one that never forgets your style or your mission. [Download the free ChatGPT Brand Voice Training Guide here.](https://avidai.com/download-how-to-train-chatgpt-to-write-better-fundraising-appeals/) ![Benchmark universe panel: 1,003 nonprofits with $13.8M average revenue and 41,046 average active donors](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/image-4.webp) If the three plays above sound like a lot of manual work and switching between spreadsheets, emails platforms, and prompts, that’s because they are. That’s exactly why we built **Avid**: the first fundraising operating system that bakes these workflows into proven ready-made AI-powered Playbooks. ## **Meet Avid: The Only AI-Powered Operating System for Fundraisers** Nearly every fundraiser we talk to says their year-end plan depends on late nights, messy spreadsheets, and last-minute copy-paste jobs, That’s exactly why we built **Avid**—to take the heavy lift off your plate. **Avid** is the first **fundraising operating system** designed for nonprofits. - It pulls the right audience segments automatically. - It drafts copy and creative in your brand voice. - It deploys campaigns across email, SMS, ads, and more. - And keeps learning as results come in. At the core are its [AI-powered Playbooks](https://avidai.com/ai-powered-playbooks/): pre-built, campaign templates designed by fundraisers, for fundraisers. You don’t start from scratch, you start from strategy—and the Playbook builds the rest. ## **Focus on Donors, Not Spreadsheets This Year-End** Year-end doesn’t have to be a blur of late nights and last-minute copy. With **Avid**, you can reactivate lapsed donors, personalize across segments, and spin up a full campaign kit in under 90 minutes. Your strategy in; assets out. Humans in the loop; donors at the center. **See a play build in real time.** Book a demo and see how **Avid** builds your year-end play—so you can spend more time with donors, not spreadsheets. **Categories:** AI & Automation --- ### [AI Paralysis Is Real: A Fundraiser’s Guide to Getting Unstuck](https://avidai.com/blog/ai-paralysis-is-real-a-fundraisers-guide-to-getting-unstuck/) **Published:** November 12, 2025 **Author:** Nathan Hill **Excerpt:** AI is everywhere in fundraising conversations—but many teams are stuck in “wait and see” mode. Here’s why AI paralysis happens, the cost of staying frozen, and how small, safe steps (plus Avid’s built-in Playbooks) help you move from hesitation to progress. **Content:** AI is everywhere in fundraising conversations. At conferences, in webinars, on LinkedIn—everyone is talking about how it can transform donor engagement. And yet, when you get back to your desk, it’s easy to feel stuck. There are too many tools, too much jargon, and too much risk in “getting it wrong” with donors. That feeling has a name: **AI paralysis.** But the one thing AI gurus don’t tell you is that you don’t have to master every tool or build the perfect workflow to start. This guide will show you why AI paralysis happens, the cost of staying frozen, and **three simple moves to get unstuck.** ## Why AI Paralysis Happens in Nonprofits If year-end already feels overwhelming, the idea of “adding AI” can feel like just one more burden. Almost every nonprofit team we talk to says the same thing: *“We know it’s powerful, but we don’t know where to start.”* That’s not because fundraisers aren’t innovative but because the sector faces unique challenges: - **Overwhelm.** There are more than 10,000 AI tools on the market, most built for marketing or sales. None of them speak the language of generosity. So you’re left wondering: *Which of these could actually help us raise more?* - **Uncertainty.** For-profits can afford to “test and fail.” Nonprofits can’t risk donor trust. When the output feels off-brand or too transactional, the safest move often feels like doing nothing. - **Isolation.** Fundraisers already wear five hats. Who has extra hours to tinker with prompts or piece together spreadsheets just to see if AI *might* work? This is why so many teams end up in “wait and see” mode. It’s not a lack of will, it’s the weight of trying to figure it out alone, with too much at stake. ## But The Cost of Staying Stuck in 2025 is Too Expensive to Ignore AI paralysis not only creates frustration, but it holds generosity back. Every week you delay experimenting, you’re leaving impact on the table: - **Missed campaigns.** That lapsed donor campaign that never launches is not only a missed revenue number, it’s missed impact. - **Team fatigue.** Carrying the weight of “we know we should be using AI, but we’re not” drains morale. Staff end up stuck in busywork instead of focusing on strategy and relationships. - **Losing ground.** Donors are experiencing personalization everywhere else in their lives. As other nonprofits adopt AI to deliver relevance at scale, standing still starts to feel like slipping backwards. **AI paralysis is expensive, not just in dollars, but in missed impact.** But momentum doesn’t require a giant leap. Even one small step forward with AI pays back in confidence, capacity, and results. Here’s how to build momentum, one safe step at a time. ## 3 Practical Moves That Break AI Paralysis in Nonprofits Fast The way out isn’t mastering AI, it’s proving to yourself that it works in *your* world. **One success is all it takes to flip your team from frozen to moving.** When you watch AI cut a task from hours to minutes, you stop asking “Can we do this?” and start asking “What else can we unlock?” Here are three simple ways to create that first win. ### 1. Train AI on Your Brand Voice If you do just one thing to break paralysis, do this: train AI on your brand voice. Instead of starting with donor-facing campaigns, start internally. You can use ChatGPT to upload your mission, values, do/don’t words, and sample copy. Teach AI how your organization *sounds*. Once AI knows your voice, everything else—appeals, thank-yous, social posts—feels authentic and on-brand. In [this OneCause webinar](https://www.onecause.com/webinar/recording-moving-up-the-grid-with-ai-smarter-fundraising-for-nonprofit-success/), [Nathan Hill](https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathan-peter-hill/) shared the story of Riley, a teammate who secretly had ChatGPT draft four weeks of emails in his voice. When he read them, he realized they sounded more like him than if he’d written them himself. That’s the power of brand voice training, and it’s the fastest way to see AI work for you. You can grab our [free ChatGPT Brand Voice Training Guide](https://avidai.com/download-how-to-train-chatgpt-to-write-better-fundraising-appeals/) to walk AI through your tone step by step so instead of cranking out “generic” content, AI starts sounding like *you*. ![Mock chat window with the prompt 'How to train ChatGPT to write better fundraising appeals'](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/how-to-train-chatgpt-768x996.webp) ### 2. Use AI as a Thought Partner AI isn’t just a copywriter. It can brainstorm ideas, outline briefs, and pressure-test your thinking. This shifts your mindset from “AI replaces me” to “AI accelerates me.” Next time you draft a campaign plan, ask an AI tool such as ChatGPT or Google’s Gemini to give you five alternate framings or subject line options. Faster brainstorming, more variety, less creative block. ### 3. Automate One Manual Workflow Paralysis often melts when you *feel* the time savings. Fundraisers waste hours pulling lists, formatting spreadsheets, or copy-pasting into CRMs. Pick one repetitive workflow and hand it to AI. For example, you can build a LYBUNT call sheet in Google Sheets with Gemini, and use ChatGPT to spin up a lapsed donor reactivation campaign automatically. Automation means hours saved, confidence gained, and momentum for the next experiment. ## The Shortcut: A System That Removes Guesswork Most fundraisers aren’t afraid of AI itself; they’re afraid of wasting time, sounding off-brand, or risking donor trust. That’s why at **Avid** we built something different—**a fundraising operating system designed to help nonprofits put AI to work safely and effectively.** [Read about how Avid works here.](https://avidai.com/how-avid-works/) If training AI on your brand voice feels overwhelming, **Avid** comes preloaded with [proven Playbooks powered by AI](https://avidai.com/ai-powered-playbooks/) and already tuned for fundraising. That means you skip the tinkering and go straight to authentic, on-brand campaigns. With **Avid**, your team gets: - **AI without the guesswork.** Avid syncs with your CRM, email, and donation platforms in real time to unify donor data and automatically surface the right segments. - **AI without the blank page.** Playbooks are pre-trained on fundraising best practices and can be tuned with your brand voice, so campaigns start polished and on-message. - **AI without the risk.** Every workflow bakes in proven donor engagement strategies and includes human review, so you move fast without risking trust. Fundraisers stay focused on strategy while the system handles execution. For example, one **Avid** client [increased donor reactivation by 308%](https://avidai.com/blog/luther-seminary/)—not because they became AI experts, but because the system made it effortless to put AI to work safely. ## Avid Gives Your Team The Confidence to Move Forward AI paralysis is real, but it doesn’t have to hold your team back. Progress doesn’t come from mastering every tool; it comes from taking one safe, meaningful step. Whether that step is training AI on your brand voice, letting it draft your next campaign brief, or automating one manual workflow, each win builds confidence and momentum. And with **Avid**, you don’t have to take those steps alone. Our Playbooks are built by fundraisers, for fundraisers, so you can put AI to work without the overwhelm—bringing clarity to your team, lift to your campaigns, and timely, personal engagement to your donors. The path forward isn’t about more hours or more tools. It’s about smarter leverage. If you’re ready for your first safe win with AI, **Book a demo** and see how Avid helps you move from paralysis to progress—safely, quickly, and in your own voice. **Categories:** AI & Automation --- ### [Preserving Humanity in AI-Powered Fundraising: Key Insights from Nonprofit Tech Leaders](https://avidai.com/blog/preserving-humanity-in-ai-powered-fundraising-key-insights-from-nonprofit-tech-leaders/) **Published:** July 28, 2026 **Author:** Nathan Hill **Content:** AI tools are multiplying faster than teams can evaluate them, donor participation is declining, and **the pressure to do more with less has never been heavier.** But the answer isn’t to hand your fundraising over to a bot. In a recent webinar hosted by Avid, Kevin Peters (Founder & CTO, Avid) and Nathan Chappell (Chief AI Officer, Virtuous) made the case that the real opportunity in AI isn’t replacement — it’s reclamation. Reclaiming the hours your team spends on operational work so they can **focus on the relational work that actually moves donors.** --- ## Why Most Fundraisers Have an Outdated View of AI Most people’s mental model of AI is frozen at November 2022 — the month ChatGPT launched. Back then, it was a novelty: write me a poem, summarize this document. That version of AI feels familiar, and it’s largely how the sector is still using it. But the technology has moved well past that. Five months after launch, ChatGPT could pass the bar exam — outperforming 90% of lawyers. And according to recent research Nathan cited in the webinar, AI agents are on track to complete a full eight-hour workday without human intervention by March 2027. What that means practically: **the gap between how most fundraisers use AI and what AI is becoming is enormous** — and it’s widening every month. --- ## What Is an AI Agent — and Why Does It Matter for Fundraising? An AI agent isn’t a single model. Kevin Peters described it this way: think of an agent as **a manager orchestrating a team of specialized workers.** When you ask it to do something, it delegates — pulling in the right tools, models, and data sources to complete the task faster and more accurately than any single model could alone. This is how [Edna, Avid’s fundraising agent](https://avidai.com/meet-edna/ "Meet Edna"), works. Rather than clicking through reports and building queries manually, Avid users ask Edna a question. She surfaces the answers, identifies the next best audience to reach, drafts segmented copy, and syncs lists to their email tool — in minutes, not days. Nathan introduced a distinction worth internalizing: “human in the loop” (AI does the work, a human reviews) versus “human at the helm” (a human is ultimately accountable for every decision AI makes on their behalf). As agents become more autonomous, that distinction becomes more important, not less. [Watch a 6-minute tour of how Edna works as your team’s fundraising agent »](https://avidai.com/activate-your-tour-of-avid/) --- ## What Do Donors Actually Think About Nonprofits Using AI? This is where the data is most surprising — and most useful. FundraisingAI conducted a study of more than 2,000 donors and found: - **80% of donors want nonprofits to use AI** - **90%+ say disclosure is key** But the more revealing finding was the disconnect between what donors want and what nonprofit professionals *think* donors want. Nonprofit pros assumed donors primarily wanted AI used for personalization. Donors ranked that fifth. What they actually want is for AI to help them **trust the organization more** — through better privacy, clearer accountability, and responsible stewardship of their data. The practical takeaway: you don’t need an AI disclosure on every email. But you should have a clear statement somewhere on your website — similar to a data governance policy — that explains how you use AI and the principles guiding that use. --- ## Is It Ethical to Use AI to Write Fundraising Copy? Both Kevin and Nathan addressed this directly. Kevin’s framework: **treat AI output the way you’d treat copy from an agency**. Would you send an email an agency wrote without reading it first? No. Would you let an agency rewrite your mission statement? No. Would you let them take an approved email and adapt it for an ad? Sure. The same logic applies to AI. Nathan’s framing gets at something deeper: **the ethical question isn’t *who* wrote the copy — it’s whether the donor is at the center of the decision.** Fundraising has always involved persuasion. AI-generated copy isn’t inherently manipulative, and human-written copy isn’t inherently trustworthy. What matters is the intent and the values behind it. His practical advice: write your organization’s AI values down. Most teams have values on the wall but don’t use them to make decisions. As AI introduces new ethical gray areas daily, internalized values become the framework. --- ## How Should Nonprofits Protect Donor Data When Using AI? Kevin’s rule is simple: if you wouldn’t want it repeated on the evening news, don’t put it in an AI tool. More specifically: - **Free consumer tools** (ChatGPT free, Claude free, Gemini) harvest your inputs. Never enter donor PII into these. - **Enterprise accounts** (ChatGPT Enterprise, Claude for Enterprise, Microsoft Copilot with enterprise settings) offer walled-off environments where your data is not used to train models. - When in doubt, anonymize: use donor IDs rather than names, hash identifying information before passing it to any model. Enterprise-grade privacy that cost close to $1 million two years ago now runs around $30 per month. At Avid, we go to great lengths to ensure no Donor PII ever reaches an AI. As Kevin shared in the discussion, there are creative ways to use tokens and IDs to anonymize your donor data. **Avid has this level of donor protection built in automatically.** So you get all the benefits of better intelligence, analysis, strategy, and execution—and all the confidence that your donor’s info is secure. --- ## Where Should Nonprofits Start with AI? Both Kevin and Nathan pushed back on the instinct to start with the most visible or exciting use cases. The bigger wins come from auditing where time actually goes. Nathan shared a framework one organization used: they catalogued 441 activities across their 150-person team, ran the list through Claude, identified which tasks AI could meaningfully augment, and then filtered for what no one actually enjoyed doing. They narrowed it to 20 priority areas — a concrete, actionable roadmap that came directly from their own work. Kevin’s starting point for most fundraising teams: **predictive AI and propensity modeling**. One stat worth repeating — wealth is less than 10% correlated with generosity. Yet most organizations still use wealth as their primary prospecting signal. Machine learning can surface the engagement patterns that actually predict giving, and accessing that capability no longer requires a data science team. **Avid is built to be your [AI fundraising agent out of the box](https://avidai.com/how-it-works/).** Integrate all your tools with a few clicks. And Edna, Avid’s fundraising agent, is already trained on 8,000+ fundraising experiments and 650+ million donor interactions. She’s seen what works in fundraising across more touchpoints than any fundraising team sees in a lifetime. --- ## Frequently Asked Questions **Can nonprofits use AI to write donor communications?** Yes — with human review. Treat AI output as a first draft, not a final product. Always read, edit, and approve before sending. **Do nonprofits need to disclose when they use AI?** Best practice is a clear AI use policy on your website. You don’t need to label every AI-assisted email, but transparency about how you use AI builds donor trust. **Is donor data safe in AI tools?** It depends on the tool. Free consumer tools are not safe for donor data. Enterprise versions of major AI platforms offer strong privacy protections. When in doubt, don’t input PII. **Where should a small nonprofit start with AI?** Start by auditing where your team’s time goes. The highest-value use of AI is eliminating the work that consumes hours and doesn’t require a human — not replacing the work that does. --- Fundraising is human work. The teams that will win in this next era aren’t the ones that hand the most over to AI — they’re the ones that use AI to get back to the work only humans can do. *[Book a quick tour with an Avid team member →](https://avidai.com/demo)* **Categories:** AI & Automation --- ### [Avid Expands Leadership to Drive Fundraising Innovation](https://avidai.com/blog/avid-expands-leadership-to-drive-fundraising-innovation/) **Published:** January 13, 2025 **Author:** Avid Team **Excerpt:** Avid welcomes Stephen Boudreau and Erik Tomalis to its leadership team, poised to transform how nonprofits approach and grow generosity. **Content:** *Dallas, TX – January 13, 2025 –* Avid, the first fundraising agency in the cloud, proudly announces the appointments of Erik Tomalis as Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) and Stephen Boudreau as Chief Marketing Officer (CMO). ## Erik Tomalis Erik Tomalis brings more than 20 years of experience in fundraising, agency leadership, and nonprofit technology. He has held senior roles at Virtuous, Pursuant Ketchum, TrueSense Marketing, and St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, among others. Over the course of his career, Erik has conducted more than 4,000 donor meetings, helping nonprofits in healthcare, education, and youth-based initiatives raise millions. As CRO, Erik will lead revenue strategies to grow Avid’s market presence and strengthen client engagement. “Joining the team at Avid is an incredible opportunity. I’m passionate about the nonprofit sector and the transformative work it drives. I realized there was a significant hole in the market—one that doesn’t compete with technology solutions but instead complements them. That’s where Avid comes in, and it’s why I’m here,” said Tomalis. Ray Gary, CEO of Avid, shared, “Erik’s proven track record and deep understanding of the non-profit sector make him an invaluable addition to our leadership team. We are confident that his expertise will propel Avid to new heights.” ## Stephen Boudreau Stephen Boudreau brings entrepreneurial vision, creative leadership, and a passion for nonprofit innovation to Avid. With over 20 years of experience building tools that help nonprofits thrive, he’s driven by one goal: making generosity easier. A two-time founder, Stephen co-launched Ascendio, a digital agency helping nonprofits grow, and in 2014, built RaiseDonors, a SaaS platform that redefined online fundraising. After its acquisition by Virtuous Software, he helped scale the brand, foster a passionate community, and drive record-breaking growth. Now, as Avid’s CMO, Stephen blends creativity with data-driven strategy to help nonprofits move from insight to impact. “Avid is unlocking something big for nonprofits—giving them the tools to make generosity frictionless,” said Boudreau. “This is a movement, and I couldn’t be more excited to be part of it.” Stephen’s appointment as CMO reflects his ability to bridge creativity with data-driven insights—crafting marketing strategies that not only drive engagement but also deliver measurable impact. “I’m a designer at heart, and great design—whether visual or strategic—creates clarity, fosters connection, and inspires action,” said Stephen Boudreau. “Joining Avid feels like opening a treasure chest of powerful tools for nonprofits. We’re building something nonprofits can rally around to unlock generosity like never before. I couldn’t be more excited to launch this movement and share it with the world.” Ray Gary added, “Stephen’s creativity, leadership, and deep nonprofit experience bring a bold new perspective to Avid. His vision for growth and design-driven strategies will take our mission to the next level—helping nonprofits achieve transformational results.” Their combined understanding of the SaaS landscape and dedication to nonprofit growth position Erik and Stephen to lead Avid in transforming how nonprofits approach and expand generosity. ## About Avid Avid is the first fundraising agency in the cloud, using advanced AI to turn nonprofit data into actionable strategies. By unlocking siloed information, Avid empowers organizations to enhance donor engagement and drive fundraising success. For more information, visit[ avidai.com](https://avidai.com/). **Categories:** News --- ### [Keep Fundraising Moving During Your CRM Migration](https://avidai.com/blog/keep-fundraising-moving-during-your-crm-migration/) **Published:** March 5, 2026 **Author:** Nathan Hill **Excerpt:** CRM migrations are a major undertaking for a nonprofit—and a massive headache. Avid can make your CRM migration much smoother. **Content:** CRM migrations are a major undertaking for a nonprofit. And they can be a massive headache. But occasionally they’re necessary for an improved user experience, simpler donor records, improved back-office operations, and more. If find yourself facing a CRM migration, Avid can make it much smoother. ### The Challenge of a CRM Migration While a new CRM promises better infrastructure and improved data management, the transition itself can take 6–18 months. During that time, fundraising teams often lose visibility into performance, struggle to identify donor opportunities, and pause strategic campaigns. **Avid helps nonprofits maintain momentum** during CRM migrations by providing an intelligence layer that works alongside your CRM. ## **Avid Works With the CRM You Choose** Avid is CRM-agnostic, meaning you can select the CRM that best fits your organization. In fact, it’s built to work with all your most critical [nonprofit fundraising software](https://avidai.com/blog/nonprofit-fundraising-software-a-complete-guide-to-every-category-and-the-agent-that-makes-them-work-together/). Avid integrates directly with most major nonprofit CRMs including: - Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge - Bloomerang - Donor Direct Studio Enterprise - DonorDock - DonorPerfect - Hubspot - Nation Builder - Neon One - Salesforce - Virtuous **For CRMs that Avid doesn’t integrate with directly**, your data can almost always be connected through automated exports. This flexibility ensures your fundraising intelligence layer stays consistent even while your systems evolve. ## **Maintain Visibility During the Migration Process** CRM migrations often disrupt reporting and analytics. With Avid, your organization **maintains a clear view of your fundraising programs** across channels. This allows your team to continue to identify opportunities and monitor performance while your new CRM environment is being implemented. ## **Continue Identifying Donor Opportunities** Instead of waiting until your migration is complete to uncover insights, **Avid analyzes your fundraising data immediately**—regardless of which CRM it’s in. This lets you surface key opportunities that no CRM could ever help you spot, including upgrade potential, reactivation prospects, likely recurring donors, and high-value donor segments. Avid enables your fundraising teams to stay proactive even during system transitions. ## **Simplify Segmentation and Campaign Execution** CRM migrations often require rebuilding segmentation models and campaign targeting from scratch. Avid helps **automate segmentation** using donor behavior and engagement data. And it’s not limited to what’s in your CRM. Avid allows you to create segmentation using data from: - Your old CRM - Your new CRM - Your email marketing tools - Your direct mail data Avid **connects all your different fundraising tools and data**—giving you access to easier and more advanced segmentation than ever before. Plus, Avid can automatically **sync your audiences** to the right channels—avoiding the need for CRM queries, imports/exports, and spreadsheets. ## **Turn Data Mapping Into Strategic Insight** Every CRM migration requires careful data mapping. When you turn on Avid as your Fundraising Operating System, Avid’s LockStep team works closely with you to understand how your data is structured. It then gets structured and mapped into Avid with an AI-assist, allowing your data to connect to any of your other tools–including your new CRM. This process will help you have better clarity about critical questions like: - How do we measure key fundraising channels? - What subchannels should be monitoring? - What data am I missing to get insights that lead to growth? When you turn on your new CRM, your data is **already structured to make your migration as simple as possible.** Avid’s process takes 30 days, keeping you up and running while your CRM migration is underway. ## **Keep Fundraising Running While Your Infrastructure Evolves** Fundraising cannot pause during a CRM migration. Avid lets you start running more data-driven campaigns, improves program visibility, and identifies opportunities—even as your CRM infrastructure changes. **CRM migrations may take months, but your fundraising momentum doesn’t have to slow down.** Avid helps nonprofit organizations maintain clarity, uncover opportunities, and continue scaling their fundraising programs throughout the migration process. **Categories:** AI & Automation --- ### [7 Fundraising Tools That Every Modern Nonprofit Should Have on Their Radar](https://avidai.com/blog/fundraising-software-nonprofits/) **Published:** June 8, 2025 **Author:** Avid Team **Excerpt:** Discover the 7 fundraising tools every nonprofit needs in 2025. Learn how to build a smarter, scalable tech stack, and how Avid brings it all together. **Content:** Modern fundraising is all about using the right tools to simplify what’s complex, automate what’s repetitive, and give your team room to do what they do best: build relationships and drive giving. This guide breaks down the **seven [nonprofit fundraising software](https://avidai.com/blog/nonprofit-fundraising-software-a-complete-guide-to-every-category-and-the-agent-that-makes-them-work-together/) categories that help modern nonprofits** simplify complexity, automate execution, and free up fundraisers to do what they do best: build relationships and raise more. These are the proven tools that top fundraising teams use to operate with clarity, speed, and confidence. If you’re still piecing things together, this list can help you get clarity on what a smart, scalable stack really looks like. ## **1. Donor CRM to Keep Every Relationship Organized** A CRM helps you remember what matters: who gave, how they gave, and how to deepen the relationship over time. Instead of manually digging through spreadsheets or swapping between platforms, **a strong CRM puts everything you need in one place**. Nonprofit CRMs let you track giving history, communication preferences, engagement activity, and notes. They keep your team aligned, your data clean, and your outreach intentional. Nonprofit CRM solutions like **Salesforce, Bloomerang, DonorPerfect, Virtuous, Neon One**, and **Raiser’s Edge NXT** help fundraising teams stay organized, strategic, and proactive. ## **2. Email Marketing to Leverage Your Highest-ROI Channel** [Email still delivers the highest ROI of any channel](https://avidai.com/blog/nonprofit-email-marketing-statistics/). And the right email marketing platform makes it easier to execute consistently. Modern fundraising email tools let you segment audiences, personalize messaging, and schedule sends based on behavior, not just your calendar. Whether you’re sending a first-time *thank you* or reactivating lapsed donors, email software lets you communicate clearly and consistently with your givers. Platforms like **Mailchimp, Hubspot, ActiveCampaign,** and **Kit** help teams do more with less manual effort, while improving results. ## **3. Donation Platforms to Make Giving Seamless** When donors are ready to give, nothing should get in their way. They want giving to be fast, easy, and intuitive. And a nonprofit donation platform allows generosity to flow. Modern nonprofit donation tools are built for speed, clarity, and flexibility. They let you create mobile-friendly forms, offer recurring options, and tailor asks by campaign or audience. The results are higher conversion rates and more confident giving. Solutions like **iDonate, RaiseDonors, Anedot,** and **FundraiseUp** make it easy to capture generosity the moment it strikes. ## **4. Analytics and Reporting to Know What’s Working and Why** Fundraising strategy should be [guided by data](https://avidai.com/blog/you-have-the-data-now-what/), not instinct. Analytics tools give you visibility into the performance of your campaigns, channels, and donor behavior. They help you spot trends, optimize strategies, and report back with clarity. Platforms like **Google Analytics, Looker Studio,** and **Power BI** support data-informed decisions that sharpen strategy for smarter growth. ## **5. Marketing Automation to Build Campaigns That Run Themselves** Marketing automation takes what your team does best: **timely, relevant communication**, and makes it scalable. With a nonprofit marketing automation tool, you can trigger emails based on donor behavior, set up drip campaigns that nurture interest, and ensure no opportunity slips through the cracks. It’s like adding an extra team member that never forgets to follow up. Tools like **HubSpot, Marketo, Pardot,** and **ActiveCampaign** help nonprofit teams create journeys that are consistent, thoughtful, and built to convert. You don’t have to rely on manual execution anymore! ## **6. Forms and Lead Capture to Start the Journey with a Simple Action** Not every supporter is ready to give right away. But they might sign up, RSVP, or download a resource. Lead capture forms help you capture that interest and feed it into your broader strategy. Whether it’s an event registration or an advocacy form, the right tool makes it easy to collect and organize contact info so you can nurture your potential donors and follow up with purpose. Solutions like **Gravity Forms,** **Unbounce,** and **Leadpages** help fundraisers turn one-time interactions into active momentum. ## **7. Donor Intelligence and Segmentation to Focus Where It Matters Most** Not all donors are the same, and your outreach strategy shouldn’t be either. [Donor intelligence tools](https://avidai.com/blog/donor-intelligence/) help you prioritize the right people with the right message at the right time. [Fundraising intelligence tools](https://avidai.com/fundraising-intelligence/) help you understand who’s most likely to give, how to tailor your message, and where to focus your energy. With smart segmentation, you can match the right message to the right moment, increasing response rates and strengthening relationships. Tools like **Looker, Tableau**, or even **spreadsheet-based models** help surface patterns. And [systems like **Avid**](https://avidai.com/how-avid-works/) take it a step further, connecting your donor data with live engagement, so your segmentation isn’t just smarter, it’s automatic. ## **Avid, The Fundraising Intelligence System That Makes It All Work** You’ve now seen what a strong fundraising stack looks like: purposeful tools solving real problems. But even the best tools can fall short when they’re working in isolation. That’s the difference between having a stack of tools, and having a *system*. Think about your current stack. Does your CRM trigger timely emails based on donor behavior? Does your donation form feed into your segmentation strategy? Do you know which campaigns are working (and why) in real time? Most teams are stuck [managing data across tools](https://avidai.com/blog/you-have-the-data-now-what/) instead of using it to drive action. That’s where [**Avid**](https://avidai.com/for-fundraisers/) comes in. We call it [the Fundraising Agency in the Cloud](https://avidai.com/blog/fundraising-agency-in-the-cloud/). ### **What is Avid?** [Avid is a fundraising intelligence system](https://avidai.com/fundraising-intelligence/) that helps you get more out of the fundraising tools you already use. While many platforms collect and visualize data, [Avid](https://avidai.com/blog/built-for-fundraisers/) does something different: it *connects* the dots across your stack (CRM, email platform, donation tools), *aggregates* donor activity, and delivers *insights* your team can act on, automatically. Instead of just showing you dashboards, [Avid uses AI](https://avidai.com/blog/how-ai-is-powering-fundraisers/) to tell you what matters. It updates your segments in real time, triggers campaigns based on behavior, and keeps every tool in sync, so you’re not just tracking engagement, you’re acting on it. The best part is that [Avid doesn’t replace your stack](https://avidai.com/integrations/), it makes it smarter. **Want to see how Avid can help you turn your stack into a system that actually works?** **→** [**Book a demo here.**](https://avidai.com/demo/) **Categories:** Nonprofit Marketing --- ### [Bible League Canada Lowers Cost Per Donor by 20% with Avid](https://avidai.com/blog/bible-league-canada/) **Published:** September 16, 2024 **Author:** Avid Team **Excerpt:** Discover how Bible League Canada leveraged first-party data using Avid to optimize their Facebook ads, nurture new donors, and achieve growth. **Content:** ![Bible League Canada Logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/site-bible-league-canada.png)[Bible League Canada](https://bibleleague.ca/) (BLC) was expanding fast. After a 1,000% increase in digital donors, they hit a challenge: their data was everywhere—scattered across Salesforce, MailChimp, and Facebook. Their team had a big vision for growth but lacked the tools to segment donors, optimize ads, and automate outreach. They needed smarter insights to make every campaign count. Then they found Avid—a fundraising intelligence platform designed to unify donor data and drive real-time results. #### The Results ## Avid Delivers Smarter, More Cost-Effective Fundraising - Lowered Facebook cost per donor by 20% - Reduced Facebook cost per name by 11.4% - Increased Facebook ad clicks by 63.9% - Automated donor segmentation across email and ads With Avid, BLC transformed fragmented data into action, building a more complete picture of their donors and optimizing their campaigns for better reach, lower costs, and higher engagement. #### The Challenge ## Siloed Data Was Holding Them Back ### 1. No Donor Segmentation Across Systems BLC’s donor data lived in Salesforce, but their email marketing ran through MailChimp—which couldn’t automatically sync donor segments. Simple tasks, like sending emails to active donors vs. new supporters, required manual exports, imports, and list-building for every campaign. ### 2. Limited Visibility into Facebook Ad Performance With privacy restrictions limiting Facebook’s ad tracking, BLC was stuck relying on incomplete platform data. Lookalike audiences weren’t as precise, and donor targeting suffered. To improve performance, they had to manually import lists—a slow, inefficient process. ### 3. Missed Opportunities in Donor Onboarding Without real-time segmentation, new donors received generic messaging rather than tailored engagement based on where they were in the giving journey. Recurring donors weren’t recognized, and first-time donors weren’t nurtured into long-term supporters. BLC knew they were leaving impact on the table. #### The Solution ## A Unified Platform for Smarter Fundraising With Avid, BLC eliminated silos across their [nonprofit fundraising software](https://avidai.com/blog/nonprofit-fundraising-software-a-complete-guide-to-every-category-and-the-agent-that-makes-them-work-together/) and brought all donor insights into one system, unlocking smarter audience targeting and automated segmentation. ### 1. Lowered Facebook Cost Per Donor by 20% Instead of relying on Facebook’s limited pixel data, BLC used Avid’s first-party donor insights to build stronger lookalike audiences based on actual donor behavior. With smarter, more relevant audience targeting, their ad costs dropped: - Cost per donor decreased by 20% - Cost per name reduced by 11.4% - Facebook ad clicks increased by 63.9% > **“Before Avid, we could reach donors. But now we can actually optimize how we engage them across different channels and maximize every campaign.”** > — Jody Matheson, Director of Marketing ### 2. Automated, Data-Driven Donor Segmentation With Avid AI, BLC could instantly sync donor data across Salesforce and MailChimp, finally allowing them to: - Target new, recurring, and lapsed donors separately - Automate welcome series emails for new donors - Move recurring donors into a separate engagement track Now, BLC’s segmentation is real-time and dynamic—no more manual list-building, and no more missed opportunities to personalize outreach. ### 3. A Smarter, Always-On Donor Journey With donor segmentation running 24/7, BLC could: - Welcome first-time donors automatically and guide them toward deeper engagement - Encourage new donors to become recurring supporters - Steward recurring donors with mission-driven messaging tailored to them What used to be a time-consuming manual process is now an automated, intelligent donor journey that adapts to each supporter’s behavior. ## Better Data. Smarter Decisions. Stronger Results. BLC isn’t alone. Nonprofits using Avid AI’s fundraising intelligence see: - Up to a 41% reduction in donor acquisition costs - Automated audience syncing across Facebook, email, and CRM - Real-time campaign performance tracking for better, data-driven decisions **Categories:** Customer Stories --- ### [Fundraising Automation Increased Retention by 200%](https://avidai.com/blog/fundraising-automation-increases-retention-by-200/) **Published:** September 29, 2025 **Author:** Nathan Hill **Excerpt:** Fundraising automation is essential for growth. See how one nonprofit increased donor retention by 200% using a fundraising automation strategy. **Content:** How Avid-Powered Fundraising Automation Led to a Winning Upgrade & Retention Strategy Budgets are getting tighter. Resources are limited. Hiring more staff is almost never an option. But in modern fundraising, donors expect more. Personal communication. Timely outreach. Tailored content. **How is an organization expected to keep up?** And is it even worth it to try? Nathan Hill of Avid and Bryce Johnston of [Brad Cecil & Associates](https://cecilcommunication.com/) teamed up to tackle how fundraising automation leads to major improvements in results. No more spreadsheets. No more manual number crunching. Watch the recording of the live webinar below, or keep reading to see how one nonprofit increased donor retention by 200% using Avid-powered fundraising automation. - [The State of Basic Fundraising Segmentation](#aioseo-the-state-of-basic-fundraising-segmentation) - [The Data Says We Need Fundraising Automation](#aioseo-the-data-says-we-need-fundraising-automation) - [Increasing Retention by 200% with Fundraising Automation](#aioseo-increasing-retention-by-200-with-fundraising-automation) - [Powering Your Fundraising Automation](#aioseo-powering-your-fundraising-automation) ## The State of Basic Fundraising Segmentation More than ever before, donors expect to be known by the nonprofits they support. You should know their name. Their values. Their communication preferences. Their giving history. But the hard reality is that **most nonprofit tech stacks don’t allow for this.** For most fundraisers, segmented and personalized communication is a manual effort. Let’s say you’re trying to reach out to new donors with an ongoing cultivation series. This type of audience sounds easy to create. But here’s the process for most fundraisers: ### **1. Build a list in your CRM.** This sounds easy enough. But most CRMs don’t have a default audience or list for exactly what you need. Even if there’s a simple option to select new donors, it usually **doesn’t have the filters you need.** Larger donors need separate communication. Recurring donors need customized messaging. Invalid emails need to be scrubbed. In most cases, fundraisers hit a wall in their CRM. Which leads us to step 2. By the way, no CRM is meant to do everything. Read more about the benefits and limitations of different types of [nonprofit fundraising software](https://avidai.com/blog/nonprofit-fundraising-software-a-complete-guide-to-every-category-and-the-agent-that-makes-them-work-together/). ### **2. Export your audience to a spreadsheet.** After you hit a wall in your CRM, you need to get your hands dirty working in a spreadsheet. You export your list. Fire up excel. Turn on your filters and get to work. The problems here are plenty. First, it’s a slow process. Most of us have to do a Google search to remember the name of a critical formula, create a pivot table, run a VLOOKUP and more. Second, there are **countless ways to make mistakes**. Any manual process introduces more chances for error: - You forget that you had a particular filter on. - You accidentally shift your rows while moving data around. - You save the file in the wrong format and lose all your work. If you make it through the gauntlet of manual spreadsheet work, then it’s time for step 3. ### **3. Import your list to your fundraising tool.** Once you’ve manually dialed in your list, now you need to get it into your fundraising tool of choice. You open your email platform. Meta/Facebook ads manager. Your SMS tool. When you run your import, you have to map your fields—introducing another opportunity to accidentally make a mistake. While this step is generally straightforward, it takes time. And you don’t have extra time. The worst part? **None of your performance data is connected back to your CRM.** ![Flow chart showing manual fundraising segmentation](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Manual-Fundraising-Segmentation-1024x271.webp)How are you going to know how someone’s engagement within your fundraising channel impacts their long-term value? You could pay an expensive agency to stitch your data together into a nice Powerpoint slide. But by then, the data is out of date and isn’t actionable. ### **4. Repeat this process forever.** The worst part about manual processes is that they never end. **Want to send a new donor welcome series?** *Great!* You get to export a list of new donors every week forever. **Want to send a giving anniversary message to your donors?** *Perfect!* Now you’re pulling a manual list every single day. **Want to send a personalized upgrade appeal to donors who give frequently?** *Sorry!* You don’t have enough time left in your day to pull the audience. And no one else on your team wants to volunteer. ## The Data Says We Need Fundraising Automation Most fundraisers feel this pain. But the need for fundraising automation goes well beyond increasing our capacity. There are some concerning trends happening in fundraising that automation can help solve. ### **Donor Upgrade Rates are at a 5-Year Low** One of the best ways to grow your fundraising revenue is through retaining and upgrading existing donors. New donors cost a tremendous amount of money to acquire. And their real **value to your fundraising program kicks in if they retain** and upgrade their giving over time. However, the upgrade rates of broadbase to mid-level donors is down. It’s actually been trending down for 5 straight years. ![Avid Benchmarks chart showing declining midlevel donor upgrade rates](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/image-6.webp)The same story is true for major donors. Upgrade rates for major donors are at a 5-year low. ### **Total Active Donors are Down** Not only are upgrades down. But the average number of donors giving to a nonprofit is down. There was a major uptick in 2021 as donors came out in droves during the middle of the pandemic. Since then, **active donors have declined every year.** ![Avid Benchmarks chart showing declining active donors](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/image-8.webp)[GivingUSA](https://avidai.com/blog/giving-usa-2025-insights/) reports similar findings with the percentage of revenue from individual donors shrinking. Even organizations who are maintaining their revenue are typically doing so because of fewer donors giving larger amounts. This trend does not bode well for fundraisers trying to ensure long-term organizational health. ### **Retention and Reactivation Continue to Drop** There’s an ongoing [crisis happening around donor retention](https://avidai.com/blog/the-donor-retention-crisis-why-fundraisers-need-to-sound-the-alarm-now/). Although there have been a couple of years lately where it’s slightly up, the 5-year trend is down. ![Avid Benchmarks chart showing declining donor retention rates](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/image-7.webp)This slow trickle of retention rates backs up the continual decline in active donors. Fewer people are continuing to give to nonprofits over time. **Reactivation rates are dropping every year as well**. The combination of declining reactivation and retention puts fundraisers in a challenging situation. ![Avid Benchmarks chart showing declining donor reactivation rates](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/image-9.webp)With fewer resources and limited budgets, how do we start to turn these metrics around? ### **Fundraising Automation Helps Meet Donor Expectations** One reason these metrics may be on the decline is because of donor expectations. **The world around our donors is customized, personalized, and tailored to them.** Their daily news. Their TV shows. Their product preferences at Target. Their commonly ordered groceries. Everything is tailored and customized. Everything besides their experience with the organizations they donate to. For fundraisers to create communications that lead to long-term giving, we **have to reach our donors in a personal way at scale.** This can be done in 2 ways. You can hire more staff. Or you can scale with technology. For most fundraisers, hiring more staff is out of the question. But with AI tools, fundraising automation is at our fingertips—allowing us to **scale personalization with technology.** ## Increasing Retention by 200% with Fundraising Automation Bryce Johnston and the team at Brad Cecil and Associates identified a problem when working with [Tarrant Area Food Bank](https://tafb.org/). Their retention rates for broadbase donors were below the [nonprofit fundraising benchmark](https://avidai.com/benchmarks). **Fixing retention rates is no easy task.** It usually requires a lot more data analysis to understand the root cause. And the solutions often require in-depth personalization. Here’s how they diagnosed and solved the problem. ### **Diagnosing the Donor Retention Problem** Tarrant Area Food Bank’s broadbase donors were retaining around 21%. Retention rate averages can vary based on the type of nonprofit. According to Bryce, a typical, healthy food bank usually sees a 23% retention rate for their broadbase donors. Tarrant Area Food Bank was not too far off, but a 2% difference in retention can make a big impact on revenue. Using [Avid Insights](https://avidai.com/fundraising-intelligence/), they were able to zoom in. Avid’s AI-driven fundraising intelligence allowed Tarrant Area Food Bank to **see the root cause of their retention issue.** ![Chart showing retention growth after implementing fundraising automation strategy](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/2nd-Year-Retention-Chart-1024x481.png)Donors who gave less than $100 were retaining at a dismal 11%. By implementing a fundraising automation strategy, Bryce and the team at Brad Cecil & Associates helped turn this around into a 33% retention rate. **That’s a 200% increase in donor retention!** Here’s how they did it. ### **Fixing Retention with Fundraising Automation** With these small dollar donors retaining at such a low rate, they devised a plan. The plan would use **a fundraising automation strategy** to cultivate these donors, lead them towards a second gift, and ultimately upgrade them to a recurring donor. ![Graphic outlining a new donor fundraising automation strategy](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/image-5-1024x415.png)#### Phase 1: Cultivating New Donors To start, they developed a **new donor welcome series.** This series included 3 to 5 automated emails sent over the course of a new donor’s first 30 days. The purpose of the series was not to secure a 2nd gift, but to welcome the donor: - Expressing gratitude - Celebrating their decision to give - Telling powerful stories of impact - Showcasing key programs While the concept of a new donor welcome series doesn’t sound overly complex, **execution is nearly impossible without fundraising automation.** Tarrant Area Food Bank used Avid to automatically identify new donors, and trigger this email fundraising series. No CRM queries. No spreadsheets. No manual exports or imports. ``` Fundraising Automation Tip:Tarrant Area Food Bank used Avid to identify brand new donors, syncing them to their email tool to deploy the new donor welcome series. ``` #### Phase 2: Winning the Second Gift In the new donor’s 2nd month, the fundraising automation strategy shifted. Now that the donor had been welcomed, it was **time to invite them to give again.** This automated 2nd gift email fundraising series consisted of 3-5 automated emails over a 7 to 10 day period. The emails were a mix of content types: - High value cultivation - Direct donation appeals - Messaging reiterating the impact of giving ``` Fundraising Automation Tip:Tarrant Area Food Bank used Avid to identify donors who already gave their second gift, automatically removing them from the email series.  ``` #### Phase 3: Upgrading to a Recurring Donation After securing the 2nd gift, a steady giving relationship has been established. The next and final stage of this fundraising automation sequence focused on **converting the donors giving into a monthly recurring donation.** It included 4-6 automated fundraising emails sent over 10-14 days. These emails emphasized: - The unique benefits or recurring giving - The greater impact of a monthly donation - Affirmation of the donor’s values and mission alignment ``` Fundraising Automation Tip:Tarrant Area Food Bank used Avid to identify donors who had already upgraded their gift to monthly and removed them from the campaign automatically. ``` ## Powering Your Fundraising Automation The challenge with a fundraising automation strategy is that you need a system to execute it. For most fundraisers, their tools don’t communicate. Their email tool is disconnected from their CRM. Their segmentation is done manually. To see a 200% increase in retention, **you need a fundraising operating system that connects your tools**, your data, and your strategies. All under one roof. Avid is the fundraising operating system that unifies your tech stack and powers the most robust of fundraising automation strategies. [Avid Pathways](https://avidai.com/always-on-data-sync/) can create segmentation based on data from all of your fundraising tools. It updates your audiences every day. And it keeps them in sync with each channel automatically. Here’s a short video on how **Avid Pathways empowers your fundraising automation strategy.** ## Book a Fundraising Automation Strategy Session Want to brainstorm ideas on how you can use fundraising automation to grow your revenue? Schedule a **30-minute strategy session** with an Avid expert. During your session, you’ll: 1. Review your fundraising tech stack to identify challenges and opportunities 2. Brainstorm fundraising automation ideas that can lift results 3. Preview how Avid can power your fundraising automation [Schedule your fundraising automation strategy session »](https://avidai.com/automation-strategy-session/ "Automation Strategy Session") **Categories:** AI & Automation, Customer Stories, Fundraising Strategy --- ### [20 Fundraising Workflows You Need to Automate (But Probably Haven’t Yet)](https://avidai.com/blog/fundraising-workflows-you-should-automate/) **Published:** June 8, 2025 **Author:** Nathan Hill **Excerpt:** Most nonprofits automate donation forms or emails, but what about journeys, timing, or follow-up? Discover 20 workflows that could save you time. **Content:** Fundraising teams today aren’t failing because they lack insight. They’re struggling because even when they know what to do, they don’t have the time or system to do it. You’re constantly exporting lists, building segments from scratch, and trying to remember which campaign is still waiting on creative. And in that grind, **opportunities for growth slip away.** What separates high-performing fundraising teams from the rest isn’t better strategies. **It’s execution at scale.** That starts with **automating the *entire workflows* that fuel engagement, giving, and retention.** If your team is already automating basic tasks like donation receipts or newsletters, great. But the real opportunity is deeper. These 20 workflows unlock serious time savings, donor insights, and momentum, and most nonprofits haven’t automated them yet. ## **1. New Donor Welcome Series Automation** First-time donors are more likely to give again [within 60 days](https://blog.rkdgroup.com/second-gift-fundraising-strategy), but not if they’re greeted with silence. An **automated welcome series** turns first-time donors into long-term supporters by guiding them through the story they just stepped into, without adding another to-do for your team. Connect your donation form to your email tool (you can use [Avid](https://avidai.com/blog/avid-is-more-than-automation-tool/) to do it) to kick off a 3-email sequence post-gift. Focus on gratitude, mission alignment, community building, and next steps. You can also set up alerts for failed payments, automate retry attempts, and schedule thank-you emails at meaningful intervals. ## **2. New Email Subscriber Welcome Series** The purpose of acquiring new email subscribers—whether from newsletter signups, ebook offers, surveys, or other offers—is to **cultivate them to become a donor**. Plus, if you don’t have a New Emails Subscriber Welcome series, you’re nearly guaranteed to have poor deliverability and engagement. An automated email welcome series will **welcome** new subscribers, **introduce** them to your organization, and begin to **set expectations** for ongoing communication. A well designed new email subscriber welcome series can **lead to more new donors** within a short amount of time. ## **3. Automated Lapsed Donor Re-Engagement Campaigns** Most nonprofits wait too long to reach out to lapsed donors or miss the window altogether. Most teams notice this too late. But what if your system noticed giving slowdowns and launched the right message before the donor drifted? Build **dynamic segments of donors** who haven’t given in 3, 6, or 12 months, and trigger an **automated journey** with messaging tailored to their past engagement. ## **4. Recurring Gift Acquisition Automation** Fundraisers are always looking for ways to grow their recurring giving. But recurring giving acquisition often gets over complicated. The simplest thing you can do to grow your recurring donors is to **automate your recurring giving ask**. Build an automated email series complete with cultivation, personal emails, and a strong value proposition that asks existing one-time donors to upgrade their gift. You can make this **part of your new donor welcome serie**s. And you can also run an automated campaign **6 months after someone makes their first gift**. Test different frequencies and messaging to dial in your tactics. But make sure you automate the ask! ## **5. Recurring Gift Recovery Workflows** Churn on recurring gifts is often hidden and silent. A failed card, an expired date, and that once-loyal donor vanishes from your radar. But when **reminders, updates, and retries run automatically**, you recover revenue before it disappears without chasing anyone down. Don’t let avoidable churn sneak up on you. Set up alerts for failed payments, automate retry attempts, and schedule thank-you emails at meaningful intervals. ## **6. Automated Donor Anniversary Recognition** Fundraising is personal. Every donor has a day worth celebrating. Celebrating the anniversary of a donor’s first gift is one of the simplest, most overlooked ways to reinforce connection. But unless it’s automated, it won’t happen. And that moment, that “you remembered me” moment, might be what keeps them giving. [Use CRM data](https://avidai.com/blog/collecting-nonprofit-data-isnt-enough/) to track gift anniversaries, and **automate a celebration email** or personal outreach cue. Don’t know how? Steal our [First Anniversary Appeal Blueprint here](https://avidai.com/blog/anniversary-appeal-blueprint/). ## **7. Real-Time Donor Suppression Across Channels** Nothing damages trust faster than asking a donor to give again the day after they already did. When suppression is manual, mistakes happen. But with **synced systems and smart automation**, donors exit active campaigns the moment they give, no spreadsheet required. Ensure your donation platform, CRM, and email tool sync in real time. Suppression should happen the moment a gift is received, across all channels. ## **8. Volunteer Onboarding Email Sequences** Most nonprofits treat volunteer onboarding as an afterthought. But your volunteers are often your future donors, advocates, or ambassadors. **Automated onboarding workflows** ensure every volunteer is welcomed, trained, and engaged, consistently. Automate confirmation, training, and onboarding touchpoints from your signup form. Trigger flows with embedded content and clear next actions. ## **9. Instant Donation Thank-You + Receipt Workflows** Speed matters. A heartfelt thank-you delivered within seconds of a gift reinforces generosity and builds trust. But the real value comes from consistency. **Automation means no donor is ever forgotten.** Connect your donation processor directly to your email or automation platform. Make sure you’re generating branded thank-you emails and tax receipts instantly. ## **10. High-Intent Donor Behavior Alerts** Someone just clicked your planned giving page. Wouldn’t you want to know? You shouldn’t need to stalk your dashboard to catch a donor clicking on a major gift page. Set **automated alerts** for high-value behaviors so your gift officers can follow up while intent is still fresh. You can set rules to bubble these signals up in real time and notify your team when a donor clicks key links. ## **11. Automated Donor Segmentation Refresh** Segments go stale fast. That “mid-level donor” list from last quarter? Half of them have moved on. **Automated segmentation** keeps your targeting relevant in real time so your outreach never [lags behind your data](https://avidai.com/blog/you-have-the-data-now-what/). Use live syncing and dynamic logic to update segments continually and automatically. Keep segments current based on behavior, giving, and engagement. ## **12. Matching Gift Follow-Up Automation** Most nonprofits are leaving matching gifts on the table simply because the workflow is too manual. With automation, you can identify eligible donors and trigger the follow-up sequence without anyone having to Google a policy or file a form. Add a prompt on your donation form, and automate follow-up messages for eligible donors. Avid, for example, tracks match potential and triggers the right outreach without manual oversight. ## **13. Post-Donation Nurture Email Journeys** Donors want to see the ripple effect of their gift. But sending those updates and next steps manually doesn’t scale. **Automating the post-donation journey** ensures every supporter gets thanked, informed, and re-engaged without fail. Create a 3- to 5-email sequence that thanks, shares impact stories, sets expectations, and invites future action. Ensure you’re generating content based on the gift type. ## **14. Event Registration and Follow-Up Workflows** From the RSVP confirmation to the post-event survey, every interaction shapes a donor’s impression. Automating this workflow means you never miss a reminder or a “thank you for coming,” and your events feel as coordinated as your mission. **Automate registration confirmations, attendee reminders, and surveys** through your event platform and build sequences tied to donor profiles. ## **15. Automated Fundraising Dashboards for Board Reporting** You don’t need another Friday lost to building slides. Fundraisers spend too many hours building decks that say too little. **Automate your board dashboards** to pull live campaign metrics, donor trends, and pipeline insights. Use a system like Avid to automatically generate dashboards with live performance data. Export or share a board-ready link monthly. ## **16. Behavior-Based Ask Amount Personalization** Asking a $25 donor for $500 makes everyone uncomfortable. But when ask amounts adapt to a donor’s behavior and history, your appeals feel smarter, more respectful, and more effective. **Automate personalized gift suggestions** based on giving history and engagement. You can build conditional logic in your CRM to customize ask ladders. ## **17. Gift Anniversary Appeal Workflows** Donor retention hinges on timing. And the best time to re-ask a donor? One year after their last gift, when the reason they gave still resonates. Trigger appeals 1 year post-gift [using CRM data](https://avidai.com/blog/nonprofit-crm-are-no-longer-enough/) and **email automation.** ## **18. New Donor Thank-You Call Task Creation** Calling first-time donors adds a human touch that drives loyalty. But tracking who to call, when, and why shouldn’t be manual. Have your CRM or automation tool assign a task or notify a gift officer after a donor’s first gift. Auto assign tasks based on gift type and value. ## **19. Email Deliverability Monitoring and Alerts** When open rates crash or bounce rates spike, it’s often too late to fix it. But when **anomalies trigger alerts automatically**, you catch issues early and keep your reputation intact. Use your ESP’s alerts or [Avid](https://avidai.com/blog/built-for-fundraisers/)’s monitoring to track bounce rates and flag deliverability issues. Automate alerts for performance dips. ## **20. Automated Major Donor Qualification Workflows** Most major donors don’t announce themselves. They start small, engage steadily, and only raise their hand when they feel seen. Automation helps you spot those patterns and surface prospects before the moment passes. Automate donor scoring based on behavior and historical trends. ## **Turn Reactive Fundraising Into a Smart, Always-On System with Automation** The biggest challenge for fundraising team isn’t knowing what to do. The challenge is having the time to do it all. There’s **never enough time in the day** for everything you know you need to do in order to grow. Simple automations like donor receipts are good start. But the more impactful automations are the ones that help you identify the next donor to call. The most likely segment to upgrade. The donors that are about to lapse. **Avid gives you the capacity back**—letting you do the work could do if there were 10 of you. It’s the infrastructure you need for growing generosity. Want to see how Avid works with your fundraising tools? [Get a tour of Avid »](https://avidai.com/demo/) **Categories:** AI & Automation, Fundraising Strategy, Nonprofit Marketing --- ### [Higher Education Fundraising Benchmarks 2026: What the Numbers are Really Saying](https://avidai.com/blog/higher-education-fundraising-benchmarks-2026-what-the-numbers-are-really-saying/) **Published:** June 1, 2026 **Author:** Nathan Hill **Excerpt:** Higher education fundraising revenue has grown 22% over four years—but there are deeper challenges to long-term growth. See the latest from the Avid+Wiland benchmarks. **Content:** Higher education fundraising revenue has grown nearly 22% over four years — outpacing both the broader nonprofit sector (7.1%) and the 15% inflation rate over the same period. By the headline number, the picture looks strong. But benchmark data rarely tells the whole story on its own. Jackie Jackson, who leads alumni relations and fundraising at Truman State University, offered one lens on what might be behind the growth: “Planned giving being realized is what’s impacting this particular revenue line — those are final gifts, and it’s the work of people a long time ago.” Whether that’s part of what’s driving the number or all of it, the more important question is what’s happening underneath it. > **What is the Avid+Wiland Benchmark?** The Avid+Wiland Benchmark is a live dataset of more than 1,000 nonprofits, tracking near real-time fundraising performace. It tracks revenue, donor counts, retention, upgrade rates, acquisition channels, recurring giving, and more — filterable by vertical and organization size — so programs can compare against true peers, not just sector-wide averages. ## Key Takeaways - Education fundraising revenue has grown nearly 22% over four years, beating inflation — but understanding what’s inside that number matters as much as the rate itself. - Retention and upgrade rates for mid-level and major donors are declining steadily in education, converging with the broader nonprofit trend after starting from a higher baseline. - New donors at colleges and universities are now majority online — the transaction channel has shifted, but cultivation and stewardship haven’t always kept pace with where donors are entering. - Multi-channel contactability correlates directly with higher annual revenue per donor and higher upgrade rates, even when donors don’t give through every channel on file. - Monthly recurring donors retain at approximately 86% versus 49% for one-time donors — higher education has strong rates among existing recurring donors, but inconsistent volume growth. ## Why Higher Education Fundraising Revenue Looks Strong — and Why That Warrants a Closer Look The four-year revenue trend for colleges and universities is genuinely good news. Nearly 22% growth against a 15% inflation rate means net impact is growing — something the broader nonprofit sector hasn’t seen. Overall nonprofit revenue grew just 7.1% over the same period, which means impact per dollar is effectively declining for most organizations. For advancement offices making the case for continued institutional investment in fundraising, that 22% figure carries real weight. What’s worth asking, though, is what’s inside the number. The benchmark data tracks revenue totals — it doesn’t break out gift types or tell you which dollars are repeatable. Jackie Jackson offered one observation from her experience at two universities: “When you see these really big gifts — someone’s final gift — it’s a significant number. As an administrator, it’s actually kind of hard to explain to your board that revenue is up, but it’s not repeatable gifts for us.” She’s careful to note this reflects what she’s seen in her own programs, not a claim the data itself makes. But it points toward a useful habit for any development team reviewing a strong year: understanding the composition of revenue growth matters as much as the growth rate. A program that knows why it had a strong year is better positioned to sustain it than one that simply enjoys the result. ## What the Higher Education Fundraising Benchmarks Show Beneath the Revenue Line Active donor counts surged in higher education fundraising during 2023 and 2024 — a 13% increase, then another 5%. That’s meaningful growth, and it reflects real effort happening in development offices. The past twelve months have shown that growth rate slowing and now slightly reversing. The absolute number isn’t alarming on its own. The direction is worth watching. Jackson flagged the structural reason these numbers fluctuate: “This is literally dependent on a very concerted effort from your staff. Donors don’t wake up in the morning and think, I think I’ll give to the university today. Whenever you have turnover or other priorities happening, those things can fall off quickly.” The observation isn’t a critique of fundraising teams — it’s a description of how fragile momentum can be when it depends on individual effort rather than a system that keeps the work moving regardless of who’s in a given seat. The high-value donor picture follows a similar pattern. Mid-level donor retention in education started at a higher baseline than the overall nonprofit average — 72% in 2022 — but has fallen roughly five percentage points over five years, landing near the sector-wide rate. Major donor retention shows the same steady trickle decline. Upgrade rates in education followed a similar arc to the broader nonprofit trend: a significant fall, some recent leveling, but still pointing downward. The structural concern isn’t any one of these numbers in isolation — it’s the combination. Programs are becoming more reliant on mid-level and major donors at the same moment those donors are becoming harder to retain and harder to move upward. Jackson offered one possible reason upgrade rates may be softening at some institutions: “We like to say, can you consider making your very best gift? And if someone gives you their very best gift, they can’t do it again next year.” It’s a framing worth examining — not as an indictment of major gift strategy, but as a question about how those conversations are structured over time. ## What the Shift to Online First-Time Gifts Actually Means for Education Programs One of the clearest trends in the higher education fundraising benchmarks is the shift in where new donors are making their first gift. Education organizations crossed the 50% online threshold for new donor acquisition around 2022–23, slightly ahead of the broader nonprofit sector. In the past twelve months, approximately 64% of new donors across all nonprofits made their first gift through an online channel. Higher education fundraising is tracking the same curve. This doesn’t mean direct mail or events have lost their influence. One attendee during the session noted that at their fundraising gala, 90% of donors gave online — while physically present in the room. Nathan Hill, VP of Marketing at Avid, made the distinction explicit: “Just because the transaction happens online doesn’t mean the whole giving decision happened online.” The QR code completed the transaction. The dinner, the speaker, the conversations in the room — those moved the donor. What the shift does mean is that **programs need to think carefully about what happens after someone makes that first online gift.** The cultivation journey that’s long existed for direct mail donors needs to evolve for donors whose entry point was a donation page or a giving day. Onboarding sequences, personalized follow-up, and multi-channel touchpoints from the start aren’t optional additions for digital-first donors — they’re what determines whether a transaction becomes a relationship. Attribution matters here too. Jackson described how Truman State started tracking specific URLs assigned to volunteer groups and athletics channels during their giving day: “We might have thought, oh, a donor saw her message and wants to support athletics. Versus: athletics sent out this URL, and we’re seeing the impact of that effort.” **When you can see what actually moved donors, you stop optimizing for the wrong things.** ## Two Structural Levers Worth Building Now The benchmark data isn’t only a list of warning signs. Two areas stand out as clear structural opportunities — not quick wins, but levers that compound over time when built deliberately. ### Multi-Channel Contactability Avid’s benchmark data, drawn from more than 1,000 nonprofits, shows a consistent pattern: the more contact points a program has for a given donor — email, phone, mailing address, mobile — **the higher that donor’s annual value** tends to be and the **more likely they are to upgrade**. The correlation holds even when donors don’t give through every channel. The mechanism is straightforward. A donor who gives exclusively online but receives a direct mail piece still experiences something through that piece — a story, a mission moment — that influences their next online gift. A text message that doesn’t generate a reply can still remind a lapsed donor that they care, and that reminder becomes a renewal through email a week later. Contactability enables more of those cultivation moments even when the transaction happens elsewhere. In higher education fundraising specifically, the benchmark data suggests email may be less correlated with donor value than in other nonprofit verticals. Rather than a reason to abandon the channel, that’s a signal to examine whether the approach needs to evolve. It also points toward the **value of having a phone number on file** — which doesn’t just unlock calls. It opens v**oicemail, SMS and MMS**, and the ability to match donors to their digital footprint for advertising across every platform they use. **One contact point unlocks the entire multi-channel picture.** Jackson’s practical framing: “Whenever you’re building out some sort of communication, even just thinking about the one person you want to get a meeting with — look at their history. It looks like they open our emails a lot; I might start with an email, follow it up specifically. Sometimes if they don’t want a phone call, they’re going to reply to my email a little faster.” A plan, even a simple one, changes the outcome. ### Monthly Recurring Giving The recurring giving numbers in the benchmark data make a clear structural argument. Monthly recurring donors retain at approximately 86%. One-time donors retain at approximately 49%. Upgrade rates for recurring donors are roughly ten times higher than for one-time donors. These aren’t marginal differences. Higher education fundraising programs show strong retention and upgrade rates among their existing recurring donors. The gap is in volume — the share of donors giving monthly fluctuates in education rather than growing on a consistent upward trajectory, in contrast to other nonprofit verticals where recurring programs have trended steadily higher. Jackson was candid about the challenge: “I have not figured out how to get them started just yet.” That’s an honest assessment shared by many development offices. But if recurring giving is growing consistently in health, faith, and human services organizations, there are patterns worth examining — not because every tactic transfers, but because the structural opportunity is the same. **The question for education programs isn’t whether recurring giving works.** It’s what the specific motions are for getting donors to say yes to it. > “Even if these metrics scare you a little bit, I hope you look at it as an opportunity to identify where we can make adjustments.” > > Jackie Jackson, VP of Advancement, Truman State University ## Higher Education Fundraising Benchmarks: Using the Data as a Map The higher education fundraising benchmarks for 2026 tell a nuanced story. The headline is real — nearly 22% revenue growth over four years, beating inflation, outperforming the broader sector. That’s worth acknowledging and worth using in the conversations that matter inside your institution. What the data underneath asks is whether the conditions generating those results are being actively built or passively inherited. Declining high-value donor retention, a shift to online acquisition that requires updated stewardship thinking, and a recurring giving opportunity that most education programs haven’t fully developed — these are the structural questions the benchmark surfaces. None of them are cause for alarm. They’re cause for action. Fundraising programs don’t grow because of a single strong year. They grow when the work keeps moving — when learning from one cycle carries into the next, when every campaign starts with better information than the last. The data is there. The [Avid Fundraising Benchmark](https://avidai.com/benchmark) is free to access and updated monthly, filterable by vertical and revenue size. See how your program compares to your actual peers — and use what you find to shape what you build next. Want to see how Avid helps education programs [connect insight to execution](https://avidai.com/how-it-works/ "How It Works")— keeping donor data, campaign history, and outreach activity in one system instead of scattered across disconnected tools? You can schedule a tour at [avidai.com/demo](https://avidai.com/demo/ "Book a Demo") **Categories:** Fundraising Benchmarks --- ### [How KCBI Lifted Recurring Donor Retention by 19% Using Avid](https://avidai.com/blog/how-kcbi-lifted-recurring-donor-retention-by-19-using-avid/) **Published:** June 30, 2025 **Author:** Nathan Hill **Excerpt:** KCBI had a large base of recurring donors. Avid identified early warning signs of a retention issue—allowing them to develop a plan that increased retention by 19%. **Content:** KCBI—a media and radio broadcasting organization based in Dallas, TX—uncovered a problem. Their recurring donors were leaving. For years, they embraced a humanized approach to their communication. This approach helped lead to a healthy base of recurring donors—representing nearly 54% of their active donors. As you may know, recurring donors often retain at a very high rate. On average, **86.7% of a nonprofit’s recurring donors** will retain next year. Avid Insights identified **early warning signs of a retention issue** with their recurring donors. KCBI then used Avid Pathways to power new multichannel cultivation that **increased their retention rate by 19%.** You can watch as Nathan Hill of Avid and Courtney Krus of [Amplify](https://amplifyfr.com/) discuss how KCBI unlocked this growth in recurring donor retention below. Or keep reading to see exactly how Avid powered this boost in retention. ## The Problem: Recurring Donor Attrition Was Going Up Retention is usually not a concern when it comes to recurring donors. Most organizations choose to make an investment in recurring donors because their retention rates are significantly higher than one-time donors by nature. You can see the specific stats on how much more valuable these donors are using [Avid Benchmarks](https://avidai.com/benchmarks/ "Benchmarks Sign Up Page"). But KCBI noticed a steady trend beginning to creep in. Their **recurring donor attrition rate was increasing.** The more their attrition rate rose, the more work was required to either acquire new recurring donors or reactive lapsed recurring donors. There had to be a solution. ![Chart showing recurring donor attrition rate over time](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Recurring-Donor-Attrition-Rate-Chart.webp)**Avid Insights helped bring this alarming trend to the surface.** Courtney Krus of Amplify uses Avid every day in her work helping nonprofits grow their fundraising—including in her work with KCBI. She used Avid Insights to identify this steadily growing attrition trend. After alerting the team at KCBI to the trend, Courtney and the team at Amplify put a plan together to solve it. While some organizations might shy away from reminding the donor that their credit card was still being charged on a monthly basis, KCBI went the opposite direction. **Courtney, Amplify, and KCBI built a human-first approach** to get recurring donor retention back on the right track. ## The Strategy: Human-First Cultivation Across Multiple Channels Reminding donors of their recurring gift every single month may not seem like a go-to strategy for solving retention. If you took a page out of many for-profit subscription marketing playbooks, you might hope the donor forgets about their monthly gift so they keep giving it in perpetuity. The plan that Courtney and her team at Amplify implemented with KCBI went the opposite direction. They **used every channel they had at their disposal** to not just remind donors of their recurring donation—but to invest in their donor and show them the impact of their giving. ![Image showing examples of fundraising channels used in the campaign](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/The-Strategy-for-Recurring-Donor-Retention-1024x579.webp)This strategy was a true, **multichannel fundraising approach.** They installed a cultivation plan that utilized: - A semi-monthly **direct-to-voicemail** message - A monthly **email** showcasing the impact of the donor’s monthly gift - A monthly **text message** to help cultivate a deeper relationship - A one-time **physical resource** sent to recurring donors in the mail - Ongoing cultivation via **Meta advertising** In all of this communication, they leaned into their proven approach of connecting with donors in a human-centric way. Personal tone. Authentic language. And a focus on investing in the donor relationship. ### **The Challenge of Multichannel Fundraising** Multichannel fundraising is challenging to pull off at scale. In today’s fundraising landscape, **multichannel communication is so much more than just emails and direct mail.** It encompasses a wide variety of channels: - Email - Phone & Voicemail - Meta Advertising - Google Advertising - Text / SMS - Events - Apps - Website - And more! There are a seemingly infinite number of channels you can leverage. The challenge of multichannel fundraising is to sustainably leverage each key channel using dynamic messaging for each of your key segments. The hours this takes is **typically more than any fundraiser or team has time for**. Thankfully, a system like Avid makes scaling multichannel fundraising possible. **KCBI leveraged** [**Avid Pathways to help automate their segmentation**](https://avidai.com/blog/the-easy-button-for-fundraising-segmentation/) and power their multichannel fundraising efforts. ## The Result: A 19% Increase in Recurring Donor Retention When retention rates for recurring giving are already high, it’s very hard to increase them in a significant way. But KCBI saw a major improvement in performance. **This multichannel cultivation effort increased recurring donor retention by 19%!** ![Image showing a 19% increase in recurring donor retention](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/19-Percent-Increase-in-Recurring-Donor-Retention-1024x577.webp)Rather than keeping donors in the dark about their monthly giving, this **human-first approach to cultivation** caused more donors to stick around. These recurring donors now had greater awareness of where the donation was going, who it was helping, and how it was making an impact. Beyond that, the human touch **built a deeper, trusting relationship** between the donor and the organization. ## How Avid Powered the Increase in Retention KCBI’s effort to increase recurring donor retention was **powered by Avid**. While Courtney and Amplify brought the strategic guidance, Avid brought the issue to light and allowed this multichannel cultivation effort to scale. ### **Avid Insights Diagnosed the Problem** Avid Insights is built to bring all your data together. Your CRM data. Your donation platform data. Your email analytics. Once all your data is talking, Avid then **visualizes your performance** in clear, actionable ways to help you spot opportunities and diagnose potential problems. ![Image showing an example of Avid Insights](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Avid-Insights-Example-1024x595.webp)KCBI used Avid Insights to spot the trend of recurring donor attrition—leading them to develop a new plan to increase retention. ### **Avid’s Audience Creator Built the Segmentation** Avid aggregates all your data together, enabling you to **create more sophisticated and accurate audiences** than ever before. You can build segments using giving data, contact info, email performance, and other engagement data. Not only that, but these audiences are updated every day. ![Image of Avid's audience creator, showcasing an active recurring donor audience](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Avid-Audience-Creator-Example-1024x696.webp)KCBI used Avid’s audience creator to instantly create an up-to-date list of their recurring donors. Many CRMs have challenges identifying recurring donors due to inconsistent data and large variations in how recurring donors are classified. **Avid was built by fundraisers** who understand recurring giving, so it knows how to target your recurring donors with accuracy. ### **Avid Pathways Kept Audiences Synced Across Channels** Avid is more than an audience creation tool. It’s designed to help you turn your data into action. Avid is capable of taking any of your audience segments and **deploying them to the fundraising channels of your choice**. It does this using a tool called Pathways. KCBI uses Avid Pathways to sync their audience segments to Hubspot and Meta. This keeps their email targeting always up to date—and maintains accurate advertising audiences for ongoing cultivation. ![Meta logo and Hubspot logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Meta-Advertising-and-Hubspot-Logos-1024x134.png)Avid Pathways helps many organizations [automate workflows](https://avidai.com/blog/fundraising-workflows-you-should-automate/), saving tremendous time on tasks that would otherwise require a manual effort. ## Ready to See What’s Possible? KCBI didn’t just run a one-off campaign. They launched an **ongoing, scalable, and sustainable strategy** to boost recurring donor retention for the long term. Without Avid, sustaining this strategy would require more hours than they have time for. With Avid, this human-first cultivation strategy can run on **an intelligent fundraising system** that’s built to scale your time and your resources. This is what Avid makes possible. Want to see how you can build more scalable fundraising strategies using Avid? 👉 [See Avid in action](https://avidai.com/demo/) **Categories:** Customer Stories --- ### [You Need to Email Your Direct Mail Donors](https://avidai.com/blog/you-need-to-email-your-direct-mail-donors/) **Published:** June 6, 2025 **Author:** Nathan Hill **Excerpt:** Your donors are not channels, they're people. Cultivating through multiple channels where they interact can lead to greater donations. **Content:** *“Which channel is better for sending out a fundraising appeal? Email or Direct Mail?”* Ask this question in a room full of fundraisers, and you’ll inevitably stir up a heated debate. Depending on how you’ve built your fundraising program and the state of your data, you might end up with a variety of answers to this question. I’ve heard many responses to this question including: - “My data is a mess. **It’s too hard to attribute** each channel. I’m going to move on to something else.” - “Direct mail is so much better. **Online donors aren’t worth it.”** - “**It depends!** My offline donors respond better to direct mail. My online donors respond better to email.” Regardless of what this looks like for your organization, I’d submit to you that **it’s the wrong question** to ask in the first place. ## Donors are Not Confined to a Channel Donors are not a channel. They’re people. They may have a preferred method of giving, but **most donors interact across many channels**. Think about your own personal behaviors for a moment. When you donate to a cause that matters to you, do you prefer to stick a check in the mail? Or do you prefer to give on the website? Since you’re reading this on LinkedIn, let’s assume that you prefer to give on the website. But what prompted your gift in the first place? - Did you have **a conversation** with someone who is also a donor? - Did you read **a news article** that prompted you to think about the organization? - Did you see **an ad** (whether you’re aware of it or not) on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Google, etc. that kept the organization top of mind? - Did you get some type of **post card** or **update in your mailbox** from the organization? The reality is, most people don’t just wake up and give their money away. There is almost always *something* that prompts the decision. The challenge for most fundraisers and marketers is that **we’re obsessed—even addicted—to channel attribution**. Donors either give in this channel or that channel. That’s it. But if you step into the shoes of your donor for just a brief second, you’ll realize that **donors do not consider themselves as a channel**. Instead, they consider themselves a person. And in [modern fundraising, every touch point matters](https://avidai.com/blog/modern-fundraising-is-unsustainable/). People interact with what’s in front of them. ## Offline Donors with an Email are More Valuable People certainly have preferences in how they give. But **people are influenced by every channel they interact with**—even if they have a preferred channel for giving. A question like “Which channel is better for sending a fundraising appeal” can dehumanize our donors, forcing them into a category. It missed the fact that each channel has value, even if the donor gives through a different one. Let’s try asking a better question: ***Why would someone who has historically given offline choose to give more?*** This is a better question for several reasons. 1. **It doesn’t assume that donors are forever associated with a specific channel.** We don’t want to fuel our assumptions. We want to seek to understand. 2. **It uses the word “why”.** A “what” question almost always leads to a dead end. A “why” question begs an action-oriented response. Once we arrive at an answer, we can do something with it! 3. **The question is narrow enough** that we won’t head down a long, winding rabbit trail to nowhere. 4. **The question is open ended enough** that the applications may be far reaching. We might uncover answers that can be tested with other channels and segments. The answer to this question likely has varying answers from organization to organization. As I look at the data in the aggregate using [Avid Benchmarks](https://avidai.com/benchmarks/), there’s a meaningful trend that stands out: *Donors who have only ever given offline tend to give more if they also receive emails.* ![Chart showing revenue by donor type](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Offline-Donors-are-More-Valuable-with-an-Email-Address-1024x726.webp)The data says that an **offline donor gives 36% more each year if they receive emails** from you. That’s a big difference! But it doesn’t stop there. **Offline donors retain 12% better if they receive emails from you.** ![Chart showing retention rates by donor type](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Offline-Donors-Retain-Better-with-an-Email-Address-1024x715.webp)Let’s have some fun with numbers. - Imagine your organization brings in $10M in donations each year. - Let’s say your offline channels bring in 55% of your total donations. - This would mean your offline channels account for $5.5M in annual revenue. - If you could acquire the email address of your offline donors, you could theoretically bring in an additional $1.98M annually. That’s a **19% increase in revenue!** But let’s not get ahead of our skis. **We haven’t yet answered the “why”** part of this question. All we’ve done is identify a trend. ## Why Do Offline Donors with an Email Give More? Simply having someone’s email address means nothing. You could go scrape the internet, buy a bunch of lists, and append email addresses to all of your offline donors. Does that mean they’re magically going to give you more money? Absolutely not! To get to the *why*, we need to understand **how this trend actually impacts the person**. There are a few things that may be at play: 1. **When a donor gives you their email address, it represents a greater level of investment.** Buying someone’s email address from a 3rd party does nothing to build greater trust or affinity. But an offline donor who willingly gives you their email address is expressing greater connection to your organization. As a result, it’s only natural that you’d see these donors give at a higher level. 2. **Having a donor’s email address gives you greater opportunity to cultivate.** Email is a cost-efficient way to keep your donor up-to-date with how their giving is making an impact. Should it replace your direct mail channel? No! But email gives you the chance to stay top of mind with your “offline” donors without breaking the bank. And when you stay top of mind, you have a greater chance of seeing a higher response when you send your next direct mail appeal. 3. **Having a donor’s email address gives you more chances to strategically send an appeal.** I’m not saying you should blast your offline donors with donation emails every few weeks. But when the need arises, you can alert them to a particular campaign or opportunity with much more agility than you could via the mail. Now, they may never give to you online. But they might see your appeal, pull out the checkbook, and send you that donation. ## Turning This Insight into Action Data should always lead to action. So what do we do with this interesting metric about offline donors and email addresses? **I always like to start with a hypothesis.** For instance: *Will acquiring more email addresses from my offline donors lead to a continual increase in revenue per donor?* This is a difficult hypothesis to test. It’s not as clean as a/b testing a red button versus a blue button. But you can still take action. **Your hypothesis should lead you to take action**. For instance: Let’s build out a campaign to incentivize offline donors to share their email with us. After we cultivate them via email for 6 months, let’s look at their value versus those that did not provide their email. **Your action should lead to new conclusions—and more meaningful questions. You might learn that cultivating offline donors via email does in fact increase their value. From there, you might build an automated campaign to try to acquire the email of every new offline donor. Beyond that, you may ask additional questions like: - Will cultivating online donors with offline channels lead to greater revenue? - Are there other channels that I can use to cultivate both my online and offline donors? - Is there a better email cadence to lead to further improvements? ## A System to Power Your Multi-Channel Fundraising At the end of the day, **many fundraisers don’t have the tools** to run effective multi-channel campaigns. Understanding the true impact of each channel is nearly impossible when most of our **fundraising tools are disconnected**. On top of that, it’s a tremendous amount of work to identify which audiences should be targeted in each channel—and then keep all your lists accurate and up to date. **Avid is a system that powers this entire process**—taking the grunt work off your shoulders and delivering better results. It serves up meaningful data insights, empowers match back reporting for multichannel attribution, and manages & synchronizes your segmentation automatically. If you want to see how Avid can help you understand the impact of each channel and empower multi-channel strategies, you can [book a demo to take a look here »](https://avidai.com/demo) **Categories:** Fundraising Strategy --- ### [How DonorPerfect Fundraisers Can Reduce Donor Acquisition Costs Using Avid](https://avidai.com/blog/how-donorperfect-fundraisers-can-reduce-donor-acquisition-costs-using-avid/) **Published:** September 16, 2025 **Author:** Nathan Hill **Excerpt:** DonorPerfect + Avid unlocks more effective advertising strategies that reduce donor acquisition costs and grow your fundraising results. **Content:** No matter which CRM you use, at a certain point you feel stuck. You know you have the data to drive better targeting, advertising, and more. But getting it out of your CRM and into your advertising channels is often a challenge. Usually it takes a manual effort to figure out who to target. And another manual effort to get those lists into your advertising tools. But with Avid + DonorPerfect, fundraisers are able to seamlessly integrate their CRM data and their advertising tools reduce donor acquisition costs. ## **The Strategy:** How Fundraisers Use Advertising for Donor Acquisition How do [DonorPerfect](https://www.donorperfect.com/) fundraisers use advertising to acquire new donors? The strategy is actually simple. Execution is the challenge—unless you’re using Avid + DonorPerfect. **Your most powerful resource to acquire new donors is your DonorPerfect data.** You CRM data tells you: 1. Who are your most likely donors? 2. Who are your most valuable donors? 3. What motivates highly retaining donors? Getting the answers to these questions out of DonorPerfect (or any CRM) isn’t always straight forward. But Avid understands your DonorPerfect data and answers these questions with ease. Simply reporting on these questions is not enough. Data should always lead to action. **Avid translates and connects your DonorPerfect data to your advertising tools** like Facebook / Meta advertising. Meta can then use this data to create a “Lookalike” audience: a modeled audience of Facebook/Meta users that look and behave like your most valuable donors. DonorPerfect fundraisers then use “Lookalike” audiences to advertise to with a simple acquisition model: 1. **Capture their attention** with an ad for a free offer (an ebook, a quiz, a survey, a petition, etc.) 2. **Ask for their email address** in exchange for the free offer. 3. Give them a chance to **donate right away** after they access the offer. 4. **Cultivate them** with email communication and convert more new donors over the coming weeks. ![Graphics showing an online donor acquisition model](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/image-1024x420.webp)This simple model is a sustainable strategy to acquire new online donors who can be highly valuable to your nonprofit. The challenge: **connecting DonorPerfect to your advertising tools is nearly impossible** unless you’ve supercharged your CRM using Avid. ## **The Data:** How DonorPerfect Data Can Power Better Acquisition Advertising Anyone fundraiser can export data from DonorPerfect and import it into Facebook / Meta advertising. But knowing what data to send, enriching your data, and keeping it constantly in sync is a major challenge. ### **Enriched Audience Targeting** Your DonorPerfect data is your most valuable asset for donor acquisition. But it might not be enough on its own. **Most DonorPerfect fundraisers have critical donor engagement data stuck in other tools.** You might have email engagement data stuck in Constant Contact (or other email tools). You may have donation data stuck in a donation platform like FundraiseUp. All of these other data sources have important information that enhances your donor acquisition advertising—but it might not ever make it into your DonorPerfect database. **Avid connects all your fundraising tools and data under one roof.** ![Graphic showing Avid connecting DonorPerfect to other fundraising tools](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Avid-DonorPerfect-Conneting-Your-Tools-Graphic-1024x688.png)#### How does this impact your donor acquisition advertising? Connecting all your fundraising data sources together allows Avid to create a more complete picture of who your most valuable donors are. When Avid connects your audiences to Facebook / Meta advertising, your advertising audiences are created with greater intelligence. Advertising audiences powered by Avid lead to significantly reduced donor acquisition costs. One nonprofit saw a [20% decrease in the cost to acquire a new donor](https://avidai.com/blog/bible-league-canada/) by using Avid-powered advertising. ### **Automated Targeting & Suppression** Enriching your audience for more effective acquisition advertising is only half the battle. The other half is keeping your targeting up to date. Imagine you’re planning to spend $1,000 on donor acquisition advertising. It might cost you anywhere from $50 to $100 to acquire a new donor. But what if someone donates on the first day of your ad campaign? If you’re trying to keep your lists updated manually, you might go a full week spending money on ads to people who have already donated! Avid + DonorPerfect allows you to keep your advertising audiences up to date every day. ![Screenshot of Avid showing DonorPerfect data being synced to Facebook advertising](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Screenshot-2025-09-16-at-4.25.37-PM-1024x125.webp)This keeps your costs down. It increases your campaign performance. And it leads to greater fundraising growth. ## **The Tactics:** How to Improve Your Advertising Audiences with DonorPerfect Data How do you make this type of strategy and targeting work with Avid + DonorPerfect? The good news: We’ve already taken care of the hard work. The integrations are already built. Onboarding takes weeks, not months. And your most common segmentation is automatically created. ### **Avid + DonorPerfect integrate seamlessly.** When you start using Avid, just select “DonorPerfect” from your connections list, follow the simple connection instructions, and your data starts flowing automatically. No custom integration is needed. No need for developers. Just log-in and your data will start flowing. ![Screenshot of Avid showing the simple way to login and connect your DonorPerfect data](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/image-1-1024x665.webp)### **Onboarding with Avid takes weeks, not months.** Most CRM migrations take several months to complete. Avid takes weeks to get fully onboarded. Avid’s LockStep team works hand-in-hand with you to understand your data, map everything in a way that makes sense to you, and get your data flowing to your advertising tools via Avid Pathways. ### **Your most commonly used advertising audiences are automatically created.** Without Avid, you might be manually exporting, filtering, cleaning, and importing data. With Avid, your most common audience segments come pre-built. You can always build more robust, custom segmentation as needed. But you’ll have instant access to audiences like New Donors, Lapsed Donors, Active Donors, Donors Likely to Become Recurring, and more. ## **Going Deeper:** Other Ways to Use DonorPerfect Data to Power Better Advertising Results There are countless other ways that Avid + DonorPerfect can power more effective advertising and greater fundraising results. **Identify donors who are about to lapse**, and automatically target them with a re-activation ad campaign. **Reach the recipients of your next direct mail campaign** with digital ads—keeping your nonprofit top of mind and boosting conversions. **Keep a steady drip of cultivation ads** in front of your 2nd year donors, increasing the likelihood of them retaining. You can unlock all of these opportunities by using Avid as your fundraising operating system along with DonorPerfect as your CRM. ## **Take Action:** Use Avid to Supercharge DonorPerfect and Improve Results [![DonorPerfect + Avid - Supercharge Your CRM for Fundraising Growth | Resource Image](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/DonorPerfect-Avid-How-to-Supercharge-Your-CRM-and-Unlock-Greater-Fundraising-Growth-232x300.webp)](https://avidai.com/download-donorperfect-avid/) Avid doesn’t replace your CRM. It supercharges it—connecting it with all your other fundraising tools and data sources. See how you can **use Avid to supercharge DonorPerfect** with online advertising strategies, enhanced segmentation, advanced reporting, and more! [DonorPerfect + Avid | Supercharge Your CRM for Fundraising Growth](https://avidai.com/download-donorperfect-avid/ "Download DonorPerfect + Avid | Supercharge Your CRM for Fundraising Growth") [Get the Free Guide](https://avidai.com/download-donorperfect-avid/) **Categories:** AI & Automation, Fundraising Strategy **Tags:** DonorPerfect --- ### [How to Get Advanced, User-Friendly Reporting Out of DonorPerfect Using Avid](https://avidai.com/blog/how-to-get-advanced-user-friendly-reporting-out-of-donorperfect-using-avid/) **Published:** September 17, 2025 **Author:** Nathan Hill **Excerpt:** Avid allows DonorPerfect users to get advanced reporting in a user-friendly layout—all without switching CRMs or paying expensive agency fees. **Content:** How do you know that your fundraising efforts are working? Your most important donor data lives inside your CRM. But there’s a lot of other data you need to understand how you’re performing. What **channels** are performing well? What **key metrics** do we focus on next? Which **donor segments** need some help? Which appeals are driving **long-term results**? Supercharging your [DonorPerfect](https://www.donorperfect.com/) data with **Avid gives you AI-powered fundraising intelligence** in user-friendly reports. All of this is at your fingertips, and done in minutes. ## **The Problem:** CRM Fundraising Reports are Limited No matter your CRM, your **fundraising reports are always limited.** They’re limited to what data lives in your CRM. They’re limited by the reporting tools of your CRM. They’re limited by your ability to analyze results using exports and spreadsheets. CRMs are designed to store your most important donor data—not to deliver robust, beautiful fundraising reports. Many **advanced nonprofits will employ data analysts** to get to the bottom of what their CRM data is telling them. **Others pay expensive agency fees** just to get simple reporting delivered in a nice presentation. In modern fundraising, you shouldn’t settle for limited reporting or paying expensive agencies just to tell you how many people donated last month. **Avid + DonorPerfect gives you the advanced reporting you need**, in a user friendly format—and blends your data from all your tools to give you the full picture. ## **The Opportunity:** Today’s Fundraisers Need Intelligent Insights Delivered Instantly Access to basic reporting seems like a luxury for many fundraisers. But fundraising success today requires a lot more than basic reports. You need reports that **blend all your fundraising tools** together in one place. You need **AI-powered insights** that show you your next move instantly. You need **customized filtering** to drill into the donor segments that matter. Beyond that, you need your fundraising intelligence to be intuitive. **No fundraiser should have to export data to a spreadsheet** just to see who gave to a particular campaign. Fundraisers should be able to open a single fundraising operating system to see a comprehensive dashboard: - What are the biggest changes in my fundraising I need to know about? - What are the opportunities ahead of me right now? - What problems are emerging that I need to get ahead of? All these questions can be **easily answered with an AI-powered system** that blends DonorPerfect data with all your other fundraising tools. ## **The Solution:** Avid Provides Advanced Reporting in a User-Friendly Layout Avid + DonorPerfect is a perfect pairing to let you **get answers to your most important fundraising questions** all in one place. DonorPerfect stores your most important donor data. Avid connects your DonorPerfect data with all your other sources: email tools, advertising tools, and more. With Avid as your fundraising operating system, you get **AI-powered fundraising intelligence** at your fingertips. No expensive agency fees. No waiting around for a data analyst to get back to you. No manual number crunching in excel. No more custom Power-BI reports to blend your data. ### **Daily, AI-Driven Fundraising Insights** Avid’s Insights Dashboard analyzes your DonorPerfect data to serve up the most critical insights about your fundraising in real-time: - What are my biggest **opportunities**? - Where are my biggest **problem areas**? - Why are these **trends** happening? ![Screenshot of Avid's AI-powered fundraising insights dashboard.](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/image-2-1024x550.webp)Even if you’re not a data-person, Avid uses AI to translate your data, charts, and graphs into simple language for anyone to understand. And when you’re ready to dive deeper, you can explore what’s happening with advanced reporting. ### **Advanced, User-Friendly Fundraising Reports** Advanced reporting tools like Power BI or even Google Data Studio can be cumbersome. And they take a special degree of knowledge just to get started. With Avid, your DonorPerfect **data is connected in an instant via a powerful, native integration.** Once your data is connected, your advanced fundraising reports start to come to life immediately. In a matter of seconds, you can get answers to critical questions like: - How many **new recurring donors** do I have? - What channels are leading to **more donors retaining**? - What **appeals** are leading donors to upgrade? ![Screenshot of fundraising reports from Avid Insights](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/image-3-1024x645.webp)You can also get more advanced, filtering any report by donor type, appeal names & codes, time periods, and more. **Your CRM shouldn’t be expected to be an advanced, all-in-one reporting tool.** For that, you need an AI-powered fundraising operating system like Avid. ## **Going Deeper:** Other Ways Use DonorPerfect Data to Power Better Fundraising Results Avid + DonorPerfect lets you get all the advanced reporting you need to make better strategic decisions. **But reporting on its own doesn’t drive results.** As your fundraising operating system, Avid lets you turn your reporting and analytics into action. ### **Audience segments built in a single click** When you’re analyzing your fundraising performance, it’s common to come across an insight that you want to take action on. Did you discover you have a sudden influx of **new donors**? A slowly growing audience of **lapsed donors**? A group of donors that have **stopped engaging** with your emails? **Any insight in Avid can be turned into an audience with a single click**—allowing you to reach them with emails, advertising, and more. ### **Sync your audiences to your fundraising channels automatically** Any audience you create can be synced to your fundraising channels of choice. With Avid, your segmentation is created instantly and kept up to date automatically. ![Screenshot of Avid Pathways showing the ability to sync data from DonorPerfect to Facebook advertising](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Avid-Pathways-example-921x1024.webp)**Want to run a reactivation campaign using Facebook / Meta ads? Avid + DonorPerfect keeps your advertising audience up to date every day. **Want to send an automated new donor email series?** Avid + DonorPerfect updates your email tool of choice with your latest new donors to power automated emails to welcome and onboard them. **Want to upgrade your one-time donors to recurring?** Avid + DonorPerfect can automatically spot likely recurring donors—powering retargeting ads and automated email outreach. ### **Intelligent campaigns built for you using an AI-assist** Taking action on your data doesn’t just stop at reporting and segmentation. The most effective fundraisers turn insights and segments into intelligent campaigns. An AI-powered fundraising operating system creates those campaigns in minutes. Avid + DonorPerfect allows you to **spot the trends, identify the segments, and create powerful campaigns in minutes**—all built on top of proven fundraising tactics and strategies. ![Screenshot of Avid Playbooks showing a basic fundraising campaign created by AI](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Avid-Playbooks-Example-1024x490.webp)Tools like ChatGPT can help you write copy faster. But Avid is **built by fundraisers**, trained on 8,000+ fundraising experiments, and built to improve your creative the more you use it. Choose the **campaign**. Add your strategic **insights.** Watch Avid **automatically write your copy**. Every asset, for every channel, and every segment. All done in minutes. ## **Take Action:** Use Avid to Supercharge DonorPerfect and Get Better Insights [![DonorPerfect + Avid - Supercharge Your CRM for Fundraising Growth | Resource Image](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/DonorPerfect-Avid-How-to-Supercharge-Your-CRM-and-Unlock-Greater-Fundraising-Growth-232x300.webp)](https://avidai.com/download-donorperfect-avid/) DonorPerfect on its own can house and store your most critical donor data. **Avid + DonorPerfect brings your data to life**—allowing you to instantly know your next move, identify your segments, and deploy campaigns that lead to better results. See how Avid + DonorPerfect can give you better insights, in a user-friendly way, and deliver better results for your fundraising. [DonorPerfect + Avid | Supercharge Your CRM for Fundraising Growth](https://avidai.com/download-donorperfect-avid/ "Download DonorPerfect + Avid | Supercharge Your CRM for Fundraising Growth") [Get the Free Guide](https://avidai.com/download-donorperfect-avid/) **Categories:** AI & Automation **Tags:** DonorPerfect --- ### [15 Segmentation Ideas for Your Year-End Fundraising](https://avidai.com/blog/15-segmentation-ideas-for-your-year-end-fundraising/) **Published:** October 10, 2025 **Author:** Nathan Hill **Excerpt:** Segmentation is essential to cut through the noise and engage donors personally. Get year-end fundraising inspiration with these segmentation ideas. **Content:** Year-end is the hardest season of the year to win your donors’ attention. There is a natural state or urgency and generosity built into the year-end season. But with every nonprofit looking for a share of your donor’s wallet, it can be a challenge to stand out. How do you differentiate yourself? How do you keep from getting lost in the noise? **Fundraising segmentation is a primary strategy to stand out in the year-end noise.** When most nonprofits are using generic language, a targeted, personalized message at the right time can make a tremendous difference. But which segments should you talk to? What should you say? And how do you customize your donation ask? Keep reading to discover **15 unique audience segments** that you can incorporate into your fundraising during key times of the year-end season. ## Fundraising Segmentation Ideas for Giving Tuesday There are countless ways you can divide up your audiences and create targeted outreach to strengthen your [Giving Tuesday playbook](https://avidai.com/blog/giving-tuesday-ai-driven-fundraising-playbook/ "Giving Tuesday: An AI-Driven Fundraising Playbook"). Here are a few audiences to consider unique messaging for across your channels in order to activate unique donor segments and drive greater giving. ### **1. Existing Donors** Existing donors are going to be the **lifeblood of your year-end campaign as a whole**. They should always be given the opportunity to give to your Giving Tuesday campaign—taking advantage of the natural excitement about giving. When talking to known donors, show that you know them by referencing their previous giving. Thank them for their most recent gift. Provide custom donation asks based on their previous giving levels. And just because they give to your Giving Tuesday campaign doesn’t mean you should suppress them from other year-end communications. Many donors will give multiple times throughout the month of December. ### **2. Email Subscribers, Non-Donors** With Giving Tuesday being a primary time for donor acquisition, specifically talk to your email subscribers that have not yet given to you. Use your free content offer funnel to engage these non-donors, **setting them on a path towards giving**. *What is a free content offer funnel?* 1. Send them an email inviting them to get access to a free offer (ebook, video, video series, online course, etc.) 2. Link the email to a landing page for them to fill out a form to get access. 3. Make a Giving Tuesday donation ask directly on the confirmation page. 4. Follow up via email with those who don’t give to make a dedicated donation appeal. Consider offering unique incentives like a gift matching opportunity just for these supporters who are considering making their first ever donation. ### **3. Lookalike Audiences** Use Facebook/Meta ads to create a lookalike audience of your most valuable donors. Import a list of your high-value donors to Meta Ads, and it can create a modeled audience of Meta users who have similar online behaviors. Target this list with your **free content offer as a means of acquiring them as a new donor** during the lead up to Giving Tuesday. ### **4. New Donors** Donors who have given for the first time this year are hard to retain. But if you can get them to give a second gift during this same year, their **likelihood of retaining increases dramatically.** Create targeted messaging for these donors, incentivizing them to give again. Use urgency language, incentives like a match or unique content, and custom donation asks based on their original donation. ### **5. Frequent Donors (3 or More Donations in the Past 12 Months)** Donors who have given 3 or more times in the past 12 months may be a likely audience to upgrade to a recurring donation. Consider targeting these donors with **a specific recurring upgrade appeal on Giving Tuesday**, asking them to give monthly in order to increase their impact. Giving Tuesday can also be a good time to introduce a specific incentive for starting a monthly recurring donation. Offer a free gift, unique content, or even a matching opportunity to incentivize action. ## Early to Mid-December Your [year-end fundraising](https://avidai.com/blog/year-end-fundraising-an-ai-driven-campaign-playbook/ "Year-End Fundraising: An AI-Driven Campaign Playbook") campaign should have touch points with all of your donors and subscribers. It’s a primary season both for **converting** subscribers into donors for the first time, as well as **reactivating** and **upgrading** existing donors. Between Giving Tuesday and the last week of the, the goal of your campaign is to **prime potential donors for your final year-end appeals**. But you should also see a steady drip of donations along the way. Plan to create segmented messaging, giving opportunities for specific audiences and segments. Here are a few examples to consider: ### **6. Mid-Level Donors** Mid-level donors are likely source of significant revenue during December. Even if they’re on a gift officer’s portfolio to call, create special cultivation messaging for them. This will keep your organization top of mind and prep them for when a direct appeal arrives. You might also consider reaching out in early November to mid-level donors who have yet to give this year. Ask them to **contribute to a gift matching fund** that you can use in your year-end campaign to incentivize giving from new donors. ### **7. Major Donors** You may not want to berate your major donors with countless email donation appeals. But that doesn’t mean there’s not an email strategy for them. Consider modifying a portion of your year-end emails to be purely cultivation. Remove the direct donation ask, but still **share stories of impact, testimonials, goals for the new year**, and more. This can prime them for a potential outreach from a gift officer. And it may lead them to organically give on their own. ### **8. Recurring Donors** Your recurring donors are already giving automatically in December. But that doesn’t mean they’re not willing to give a donation above and beyond their regular gift. Consider creating a modified segment of your year-end emails that specifically **encourages recurring donors to give an additional gift** before the end of the year. Don’t forget to share compelling reasons about the impact their additional gift will make! ### **9. New Subscriber Activation** Year-end can be a primary season to activate new email subscribers from this year who have not become a donor yet. Consider segmented messaging in some of your appeals that talks specifically to these supporters, recognizes their important role in supporting the cause, and **asks them to take the critical next step of giving** to further their impact. ### **10. Recently Lapsed Reactivation** Your recently lapsed donors have tremendous value. Compared to new donors, they cost a lot less to re-activate and they tend to give at higher levels. Consider dedicated communication to these donors that recognizes their previous giving, highlights that they have not given recently, and **invites them to reactivate their donation** to make significant impact in the year to come. ### **11. Donor Who Are About to Lapse** Donors who gave last year but have not given yet this year are another potential audience segment during year-end. These donors already have some affinity with your organization. They’ve expressed alignment with your mission, your cause, and your values. It’s possible they’re intending to give already. But they may need additional prompting to get over the finish line. Craft dedicated appeals for these donors to invite them to renew their giving before the end of the year—extending the impact they’re able to make on a cause they care about. ## Last Week of December During the last week of the year, urgency is the name of the game. With most communication being short and to the point, it may be tempting to throw segmentation out the window. But there are **plenty of opportunities for nuanced, segmented messaging** in the last week. Here are a few key audiences that you should consider sending customized messaging. ### **12. Small Donors** Donors who have historically given small gifts may continue to do so if not prompted to give more. Consider testing messaging for your smaller donors that gives **a compelling reason for them to give at a higher level.** Use personalized copy to recognize their previous giving, and include a custom and specific donation amount in your call to action. ### **13. Consistent Donors Who Have Not Given** Create an audience of donors who have given consistently for the past few years, but have not given yet this year-end season. Send tailored messaging thanking them for their consistent, faithful support over the years. **Make it clear that they have not donated yet this season**. Ask them to renew their giving before the year-end deadline. ### **14. Early Year-End Donors** It’s not uncommon for a donor to give multiple times throughout the year-end season. Create an audience of people who gave within the first two weeks of December. Discuss your campaign goal and how close you are to reaching it. **Ask them to give an additional gift to help reach your year-end goal** in order to create greater impact in the year ahead. ### **15. Uncontacted Donors on a Gift Officer’s Portfolio** There is only so much time in the day. So an effective gift officer will prioritize contacting donors that show signs of being likely to give. For donors that have yet to be contacted, consider a series of communication to create engagement. Send them a dedicated **direct-to-voicemail message** sharing a story of impact. Send an **SMS** linking to a testimonial. Send them an **email with a video** highlighting impact this year. If they engage, send them to the top of the call list for a gift officer to make a personalized appeal before the end of the year deadline. ## Get the AI-Powered Year-End Playbook ![Year-End Fundraising - AI-Powered Campaign Playbook ebook Cover](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Avid-AI-Powered-Campaign-Playbook-eBook-2_Page_01-791x1024.webp) Year-end fundraising requires more than ever before. More channels. More touch points. More segmentation. The AI-powered year-end playbook will help you keep up and grow your year-end giving. **What’s inside:** - Strategic year-end insights based on data from 130+ nonprofits - A comprehensive campaign playbook spanning Giving Tuesday through December 31st - Year-end segmentation ideas to help you reach donors on a more personal level [Get the AI-powered year-end fundraising playbook here »](https://avidai.com/ai-powered-year-end-fundraising-playbook-download/ "Get the AI-Powered Year-End Fundraising Playbook") ## Automate Your Year-End Fundraising Segmentation Getting this granular in your fundraising segmentation is no easy task. **Segmentation is a manual process for most fundraisers.** And ongoing segmentation requires weekly—if not daily—work to keep your segmentation in sync. With Avid, your fundraising segmentation is **kept in sync automatically**. Create it once, and Avid will sync our lists across your channels every day. **Watch the quick video to see how Avid Pathways automates your segmentation.** wistia-player\[media-id=’vk269sq8hi’\]:not(:defined) { background: center / contain no-repeat url(‘https://fast.wistia.com/embed/medias/vk269sq8hi/swatch’); display: block; filter: blur(5px); padding-top:56.25%; } It doesn’t stop there. Avid Playbooks **creates all the copy for each of these segments** for you in a matter of seconds. Every touch point. For every channel. Customized to each of your segments. **Schedule a strategy call to see how Avid can automate your year-end fundraising segmentation »** .no-image-background img{ box-shadow:none!important; background-color:#FFFFFF00!important; margin-bottom:-30px!important; margin-left:-5px; } **Categories:** AI & Automation, Fundraising Strategy --- ### [AI for Fundraising: Quick Wins for Nonprofits](https://avidai.com/blog/ai-for-fundraising-quick-wins-for-nonprofits/) **Published:** July 25, 2025 **Author:** Nathan Hill **Excerpt:** Many nonprofits struggle to implement AI for fundraising. Learn to take practical next steps to use AI to improve your fundraising efficiency and effectiveness. **Content:** AI has found its way into every nonprofit fundraiser’s life whether we know it or not. Nearly every technology platform and fundraising tool out there has implemented AI in some way. If they haven’t yet, they’re desperately trying to. But many **fundraisers still find themselves stuck.** How do I use AI for fundraising? Is it even ethical? What tools should I be using? In chatting with many fundraisers considering using AI, **there is a healthy level of fear**. Fear of data security. Fear that all their messaging will become stale. Fear that every nonprofit will start to sound the same. In a live LinkedIn conversation, Erik Tomalis and I discussed this exact topic. You can watch the recording below, or keep reading to dive into this critical topic covering: - [The Current State of AI Adoption](#aioseo-the-current-state-of-ai-adoption) - [How Nonprofits are Adopting AI for Fundraising](#aioseo-how-nonprofits-are-adopting-ai-for-fundraising) - [2 Types of AI for Fundraising](#aioseo-2-types-of-ai-for-fundraising) - [Simple Ways to Use AI for Fundraising Right Now](#aioseo-simple-ways-to-use-ai-for-fundraising-right-now) - [Avid is the System to Equip You with AI for Fundraising](#aioseo-avid-is-the-system-to-equip-you-with-ai-for-fundraising) ## The Current State of AI Adoption ChatGPT was released in November 2022, and AI evolution has exploded ever since. The accessibility of AI tools has made it relatively easy for many for-profit companies to adopt AI into their workflows. According to McKinsey & Company, 78% of companies use AI in at least 1 business function. This rapid adoption leads to many changes and challenges for leaders. They report that many **large companies are taking care to follow AI adoption best practices**. A large for-profit business often has the resources to invest to understand these best practices, but most nonprofits don’t have this luxury of resources. Many companies express **difficulty hiring AI-related roles**. This should be no surprise. AI is still brand new technology, and true experts are hard to come by. The report also shares that most companies expect to be **re-skilling their staff for the next 3 years** to bring people up to speed on how to best utilize AI in their work. These challenges are difficult for any leader. **When your nonprofit is already operating on limited resources, the challenges are even greater.** You can read McKinsey & Company’s full 2025 [report on the state of AI here](https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/mckinsey/business%20functions/quantumblack/our%20insights/the%20state%20of%20ai/2025/the-state-of-ai-how-organizations-are-rewiring-to-capture-value_final.pdf). With all these challenges ahead, how do we practically start using ai for fundraising? ## How Nonprofits are Adopting AI for Fundraising Many nonprofits are actively discussing how to best use AI for fundraising, as well as many other aspects of their organization. But practically implementing AI tools is a challenge. ### **Current Adoption of AI for Nonprofits** In a recent [tech survey from the Chronicle of Philanthropy](https://www.philanthropy.com/page/tech-survey-hub-page), they found that just **46% of nonprofits are actively using AI** in their day-to-day operations. That’s a far cry for the adoption rates of for-profit companies. Even more of a surprise is how many nonprofits are planning to use AI in the future. When the Chronicle of Philanthropy asked nonprofit leaders about their future AI plans, 77% said they expect to be active AI users in the next three to five years. 77% sounds like a large group. But framed another way, that means **nearly 1 in 4 nonprofits don’t plan to adopt AI tools** in the next 3 to 5 years. At the rate that AI is evolving, a nonprofit who waits 5 years to adopt AI into their work is going to be left behind. ### **Why Are Nonprofits Hesitant to Adopt AI?** There are many reasons why a nonprofit may be hesitant to adopt AI, especially using AI for fundraising. Many are worried about the **security of their data** and the privacy of their donors’ information. Others have concerns about AI tools having **inherent bias** and **losing the human connection** in their messaging. In my own conversations with nonprofit leaders, all these worries ring true. But they’re not necessarily deal-breakers when it comes to using AI tools. In fact, I’ve heard many nonprofit leaders share that they want to use AI tools. They just don’t know how to get started. This should be no surprise. A quick search for “AI” on G2, a website for software reviews, turns up **10,000 different AI solutions**.. With the overwhelming number of options, it’s no wonder that adopting AI is such a challenge. So where should a nonprofit begin? How can we start to use AI for fundraising? ## 2 Types of AI for Fundraising There are many different types of AI tools. [G2 groups AI tools](https://www.g2.com/categories/artificial-intelligence?source=search) into 6 major categories: - Conversational Intelligence - Deep Learning - Generative AI - Data Science - Machine Learning - AI & Machine Learning Operationalization (MLOps) ![Artificial intelligence categories from G2](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Artificial-Intelligence-Categories-from-G2-1024x936.webp)When it comes to AI for fundraising, we recommend focusing on 2 of these types of AI tools: Machine Learning and Generative AI. ### **Machine Learning for Nonprofit Fundraising** Machine learning is a way of **identifying patterns, relationships, or rules** from data to perform tasks like classification, prediction, or optimization. Practically for fundraisers, it’s a way to automate predictive modeling to tell us which donors we should focus on next in our fundraising efforts. For example: - Which donors are most likely to lapse? - Which donors are most likely to give a larger donation? - Which donors are most likely to respond to my next direct mail appeal? The foundations of machine learning for nonprofit fundraising have been developing since the 1960s with the RFM model. RFM stands for: - Recency - Frequency - Monetary Many **direct mail fundraising models will use these 3 criteria** to predict who is most likely to respond to an appeal. Some of the [earliest uses of the RFM model](https://www.rejoiner.com/resources/rfm-analysis) were by catalogers using a physical index card to track customer behavior. Fast forward to the 2000s, and the RFM model started to become more prevalent and accessible—introducing many other variables into predictive modeling as well. Today, **machine learning automates this donor modeling process**, leveraging hundreds of variables to determine which donors are most likely to respond to your next outreach. #### A Few Technologies Leveraging Machine Learning There are lots of fundraising tools that allow you to leverage machine learning to improve your results. ##### [**Fundraise Up**](https://fundraiseup.com/) This powerful donation platform leverages **machine learning and other AI tools** to provide smart and dynamic gift arrays, reduce donation form abandonment, and even prevent fraudulent transactions. ##### **[Wiland](https://wiland.com/) and [Donor Bureau](https://donorbureau.com/)** These tools both provide donor models to **help you predict who might give next**. Each of these can enrich your data to provide additional guidance on where to focus your fundraising efforts. ### **Generative AI for Nonprofit Fundraising** Generative AI is still brand new technology, popularized primarily by the release of ChatGPT in 2022. This type of AI is used for the creation of text, images, videos and more. If you’ve used AI for fundraising in any way, it’s likely been a form of generative AI. You can use **generative AI tools for a whole host of fundraising applications**: - Drafting your next fundraising appeal - Creating a series of social media posts from an article - Summarizing notes from donor phone calls The challenge of generative AI tools is that they’re only as good as how they’ve been trained. This is why when you ask ChatGPT to write you a fundraising email, you don’t often get a high quality result. The best use of generative AI for fundraising is when you’ve properly trained the tool on how to create effective fundraising content. ![How to Train ChatGPT Image - An AI for Fundraising Resource](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/How-to-Train-ChatGPT-to-Write-Better-Fundraising-Appeals-iPad-Image.webp) That’s why we’ve created a free resource called [“How to Train ChatGPT to Write Better Fundraising Appeals](https://avidai.com/download-how-to-train-chatgpt-to-write-better-fundraising-appeals/).” It walks through **a step-by-step process to train ChatGPT** and other generative AI tools on critical aspects of effective fundraising including: - Your mission - Your vision - Your value proposition - Key donor personas - Words and phrases you commonly use - Words and phrases you never use #### A Few Technologies Generative AI for Fundraising There are many tools that leverage generative AI that you can use for fundraising. The amount of tools using generative AI seems to be growing every day. Here are a couple we’d recommend that you consider: ##### **ChatGPT** It’s no surprise that ChatGPT is a powerful AI tool for fundraising. But there’s more to it than simply using a standard chat including **custom GPTs**, providing **examples for it to learn** from, and **training it on your brand** guidelines. ##### **Avid** Avid is the fundraising operating system that uses multiple types of AI tools to **add efficiency and effectiveness to your fundraising**. It uses generative AI, trained on over 8,000 fundraising a/b tests, to help you create whole campaigns in minutes. ## Simple Ways to Use AI for Fundraising Right Now Finding ways to adopt AI for fundraising can feel overwhelming. To make things easy, we’ve identified 2 primary next steps you can take to start using AI in your day-to-day work. ### **Train ChatGPT to Write Better Copy** As mentioned previously, generative AI tools are only as effective as how they’ve been trained. To start getting better quality copywriting from ChatGPT, you need to **train it on how to write effective fundraising copy** in your voice. A simple prompt to start with is this: ``` Hi! I want to provide you with a brand voice that you can remember for future tasks. Let’s call it the [My Organization] brand voice. I’ll share many details over the course of the next few messages. Please confirm that you understand. ``` This simple prompt will allow you to train ChatGPT on how to write in your voice. You can then ask it later to write copy in your brand voice. Some of the most **practical applications of using ChatGPT** include: - Drafting fundraising emails - Drafting direct mail appeals - Creating social media posts for a campaign - Creating a blog or article from an outline - Reformatting articles into ebooks for new email and donor acquisition To get started, grab a free copy of this resource on [How to Train ChatGPT to Write Better Fundraising Appeals](https://avidai.com/download-how-to-train-chatgpt-to-write-better-fundraising-appeals/). It will walk you through a series of prompts to get your ChatGPT trained to write more effective fundraising copy. ### **Analyze More Data Using Gemini** If you’re using a Google Workspace, you have Google’s AI tool called Gemini built in. It’s a very powerful tool to help with a lot of tasks, and can specifically help you when it comes to data, donor lists, and segmentation. Gemini is a generative AI tool. Used in tandem with Google Sheets, it can **help you with a number of fundraising tasks**: - Identifying trends in your donor data - Answering specific data questions - Creating charts to visualize your performance - Generating audience lists from a larger data set For example, I created a spreadsheet with some essential donor data including contact information, first and last gift date, first and last gift amount, and each donors’ current giving level. ![Example of Using Gemini AI for Fundraising](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Example-of-Gemini-AI-for-Fundraising-1024x549.webp)With some simple prompts, Gemini was able to tell me: - How many mid-level donors I have in a specific geographic area - How many mid-level donors have given so far this year - The average gift amounts of each key donor level It even **generated a list of all my mid-level donors** who have not yet renewed their donation this year, giving me a targeted outreach list for reactivation. ## Avid is the System to Equip You with AI for Fundraising With all the different AI tools available, it can be overwhelming to know where to begin. Even if you find a tool you like, no fundraiser wants more tools that don’t work with the rest of their technology. Avid is an **AI-powered fundraising operating system.** It brings all your tools together. It uses AI to power your fundraising intelligence. It uses machine learning to identify trends, problems, and opportunities. It uses generative AI to build campaigns for you in minutes. Want to see how Avid can help you instantly implement AI for fundraising? [See how Avid can help you use AI to bring more efficiency and effectiveness to your fundraising.](https://avidai.com/demo) **Categories:** AI & Automation --- ### [Year-End Fundraising: Benchmarks and Insights for Growth](https://avidai.com/blog/year-end-fundraising-benchmarks-and-insights-for-growth/) **Published:** August 29, 2025 **Author:** Nathan Hill **Excerpt:** Year-end fundraising is on a downward trend. Discover why it's declining and 4 tactics that can help you see growth this year. **Content:** Year-end has historically been a massive giving season. Some nonprofits see 40%+ of their annual budgets come in from their year-end fundraising efforts during the last 45 days of the year. But over the past few years, giving behaviors have changed. Year-end is still an absolutely critical giving season. But what used to drive major year-end results may not have the same effect anymore. Alyssa Boger of AGP ([Allegiance Group + Pursuant](https://teamallegiance.com/)) and I hosted a live LinkedIn discussion covering: - [The Latest Year-End Benchmark Data](#aioseo-the-latest-year-end-benchmark-data) - [3 Year-End Fundraising Trends to Be Optimistic About](#aioseo-3-year-end-fundraising-trends-to-be-optimistic-about) - [4 Tactics to Grow Your Year-End Fundraising](#aioseo-4-tactics-to-grow-your-year-end-giving) - [Powering Year-End Growth with Avid](#aioseo-powering-year-end-growth-with-avid) You can watch the recording below, or keep reading to see how year-end giving behavior has changed and what you can do this year to give yourself the best shot of growing your year-end fundraising results. ## The Latest Year-End Benchmark Data Looking at the year-end fundraising results for a specific year can be deceptive. There are many factors impacting performance that are out of our control as fundraisers. For example, which day of the week December 31st falls on can have a huge impact on giving. So to understand what’s really happening with year-end giving, we took a look at the trends of the past 5 years. ### **Year-End Fundraising is Trending Down** Total year-end giving is on a downward trend. Although, there have been ups and downs along the way: - 2020 was down by 8.5%. - 2021 rebounded and was up by 40%. - 2022 dropped by 17.5%. - 2023 was relatively flat—a 1.7% increase. - 2024 fell by another 8.9%. All in all, the 5-year revenue trend is down. ![Chart showing change in year-end fundraising revenue by year](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Year-End-Revenue-is-Trending-Down-1.webp)To paint the picture with concrete numbers, imagine you raised $1 Million during year-end 2019. If your results followed the average nonprofit’s, you would have only raised $979k during year-end 2024. Add inflation into the mix, and the picture gets more bleak. A nonprofit that raised $1 Million at year-end in 2019 would have **needed to raise 26% more at the end of 2024** in order to have the same impact. *But why is year-end revenue on the decline?* ### **Donor Acquisition No Longer Drives Year-End Fundraising Growth** One reason year-end revenue is on the decline is that year-end acquisition is down. There was a time where year-end was viewed by many to be a significant donor acquisition event. But the trends over the past 5 years suggest it no longer has the same potential for acquisition. ![Chart showing change in donor acquisition during year-end fundraising season by year](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Donor-Acquisition-No-Longer-Drives-Year-End-Growth.webp)Now, please hear me clearly. There is **still a lot of opportunity for donor acquisition during year-end**. It’s just not quite as much as it used to be. On the flip side, **Giving Tuesday continues to be a great opportunity for donor acquisition.** Acquisition has been up on Giving Tuesday for 4 of the past 5 years. So when it comes to year-end acquisition efforts, plan to start them early and make Giving Tuesday a focal point—focusing the last few weeks of the year on activating existing donors. ### **Retention & Reactivation Declines Are Creating a Problem** There are some larger fundraising trends that may be impacting year-end giving as well. Donor retention has been steadily declining. In fact, **retention is down 9.9%** over the past 5 years. ![Chart showing change in overall retention rates by year](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Retention-Declines-are-Creating-a-Problem.webp)Donor reactivation is seeing the same declining trend. **Reactivation rates are down 33%** over the past 5 years. These headwinds make the year-end fundraising season all the more challenging to see growth. But it’s not all doom and gloom. There are some bright spots to be encouraged about, and some opportunities for growth. ## 3 Year-End Fundraising Trends to Be Optimistic About While year-end revenue is on the decline, there are bright spots to be encouraged by. And they represent opportunities for you to see growth this year. ### **Slower Year-End Fundraising is Not Sinking the Annual Budget** Nonprofit revenue as a whole is also on a slightly downward trend. But it’s not to the same degree as the year-end giving season. Just because you see a dip in year-end giving doesn’t mean you’ll see an equivalent dip in your overall fundraising revenue. ![Chart showing change in annual revenue by year](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Slower-Year-End-Giving-is-Not-Sinking-the-Annual-Budget.webp)This signals that **donor behavior is changing significantly.** Year-end has historically been the lifeblood of many organizations’ budgets. And it’s still mission critical. But there is **increasing opportunity for sustainable giving programs throughout the year** that can give your organization greater stability—and not be conditional on a single high-urgency campaign. ### **Many Nonprofits are Seeing Retention & Reactivation Improvements** The overall trend is that donor retention and reactivation are decreasing. But many organizations are piloting new initiatives that are bucking the trend. KCBI, for example, was able to [increase recurring donor retention by 19%](https://avidai.com/blog/how-kcbi-lifted-recurring-donor-retention-by-19-using-avid/) by implementing an **Avid-powered cultivation series**. It’s hyper-personal, authentic, and focused on building a stronger relationship with the donor. Luther Seminary saw [increases in retention and donor reactivation](https://avidai.com/blog/luther-seminary/) by **using Avid to power a reactivation campaign** using Meta advertising. These case studies are models to follow as you consider how to improve retention and reactivation in your own fundraising efforts. ### **Omni-Channel Approaches are Leading to Increased Revenue** Any organization investing in an omni-channel approach to their communications is seeing the returns. The data is undeniable. **The more channels** in which you’re able to reach and communicate with your donors, **the higher the donor value** and the higher their likelihood of upgrading. ![Chart showing increased revenue per donor based on contactability](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Omni-Channle-Approaches-are-Leading-to-Increased-Revenue-1.webp)Historically, many fundraisers have isolated donors to the channel of their original gift. If they gave via the mail, the only get direct mail cultivation. If they gave online, they’ll only get email cultivation. [Modern fundraising has changed.](https://avidai.com/blog/modern-fundraising-is-unsustainable/) It requires us to communicate and cultivate donors in all the channels they engage in—even if they only ever give through a specific channel. ## 4 Tactics to Grow Your Year-End Fundraising There’s a lot changing when it comes to year-end giving trends. Many key metrics are trending down and are cause for concern. But lots of nonprofits are still finding new ways to grow. Here are 4 tactics shared from Alyssa Boger (Allegiance Group + Pursuant) that can help you see fundraising growth this year-end season. ### **Leverage Low-Cost Channels Like Digital for Donor Acquisition** Even with overall acquisition on the decline during the year-end season, online giving is a bright spot. Many organizations are seeing online acquisition perform strongly during the year-end season. The combination of more donors shifting giving online and the comparatively low cost of digital ads make online acquisition **a primary tactic leading into the year-end season.** Allegiance Group + Pursuant worked with 3 organizations last year-end season who invested significantly in online donor acquisition: - Philabuandance saw a **34% increase in revenue** with 5% lower spend. - MSAA increased revenue and ROI with a lower spend. - Audubon saw a **10% increase in media revenue** with a surge of new donors. These organizations used a blend of paid search, paid social, and programmatic display advertising to drive these results. ### **Leverage Mid-Level Donors to Fuel Match Campaigns** Alyssa also recommends a key strategy on how to best leverage mid-level donors. Consider reaching out to mid-level donors prior to your year-end campaign to **engage them in a matching campaign.** Ask them to give to a fund that will be used to incentivize other donors throughout year-end to give as well. This type of engagement can help **reactivate mid-level donors**, lead to upgrades, and ultimately fuel greater giving across your year-end season. Moody Bible Institute ran **a targeted upgrade offer to their mid-level donor that led to a 443% increase in revenue.** These mid-level donors remained in all the additional year-end communications. And many chose to give again later on in the season. ### **Omni-Channel Direct Response is Your Strongest Play** Year-end season is a notoriously challenging time of year to get your donor’s attention. Between holiday activities, the biggest retail season of the year, and all the other nonprofits vying for your donor’s gift, **omni-channel communication is the primary way to ensure you stay top of mind.** What does omni-channel communication mean? It means creating a coordinated communication plan that leverages every channel available: - Direct mail - Emails - Paid social ads - Paid search ads - Display ads - Organic social content - Phone calls & SMS Some of these channels will emerge as the most effective for driving a conversion (aka a donation). But **every channel is critical for staying top of mind.** Your ads make your direct mail appeals more effective. The reminder SMS you send to your donors during the last week of the year makes your final email appeal more effective. One organization called City of Hope worked with Allegiance Group + Pursuant to create an omni-channel Giving Tuesday campaign. By intentionally coordinating the communication and investing in a wide variety of channels, they drove **a 19% increase in Giving Tuesday revenue** including: - An 11% increase in total gifts - A 43% increase in donors - An 8% increase in average gift size ### **Plan to Turn Year-End Donors into Lifelong Sustainers** After year-end is over, there is a prime window of opportunity to convert donors into a lifelong sustainer. **Plan to reach out to your new donors in January to ask them to become a recurring donor.** But there’s more to making the recurring donation ask then simply giving the donor the option to give monthly. Your *value proposition* is critical. NAMI, working with Allegiance Group + Pursuant, rebranded their monthly giving program from “Sustainer Circle” to “Table of Hope.” On the surface, this seems like a simple change. But the “Table of Hope” language came from the early roots of the organization. It allowed them to open up more meaningful messaging around why someone should become a recurring donor. By leaning into a stronger value proposition, they saw **a 226% increase in new sustainers** and a 200% increase in sustainer upgrades. ## Powering Year-End Growth with Avid Growing year-end giving can feel complicated. Even with practical strategies, how do you **get started**? How do you **make time** to pilot a new approach? And how do you **know whether or not it’s working**? As the fundraising operating system, Avid simplifies all of this. - Avid **Benchmarks** help you visualize how your performance compares to others. - Avid **Insights** helps you identify exactly what areas you need to focus on. - Avid **Pathways** creates and manages all the segmentation you need to execute. - Avid **Playbooks** generates and deploys the all the creative for each audience segment in minutes. Want to see how Avid can be the fundraising operating system to help you **get the most out of your year-end fundraising**? [Watch an Avid demo instantly »](https://avidai.com/access-demo/) **Categories:** Fundraising Strategy --- ### [5 Quick Wins New Avid Users See in Their Fundraising Right Away](https://avidai.com/blog/quick-wins-for-new-avid-users/) **Published:** November 6, 2025 **Author:** Karina Rodríguez **Excerpt:** New to Avid? See five ways fundraisers are getting measurable results—fast—with AI-powered insights, automation, and clarity. **Content:** Every fundraiser knows that adopting new technology comes with a learning curve. You need time to connect your tools, adjust your workflows, and get comfortable with the system. But here’s the thing about Avid: the wins start almost immediately. Because Avid isn’t just another platform to manage. It’s a **fundraising operating system**—one that connects your tools, data, and campaigns into a single, intelligent workflow. That means even in your first weeks, you start seeing real progress. Here are five quick wins new Avid users are seeing right away in their fundraising. ## 1. Instant Reporting: From “We Think” to “We Know” Before Avid, reporting could take hours—or days. Pulling data from multiple platforms, cleaning it, formatting it, and trying to explain what it actually means to your board or leadership team. Now, Avid’s **Fundraising Intelligence** does it instantly. The moment your systems connect, Avid starts analyzing performance across email, ads, donations, and CRM data. It visualizes the story behind the numbers—showing trends, benchmarks, and actionable insights in one place. Instead of manually building slides before every board meeting, fundraisers simply log in and see their top KPIs already calculated and contextualized. **Quick win:** clarity and confidence in reporting—without hours of manual work. Learn more about Avid’s[ Fundraising Intelligence](https://avidai.com/fundraising-intelligence/) here. ## 2. Appeal Creation: Generate Fundraising Copy in Seconds If there’s one thing fundraisers never have enough of, it’s time. Especially when it comes to writing donor communications that inspire action. With **AI-Powered Playbooks**, Avid builds entire appeals—emails, landing pages, social copy, even ad headlines—in seconds. These aren’t random templates or AI guesses. Every recommendation is powered by insights from **7,000+ proven fundraising experiments**. Avid identifies your audience, tailors your message, and automatically builds content that’s designed to perform. Fundraisers can move from idea to launch in minutes instead of days, freeing up time to focus on relationships, not rewrites. **Quick win:** a complete, optimized appeal—ready to go live before lunch. Learn more about Avid’s[ AI-Powered Playbooks](https://avidai.com/ai-powered-playbooks/) here. ## 3. Smarter Suppression Lists: Automate What Used to Take Hours Every fundraiser knows the pain of managing suppression lists: making sure lapsed donors don’t get reactivation emails, or that recent givers aren’t hit with another appeal too soon. With Avid’s **Always-On Data Sync**, those lists update automatically—across every platform you use. That means no more exporting, importing, or second-guessing whether the right audiences are being included or excluded. Avid keeps your segments accurate and your outreach smart, in real time. **Quick win:** less manual list work, fewer mistakes, and more relevant campaigns. Learn more about Avid’s[ Always-On Data Sync here.](https://avidai.com/always-on-data-sync/) ## 4. Acquisition Advertising: Smarter Targeting, Lower Costs For most nonprofits, acquisition is one of the most expensive parts of fundraising. You’re constantly trying to find new donors who actually care about your mission—and avoid wasting money on audiences that won’t engage. Avid helps solve that with **Precision Donor Outreach**. It enriches your ad targeting with real-time donor insights, automatically identifying the most likely new supporters based on patterns in your existing data. The result? More efficient ad spend, better-quality leads, and lower acquisition costs—without guessing or constant manual optimization. **Quick win:** improved ad performance and measurable savings—right out of the gate. Learn more about Avid’s[ Precision Donor Outreach](https://avidai.com/precision-donor-outreach/) here. ## 5. Planning and Forecasting: Better Strategy with Predictive Analytics Traditional fundraising planning often relies on last year’s numbers and gut instinct. But what if your system could accurately *predict* how your strategy will impact results? Avid’s Fundraising Scorecard does exactly that. First, Avid looks at your current performance to help you **instantly see the health of your most important metrics:** - Acquisition - Retention - Reactivation - Upgrade Using your historical performance, Avid can then **predict exactly where your revenue will end up** at the end of the year—as well as over the next 3 years. But better strategy requires you to know where to focus next. Avid’s **predictive analytics help you make an accurate annual plan**—showing you the revenue impact of various strategies over time. **Quick win:** real-time forecasting that helps you prioritize the strategies with the highest impact. Explore[ How Avid Works](https://avidai.com/how-avid-works/) here. ## What These Quick Wins Have in Common Each of these wins—instant reporting, fast appeals, automated lists, smarter ads, and predictive planning—comes from the same idea: **connected intelligence**. When your systems finally talk to each other, everything gets easier. You stop managing tools and start managing growth. That’s what Avid was built for: giving fundraisers immediate clarity, quick wins, and long-term scale. ## See How Fast Your Wins Can Start with Avid If you’ve been exploring AI or new systems for your fundraising, Avid makes it easy to see real results right away. Let’s talk about how your team could start seeing these same five wins—in weeks, not months. [**Book a Strategy Session →**](https://avidai.com/fundraising-strategy-session/) **Categories:** Nonprofit Marketing --- ### [3 Email Templates for the Last Week of the Year](https://avidai.com/blog/3-email-templates-for-the-last-week-of-the-year/) **Published:** December 1, 2025 **Author:** Nathan Hill **Excerpt:** These 3 email templates will help your fundraising generate more urgency and donations leading up to the December 31st year-end fundraising deadline. **Content:** The last week of the year will often bring in 40% or more of donations for the entire year-end season. But only if you have the right strategy. To make things simple, we’ve put together **3 email templates that you can use to drive urgency and giving** leading up to your year-end deadline. Keep in mind, these are most effective if you’ve used a full [year-end playbook](https://avidai.com/blog/year-end-fundraising-an-ai-driven-campaign-playbook/) to craft a compelling value proposition throughout the season. If your potential year-end donors have seen the impact of giving over the course of your year-end campaign, these 3 emails will help drive the urgency needed to activate donors before the deadline. Let’s get started. ## Email 1: December 30th ### **Description:** Your December 30th email should **briefly remind donors of the impac**t of giving while focusing on a high-urgency donation ask. Send it from a human and use a warm, friendly tone. **Send Time:** 7:37am **Sender:** Send from the Chief Development Officer (or equivalent) **Subject Line:** Tomorrow’s the last day ### **Email Copy:** Good morning, \[First Name\]! Can you believe the end of the year is tomorrow? I’m looking back on this year and celebrating so many milestones and moments of impact we’ve seen at \[ORGANIZATION NAME\]. • \[Example 1\] • \[Example 2\] • \[Example 3\] Of course, all of this is made possible by your generous giving. Will you consider making one more generous donation before the end of the year? Here’s a link where you can make your tax-deductible donation before the year-end deadline: \[INSERT DONATION PAGE URL\] Thanks for your consideration and support. Your gift will help make even greater impact as we head into a brand new year. – \[Sender First Name\] \[Signature\] ## Email 2: Dec. 31 – Morning Reminder ### **Description:** The Dec. 31 Morning Reminder should **focus exclusively on urgency and asking for the gift**. You can mention how close you are to your year-end goal and/or include additional incentives. Keep it short, to the point, and make a clear donation ask. **Send Time:** 8:03am **Sender:** Send from the Chief Development Officer (or equivalent) **Subject Line:** Just a few hours left to give ### **Email Copy:** \[First Name\], it’s new year’s eve! I was checking my records this morning and noticed that you hadn’t made your year-end donation yet. So I thought I’d send you a quick reminder this morning to make sure you can get your donation in before the deadline at 11:59pm this evening. Will you take a minute to give your year-end gift? \[INSERT DONATION PAGE URL\] – \[Sender First Name\] \[Signature\] ## Email 3: Dec. 31 – Evening Reminder ### **Description:** This final email should read like **a reminder you would send to a co-worker or friend** with whom you were waiting on a response. Keep it short, to the point, and include the call-to-action. Include your original Dec. 31 Morning Reminder email below to increase the authenticity. **Send Time:** 5:38pm **Sender:** Send from the Chief Development Officer (or equivalent) **Subject Line:** Quick reminder ### **Email Copy:** \[First Name\], I sent you a note this morning but hadn’t seen your response. There’s only a few short hours left to donate before the end of the year. Will you make your year-end donation before the deadline? Here’s the link to donate right away: \[INSERT DONATION PAGE URL\] – \[Sender First Name\] \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ **Sent:** December 31, \[YYYY\] at 8:03am **From:** \[INSERT ORIGINAL SENDER NAME\] \[First Name\], it’s new year’s eve! I was checking my records this morning and noticed that you hadn’t made your year-end donation yet. So I thought I’d send you a quick reminder this morning to make sure you can get your donation in before the deadline at 11:59pm this evening. Will you take a minute to give your year-end gift? – \[Sender First Name\] \[Signature\] ## Improve Performance with Segmentation If you’re using a one-size-fits-all email blast strategy, you’re leaving donations on the table. Donors expect more this year. They expect that you know them. They expect you to understand what matters to them. They expect you to communicate in a personalized way. There are many ways to improve your performance using segmentation during the last week of the year. Consider creating versions of these 3 emails that specifically address: 1. **Donors who are about to lapse.** Emphasize that they’ve been a faithful donor in the past, but you haven’t seen a gift from them this year yet. 2. **Consistent year-end donors who have not yet given.** Emphasize that you’ve seen year-end donations from them faithfully in years past. But you have not seen a year-end gift from them this year. 3. **Donors who gave early in the season.** Many donors will give multiple times during the year-end season. Ask donors who gave in early December to consider making an additional donation before the deadline. There are countless other ways to segment and personalize your last week of the year communications to improve results. In fact, there are [15 unique year-end segmentation ideas here](https://avidai.com/blog/15-segmentation-ideas-for-your-year-end-fundraising/). ## Avid Can Build Your Campaign for You Most fundraising campaigns are built with generic copy and manual segmentation. But the most effective fundraisers are using Avid as their fundraising operating system to craft their full campaign. Every channel. Every touchpoint. Every segment. Each campaign is created in minutes, powered by proven fundraising insights and customized to your mission. Want to see Avid in action? [Let Avid build your next campaign »](https://avidai.com/year-end-launch-lab/) **Categories:** Fundraising Strategy --- ### [Seven AI Prompts Every Planned Giving Officer Should Use and Beyond](https://avidai.com/blog/7-ai-prompts-planned-giving-officers/) **Published:** November 21, 2025 **Author:** Frank Mumford **Excerpt:** Learn the seven AI prompts planned giving officers use to surface donor motivations, personalize outreach, and act on insights faster. **Content:** Most fundraising teams already have what they need to understand their donors—it’s just buried in CRMs, call notes, emails, and stories that never get revisited. The donors who *might* name you in their will or donate a major gift are already telling you who they are. The problem is those signals never make it out of your notes and into your strategy. The real challenge isn’t data access; it’s data *activation*. That’s where AI comes in. Tools like [Avid](https://avidai.com/) help fundraisers turn that noise into insight—identifying what donors are really saying, why they give, and how to meet them with the right message at the right time. These seven prompts help you build that muscle—using AI to: ### A – Aggregate Bring all your donor data, stories, and engagement signals into one unified view—no more silos across CRMs, campaigns, or channels. ### V – Visualize Turn that data into clear, actionable insights—surfacing what’s working, what’s missing, and where opportunities are hiding. ### I – Identify Use AI to pinpoint patterns, motivations, and moments that matter most—from legacy prospects to next best actions. ### D – Deploy Activate personalized outreach instantly across every channel—email, ads, direct mail, and beyond—so insights turn into measurable impact. Once you see what it can do on a single prompt, you start to imagine what’s possible when your entire program thinks this way automatically. ## AI Prompts ### 1. What They’re Really Saying **Description: Use this to interpret donor visit notes or call recaps. It helps you surface the *emotional intent* behind a donor’s words so your next follow-up feels human and relevant. **Prompt:** ``` You’re a planned giving officer analyzing donor visit notes.For each note, identify: 1. The donor’s life stage or context (retirement, caregiving, early career, etc.) 2. Their emotional or motivational themes (family, faith, gratitude, financial security, legacy, etc.) 3. What they are actually saying beneath the surface (the human insight). 4. The recommended communication tone (educational, empathetic, inspirational, etc.) 5. One suggested next step (resource, conversation, or follow-up idea). ``` Return as a table: Donor | Life Stage | Themes | What They’re Really Saying | Tone | Next Step. **Use Cases:** - Before writing thank-you or follow-up emails. - Summarizing team call notes. - Training gift officers to listen for intent, not just information. **Example output:** “Retired grandmother, motivated by family and gratitude, worried about outliving her savings. She needs reassurance that a bequest can come *after* her needs are met.” **How Avid would do this for you:** Avid [centralizes donor notes from your connected systems](https://avidai.com/ai-powered-playbooks/) so the whole team sees context in one place. ### 2. Segment by Motivation **Description: Turn unstructured donor notes or giving history into usable audience segments. Great for tailoring campaign language by motivation instead of just wealth or age. **Prompt:** ``` Analyze these anonymized donor visit notes and latest giving history.Group donors into segments based on shared motivations (family legacy, faith & values, community impact, financial planning).For each segment, provide: • A one-line summary of the segment’s core driver • Three recommended message themes or hooks • A suggested next-step action or campaign idea. ``` **Use Cases:** - Creating donor personas for planned-giving marketing. - Building tailored follow-up series or appeal letters. - Prioritizing outreach lists by motivation cluster. **Example segment:** **Family Legacy Builders**: often grandparents or long-time donors who care deeply about what they pass on. **Hooks:** “stories your grandkids will tell,” “turning gratitude into legacy,” “caring for family and community.” **How Avid would do this for you:** Avid keeps [segments refreshed automatically](https://avidai.com/precision-donor-outreach/) based on giving behavior, engagement, and CRM updates. ### 3. Rewrite for Clarity **Description: Use AI as your copy editor to make planned-giving content warmer, clearer, and easier for older audiences to read. **Prompt:** ``` You’re a planned-giving copy editor. Rewrite this email (or letter) for clarity and warmth: • Keep the donor’s dignity and voice. • Use roughly an 8th-grade reading level. • End with one specific, gentle next step.Return: two subject-line options, short preview text, and the full body text rewrite. ``` **Use Cases:** - Refreshing stewardship emails. - Drafting board or leadership letters. - Simplifying donor-facing materials for readability. **How Avid would do this for you:** Avid gives you a single place to store past messages, templates, and donor context, so when you rewrite for clarity and warmth, you’re not starting from a blank page, so you can[ pull in the right tone, segments, and examples instantly](https://avidai.com/fundraising-intelligence/). ### 4. Multi-Channel Storytelling **Description: Turn one great donor or impact story into multiple ready-to-use assets for print, digital, and video channels. **Prompt:** ``` Take this donor story (insert text) and rewrite it for multiple formats: 1. A 250-word print newsletter story 2. A 100-word email feature 3. A 60-second video script 4. A 40-word social caption ``` Keep the donor’s voice authentic, emphasize values and impact, and adjust tone appropriately for each channel. **Use Cases:** - Repurposing annual-report stories. - Coordinating messages across marketing, advancement, and alumni teams. - A/B testing tone between channels. **How Avid would do this for you:** Avid brings your donor stories, past campaign assets, and CRM-synced donor context into one workspace. Instead of digging through shared drives, old emails, or separate marketing tools, everything you need to [adapt a story for multiple channels](https://avidai.com/precision-donor-outreach/) is already organized inside the campaign you’re building. ### 5. Responsible AI Checklist **Description: Quickly build a working policy to ensure your team uses AI responsibly and transparently. **Prompt:** ``` Create a one-page ‘Responsible AI Checklist’ for a nonprofit fundraising team.Include policies for: data privacy (PII handling), human oversight (final approval steps), transparency with donors (when AI assists communication), and periodic audit/review.Write in plain, clear language.End with a short ‘Why It Matters’ paragraph. ``` **Use Cases:** - Drafting AI policy for leadership review. - Training new staff on best practices. - Demonstrating compliance during donor or board audits. So when a board member asks, “How are we using AI?” you have a clear, confident answer. **How Avid would do this for you:** Avid enforces permissioning, [data standards](https://avidai.com/always-on-data-sync/), and human-review steps so your team uses AI safely, without relying on *ad hoc* policies. ### 6. Engage Prospective Legacy Donors (Univ. Example) **Description: Create personalized outreach that connects alumni to relatable donor stories and encourages survey participation or meetings. **Prompt:** ``` Using donor stories from a planned-giving page like this one (e.g., Drake’s ‘Supporters Like You’ page: ``` ``` https://plannedgiving.drake.edu/supporters-like-you, and grouping alumni into three age categories (Millennial, Gen X, Baby Boomer), please: 1. Sort relevant stories by age group. 2. Draft email copy for each group that includes: a. A short teaser for one story b. A link to the story c. A call-to-action to fill out the survey or meet in person. ``` **Use Cases:** - Personalized legacy campaign emails. - Alumni reunion follow-ups. - Donor engagement surveys with story-driven framing. Pro Tip: Use Microsoft Email Merge to personalize stories at scale. [Link to more info.](https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/use-mail-merge-in-word-to-send-bulk-email-messages-0f123521-20ce-4aa8-8b62-ac211dedefa4) **How Avid would do this for you:** With Avid, the alumni data you already trust flows straight into the campaign builder. Age bands, class years, and giving recency are [instantly usable as filters](https://avidai.com/precision-donor-outreach/), and you can write and send your outreach in the same workflow—no pivot tables, exports, or tool-hopping required. ### 7. Quarterly Review Insight Tool **Description: Use AI to summarize quarterly results, highlight learnings, and identify what to stop, start, or continue doing. **Prompt:** ``` You’re a strategic advisor to the planned-giving team.Review the last quarter’s metrics: number of contacts, expressions of intent, and finalized bequest notifications.Provide: • Three things that worked well • Two things to stop doing • Two things to start doing (with next-step recommendations) Return concise, actionable bullet points. ``` **Use Cases:** - Quarterly donor strategy reviews. - Board or leadership updates. - Identifying patterns and priorities for the next cycle. It shifts the conversation from effort to outcomes, making it clear which actions contributed to new intents or documented gifts. **How Avid would do this for you:** Avid [visualizes your PG pipeline automatically](https://avidai.com/fundraising-intelligence/)—showing which actions led to intent, documentation, or meetings, without manual reporting. ## Final Thought: From Curiosity to Confidence AI isn’t replacing the art of fundraising—it’s helping you see what’s been hiding in plain sight. The patterns in your donor conversations, the motivations buried in your notes, the stories that could inspire the next legacy gift. Used well, AI can: - Surface hidden insights about donor intent and timing - Save hours of manual writing and segmentation work - Keep communication human, while helping scale your personal touch - Turn unstructured data into usable stories and next steps And while these prompts are a great place to start, tools like **Avid** can help take this further—bringing your donor data, stories, and communications together in one place, so the ideas you spark with AI turn into action automatically. When used responsibly, AI gives planned giving officers what they’ve always needed most: more time to build real relationships and the clarity to know where to focus next. [Click here](https://avidai.com/access-demo/) to watch a quick demo video. **Categories:** AI & Automation --- ### [How Large Teams Use Avid to Improve Their Fundraising](https://avidai.com/blog/how-large-teams-use-avid-to-improve-fundraising/) **Published:** November 6, 2025 **Author:** Frank Mumford **Excerpt:** Large teams have complex systems. Avid unifies your tools, automates segmentation, and delivers AI-powered reporting—no analysts required. **Content:** For large fundraising teams, complexity is both the strength and the struggle. You have the data. You have the tools. You even have a talented team of analysts and marketers. But the sheer scale of operations—spanning multiple platforms, systems, and departments—can make it difficult to see the full picture. Even simple questions like “How did that campaign perform?” or “Which audience gave the most?” can require hours of manual work, cross-platform exports, or help from outside agencies. Avid was built to change that. Designed as a **fundraising operating system**, Avid connects every layer of a large organization’s tech stack, automates segmentation, and delivers AI-powered insights, without adding complexity or cost. Here’s how large fundraising teams are using Avid to unify their systems, simplify execution, and unlock smarter growth. ## The Challenge: Sophisticated Systems, Scattered Insights As organizations grow, their systems multiply. CRMs, email tools, donation platforms, ad accounts, and analytics dashboards all play vital roles—but rarely talk to each other. The result is familiar to any large fundraising team: - Endless data exports between systems - Delayed or incomplete reporting - Duplicated work across teams - Agencies and analysts needed just to interpret results These are smart teams trapped inside disconnected systems. And it’s not sustainable. Avid simplifies it all, bringing data, automation, and intelligence under one connected roof. ## 1. Bring Your Entire Fundraising Stack Into Sync Avid’s **Always-On Data Sync** connects your CRM, email, advertising, and donation platforms into a single, unified data flow. Instead of pulling manual lists or relying on data teams to reconcile exports, Avid keeps your donor records updated and consistent across every tool you use automatically. For large teams managing multiple business units or regional chapters, that consistency is transformative. It creates one shared source of truth for every donor interaction and performance metric. **Result:** unified data, fewer silos, and cleaner execution across every campaign. → Learn more:[ Always-On Data Sync](https://avidai.com/always-on-data-sync/) ## 2. AI-Powered Reporting—Without Power BI or an Agency For most large nonprofits, meaningful reporting requires technical support. Analysts build dashboards in Power BI or Tableau. Agencies charge extra to deliver performance insights. And by the time leadership sees the results, the data is already outdated. With **Fundraising Intelligence**, Avid eliminates that bottleneck. AI-powered analytics surface your most important KPIs instantly—donor retention, acquisition costs, campaign ROI, and channel performance—across your entire ecosystem. No custom SQL queries. No waiting on reports. Just immediate, actionable clarity your team can trust. **Result:** enterprise-grade reporting without enterprise complexity. → Learn more:[ Fundraising Intelligence](https://avidai.com/fundraising-intelligence/) ## 3. Automate Advanced Audience Segmentation Large teams know that effective segmentation is both the key to success and the hardest thing to maintain. Complex filters, overlapping lists, and data discrepancies make it nearly impossible to keep segments accurate at scale. Avid automates it all. With **Precision Donor Outreach**, your segments update dynamically based on real-time donor behavior—across channels and platforms. You can build advanced filters once and let Avid handle the rest: recency, frequency, channel engagement, giving capacity, and more. That means less time managing lists and more time managing results. **Result:** every campaign reaches the right donor at the right time—without manual oversight. → Learn more:[ Precision Donor Outreach](https://avidai.com/precision-donor-outreach/) ## 4. Build Omni-Channel Campaigns with Segmentation Built In Large teams often struggle to keep messaging consistent across departments and channels. One group builds the email, another runs the ad, another updates the donation page—and alignment gets lost in the process. Avid’s **AI-Powered Playbooks** solve that. Playbooks generate entire omni-channel campaigns—emails, ads, and landing pages—automatically aligned to your data and segments. Each asset is built using proven fundraising patterns, so teams can launch high-performing campaigns faster and with complete consistency. The creative and strategic quality stays high, even as volume scales. **Result:** cohesive, data-driven campaigns that scale effortlessly across channels and teams. → Learn more:[ AI-Powered Playbooks](https://avidai.com/ai-powered-playbooks/) ## Why Large Fundraising Teams Trust Avid Large fundraising teams use Avid not because it’s another tool—but because it’s the *system* that unifies all of them. Avid sits on top of your existing infrastructure, translating complexity into clarity. It enables teams to: - Eliminate manual data reconciliation - Replace reactive reporting with predictive insights - Automate segmentation at scale - Execute consistent, omni-channel campaigns effortlessly In short: Avid gives enterprise teams the power to think strategically again—without waiting on spreadsheets, analysts, or outside agencies. ## See How Avid Handles Enterprise Complexity If your organization has outgrown its tools—or you’re spending too much time managing data instead of using it—Avid can help. In one short strategy session, we’ll show you how enterprise teams use Avid to simplify reporting, automate segmentation, and unify campaigns across every channel. [**Book Your Strategy Session →**](https://avidai.com/demo/) **Categories:** Nonprofit Marketing --- ### [ChatGPT vs Avid: The Difference Between Helpful AI and Fundraising Intelligence](https://avidai.com/blog/chatgpt-vs-avid-ai-for-fundraisers/) **Published:** November 4, 2025 **Author:** Erik Tomalis **Excerpt:** ChatGPT can help you write faster. Avid helps you raise smarter—with AI built for fundraising, not just words. **Content:** Artificial intelligence has officially entered fundraising. Everywhere you look, fundraisers are experimenting with ChatGPT—asking it to draft donor emails, write appeal headlines, or summarize reports. And honestly, that’s a good thing. If you’ve ever felt stretched thin—trying to be strategist, copywriter, analyst, and project manager all at once—AI tools like ChatGPT can feel like a lifeline. They make the day-to-day work a little faster, a little easier. But there’s a limit to what they can do. ChatGPT is great at writing *words*. It just doesn’t know which *ones* will move your donors to act. It can summarize data, but it can’t tell you *what to do* with it. And it definitely can’t connect to your CRM, segment your audiences, or optimize your campaigns while you sleep. That’s where[ Avid](https://avidai.com/) comes in. ## ChatGPT Helps You Work Faster. Avid Helps You Raise Smarter. ChatGPT is a general-purpose AI assistant. It’s designed to help anyone write or brainstorm—no matter the industry. Avid, on the other hand, was built specifically for fundraisers. Our platform doesn’t just generate text. It connects your tools, your data, and your campaigns into one intelligent system that knows what’s working, what’s not, and where your next opportunity lies. So while ChatGPT helps you write *faster*, Avid helps you *raise smarter*. ChatGPT Avid **Purpose** General writing and brainstorming tool AI-powered fundraising system **Knowledge** Trained on public internet data Built from 7,000 + real fundraising experiments **Integration** Standalone; disconnected from your stack Connects to your CRM, email, ads, and donation platforms **Output** Words Results Both use AI—but only one knows fundraising. ## Where ChatGPT Stops, Avid Starts AI can be incredibly helpful in day-to-day work. But when your goal is *raising more money*, you need more than a smart text generator. You need a system that understands context, timing, and audience behavior. Let’s look at where ChatGPT falls short—and how Avid fills the gap. ### 1. Copywriting ChatGPT can write anything you ask for. What it can’t do is tell you *which* message will resonate most with your donors. Avid builds every campaign from tested fundraising patterns—optimized by data from thousands of experiments. It doesn’t just write quickly; it writes *effectively*. When you use Avid, you’re not starting from a blank page. You’re starting from what already works. Learn more about Avid’s[ AI-Powered Playbooks](https://avidai.com/ai-powered-playbooks/) here. ### 2. Segmentation ChatGPT can help you draft an appeal, but it doesn’t know who to send it to. Avid does. Our AI automatically segments and refreshes your donor audiences across your CRM, email, ads, and donation platforms. It keeps your data clean, current, and aligned—so every message reaches the right donor at the right time. That means less guessing, less manual work, and more meaningful engagement. Learn more about Avid’s[ Precision Donor Outreach](https://avidai.com/precision-donor-outreach/) here. ### 3. Reporting and Analytics ChatGPT can summarize your reports—but it can’t tell you what to *do* next. Avid delivers real-time[ fundraising intelligence](https://avidai.com/fundraising-intelligence/). It surfaces your top opportunities, benchmarks your performance, and shows exactly where to focus to grow. It’s the difference between staring at data and acting on it. ### 4. Data Security Fundraisers handle some of the most sensitive information there is: donor data. That’s not something you can safely paste into a public AI tool like ChatGPT. Avid was built for nonprofits from the ground up. Your data stays protected, private, and compliant—so you can innovate without risk. You get all the benefits of AI, minus the uncertainty. Read about[ The Truth About AI for Nonprofit Fundraising & Security](https://avidai.com/blog/ai-for-nonprofit-fundraising/) here. ## Fundraising Doesn’t Need More Tools. It Needs Clarity. AI tools are helpful. But at the end of the day, tools still rely on you to know what to do with them. That’s the problem most fundraising teams face—not a lack of effort, but a lack of clarity. Too many disconnected systems, too many dashboards, too many guesses. Avid solves that by becoming the system that thinks like your best team would. It unifies your data, surfaces your next steps, and builds your campaigns automatically—so you can focus on relationships, not spreadsheets. Our customers see it every day: - **+27% increase in annual donations** - **+39% improvement in donor retention** - **–41% lower acquisition costs** Those numbers aren’t generated by faster writing—they’re driven by smarter systems. Discover how[ Bible League Canada Lowered Cost Per Donor by 20% with Avid](https://avidai.com/blog/bible-league-canada/) ## ChatGPT Helps You Work. Avid Helps You Win. ChatGPT is a great tool. It can help your team move faster, test ideas, and get creative. But it’s not a fundraiser. It doesn’t know your donors, your goals, or what drives generosity. Avid does. It’s not just AI—it’s fundraising intelligence. The kind that connects your data, automates your outreach, and builds campaigns based on what’s proven to work. Because the future of fundraising isn’t about having more tools. It’s about having the *right system* behind them. ## Ready to See What Avid Can Really Do for Your Fundraising? If you’re curious how AI could actually *drive measurable growth* for your organization, we’d love to show you. Book a 30-minute **strategy session** with our team to see exactly how Avid connects your data, automates your outreach, and helps fundraisers raise more—with confidence. [**Book Your Strategy Session →**](https://avidai.com/fundraising-strategy-session/) **Categories:** AI & Automation --- ### [Your Channel ROI May Be Lying to You: The Hidden Cost of Fragmented Fundraising Data](https://avidai.com/blog/channel-roi-is-lying-to-you/) **Published:** November 14, 2025 **Author:** Frank Mumford **Excerpt:** Your channel ROI might be lying to you. See why siloed data hides true performance and how Avid’s connected system helps fundraisers see the full donor story. **Content:** Channel ROI looks simple, but it may be lying to you. When fundraising reports arrive, they usually come with good intentions—and bad conclusions. A direct mail campaign looks flat. A paid ad channel seems expensive. A board member asks why “email ROI” is slipping. The natural instinct is to cut what looks weak and double down on what looks strong. But as **Alyssa Boger**, EVP of Client Experience at Allegiance Group + Pursuant, explained during [Avid’s *Prepping for Year-End Fundraising* webinar](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=151WXJxcdiw), those reports rarely tell the full story. People who receive the mail are giving—they’re just giving through other channels. Donors are still engaging. They’re just completing their gifts somewhere else. And that means the way most fundraisers measure channel performance no longer matches how real donor journeys unfold. Here’s why fragmented data distorts your fundraising results—and how connected systems reveal what’s really working. ## The ROI Illusion: Why Good Reports Can Still Lead to Bad Decisions For decades, channel ROI was a reliable compass. Mail response equaled mail performance. Email clicks equaled digital success. Each channel lived in its own column. Today, that model breaks down. Donors might see a mail piece, click an ad on social, and give on your website a week later. Each touch matters but only one gets credit. As **Nathan Hill**, Avid’s VP of Training, put it during the same session: It’s becoming much more challenging to look at channels in a silo and make informed decisions that won’t have ripple effects. Those ripple effects are real. When you judge each channel in isolation, you may miss context and make the wrong calls. You scale back tactics that quietly feed your strongest results and over-fund the ones that only appear to perform. **In other words, your ROI report may be accurate on paper but misleading in practice.** ## Disconnected Systems = Disconnected Strategy Fragmented data doesn’t only distort performance metrics—it distorts strategy. When systems don’t talk to each other, fundraisers can’t see how donor interactions connect. The result is a long list of false signals: - **False negatives:** A channel that looks weak on its own may actually drive conversions elsewhere. - **False positives:** A “high-ROI” digital campaign might only succeed because mail or paid media primed those same donors. - **False trends:** Each system captures its own piece of the truth, leaving the organization with multiple, conflicting versions of performance. These disconnects compound. Teams spend hours debating reports instead of improving campaigns, budgets swing back and forth, and donors experience inconsistent messaging as every team optimizes for its own metric. The cost is inefficiency and lost generosity. ## What Happens When Every Channel Finally Talks to Each Other The alternative and solution to this problem is not another dashboard—it’s a connected system built to unify every piece of your fundraising data. When fundraising data lives in one place, the story changes. You can see how channels interact, not compete. You can quantify the influence of mail on digital revenue, track how social ads affect mid-month giving, and understand which combinations truly lift conversion. A unified dataset turns “flat” channels into provable contributors. It gives fundraisers confidence to defend strategies that are working beneath the surface. And it restores what every organization needs before year-end: clarity. It might sound ambitious—but this kind of connected system already exists. We built it for fundraisers. **Avid** is the first fundraising operating system built to connect every channel and reveal the full donor story. ## Finally, a System That Shows What’s Really Working We built Avid to deliver this kind of visibility. - **Always-On Data Sync** keeps CRM, email, ad, and donation data connected and up to date—no manual exports or spreadsheets. - **Matchback Analysis** automatically identifies when a donor touched one channel but gave through another, revealing the full path to gift. - **Fundraising Intelligence** surfaces those patterns in real time so teams can act on what’s actually driving results, not what the last-click report says. Instead of chasing individual channel metrics, fundraisers can finally measure what matters: how every touchpoint contributes to donor behavior. ### Start Measuring Donors, Not Channels Before you decide which budget lines to trim, take one step back. Look at the donor, not the delivery method. Run a quick matchback on your last campaign. And compare donor-level revenue to channel-level ROI. You’ll likely discover that the tactics you thought were fading are the ones holding your results together. The truth isn’t that mail or ads stopped working. It’s that your systems stopped showing you how they work together. See how Avid connects every channel, surfaces hidden revenue, and gives you clarity about what’s *actually* driving your fundraising growth. [Watch Avid’s on-demand demo →](https://avidai.com/access-demo/) **Categories:** Fundraising Strategy --- ### [The Two-Gift Strategy: Why Smart Fundraisers Start in Fall to Win in December](https://avidai.com/blog/two-gift-strategy-fundraising/) **Published:** November 14, 2025 **Author:** Karina Rodríguez **Excerpt:** The best year-end campaigns start months before December. Here’s how front-loading acquisition in the fall leads to higher retention and stronger results when the calendar closes. **Content:** Every fundraiser knows December delivers. But fewer are realizing that **fall** might be even more powerful. During [Avid’s ***Prepping for Year-End Fundraising*** webinar](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=151WXJxcdiw), **Alyssa Boer**, EVP of Client Experience at Allegiance Group + Pursuant, revealed something most fundraisers overlook: “We’re seeing more success in front-loading acquisition in the fall… leverage September, October, November to drive acquisition. Those new donors are then more likely to give a second gift in that year-end timeframe, especially if you have a match or challenge.” That single insight changes everything about how we plan year-end. Because what Alyssa’s really saying is this: **The organizations winning December are the ones that started in the fall.** ## The December Trap: Why Waiting Costs You Donors For decades, year-end fundraising has revolved around a single sprint: the late-December rush. You plan campaigns, launch Giving Tuesday, and flood inboxes during the final week of the year. It worked when inboxes were emptier, ad costs were lower, and donors waited for deadlines to act. But today, attention is scattered, channels are saturated, and “year-end” feels like a 30-day shouting match. By the time most nonprofits ramp up, donor fatigue is already setting in. Alyssa’s advice redefines how to approach year-end: **start *earlier* while competition is lower. Use fall to quietly build your base, and then use December to activate the donors you’ve already acquired.** Because the truth is, December isn’t your starting line anymore. It’s your **second act.** ## Act 1: Use Fall to Build Before the Noise Hits September through November is the hidden growth window most organizations ignore. It’s when inboxes are quieter, acquisition costs are lower, and your message can actually be heard. Early fall is the time to: - Launch light-touch paid and organic campaigns that introduce your mission. - Test creative messages while CPMs and CPCs are still reasonable. - Use direct mail and display ads to seed awareness *before* the Giving Tuesday rush. As Alyssa put it, **the goal isn’t to win December, it’s to arrive ready.** That early activity builds a donor audience you can re-engage when urgency peaks—people who already know your story and are ready to act again in December. ## Act 2: Turn First-Time Donors into December Loyalists **Nathan Hill**, Avid’s VP of Training, underlined what happens next: ***“If you can get that new donor to give that second gift within 12 months, retention skyrockets.”*** The second gift is the moment where generosity becomes loyalty. And the shorter the window between gifts, the stronger that relationship becomes. That’s why front-loading acquisition pays off so dramatically, because your fall donors are *fresh*. They remember why they gave. They’re still emotionally connected. December gives you a natural reason to re-engage them: a year-end match, a challenge, a mission milestone. Think of it as storytelling with a second chapter: - **Fall:** “You helped launch this initiative.” - **December:** “See what you started and help it go even further before year-end.” That’s momentum. ## How to Carry Momentum from Fall to December The Two-Gift Strategy works because it’s built on ***timing***, not luck. Every new donor you bring in during the fall is more than a transaction—it’s the start of a relationship that’s still warm when December comes. The challenge is keeping that connection alive without overwhelming them. That means: - Tracking who came in through fall campaigns, - Knowing when they’re most likely to give again, and - Following up with messaging that feels like a continuation, not a restart. And, unfortunately, that’s where most teams fall short. Lists live in spreadsheets. Reports take weeks. By the time someone decides who to re-solicit, the window has closed. **Momentum like this is hard to maintain manually. That’s where Avid helps.** [Avid](https://avidai.com/how-avid-works/) turns your donor data into timing intelligence, automatically. It helps you act while attention is high and before opportunity fades. - **Fundraising Intelligence** flags new donors ready for a second gift, so you can act while enthusiasm is high. - **Avid Playbooks** automate the right follow-up cadence, whether that’s a thank-you + update flow, a match challenge, or a December reactivation push. - And because it all happens inside one campaign environment, your fall leads automatically flow into your December messaging **without manual rebuilds.** What you end up with is one continuous story: **Act 1: Inspire. Act 2: Invite.** **That’s the real power of the Two-Gift Strategy—it doesn’t require more campaigns, just better timing.** ## Fundraising Isn’t a Season—It’s a System That Sustains Momentum Alyssa and Nathan show that year-end success comes from doing the right things in the right order—not simply doing more in December. When you treat fundraising as a series of isolated pushes, every campaign starts from zero. But when you see it as one connected journey, each phase builds on the last. Fall fuels December. December fuels retention. And the cycle keeps compounding. That’s what Avid helps fundraisers do—build sustained momentum, not just seasonal spikes. ### Turn Momentum Into Loyalty Before you launch your next December push, take one step back. Ask yourself: - Are we acquiring early enough to build momentum? - Do we have a clear plan for turning those fall donors into loyal givers? - Are we following up quickly enough to catch donors while they’re still engaged? If not, you’re leaving your best opportunity for loyalty on the table. Get the ***AI-Powered Campaign Playbook for Year-End***—built from data across 130+ nonprofits—to see how top fundraisers plan, segment, and sustain momentum through December 31. [**Download the Playbook →**](https://avidai.com/ai-powered-year-end-fundraising-playbook-download/) **Categories:** Fundraising Strategy --- ### [Don’t Ignore Giving Tuesday: It’s Your Best New-Donor Day of the Season](https://avidai.com/blog/giving-tuesday-still-matters/) **Published:** November 14, 2025 **Author:** Nathan Hill **Excerpt:** Giving Tuesday still drives the most efficient new-donor acquisition of the year-end season. See why the data proves it’s growing—not fading—and learn how to turn one day of generosity into year-end momentum with Avid’s AI-Powered Campaign Playbook. **Content:** Each November, fundraisers debate whether Giving Tuesday is still worth the effort. Inboxes overflow, ad costs rise, and results can look inconsistent. But Avid’s data tells a different story. But when you look at the data, that perception doesn’t hold up. As **Nathan Hill**, VP of Training at Avid, explained during our [*Prepping for Year-End Fundraising* webinar](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=151WXJxcdiw), the trend line is clear: “Giving Tuesday is still effective for acquisition… The numbers are hard to argue with because they continue to grow year over year. By and large, Giving Tuesday is growing every year in terms of how many new donors it’s able to bring in.” In other words, while many organizations are stepping back, **the ones staying in the game are acquiring more new donors than ever.** ## The Myth of “Giving Tuesday Fatigue” It’s easy to assume that a crowded day must be a declining one. But Avid’s multi-year benchmark data tells a different story: - +233% new donors in 2020 vs. 2019 - +15% growth in 2022 - +21% growth in 2023 - +15% growth in 2024 Those increases are *compounding*—each year’s growth adds to the previous one. For many nonprofits, that single day continues to outperform every other for donor acquisition volume and efficiency. The idea that donors are “tired” of Giving Tuesday doesn’t hold up under scrutiny. What’s actually happening is that **donor attention has consolidated around a few proven moments**, and this remains one of them. ## Why Giving Tuesday Still Works So why does the day keep growing while other fundraising moments plateau? ### 1. It’s Collective, Not Competitive Giving Tuesday creates a shared moment of generosity. Donors don’t experience it as a marketing campaign—they see it as a movement. That collective energy still motivates action. ### 2. It Benefits from Built-In Amplification Social platforms, influences, employers, and more all promote Giving Tuesday activity. These external signals amplify your message without extra ad spend. ### 3. It Offers a Natural First Step for New Donors Because the day is public and widely recognized, it lowers the psychological barrier to give. Donors who may not respond to a single-organization appeal feel comfortable joining a global event. ## How Smart Fundraisers Use Giving Tuesday as a Compounding Growth Engine The data is clear: Giving Tuesday drives the largest influx of new donors during the year-end season. The question isn’t *whether* to participate—it’s *what to do next*. Nathan’s data confirms Giving Tuesday’s continued strength as an acquisition event. **Alyssa Boger**, EVP of Client Experience at Allegiance Group + Pursuant, added another layer: how to turn that acquisition into lasting engagement through smart sequencing. “We’re seeing more success in front-loading acquisition in the fall… leverage September, October, November to drive acquisition. Those new donors are then more likely to give a second gift in that year-end timeframe, especially if you have a match or challenge.” That insight reframes the role of Giving Tuesday. **Giving Tuesday is both a high-performing acquisition day and a strategic pivot point within the broader fall fundraising season.** When you acquire new donors on Giving Tuesday, you have the rest of December to re-engage them while enthusiasm is high. **That second touch—the year-end gift—is what turns Giving Tuesday from a one-day spike into a compounding growth engine.** ## How to Make the Most of the Noise Standing out on a crowded day doesn’t require bigger budgets or louder creative. It requires thoughtful preparation and disciplined follow-up. Here’s what consistently drives results in Avid’s benchmark data: ### 1. Prepare Donors Ahead of Time Begin reminding your list about your participation a week early. Clarity and repetition build recognition—so when the day arrives, your supporters already know what to expect. ### 2. Keep Messaging Simple and Personal Avoid overdesigned templates or abstract slogans. Short, human appeals perform better when donors are skimming through dozens of messages. ### 3. Follow Up Quickly and Authentically A first thank-you followed by a specific update within a week can double the likelihood of a second gift before year-end. Use December to deepen that connection with a matching offer or a mission milestone. ### 4. Track the Real Results Behind Your Giving Tuesday Effort Giving Tuesday keeps growing, but many teams miss just how strong it is because they’re only looking at one report or one channel. Some gifts come through your website, others through social or email, and each platform counts them differently. With unified data, you can see the full picture—how many new donors actually gave that day and how their giving compares to the rest of the season. That clarity helps you defend the investment and refine next year’s plan with confidence. Avid can help with that. Avid’s unified data tools make that visibility automatic, so your results reflect what’s truly happening across every channel. ## Turn One Day into Year-End Momentum with Avid Avid makes it easier to connect Giving Tuesday to the rest of your year-end plan: - **Fundraising Intelligence** identifies new Giving Tuesday donors most likely to give again before year-end. - **Playbooks** automate the post-Giving Tuesday sequence—thank-you, update, and reactivation flows—so no opportunity slips through the cracks. - **Matchback Analysis** reveals where those donors actually converted, giving you a clear view of each channel’s influence. Instead of treating Giving Tuesday as an isolated campaign, Avid helps you integrate it into a continuous donor journey—from first gift to lasting relationship. ## Turn One Day Into a Year-End Advantage Giving Tuesday isn’t losing power—it’s becoming more strategic. The nonprofits that keep winning with it aren’t chasing a trend. They’re using it as the launchpad for stronger year-end performance—acquiring donors efficiently, following up fast, and keeping momentum through December 31. See how to plan and sequence those campaigns with the AI-Powered Campaign Playbook for Year-End—built from data across 130+ nonprofits. [**Download the Playbook →**](https://avidai.com/ai-powered-year-end-fundraising-playbook-download/) **Categories:** Fundraising Strategy --- ### [How Small Fundraising Teams Use Avid to Boost Donor Results and Efficiency](https://avidai.com/blog/how-small-teams-use-avid-to-improve-fundraising/) **Published:** November 6, 2025 **Author:** Nathan Hill **Excerpt:** Even solo fundraisers can raise smarter with Avid. See how small teams use AI-powered automation and insights to grow faster with less work. **Content:** Many small fundraising teams share the same hesitation when they first hear about Avid: “This sounds powerful, but can a small team like ours really use it?” The answer is a resounding yes. Avid was designed to make fundraisers *more effective*, not busier. Whether you’re a solo fundraiser juggling campaigns, reports, and appeals, or a small team supporting an entire organization’s growth, Avid gives you the same intelligence and automation that larger nonprofits use, without the overhead. Here’s how small teams are using Avid to save time, work smarter, and grow their fundraising results. ## The Challenge: Doing It All, All the Time Small fundraising teams are often expected to do everything—strategy, storytelling, data, reporting, and stewardship—without the staff or tools to support them. You might spend hours manually building donor lists, jumping between CRMs and spreadsheets, or writing appeals from scratch. Reporting often becomes a reactive exercise instead of a strategic one. And by the time you finally send your campaign, there’s little energy left to analyze how it performed. Avid changes that equation. Instead of trying to be everywhere at once, you can rely on one connected system that automates the busywork, surfaces insights automatically, and keeps your campaigns moving forward—even when your day is packed. ## 1. Turn CRM Data Into Real-Time Reporting & Insights Small teams don’t have time to wrestle with data. Avid’s **Fundraising Intelligence** instantly turns your CRM into a strategic engine—analyzing your donor activity, identifying trends, and surfacing opportunities automatically. No more exporting data into spreadsheets or guessing what the numbers mean. Avid connects directly to your systems and shows you what matters most: - Who’s most likely to give again - Which channels are performing best - Where you’re losing donor engagement And since Avid benchmarks your results against live sector data, you’re not just reporting—you’re gaining context. **Quick win:** Instant clarity for you, your board, and your next campaign strategy. → Learn more:[ Fundraising Intelligence](https://avidai.com/fundraising-intelligence/) ## 2. Integrate Advanced Email Tools—Without the Complexity Many small teams outgrow their email platform but don’t have the time or technical capacity to upgrade. Avid fixes that. Through **Always-On Data Sync**, Avid connects your CRM, email, ads, and donation systems in real time. That means your lists are always accurate, your segments update automatically, and your donor journeys stay consistent across every channel. No more importing and exporting CSV files or worrying about duplicate records. You get the sophistication of an enterprise-level marketing setup, without needing a dedicated data team to run it. **Quick win:** Smarter, more personalized communication with zero manual list management. → Learn more:[ Always-On Data Sync](https://avidai.com/always-on-data-sync/) ## 3. Build Complete Fundraising Campaigns in Minutes, Not Days When you’re wearing every hat in fundraising, campaign creation can feel overwhelming. That’s why small teams love **AI-Powered Playbooks**—Avid’s built-in campaign generator. You tell Avid your goal (reactivation, acquisition, stewardship, etc.), and it instantly creates your audience segments, messaging, and creative assets, tailored to your organization’s mission and donor data. What used to take days of coordination now takes minutes. And because it’s powered by proven fundraising data, your campaigns start from a place of confidence, not guesswork. **Quick win:** Complete, optimized campaigns ready to launch with minimal effort. → Learn more:[ AI-Powered Playbooks](https://avidai.com/ai-powered-playbooks/) ## 4. Instantly Present Results to Your Team and Board Board and leadership updates are part of every fundraiser’s reality. But they can eat up hours that should be spent on strategy and relationships. Avid automatically generates board-ready performance dashboards that visualize what’s working, what’s improving, and what needs attention. With one click, you can show: - Campaign ROI by channel - Donor retention and acquisition rates - Trends in giving by segment or region Instead of cobbling together metrics from multiple platforms, you simply open Avid, share the dashboard, and move on. **Quick win:** Confident, data-backed reporting that helps you lead the conversation. ## Why Small Teams Thrive with Avid Small teams thrive when they have clarity and automation on their side. Avid delivers both. It’s not about replacing people—it’s about amplifying them. By automating execution and surfacing insights, Avid gives small teams **the time and focus to do what they do best: build relationships and drive generosity.** And because Avid scales with you, it grows as your organization grows. Whether you’re running your first major campaign or optimizing a mature fundraising program, Avid adapts to your goals and capacity. **The result:** small teams operating with the power, intelligence, and confidence of the biggest fundraising organizations. ## See What Avid Can Do for Your Team If you’ve ever wondered whether Avid can make a difference for a small team, the best way to find out is to see it in action. In one short strategy session, we’ll show you exactly how fundraisers like you are using Avid to save time, stay organized, and grow revenue—without adding headcount. [**Book Your Strategy Session →**](https://avidai.com/demo/) **Categories:** Nonprofit Marketing --- ### [Year-End Giving Is Down—But Here’s Where Nonprofits Can Still Win](https://avidai.com/blog/year-end-giving-is-down-where-nonprofits-can-still-win/) **Published:** November 6, 2025 **Author:** Nathan Hill **Excerpt:** Year-end giving has dipped, but data shows where nonprofits can still win. Learn how connected strategies and AI insights drive stronger results. **Content:** For decades, fundraisers could count on one truth: **December delivers.** Nearly 40% of giving often happened in the final weeks of the year. But if your December totals have felt smaller than they used to, you’re not imagining things. **Year-end giving has been down in three of the last five years.** As [Nathan Hill](https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathan-peter-hill/)—VP of Training at Avid—shared in our recent webinar [*Prepping for Year-End Fundraising*](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=151WXJxcdiw): ***“If you raised a million dollars during year-end in 2019, by the end of 2024 you’d actually need to raise 26% more just to have the same impact. Flat isn’t good enough anymore.”*** So where does that leave fundraisers preparing for the most important season of the year? The answer: nonprofits are still winning—just in different ways than before. ## Flat is the New Down: What Avid Data Really Tells Us About Year-End Looking at five years of [Avid benchmark data](https://avidai.com/benchmarks/), one thing is clear: **year-end giving behavior is changing.** **2020 was down, 2021 bounced back, 2022 and 2024 slipped again.** On the surface, that may look like noise, but in real terms, it’s a slow slide backward. Here’s why: when inflation rises faster than revenue, even a “flat” year means you’ve lost ground. If your results aren’t climbing, your impact is shrinking. **And yet, some nonprofits are still finding growth.** What sets them apart? They’re not counting on one big “December moment” anymore. Instead, they’re building *momentum throughout the year*—staying in front of donors across channels, long before the end-of-year rush. As **Alyssa Boger**—EVP of Client Experience at [Allegiance Group + Pursuant](https://teamallegiance.com/)—put it during the same webinar: ***“Donors are consolidating their giving. They’re choosing fewer organizations, but they’re giving more deeply to the ones that stay connected with them.”*** The lesson is simple but powerful: **donors are still generous, but you have to earn your spot as their trusted choice for giving.** ## Where Donors Still Say Yes—And What Nonprofits Can Do About It Year-end giving may be under pressure, but that doesn’t mean hope is lost. In fact, there are bright spots in the data and they point toward practical strategies nonprofits can lean into this season. ### 1. Online Giving Is Still Growing While our data shows offline channels like direct mail are softening, online giving continues to climb year over year. That doesn’t mean mail has no value—it means donor behavior is shifting. Many supporters still open a letter, but when it’s time to give, they head to your website or phone instead of mailing back a check. 💡Treat mail and digital as partners, not competitors. Digital channels make your direct mail better. Direct mail makes digital channels better. Measure your results holistically to see how your direct mail strategy influences other giving channels. ### 2. Giving Tuesday Remains a Powerhouse Some fundraisers are skeptical of Giving Tuesday, worried it’s overhyped or cannibalizes December gifts. But the numbers are hard to ignore: **acquisition on Giving Tuesday continues to grow every year.** [Nathan](https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathan-peter-hill/) explained in the webinar that new donor acquisition has trended down overall since 2021—except on Giving Tuesday, where it keeps rising. 💡Lean into Giving Tuesday as both an acquisition and reactivation moment. Use matching challenges or multi-channel storytelling to capture attention, and then have a plan to quickly follow up so first-time givers become repeat donors before the year ends. ### 3. Omni-Channel Donors Are More Valuable Donors don’t live in one channel anymore. They might receive a mail piece, see an ad on Facebook, and open an email, but only give through one of those touchpoints. Without proper tracking, it’s easy to think one channel “failed” when in reality it was the spark that led to the gift. For example, Avid matchback analysis has shown that **donors who receive mail often choose to give online instead.** If you only look at the mail response rate, it looks like the channel underperformed. But when you connect the dots across channels, you see mail actually boosted online giving. 💡Don’t silo your channels. The nonprofits seeing growth are the ones creating connected donor journeys across mail, email, ads, SMS, and web. ## The Bigger Truth Nonprofits can still win at year-end, but the path forward isn’t about doing *more* in December but about building systems that connect all your channels and data, so you can see what’s really driving gifts and invest in what works. If you want a more detailed plan for how to build that kind of connected strategy, explore [Avid’s *AI-Powered Year-End Fundraising Playbook*](https://avidai.com/ai-powered-year-end-fundraising-playbook-download/). It breaks down proven campaigns, timing models, and donor-journey frameworks built from thousands of real nonprofit experiments so your next season of giving starts ahead, not behind. ## The End-of-Year Deadline Isn’t Enough—Here’s How Smart Nonprofits Build Momentum For years, the year-end playbook was simple: send some cultivation around Thanksgiving, drop your year-end mail appeal in December, launch a flurry of emails during the last week of the year, and trust that December 31 would deliver. This strategy will still raise significant funds. But the data tells us there is a better way. Avid’s live benchmarks back this up. Today’s winning organizations aren’t betting everything on one big moment. Instead, the organizations seeing growth are the ones building *momentum across the entire fall*: - **Acquisition happens earlier.** More nonprofits are frontloading acquisition in September–November, so new donors are in the door and primed to give again during December. - **Giving Tuesday is a springboard.** It’s no longer just a one-day spike, but the kickoff to a season of deepening engagement. Smart fundraisers immediately re-solicit those new donors while the excitement is fresh. - **Engagement is omni-channel.** Donors might see a mail piece, scroll past a Facebook ad, and finally give through email. The nonprofits building connected journeys across channels are the ones seeing higher upgrades and stronger retention. - **Budgets are shifting with attention.** Instead of spending more, nonprofits are reallocating—for example, sending a lower-cost postcard to digital-first donors and investing the savings in paid social or programmatic ads where attention is rising. **Revenue stability doesn’t come from a single deadline anymore, it comes from sustained momentum.** And the best part is that sustaining momentum doesn’t have to mean piling more on your team’s plate. With the right systems, you can automate touchpoints, connect data across channels, and make every campaign work harder without burning out your staff. ## How Avid Helps You Win at Year-End We’ve seen the challenges: flat results that are really losses, late-December acquisition that’s slowing, channels that look like they’re underperforming when they’re actually driving gifts elsewhere. Knowing this is one thing. Acting on it is another. That’s why we built Avid as the **fundraising operating system**—to give you clarity and control in the very moments that feel most uncertain. With Avid, you can: - **Track performance in real time.** Instead of waiting for reports weeks later, Avid’s live benchmarks show you exactly how your year-end results stack up each day across your sector and peer organizations. - **See the full impact of every channel.** Avid’s matchback analysis connects the dots across channels, so you can see when a donor who received a mail piece actually gave online or at an event. Without this visibility, it looks like mail underperformed, but in reality, it sparked the gift. Avid helps you measure the full influence of every channel. - **Automate stewardship at scale.** Donors are consolidating their giving, which means staying top of mind is critical. Avid helps you personalize follow-ups and thank-yous automatically, so no donor feels overlooked, even when your team is stretched thin. - **Surface your top priorities daily.** AI-powered donor intelligence pinpoints which lapsed donors to re-engage, which mid-level givers are ready to upgrade, and which new donors need a second gift ask before the window closes. The difference is simple: **Avid turns data into action.** Instead of hoping December delivers, you’ll know exactly where to focus and how to build momentum that carries into the new year. [Take a quick tour of Avid](https://avidai.com/demo/) to see how it can help your team turn year-end challenges into year-round wins. ## What This Means for You Year-end isn’t dead. It’s evolving. The nonprofits that win in this environment are the ones who: - Recognize that “flat” results are actually losses. - Understand that donors are consolidating their giving, not abandoning it. - Lean into omni-channel engagement and personalized stewardship to stand out. If you want to see how your year-end performance stacks up in real time, explore[ **Avid’s free, live fundraising benchmarks**](https://avidai.com/benchmarks/). And if you want the full conversation that inspired this post, don’t miss our webinar replay: [Watch *Prepping for Year-End Fundraising* here.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=151WXJxcdiw) Because year-end giving may be down, but your results don’t have to be. **Categories:** Fundraising Strategy --- ### [Avid raises $6.5M to deliver strategy and execution on demand for fundraisers](https://avidai.com/blog/avid-raises-6-5m-seed-round/) **Published:** October 16, 2025 **Author:** Stephen Boudreau **Excerpt:** Backed by Silverton Partners, Avid is building the first AI-powered Fundraising Operating System—bringing strategy and execution on demand to every fundraiser. **Content:** Today, we’re thrilled to share that **Avid has raised a $6.5 million seed round led by Silverton Partners** to accelerate our mission of helping nonprofits plan, personalize, and deploy fundraising campaigns faster. This investment marks an important milestone for Avid—not just as a company, but as a movement toward a more connected, intelligent, and actionable approach to fundraising. ## Why we exist At Avid, we exist to help fundraisers accelerate their mission. Fundraising is one of the most mission-critical functions in the world—yet it’s been held back for decades by tools that don’t work together. Most teams are forced to stitch together donor data, analytics, and execution across disconnected systems, losing time, clarity, and opportunities along the way. The result? Fundraisers spend more time managing tools than moving their mission forward. Avid was built to change that. We’re creating the first **AI-powered Fundraising Operating System**—a system that unifies data, insights, and campaign execution so fundraisers can move from information to impact without friction. ## What this means This new funding allows us to expand our team and accelerate innovation across product, AI, and customer experience—continuing to build toward the future of fundraising: faster, smarter, and built around the people doing the work. Already, Avid is helping leading nonprofits across the U.S. turn donor data into action in minutes instead of months—and this is only the beginning. ## From our leadership Avid’s leadership team has spent decades inside fundraising—seeing firsthand what works, what breaks, and what’s possible when everything finally works together. > “We’re rebuilding fundraising from the ground up—putting strategy and execution on demand for every nonprofit team. This funding allows us to expand that vision and empower more organizations to act faster and fundraise smarter.” > > Ray Gary, CEO, Avid > “After years of watching nonprofit teams wrestle with the same data and execution challenges again and again, I wanted to create something fundamentally better. Avid closes the loop between insight and action so fundraisers can focus less on managing tools—and more on driving impact.” > > Kevin Peters, Founder & CTO, Avid *Want to know more about our story and the people behind Avid?* [Meet the team →](https://avidai.com/about/ "About Avid") ## A partnership for growth We’re proud to have the support of **[Silverton Partners](https://www.silvertonpartners.com/)**, one of the most respected early-stage investors in Texas. > “Nonprofits are under increasing pressure to do more with less, and Avid gives them the system to do exactly that. The Avid team understands the complexity of fundraising at a deep level, and their approach to harnessing new advances in AI to unify data, intelligence, and automation is both timely and transformative. > We’re thrilled to partner with them as they redefine what’s possible in this sector.” > > Rob Taylor, Partner at Silverton Partners ## Looking ahead This moment is about more than funding—it’s about possibility. The chance to build a system that truly empowers fundraisers, unites data and strategy, and helps more mission-driven organizations do what they were made to do. We couldn’t be more grateful to our early customers, partners, and team who have believed in the vision from the start. Here’s to what’s next. **Categories:** News --- ### [Impact Architecture: Closing the Most Expensive Gap in Fundraising](https://avidai.com/blog/impact-architecture/) **Published:** August 12, 2025 **Author:** Stephen Boudreau **Excerpt:** Some fundraising teams move fast, others stall. The secret? A foundation that closes the costly gap between knowing and doing. **Content:** > “Vision without execution is hallucination.” > > Thomas Edison In every corner of the nonprofit world, there’s a version of these two teams. **Team One has the talent.** They’ve got big ideas, sticky notes on their monitors, and enough energy drinks in the fridge to power a small town. Their campaign calendar is a color-coded work of art. They hold meetings, make plans, and talk about all the ways they’re going to change the game this year. And yet… somehow… the ideas stack up faster than they get out the door. The lapsed donor file? They know it’s growing, but the *“Fall Re-Engagement Plan”* is still in draft. That A/B test they were excited about last quarter? Pushed to *“next quarter.”* And when the board emails with *“a great idea we should try,”* it throws the week into a spin cycle. They’re not failing—but they’re always just a little behind. **Team Two has talent too.** They have ideas, meetings, and the occasional curveball from the board. But they move differently. When a donor looks like they might lapse, they reach out—before it’s a problem. When a new campaign idea comes up, it’s tested and launched in days, not months. They have fewer *“next quarters”* and more *“already dones.”* Same size teams. Similar budgets. Same mission-driven grit. One feels like they’re chasing the work. The other feels like they’re steering it. The difference isn’t about caring more or working harder. It’s about something harder to see, but easy to feel once you’ve been on both sides. ## The pattern you start to notice Spend enough time around fundraising teams, and you start to feel a little déjà vu. You could walk into a campaign planning meeting in Chicago, leave halfway through, fly across the country, and sit in on another one in Seattle… and it’s the same conversation with different coffee mugs. Team One always has a moment—usually about 18 minutes into the meeting—where someone says, *“We should…”* and everyone nods like they’ve just discovered fire. They’ll whiteboard it, assign action items, and then… *life* happens. A gala vendor drops out. Finance needs budget numbers. Someone gets the flu. The spark fades under the weight of everything else. Meanwhile, Team Two has the same kind of *“We should…”* moment, but theirs doesn’t end in a wistful sigh. They’re set up to move from idea to execution without rerouting the whole train. That doesn’t mean they never hit bumps—it just means the bumps don’t derail the work. You notice this pattern over and over. The *“stuck” teams* aren’t short on ideas, skill, or motivation. The *“moving” teams* aren’t immune to politics, budget constraints, or human error. The difference lives in a quieter place—how they connect what they *see* to what they *do*. And that connection, it turns out, is where the whole game changes. ## What high-performing teams actually do differently Watch Team Two long enough and you’ll start to think they’ve found a way to bend time. They don’t work fewer hours or have bigger budgets. They don’t have a secret donor list or a hidden staff of 20. What they *do* have is a way of working that keeps ideas from dying in backlog and opportunities from passing them by. Here’s what they do differently—and how it stacks up against Team One. ### Move immediately When a donor starts slipping toward lapse, Team Two doesn’t wait for the next big campaign window—they send a personal touch right then. When a test idea comes up in a meeting, it’s in-market within the week, not buried in a backlog the size of a novel. It’s not that Team Two has fewer priorities than Team One. If anything, they have more. But the way they work is different. ### Run on humility When the data says a *“sure thing”* isn’t working anymore, Team Two changes course without drama. No post-mortems for show. No ego-wrestling in the conference room. Just: *“Alright, let’s fix it.”* Team One, on the other hand, clings to the old playbook long after the game has changed. ### Stay in lockstep Team Two keeps marketing and fundraising aligned from the start. Team One often treats them like separate planets, occasionally waving at each other across the galaxy. Team Two knows the campaigns that raise the most money are the ones where messaging, timing, and targeting are in sync from day one. ### Own the story Team Two builds and trusts its own shared view of what’s happening. Team One leans heavily on vendor reports and agency dashboards, arguing over whose numbers to believe. Team Two trusts partners, but never outsources the truth. ### Act on signals in real time Team One knows exactly which donors are slipping away—but by the time they act, it’s often too late. The gala seating chart gets handled immediately; the donor list waits. Team Two flips that. When the data says a donor is at risk, they move before it turns into a loss they have to *“win back”* later. Put it all together, and it’s not magic. It’s not superhuman willpower. It’s a different operating reality. ## The most expensive gap in fundraising From the outside, you might assume Team Two just *“runs a tighter ship.”* Better leadership, maybe. Fewer distractions. A higher caffeine tolerance. But spend time inside both teams and the truth is much less romantic—and far more fixable. > The real difference is what happens in the gap between *seeing* and *doing*. **That gap is the most expensive space in fundraising—the place where opportunities are visible but can’t be acted on fast enough to matter.** **Team One can see the opportunities.** They have the reports, the dashboards, the donor lists with yellow highlights and 🚨 ALL-CAPS SUBJECT LINES 🚨. But moving from recognition to action is where they lose momentum. The email platform lives in one place, the CRM in another, and the event list in a Google Sheet only two people have access to. The lapsed donor report comes out on Tuesdays, but the person who can pull the right segment is booked solid until next week. By the time the data is gathered, cleaned, and handed off to creative, the moment has passed. **Team Two has cleared that gap.** Their data lives in one connected view. Priorities are surfaced automatically, not buried in a spreadsheet or a weekly meeting. Campaigns can launch without a week of back-and-forth because the pieces are already aligned. It’s not that they never have delays—it’s that their default setting is forward motion. The frustrating part? Team One could get there too. This isn’t about talent, passion, or even budget. It’s about building the kind of foundation that makes fast, confident action possible every single day. ## The foundation holding it all together If you’ve ever worked on a Team One, you know the ache of watching good ideas grow stale. You also know the temptation to believe the fix is a new tool, a bigger budget, or just “working harder.” But tools alone don’t close the gap between *seeing* and *doing*. What closes it is the foundation underneath—the thing that connects your data, your priorities, and your execution into one clear, continuous flow. ![Impact Architecture](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/iA-Blog-Graphics.webp)At Avid, we call that foundation **Impact Architecture**. It’s not a dashboard. It’s not a shiny new piece of software you log into once a month. It’s the strategic engine—pulling your donor data together, spotting the signals that matter, and setting your team up to act while those signals still mean something. It’s how Team Two runs. Impact Architecture is why they don’t spend days digging for the right segment, or weeks waiting for the creative handoff, or months debating what’s working. It’s why their big ideas don’t get buried under the urgent-but-not-important pile. **And it’s why the teams using [Avid](https://avidai.com/how-avid-works/ "How Avid Works") see more campaigns launched, more donor relationships strengthened, and more revenue moved to mission without burning out the people doing the work.** You don’t have to use Avid to understand the principle. But if you want to operate like a Team Two, you need some version of this foundation—or the gap between knowing and doing will keep costing you opportunities. ## Why this matters more today than ever There’s a time when you can get away with slow, and then there’s now. Donor expectations have shifted. Personalization isn’t a *“nice touch”* anymore, it’s the baseline. When a donor makes a gift, they expect you to remember them. When they start drifting away, they expect you to notice. And when they raise their hand, they expect you to answer quickly. At the same time, the pressure on budgets and teams hasn’t let up. **Most fundraisers I know aren’t hiring, they’re consolidating. Which means the only way to do more is to move faster—and faster isn’t just about speed, it’s about clarity.** > And yes, AI is everywhere now, promising to transform fundraising. But AI without connected, context-rich data is like a self-driving car with no map—it can move, but it won’t necessarily get you where you need to go. Which brings us back to the two teams. One is still chasing the work, hoping the backlog shrinks. The other is ready for whatever comes next—because they’ve built the foundation that turns good ideas into action in the moment, not in the next fiscal year. ## Closing the gap that changes everything If you’ve ever looked at a great idea and thought, *“We should do this”* and then watched it quietly die in a meeting recap, you know the cost of the gap between knowing and doing. That gap isn’t a lack of passion or skill—it’s the ground you’re standing on. Build that ground right, and the habits of high-performing teams stop being exceptional. They just become how you work. So here’s the challenge: take a hard look at the space between when your team sees an opportunity and when you actually act on it. If that gap is slowing you down, the problem isn’t your list, your people, or your mission. It’s the missing architecture underneath it all. Because if you close that gap, you don’t just save opportunities—you change the way your team works forever. **Categories:** Fundraising Strategy --- ### [How to Use Fundraising Benchmarks to Find Growth Opportunities](https://avidai.com/blog/how-to-use-fundraising-benchmarks-to-find-growth-opportunities/) **Published:** July 31, 2025 **Author:** Nathan Hill **Excerpt:** Fundraising benchmarks are a powerful tool to shine a light on your opportunities for growth. Learn 7 practical ways to get started. **Content:** Every fundraiser wants to grow. But too often, **growth feels like a guessing game**—an endless cycle of “test and hope” without a clear sense of what success looks like. Even true A/B split testing can feel like guess work. And not everyone has enough volume of traffic and donors to make it work. So how do you **take the guess work out** of spotting growth opportunities? That’s where benchmarks come in. A strong benchmark report isn’t just a yardstick—it’s a flashlight. It helps you spot what’s working, what’s lagging, and where the biggest opportunities lie. But to use it well, you need to go beyond passive comparison. You need to use benchmarks as a launchpad for smarter campaigns, sharper strategies, and real revenue growth. Here are **seven ways** to do just that. ## **1. Spot Underperforming Channels and Fix Them Fast.** Benchmarks help you see how your performance stacks up to other organizations. And the simplest way to find growth opportunities is by channel. Keep in mind, when comparing performance, you **have to compare apples to apples**. Don’t just look for how much revenue you get from a channel versus the benchmark. You want to look at the **percentage of revenue** coming from particular channels. Do you have a low percentage of revenue coming from direct mail? How about donations from email? Or paid advertising? **Don’t shrug—dig in.** If you see a particularly low spot, it might mean there is an opportunity for growth. Underperformance isn’t just a red flag. It’s a neon sign pointing to opportunity. With benchmarks in hand, you can pinpoint which channels need a refresh—then adjust your creative, cadence, or targeting to close the gap. ## **2. Prioritize The Most Valuable Donor Segments** Not all donor segments are created equal. Benchmarks can reveal which segments are driving the most value for nonprofits at large—and where you’re leaving money on the table. You might look at a benchmark and find that the average nonprofit brings in a slightly higher percentage of new donors than you do. This could certainly be a growth opportunity. But are there more valuable opportunities? **Start with the most valuable segments.** How about reactivated donors? Retained donors? Or even recurring donors? Reactivating 2% more donors is generally going to be of much greater value to you than acquiring 2% more new donors. Reactivated donors tend to stick around longer. They tend to give more. And it often costs less to reactivate a donor than it does to acquire a new one. Build a reactivation journey. Rework your winback messaging. Segment by donor type or recency. When you use benchmarks to surface high-potential gaps, you stop spinning your wheels and start driving ROI. ## **3. Recalibrate Your Campaign Cadence** Ever wonder if you’re asking too often? Or not enough? Benchmarks can help answer that. Not many fundraising benchmarks show you every organization’s messaging cadence. But that doesn’t mean you can’t get ideas of how often to communicate. **Use downstream metrics to answer bigger questions.** One possible sign of needing to recalibrate your messaging cadence is gift frequency. Some benchmarks, including Avid Benchmarks, will show you how often a donor gives to a nonprofit on average. If your gift frequency is on the low end, it could mean that you’re not asking enough. But be careful! One metric on its own rarely tells the whole story. There are a number of factors that could impact gift frequency: - More frequent cultivation messaging can drive more traffic to organic giving opportunities. - More recurring donors means a higher natural volume of transactions. Always be sure to explore related metrics to make sure you’re getting the full picture. ## **4. Balance Your Revenue Mix by Channel** Smart fundraising isn’t just about doing more—it’s about *balance*. A benchmark report can show you how your revenue streams compare to sector norms. Maybe your peer organizations drive 22% of donations from sustainers—and you’re sitting at 12%. That’s a clear prompt to strengthen your monthly giving program. Or maybe you notice that your peers are acquiring more new donors online than offline—while your online donors haven’t grown anywhere near the same rate. This could signal a need for a strategic shift. **Use benchmarks to see beyond the obvious. Diversifying your revenue sources creates stability—and resilience. Especially in times of uncertainty. Benchmarks can help you identify a healthy mix of channels, giving you more levers to pull when facing down fundraising goals. ## **5. Balance Your Revenue Mix by Giving Level** A healthy fundraising program has a vision for the future. The best fundraisers don’t just look at this fiscal year’s projections. They look 3 to 5 years down the road. Understanding your mix of giving levels and their long-term value helps paint a clearer picture of **how your fundraising today impacts your long-term picture**. To have a healthy long-term picture, you need a mix of giving levels. **Benchmarks help keep you on course.** Looking at a benchmark, you can easily spot how your mix of giving levels compares. Do you have a lot fewer broad base donors? What’s the plan when your major donors go away? **Broadbase donors of today fuel your major giving pipeline** of tomorrow. And benchmarks can help you keep the right mix. Do you have a lot of broad base, but few mid-level and major donors? The purpose of broad base giving is generally to **lead to upgraded donations**. Benchmarks can help you understand if you need to spend a more focused effort on upgrading donors. ## **6. Study the Leaders, Not Just the Average** Medians are helpful. But outliers are instructive. The best benchmark reports don’t just show averages—they highlight top performers. And that’s where things get interesting. How are these high-growth organizations structuring their teams? What tactics are they using? Where are they investing? If you look at benchmarks and are content to meet the average, you’ll be stuck in mediocrity forever. Look at the top performers. Study the best in class. **Don’t just ask “How do we compare?” Ask, “What are they doing that we’re not?”“What would it take to close that gap?” That’s how you shift from reactive to strategic. ## **7. Learn from Other Verticals, Not Just Your Own** Looking at other organizations like yourself is of some value. It helps you make sure you’re on track. It helps contextualize your results. It ensures your performance isn’t way off from similar programs. But if you *only* look at similar organizations, you might not come away with any new ideas. **The best ideas come from outside the box.** Most transformational ideas come from outside the box thinking. Looking at the leaders. Studying the best in class. You might find that some verticals are outperforming your organization with recurring donors. Or in acquisition. Or in offline growth. You can throw your hands up and say “we’re just not like them.” Or you can learn from their strengths. See what concepts you can borrow. Test a proven idea from one vertical within your own organization. ## Top Benchmarks to Utilize for Growth **[Avid Benchmarks](https://avidai.com/benchmarks/)** Avid Benchmarks use **live data**, providing up-to-date insights that never go stale. While many benchmarks leverage survey and manual user inputs, Avid **pulls directly from the source**. This gives both higher quality as well as deeper insights that no other benchmark can provide. **[Giving USA](https://givingusa.org/)** These industry wide benchmarks get released once-per year, and provide a **snapshot of the sector at large**. How is giving and philanthropy trending? Where is funding coming from? How should we think about the future of fundraising? **[Fundraising Effectiveness Project](https://afpglobal.org/FundraisingEffectivenessProject)** Fundraising Effectiveness Project is published by AFP, and provides **quarterly updates on the state of giving**. You’ll find great insights around topics like year-end performance, donor retention trends, and more. **[M+R Benchmarks](https://mrbenchmarks.com/)** M+R Benchmarks have become a staple of the sector in recent years. Published annually, they dive into **nuanced details like advertising trends**, website performance, social media metrics, and more. **[NextAfter Digital-First Benchmarks](https://benchmarks.nextafter.com/)** NextAfter’s digital-first benchmarks are smaller in terms of sample size, but they look specifically at organizations that seeing major digital growth. If you’re **aiming to grow your digital fundraising**, this benchmark is the place to start. ## **Growth Isn’t Magic. It’s Measurement and Action.** At Avid, we believe growth doesn’t start with a hunch. It starts with insight. Benchmarking helps you **stop guessing and start improving**. It gives context to your data—helping you know where to dig in. But there’s a common problem. **Most benchmark data is out of date** by the time it’s published. How do you know the trends are still true? What if something has changed? What if last year’s trends were an anomaly? **Avid Benchmarks are live.** ![Fundraising Intelligence](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Fundraising-Intelligence-1024x629.webp) They’re based on data that’s updated every day. They directly compare your most current performance against reliable data from other nonprofits. And because the data is pulled directly from the source, you can trust the insights. **Want to shine a flashlight on your own growth opportunities using benchmarks?** [**Get free, instant access to Avid’s live benchmarks here »**](https://avidai.com/benchmarks) **Categories:** Fundraising Strategy --- ### [Why Modern Fundraising Still Feels Hard—and What High-Performing Teams Do Differently](https://avidai.com/blog/why-modern-fundraising-is-hard/) **Published:** July 22, 2025 **Author:** Avid Team **Excerpt:** Modern fundraising isn't just hard—it’s exhausting. But the most successful teams aren’t working more. They’ve changed how they work. Here’s how. **Content:** Fundraising has always been demanding. But lately, it feels like the job itself has changed. Today, fundraisers are busy running multichannel campaigns, interpreting disconnected data, managing tech stacks, writing copy, segmenting audiences, and building reports… all at the same time. The expectations have exploded. Even small, “simple” campaigns now require 30+ hours of work, multiple tools, dozens of assets, and constant syncing just to execute. It’s not your strategy that’s broken, it’s the infrastructure holding it up. So why does it feel like so much, and what exactly are the best teams doing differently behind the scenes to stay ahead? Let’s unpack what’s driving the exhaustion and what smart teams are changing to work better, not just harder. ## **The Real Problem: Modern Fundraising Is Designed for Burnout** [In a recent Avid webinar,](https://www.linkedin.com/events/7328159021683695616/comments/) our VP of Training [Nathan Hill](https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathan-peter-hill/) mapped out what it actually takes to run a campaign in 2025. The math is brutal. Even a basic two-week appeal now means: - Five+ emails, often segmented across 3 audiences. - Custom donation pages, banners, ads, and direct mail. - Real-time updates to targeting and suppressions. - SMS and voicemail drops synced to timing. - A/B testing multiple variations. - Creative approvals and copy rewrites. - Multi-platform coordination and manual reporting. And that’s before the next campaign starts. The problem is that all the work lives in disconnected places. Lists live in one system. Behavior lives in another. Campaign logic lives in someone’s head. And the more tools you add, the harder it is to keep up. We call it modern fundraising. But for many teams, it feels like building every campaign by hand with duct tape. That’s exhausting and unsustainable. ### **Your Donor Journey Changed. But Your Workflows Didn’t** Nathan also made a simple but profound observation: **We’re still planning campaigns like a funnel exists. But donors don’t move in funnels anymore.** In the webinar, he shared the story of “Sarah”, a fictional donor whose journey looked nothing like the neat marketing funnels we were taught. Sarah didn’t go from awareness to action in a straight line. She signed a petition, saw a retargeting ad, got a postcard, clicked an email, ignored it, and only donated after a friend shared a campaign on LinkedIn. **It took six touchpoints across five channels to convert one donor.** That’s not a funnel anymore, it’s a metro system! People jumping on and off different lines, moving in nonlinear ways, and needing continuity across every channel. But most fundraising teams are still working like they’re planning for a single, linear journey and doing all the hard work to connect the dots manually. ## **The Real Cost Is Lost Momentum** When fundraisers spend their time: - Updating suppression lists manually. - Copy-pasting creative between tools. - Pulling data instead of acting on it. - Rebuilding campaigns from scratch. - Scrambling to interpret dashboards. - Chasing approval on three email versions… …they’re not doing what they were hired to do: build relationships, craft strategy, and inspire generosity. **This is the hidden cost of modern fundraising. Not just burnout, but lost momentum. Lost innovation. Lost purpose.** Eventually, the best people leave, and not because they don’t care, but because the system makes caring unsustainable. ## **So What Are High-Performing Fundraising Teams Doing Differently?** Top teams aren’t immune to the pressure. They’re not superhuman or running fewer campaigns. They’ve just changed how they work behind the scenes. Here’s what’s different: ### **1. They Don’t Build From Scratch Every Time** Instead of starting every campaign from a blank doc, they use systems that embed proven logic. - Pre-built segment rules. - Dynamic campaign templates. - Suppressions that update automatically. - Smart defaults that don’t need reinventing. This approach reduces friction and helps fundraisers spend less time building and more time optimizing. ### **2. They Sync Data Once and Let the System Handle the Rest** Top teams no longer export lists, dedupe records, or chase down updates. Their system handles that for them every night, automatically. That means: - Every tool sees the same data. - Suppression logic stays accurate. - Audiences stay fresh. - Retargeting flows keep working. They’re not faster because they hustle harder. They’re faster because their system doesn’t stall. ### **3. They Use AI to Prioritize, Not Just Personalize** The value of generative AI is in helping teams **know what to do next.** High-performing teams use AI to: - Surface churn risk based on behavior. - Spot re-engagement signals in time. - Flag upgrade opportunities automatically. - Rank segments by urgency and value. This turns noise into direction so every action counts. The problem is that most teams aren’t sure where to start with AI, and the tools they try often don’t know what’s actually working ### **4. They Build for the Journey They Actually See** Rather than plan campaigns around a funnel that doesn’t exist, they accept the chaos and design for it. They use systems that: - Track donors across every channel. - Respond to behavior in real-time. - Orchestrate campaigns that adapt mid-flight. Donors don’t follow a path. Systems should. ## **The Answer Isn’t Another Tool. It’s Fixing the System Behind the Scenes** High-performing teams haven’t solved complexity by working harder. And they haven’t stitched together more tools hoping they’ll play nice. What they’ve done is simpler: **they’ve adopted a system that connects the dots for them.** Not a tech stack or another dashboard. A system that makes their tools smarter, their data actionable, and their execution automatic. **That’s what Avid was built to do.** ## **How Avid Turns Burnout Into Bandwidth** Avid isn’t another dashboard or another CRM solution. It’s a **Fundraising Intelligence System** designed to reduce manual work, surface opportunities, and drive execution in real time. Here’s how: - **Unified Signals:** Avid connects your CRM, email, ad platforms, donation forms, and more—into a real-time donor profile. - **Built-In Intelligence:** It shows you who’s drifting, warming, or ready to act—so you stop guessing. - **Execution Sync:** Avid keeps your segments, suppressions, and campaigns updated across platforms automatically. - **Embedded Strategy:** It comes with proven logic baked in—so you don’t have to reinvent anything. Avid helps you act faster, with more clarity, and with less work. That’s why it powers some of the most effective fundraising teams in the world. ## **Fundraising Doesn’t Have to Feel This Hard. You Need a New Way to Work!** The expectations placed on fundraisers are real. But burnout isn’t inevitable. And fundraising doesn’t have to feel this hard. You don’t need more hours in the day, you need a system that works behind the scenes to give your time back. 👉 **[Book a demo of Avid](https://avidai.com/demo/)** and see what it looks like when your team finally works the way today’s donors actually behave. **Categories:** Fundraising Strategy, Nonprofit Marketing --- ### [What’s the Modern Way to Fundraise in 2025?](https://avidai.com/blog/modern-way-to-fundraise/) **Published:** July 15, 2025 **Author:** Avid Team **Excerpt:** In 2025, the most modern fundraising teams aren’t adding tools—they’re building systems. Learn how to move from insight to action faster, and where Avid fits in. **Content:** *Execution* is the modern advantage for fundraisers in 2025. Everyone has data. Everyone has tools. But only the best teams can *act on it fast.* In 2025, having the most dashboards, the flashiest AI assistant, or even the most donor records won’t make you stand out. **You’ll need clarity and speed.** The teams that win are those who quickly respond to what’s happening with their donors right now. Here’s how the most modern fundraising teams are making speed their superpower and how you can start doing it, no matter where you are in your digital transformation. ## **Start With Unified Data and End With Real-Time Clarity** The modern advantage starts with *visibility*. Modern fundraisers don’t waste time hunting for exports. They build strategy on top of live, unified donor signals, pulled together from email, CRM, ads, giving platforms, and event tools. You can’t scale what you can’t see or act fast on what you can’t interpret. Unified data gives you a single source of truth so you know who’s giving, who’s drifting, and who’s ready to be re-engaged *right now*. ## **Use AI to Surface Who Matters Most Before It’s Too Late** Yes, AI can write subject lines, but that’s not where the biggest lift happens. Modern teams use AI to surface donors who matter most, right when they matter: - Flag churn risk before donors disappear. - Detect re-engagement signals after clicks with no gift. - Spot upgrade potential based on real-time behavior” AI is great at spotting live engagement signals such as: - Who’s drifting. - Who’s warming up. - Who’s ready for a meaningful ask. These aren’t vanity metrics; they’re action cues. A modern way to fundraise is to use AI to stop guessing who to focus on and start knowing. ## **Automate the Manual Work That Slows You Down** Stop rebuilding the same segments, refreshing dashboards, and exporting lists into spreadsheets just to get a campaign out the door. Modern fundraising teams automate what used to be hand-built: - Dynamic segments that update in real time. - Behavior-based triggers that power reactivation and upgrades. - Campaign logic that’s synced across channels automatically. That means fewer spreadsheets, fewer bottlenecks, and a lot more time for high-leverage work like strategy, creativity, and 1:1 outreach. ## **Run Strategy That’s Wired In, Not Tacked On** Campaign strategy shouldn’t live in someone’s head or get rewritten from scratch every month. Modern teams use systems that embed the strategy into the execution layer. That means: - Recent givers get suppressed automatically. - Lapsed donors are flagged before appeals go out. - Upgrade logic is based on live behavior, not stale rules. Strategy becomes part of your infrastructure, not something duct-taped on top. ## **Execute From Inside the Same System** Old fundraising workflows looked like this: **data in one place. Insights somewhere else. Execution on another platform.** Modern teams skip the baton pass entirely. They act in one flow: - Segments sync directly into email and ad platforms. - Campaigns launch without list-building delays. - Donor actions trigger responses automatically. The modern fundraising loop is closed, fast, and frictionless. If you’re wondering whether existing tools can simplify your work life and actually do all of this (unify data, prioritize actions, automate logic, and drive execution) **Avid** is one platform built to deliver just that. ## **So… What Kind of System Makes All This Possible?** You don’t need 10 tools. You need one system that connects what you already have and makes it smarter. **Avid** is one of the first platforms built specifically around this modern fundraising model. It’s not another dashboard, it’s a **Fundraising Intelligence System** that helps teams move from signal to action without switching tabs, pulling reports, or guessing who matters most. Here’s how Avid helps teams modernize execution: - **Unified Signals:** Avid connects to your CRM, email, donation, and ad platforms, then merges the data into a live donor profile, updated daily. - **Built-In Intelligence:** It detects real-time signals like churn risk, reactivation, or upgrade potential, no digging required. - **Embedded Strategy:** Avid includes proven campaign logic and playbooks so you’re not starting from scratch. Targeting rules, segment suppressions, and triggers are baked in. - **Seamless Execution:** Campaigns, segments, and suppressions sync directly to your existing platforms. That means less toggling and more doing. Avid doesn’t replace your tools, it makes them run like they’re on the same team. ## **The Most Modern Way to Fundraise in 2025? Act Faster Than Everyone Else** The most modern way to fundraise is acting on your donor data before the moment passes. In 2025, that means: - Seeing everything in one place, live. - Letting AI surface what matters, not guess. - Automating workflows so campaigns don’t stall. - Embedding strategy into your system, not building it from scratch. - Closing the loop between insights and action. You don’t need another tool; you need a system that moves as fast as you do. ### **Ready to See Avid in Action?** Your data already knows what to do next. Let Avid show you how to act on it. 👉 [Book a personalized demo](https://avidai.com/demo/) and see what fundraising looks like when execution becomes your competitive edge. **Categories:** Fundraising Strategy, Nonprofit Marketing --- ### [What Is a Golden Record in Fundraising—and Why You Need One More Than Ever](https://avidai.com/blog/golden-record-fundraising/) **Published:** July 1, 2025 **Author:** Avid Team **Excerpt:** Unify your donor data and eliminate guesswork. Learn how a Golden Record powers smarter, data-driven fundraising with clarity and results. **Content:** [Your CRM is full](https://avidai.com/blog/you-have-the-data-now-what/), your inbox tagged, and your dashboard shows revenue. But when the board asks: ‘Have any of those gala attendees come back and donated again?’… you’re back in spreadsheets. This gap isn’t caused by a lack of tools but from *fragmented* data and *disconnected* systems. And the solution is something most nonprofits haven’t built yet: a **Golden Record**. Let’s break down what it is, why your nonprofit needs one, and how Avid helps fundraising teams create it without adding more work. ## **What Is a Golden Record in Fundraising?** A **Golden Record** isn’t a tool or a piece of software. It’s the outcome you get when all of your donor data, from your CRM, email platform, donation tools, events, ads, and more, is connected into **one complete, up-to-date profile.** It replaces fragmentation with clarity. It brings not just cleaner data, but context you can use. A Golden Record gives you the full picture of a donor, so instead of guessing who to prioritize or what’s working, you actually *know*. With a true Golden Record, you can see: - What motivated their last gift. - Which campaigns they’ve ignored. - What content or causes they engage with. - How their behavior’s changed over time. - Whether they’re showing signs of churn or ready to upgrade. It’s not a dashboard because dashboards summarize and only show activity. A Golden Record drives real action. ### **Why Fundraisers Can’t Afford to Operate Without a Golden Record Anymore** If you’re still sending emails to “everyone who gave last year,” manually tagging lists in spreadsheets, or exporting CSVs just to build a segment, you’re already feeling the pain. But the real problem is that **you may be building strategies on outdated, disconnected data**. Without a Golden Record, fundraising teams face: - Blind segmentation based on past gifts, not behavior. - Wasted ad spend from campaigns that keep targeting people who already gave. - Slower, clunkier campaign cycles that rely on static reports and exports. - Missed inflection points: revenue changes without a clear why or what to do next. - Lack of donor context that makes personalization feel impossible. A Golden Record helps modern teams lead with precision by turning donor activity into clear, confident next steps. ## **What a Golden Record Enables Fundraising Teams to Do** A Golden Record makes real fundraising strategy possible. When you have a complete, up-to-date view of each donor, built from every tool in your stack, you can: 1. **Prioritize with Intelligence** You can see which donors are worth focusing on based on behavior, not just giving history. You know who’s most likely to upgrade. Spot who’s at risk. Focus on donors showing *live* signals, not just those on last year’s list. For example, with a Golden Record, you can identify non-recurring donors with high engagement and suppress them from recurring asks, or flag major donor prospects who recently met with a gift officer but have stopped opening emails. Without a Golden Record, these insights stay buried in disconnected tools. 2. **Execute More Precisely** Whether you’re planning an upgrade appeal, reactivation effort, or Giving Tuesday launch, a Golden Record tells you who to talk to, when, and why. It doesn’t write the emails or place the ads. But it gives you the **donor clarity** to do those things well. 3. **Report More Strategically** When your data is unified, the rest of your stack can finally execute with precision. A Golden Record is what makes automation accurate and segmentation strategic. You’ll be able to explain not just what changed but why. A Golden Record gives you context, not just numbers. ## **You Already Have the Data. You’re Closer Than You Think.** By now, you’ve probably realized the missing piece in your fundraising isn’t more data. It’s clarity. The good news is that you don’t need a new CRM or to overhaul your tech stack. You don’t even need to migrate everything to one giant platform. Most nonprofits already have the raw materials: - CRM gift history. - Email engagement. - Event attendance. - Donation form submissions. - Ad clicks and impressions. But all that data lives in silos. What you’re missing is the connective tissue, a system that transforms fragments into focus. That’s what the Golden Record does. And it’s exactly [what **Avid** delivers](https://avidai.com/blog/built-for-fundraisers/). ### **How Avid Builds Your Golden Record Without Adding Work or Complexity** [Avid connects to the systems](https://avidai.com/how-avid-works/) you already use: - CRMs like Salesforce, Bloomerang, Virtuous. - Email platforms like Mailchimp and HubSpot. - Donation tools, ad platforms, event systems, and more. Then it uses AI to: 1. **Pull the data** nightly. 2. **Clean and match it** automatically (no manual deduplication). 3. **Unify records** across tools so each donor has a single source of truth. 4. **And update behavior flags** like churn risk, upgrade likelihood, recent engagement You get a dynamic layer of [donor intelligence](https://avidai.com/blog/donor-intelligence/) that gets smarter over time and actually guides your next step. You’ve been collecting signals. Avid turns them into strategic clarity without making your team do the plumbing. ### **Want to See What Avid Looks Like?** If you’ve ever said, “We have the data, we just don’t know what to do with it,” this is the part where things start to click. Your next major gift, reactivation, or upgrade is already in your data. You just can’t see it yet. Let us show you what your Golden Record could look like and how it can help you act faster, smarter, and more strategically. [**Book a demo of Avid here.**](https://avidai.com/demo/) **Categories:** Fundraising Strategy, Nonprofit Marketing --- ### [AI isn’t Just for Big Tech Anymore. Here’s How It’s Powering Fundraisers](https://avidai.com/blog/how-ai-is-powering-fundraisers/) **Published:** April 15, 2025 **Author:** Avid Team **Excerpt:** AI isn’t just for Big Tech anymore. Discover how Avid brings real fundraising intelligence to your team—without the analysts or guesswork. **Content:** You don’t need to be a data scientist to run an **AI-powered fundraising team**. You just need the right *system* in place. For years, artificial intelligence felt like something reserved for tech giants. It powered your Netflix recommendations, Amazon’s product suggestions, and Google’s search results. Not donor outreach. Not year-end fundraising campaigns. Not your team. But that’s starting to change. Fundraising is entering a new era, one where AI isn’t a futuristic dream anymore. It’s a practical, powerful tool that’s already helping mission-driven teams raise more, waste less time, and finally work with clarity. And you don’t need to write code or hire analysts to use it. ## AI Is Already Changing the Game for Fundraisers If you’ve ever used ChatGPT to draft a thank-you email or had your email tool auto-personalize subject lines based on donor behavior, you’ve already used AI in your fundraising. In fact, you’re probably part of the [50% of organizations](https://www.philanthropy.com/article/more-than-half-of-nonprofits-use-a-i-google-org-survey-finds) who have taken advantage of it. Nonprofits are now experimenting with: - Generating donor messages with AI writing tools. - Personalizing email campaigns. - Automating basic donor responses through chatbots. These tools are helpful, but most fundraisers still feel stuck. ## The Missing Link: AI That’s Actually Built for Fundraisers The rise of tools like ChatGPT and AI-powered email automation has opened new doors for fundraisers. You can write faster, brainstorm appeals in seconds, even personalize subject lines at scale. It’s exciting, and genuinely useful. But here’s the problem: **These tools weren’t built for fundraising.** They’re generic. They’re isolated. They give you content, not context. And they leave you with the same core problem you had before: **figuring out what to do next.** You still have to: - Decide which donors to target. - Manually segment lists. - Interpret reports. - Piece together execution across 5–6 platforms. AI tools can *generate*, *predict*, or *automate*. But they don’t *prioritize*. They don’t *sequence*. And they don’t *understand your goals* the way your fundraising team does. Fundraisers don’t need one more clever app or chatbot bolted onto a disconnected stack, they need a system. One that doesn’t just generate content or automate a task, but connects every data point, insight, and action into a cohesive flow. A system that turns donor behavior into prioritized, proven strategy, and then executes it automatically. That’s why [Avid](https://avidai.com/) exists. **Built by fundraisers, for fundraisers**, [Avid](https://avidai.com/) is the first system designed to unify your tools, activate your data, and drive action, automatically. ### What Happens When AI-Powered Intelligence Joins Your Fundraising Team You stop guessing. You start scaling. But what does it actually look like when AI becomes part of your team? - First-time donors stay longer. - High-value donors get the right message. - Campaigns launch when they should, not when you finally find time. - And your team starts working *on* strategy instead of chasing execution. AI helps you lead, not just react. It gives your team back time—and the clarity to focus on what matters. And it unlocks the scale you’ve been chasing without adding headcount. That’s the power of fundraising intelligence—**not just AI, but AI designed for fundraisers.** And [Avid](https://avidai.com/) makes it accessible to every nonprofit, agency, and consultant ready to move faster. ## Say Hello to Avid: The First AI-Powered Fundraising Agency in the Cloud [Avid](https://avidai.com/) isn’t a CRM or another reporting dashboard. It’s a fundraising operating system—the first-ever agency in the cloud. It acts like a strategist, analyst, and campaign manager all in one, powered by a system we call [Impact Architecture](https://avidai.com/blog/built-for-fundraisers/). **Impact Architecture is what makes Avid more than a tool.** It’s the strategic engine behind every insight, decision, and campaign—connecting fragmented data, surfacing what matters most, and automatically executing across your stack. Instead of leaving fundraisers to piece it all together, Impact Architecture delivers a cohesive system that thinks like a strategist and moves like a team. ![Impact Architecture](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/iA-Blog-Graphics-1024x576.webp)Informed by over **650 million donor interactions** and **7,000+ fundraising experiments,** Avid doesn’t just tell you what happened. It tells you what to do next. Here’s what [Avid](https://avidai.com/)’s AI-powered platform does for your team: - Surfaces your top fundraising opportunities every day. - Predicts who’s likely to lapse, upgrade, or re-engage. - Builds campaign-ready segments automatically. - Syncs across your CRM, email, ads, and donation tools. - Powers smart playbooks that launch in minutes, not weeks. No dashboards to decipher. No spreadsheets to clean. No analyst needed. ## Ready To See It In Action? [Avid](https://avidai.com/) brings the power of AI to your fundraising team without the complexity. [**Book a demo**](https://avidai.com/demo/) to see how Avid turns donor data into strategy, execution, and real results. Let AI handle the heavy lifting. You focus on building relationships, telling stories, and growing impact. **Categories:** Fundraising Strategy --- ### [Modern Fundraising is Unsustainable](https://avidai.com/blog/modern-fundraising-is-unsustainable/) **Published:** May 30, 2025 **Author:** Nathan Hill **Excerpt:** Modern day fundraising is overwhelming. The donor funnel is broken. Campaigns require more channels and segments. And AI is the only way to keep up. **Content:** The demands of modern fundraising are **greater than any fundraiser can keep up with.** Whether you’re a solo fundraiser or you have a team of 20+, the scale your organization needs you to operate at for growth is more than you have the resources for. Don’t get me wrong. I believe you have all the skills! But you don’t have time. You don’t have the people. You don’t have the budget. You don’t have the capacity. There are too many segments. Too many channels. Too much copy, creative, list building, data, analytics and more that are required for effective fundraising. And let’s be honest. The **technology we need to be successful has not kept up** with the pace of how donor and consumer expectations have changed. The way that donors interact with our organizations has radically changed. I unpacked all of this in a live webinar. **You can watch the full recording below**, or keep reading. Let’s take a look. ## The Donor Funnel is Broken A long time ago in a marketing galaxy far, far away, someone came up with the “marketing funnel” analogy. Surely you’re familiar with it if you’ve worked in communications of any sort for any length of time. The idea is helpful. But it’s also broken. ![Graphic illustrating the marketing funnel](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfPDLU51YerXU1HcIndSIh29ap3IBYFdgnqaCrVo1Gz9Dc42bpUiWjbNL-msg_qJ1F8ZvpJ_v37zYss2kW6u7iBV7qWqysEY4OJBlsbpQ6xK5XSVqG9lJK-PnR1sCOnZ4X8_Tr_?key=JR8DKmLzQj8g_FISnXVu_Q)In concept, the marketing funnel **helps us conceptualize the different stages of the buying journey**. In our case, the primary decision is a donation. But few people show up for the first time ready to give. We have to create content and campaigns that **generate *awareness*** of the cause and our organization. That’s the **Top-of-Funnel stage (TOFU)**. Then, we need to work to help these new found prospects dig deeper. We want them to learn more about the cause. We want them to identify with the need. We need them to **consider taking a next step**. This is the **Middle-of-Funnel stage (MOFU)**. Finally, we need to help them **make a decision and take action**. We need intentional campaigns that prompt people to say yes to giving, volunteering, attending an event, etc. This is the **Bottom-of-Funnel stage (BOFU)**. ### **The problem with the donor funnel** Every analogy breaks down at some point. The funnel is helpful for thinking through these various stages of the donor journey. But it distorts our view of how donors actually engage with us. A for-profit marketing agency called [Meclabs](https://meclabs.com/about/heuristic) popularized the idea of **flipping the funnel.** For a funnel to work, it needs gravity to pull something down through it. But there is no natural, organic force that is pulling donors through our funnel—forcing them to make a decision. Flipping the funnel upside down shows us that **it’s a lot of work for the donor to move through these various stages of the decision process**. It gives us more empathy in our communications. ## Alternatives to the Donor Funnel There are many other analogies out there that challenge the traditional donor funnel. They all have different strengths and weaknesses. Let’s explore a couple alternatives. ### **The Donor Mountain** I spent a good portion of my career teaching on an alternative approach to the funnel called “The Donor Mountain.” ![Graphic illustrating the "donor mountain" analogy](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcHqMhc0yTZlUzr27LCckujzEAgGqmFBVfSzdg9k1ye19X4NuOrA7_ZBltKb8h82ZnhPmCkbQoN4MuVf3K9hGN1pTbkEl1RMTRL5eA2AXhbg7F0EmTuZC7YPtBAzVzDu1I94b72?key=JR8DKmLzQj8g_FISnXVu_Q)The donor mountain builds upon the “upside down funnel” concept. When you flip a funnel on its head, it looks more like a mountain. And it’s a lot of hard work to climb a mountain. You have to **keep choosing to go forward at every switch back** along the trail. And it’s always easier to say “no”, and turn back around. This is a great analogy to help us **consider ways to test and optimize our way towards better results** within a given donor “funnel” or donor journey. But it still doesn’t accurately map how most donors interact with us. ### **The Fundraising Flywheel** The flywheel concept is an analogy from my friends at [BuildGood](https://buildgood.com/). They use the flywheel to map out the **cyclical nature of donor engagement**. ![Graphic outlining the "Fundraising Flywheel" from BuildGood](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXeA77U8VW72pupHdioMK_4yzybngU5r921QzKuvAAWN4ILdtUxIZDGo4v997OCOzUP1iArtB58us9JaJJEvQwgKCjgH02nIykyVw4hc0MvsHaWfJIFdDK9vWPrMYvnZRtnEjA1hIA?key=JR8DKmLzQj8g_FISnXVu_Q)They can explain it far better than I can (and do so in this[ podcast on the Fundraising Flywheel](https://buildgood.com/podcast/68-introducing-the-fundraising-flywheel/)). But in short, donor engagement is a constant cycle that includes: 1. **Celebrating** the donor 2. **Reporting** back on their impact 3. **Listening** to their voice and input 4. **Engaging** them with content & cultivation 5. **Asking** them to give again or upgrade When you get to the end, you circle back around and start over again. This is a super helpful visual and model to build your fundraising and donor engagement strategies around. But it still doesn’t unpack how donors truly engage with organizations today. ## Modern Fundraising is More Like a Transit System My friend [Ben Smithee](https://bensmithee.com/) teaches on a concept he calls “Dynamic Path Advertising.” A more catchy session title he has used is “How Gen Z Broke Your Funnel.” In his analogy, he compares consumer engagement to the New York subway system. It’s **a series of trains and stations** where people ride part of their journey on one line, get off, hop on another line, and so on. It’s certainly **not a clear, linear pathway of engagement.** Personally, I’d suggest that it’s not just Gen Z that doesn’t conform to a funnel. It’s all of modern day donor and consumer behavior that has changed. Now, I grew up in Illinois and spent a number of years in Chicago. **So I like to compare it to the Chicago CTA system.** ![Image of the Chicago CTA system](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXd9gBaSXoFVKBAbNDRBI4ZgTS-WVnyH1tbfepIHDb5VJiwuncUWNB5Ji1xGd207qrfeZLz05AGmRCzD6OUVSPXKy8MfJYp7ypDoT-Vi_HcPETfeAZtSPQKNpaPm7iu-QSjkKz8l2A?key=JR8DKmLzQj8g_FISnXVu_Q)Every train on the “L” (or the “elevated” train system) in Chicago starts at some point near the outside of the city and runs all the way to the “Loop.” Anyone riding a train to get to another part of the city can **hop off at a station, walk to another line, and then ride it out** to whichever part of the city is their end destination. I believe donor engagement looks a lot more like this transit system than it looks like a funnel. **Donor engagement today is a series of touch points** (or trains) where donors engage for a while, disengage, and then show up again in another channel that might take them to the end goal of donating. They may have trains (or channels) that they ride most often. But every touch point along the way is a critical part of the journey. ## A Story of Each Donor Engagement Approach Let’s map this out and see how these different approaches play out in reality. I’d like to introduce you to a woman named Sarah. She’s entirely fictional, but here is what she looks like according to ChatGPT. ![Image of Sarah](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXfILgHSqqPfxpChclkn7zOHXiNyo_SViEtkSZ-Mmc_Nebz2vBstJs5wLb68rE3YjIfAG3td5I5xbGtWTcn6-K9zxKYtcZ4cE5xSTx57Er4aMK5_v4ypdu9is37lIhq5OxlLK4jikg?key=JR8DKmLzQj8g_FISnXVu_Q)### **Example 1: A Donor Funnel Story** Here’s a quick synopsis of how a donor funnel makes us think Sarah engages with a nonprofit organization: 1. Sarah has **never heard** of your organization. 2. Sarah **sees a Facebook** ad about an eBook from your organization. 3. She clicks, **reads more on the landing page**, and fills out a form to get it. 4. Sarah lands on an “instant donation page” and **gives right away.** There is a clear line of engagement. She becomes aware of you and your cause via a Facebook ad (Top of Funnel). She moves into the consideration stage when she clicks to read more and download the eBook (Middle of Funnel). Then Sarah makes a clear decision to give on the instant donation page (Bottom of Funnel). Now, it may surprise some to learn that this funnel approach is actually **a fairly sustainable way to acquire new donors online**. However, for most donors, there is often **a lot more going on behind the scenes that leads them to make a decision** to give. Let’s take a look at a different story and see if it sounds more accurate to human behavior. ### **Example 2: A Donor Transit System Story** In this story, Sarah takes a very different path to becoming a donor. It’s longer and it has more channels and touch points. But it feels closer to reality. See what you think as you read: 1. Sarah **signed an online petition** from you about global childhood education that her friend Emily had shared on LinkedIn. 2. Later, Sarah **sees a video ad** on Instagram from you about a Kenyan child named Amina who now attends school thanks to donor support. 3. A few days later, Sarah **receives an email** appeal from you. She clicks to learn more, but does not give. 4. While reading an article the next day, Sarah **sees another retargeting ad** from your organization with another prompt to give. She clicks again, but does not give. 5. The following week, Sarah **gets a direct mail piece** in her mailbox with a photo and letter from Amina. She keeps it on her kitchen counter for a few days. 6. Three days later, Sarah’s friend Emily shares a fundraising campaign from your organization on LinkedIn. Bolstered by her trust in Emily, **Sarah donates.** Which story feels more accurate to you? The one where Sarah comes out of nowhere and donates right away? Or the one where her trust is slowly built over a series of engagements? ## Donor Engagement is Complicated in Modern Fundraising Modern fundraising is messy. There are so many channels, touch points, and segments needed whenever you create a new campaign. In fact, in Sarah’s story above, she needed 6 unique touch points across 5 different channels before she was ready to donate. ![Graphic showing the multi-channel requirements of modern fundraising](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXc23fheGPNvZNYAUMPEZvKKYvQjdNmZIK0u7czzFWrYpvQz5ySo9bWfcRAhvYqAnd5wBC1zELmEtGNIpz28se9xQDiIX65AthQH_2dB2a05xSQEWMGhamFYpZWtjgQSpijRtLL3cA?key=JR8DKmLzQj8g_FISnXVu_Q)It’s worth nothing that **every touch point along the way could have taken her all the way to the donation.** When we build campaigns today, we have to create this interconnected web of touch points that all have a clear path towards the final destination. We must understand that **not every channel is going to be high converting**. But they all have their place in the donor journey. ## Modern Fundraising Requires More to Be Done For You If this new world of modern fundraising requires all these various channels and touch points, it also **requires a lot more time, resources, and energy** to keep up. In fact, a simple high urgency campaign with 3 unique audience segments might take you a full week just to get the basic creative put together. ![Table showing time estimates for creating a simple modern fundraising campaign](https://lh7-rt.googleusercontent.com/docsz/AD_4nXcA2FR-l_Y8GubWd7yKSnY378tW5wwH1X7WzG2tcfazoYkUDlq67-n_cwbN6xtEDn2_lgATKIyXM2cS4iD0k_AIQ-sSBqYSSXJTNoaIXoFO3CTXreAGb_eN9Gt_nuW0lOptK7JU_A?key=JR8DKmLzQj8g_FISnXVu_Q)And that doesn’t account for the additional time required for: - Creating your audience **segmentation** - **Cleaning, deduplicating**, and uploading lists to each channel - **Re-syncing** targeting and suppression lists as the campaign progresses - Generating **creative for a/b tests** to optimize each channel - **Analyzing results** and pivoting directions to keep up with performance The amount of time that modern fundraising takes is more than you have capacity for. Even a large organization with a team of 20+ doesn’t have the resources and budget they’d like to have for the scale they need to operate at. **To keep up, you need more of your work to be done for you.** This requires an AI assist. ## Using AI Tools to Assist Your Fundraising AI tools can help you with nearly every task on your plate today. Tools like ChatGPT and Claude can help you with all the copywriting these campaigns require. Tools like Gemini can help you speed up your processes as you crunch numbers and clean lists in Google Sheets. And if you’ve struggled to get ChatGPT to write quality copy for you, I have a quick guide to help. Sometimes all it needs is the right training to get it to write in your voice and use effective strategies. ### **How to Train ChatGPT to Write Better Fundraising Appeals** ![Image of the "How to Train ChatGPT to Write Better Fundraising Appeals" guide](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Screenshot-2025-05-15-at-11.02.38 AM-790x1024.png) A free, step-by-step guide for fundraisers who want to use ChatGPT effectively—without losing your voice or sending bland, generic appeals. **What’s inside:** – A **plug-and-play prompt template** for training ChatGPT on your brand voice **– Step-by-step instructions** for crafting better appeals in less time – **Practical guidance** to avoid robotic language and create copy that converts [Get Your Free Guide Here »](https://avidai.com/download-how-to-train-chatgpt-to-write-better-fundraising-appeals/ "Download How to Train ChatGPT to Write Better Fundraising Appeals") ## AI Widgets Are Not the Solution All these AI tools are just band-aids on a much deeper problem. **Nonprofits have been left behind** when it comes to technology and software for too long. Our tools don’t communicate. Our data is in chaos. As a result, we get stuck in short term thinking. And our day-to-day work lacks efficiency. Fundraisers need an intelligent system to run their fundraising program on. We call that system Avid. It gives you all the power of AI tools, but in a cohesive system built by fundraisers. It **connects all your tools** and data together. It gives you **fundraising intelligence** instantly. It creates and syncs your **segmentation** to each channel **automatically**. And it **builds your campaigns** for you! That way you can focus on the more important things: - Relationships - Strategic thinking - Organizational health & sustainability - Getting a good night’s rest so you don’t burn out! If you want to take a look at Avid for yourself, you can [read more and book a time to see the platform here »](https://avidai.com/demo) Modern fundraising requires more than any one of us can handle on our own. Avid can be your trusted companion to help you not just keep up—but grow and scale the impact of your organization. **Categories:** Fundraising Strategy --- ### [Six Fundraising Tasks You Can Automate Away with Avid](https://avidai.com/blog/fundraising-tasks-you-can-automate/) **Published:** May 19, 2025 **Author:** Avid Team **Excerpt:** Stop wasting time on donor lists, follow-ups, and manual emails. Learn how Avid helps fundraisers automate their most time-consuming tasks. **Content:** You’re not underperforming. [You’re overburdened](https://avidai.com/blog/fundraising-isnt-broken-but-it-is-stuck/). Most fundraising teams don’t struggle with strategy, they struggle with bandwidth. You’re managing lists, assets, channels, and reports, just trying to stay afloat. And as a result, your donors go unthanked, appeals go out late, and [retention suffers](https://avidai.com/blog/the-donor-retention-crisis-why-fundraisers-need-to-sound-the-alarm-now/). Not because you’re not good but because **the system is broken.** ## **Manual Fundraising Work Is Killing Your Momentum** You know what works. You know who to reach out to. You know what messages matter. But between segmenting lists, writing emails, building donation pages, and scrambling to get the campaign out the door, it’s hard to act on that knowledge. **Manual tasks are stealing your time and stalling your growth.** But what if you could take back your time before noon? Here are six tasks your nonprofit team can automate right now [with Avid](https://avidai.com/blog/built-for-fundraisers/). Not to replace your strategy but to finally give you the space to execute it. ## **6 Fundraising Tasks You Can Automate with Avid** ### **1. Manually Pulling and Cleaning Donor Lists Across Platforms** Most campaigns start with a question: *“Who should we send this to?”* But finding the answer often means wrangling reports, exporting CSVs, and matching fields across disconnected platforms. And by the time your segment is ready? It’s already out of date. **Avid,** [**the fundraising agency in the cloud**](https://avidai.com/blog/fundraising-agency-in-the-cloud/)**, lets you define your segments once, then keeps them accurate and up-to-date automatically.** Want to target lapsed donors who gave through a specific campaign last fall? Mid-level givers approaching their one-year anniversary? First-time donors who’ve engaged with your last two emails? **Avid** builds those audiences and refreshes them daily, [pulling from all your connected tools](https://avidai.com/how-avid-works/). This is the difference between “I’ll send that appeal when I finish the list” and “the right donors are already waiting.” ### **2. Writing the Same Fundraising Emails Again and Again** [Email still drives 11% of online revenue](https://avidai.com/blog/nonprofit-email-marketing-statistics/), but most teams spend more time formatting than strategizing. You know the messages your donors need to hear. But somehow you’re still rewriting thank-yous, monthly appeals, and re-engagement notes for every campaign. Each version needs a new doc. New tweaks. A review cycle. Then formatting in your ESP. All before you even hit send. **Avid** flips that workflow. You write one campaign brief (the core message, audience, goal) and [Avid’s AI-powered Playbooks](https://avidai.com/ai-powered-playbooks/) generate a complete email series from it. Not boilerplate. Real variations tailored to donor type, behavior, and lifecycle. You’re not stuck at the blank page. You’re launching with confidence. ### **3. Suppressing Donors Across Channels After They Give** Nothing ruins donor trust faster than being asked again *right after* they give. It happens because your systems don’t talk. Someone gives online, but your ad platform hasn’t updated. [Your CRM has the donation](https://avidai.com/blog/nonprofit-crm-are-no-longer-enough/), but your email tool hasn’t suppressed them from the next appeal. **Avid** keeps every channel in sync, [automatically](https://avidai.com/blog/avid-is-more-than-automation-tool/). The moment someone gives, Avid removes them from active audiences, pauses their emails, and [updates your CRM](https://avidai.com/blog/avid-vs-nonprofit-crm-bi-tools/). It’s more than good data hygiene. It’s the difference between “we see you” and “we forgot you gave.” ### **4. Following Up After a Donation or Key Action** Most teams want to follow up after a gift, event, or meaningful interaction. But that means setting a reminder, writing the message, and hoping it doesn’t get lost in the shuffle. The cost of that delay is more than a missed touchpoint. It’s lost momentum. **Avid** turns donor actions into instant, automated follow-ups. A gift triggers a thank-you. A form fill starts a re-engagement flow. A high-value click launches a next-step offer. Every message is prebuilt, behavior-based, and ready to send when it matters most. Because timing shouldn’t depend on your to-do list. ### **5. Generating Campaign-Specific Donation Pages** You’ve built a powerful appeal. You’ve moved your donor to act. But when they click “donate,” they land on a generic form that doesn’t match what got them there. The story breaks. The momentum drops. Conversion tanks. [Avid](https://avidai.com/customer-stories/) fixes that by generating campaign-specific donation pages automatically, pages that match your appeal’s tone, message, visuals, and ask levels. There’s no need to start from scratch or hand it off to another team. It’s storytelling without a stumble and a giving experience that just makes sense. ### **6. Launching Multi-Channel Campaigns from a Blank Page** [You’ve got the strategy](https://avidai.com/blog/nonprofit-marketing-best-practices/). The idea is good. But launching it means emails, a page, an ad set, segmentation logic, tracking setup, and five different logins. Campaign delays don’t happen because of bad strategy. They happen because execution takes too long. Avid’s Campaign Playbooks generate and connect every asset from a single brief: email sequence, landing page, ads, synced audiences, and built-in tracking. All aligned. All brand-consistent. All ready to go. Automating multi-channel campaigns gives your team room to focus on what really drives results: relevance, timing, and follow-through. ## **These Manual Tasks are Standing Between You and Results** [Avid](https://avidai.com/) eliminates the manual busywork that eats up your team’s time and energy so you can finally [act on the strategies you already know work](https://avidai.com/blog/you-have-the-data-now-what/). Because the best fundraising teams don’t operate with more hours. They operate with smarter systems. ### **Smart Automation Isn’t About Doing Less. It’s About Scaling What Works** Manual execution burns out teams. Smart systems free them to focus on strategy, storytelling, and stewardship. [Avid](https://avidai.com/pricing/) lightens the load and replaces the grind with automation that thinks like your best fundraiser. ### **Want to See How Many Hours You Could Save This Week?** [Book an Avid walkthrough](https://avidai.com/demo/), and we’ll show you which parts of your workflow you can automate before your next appeal goes live. **Categories:** Nonprofit Marketing --- ### [The Real Reason Fundraisers Burn Out (and How to Fix It)](https://avidai.com/blog/how-to-fix-nonprofit-burnout/) **Published:** May 20, 2025 **Author:** Avid Team **Excerpt:** Fundraisers aren’t burning out because they care too much. They're buried in busy work. Learn how smarter systems give them time to do what only they can do. **Content:** Fundraising burnout isn’t a result of apathy. It’s a result of infrastructure that’s failing its people. Fundraisers are some of the most mission-driven professionals in any organization. They show up early, stay late, and care deeply about the work. They remember donor anniversaries, tell impact stories, and hustle for every gift. But too often, they’re burning out anyway, and not because they’ve stopped believing in the mission. **They’re burning out because they’re** [**buried in dashboards**](https://avidai.com/blog/fundraising-isnt-broken-but-it-is-stuck/)**, buried in reports, buried in workflows they were never hired to manage.** What’s dragging them down isn’t a lack of passion. **It’s the invisible weight of tasks their systems should be doing for them.** ## **Why Mission-Driven People Feel Like They’re Losing** In a recent episode of the [*Nonprofit Hub Podcast*](https://nonprofithub.org/transforming-nonprofit-data-revolutionizing-efficiency-and-ethical-insights-with-ai-tools-erik-tomali-and-kevin-peters/), Avid’s Kevin Peters and [Erik Tomalis](https://avidai.com/blog/avid-expands-leadership-to-drive-fundraising-innovation/) painted a picture many nonprofit leaders will recognize: - Spending *days* every month preparing board reports. - Hunting through CRMs to find high-potential donors. - Managing disconnected tools, each with a sliver of insight. - Avoiding data altogether because the noise feels unmanageable. Fundraisers aren’t just overworked, they’re often **working on the wrong things**. They’re doing manual data pulls instead of having conversations. They’re building PowerPoint decks instead of building relationships. [Disconnected CRMs](https://avidai.com/blog/nonprofit-crm-are-no-longer-enough/), email tools that don’t sync, spreadsheets that live on someone’s desktop, these systems bury insight, delay action, and distract from what matters most: cultivating generosity. And over time, this friction adds up. Not in lost data, but in lost momentum. ## **Burnout Doesn’t Come From the Work. It Comes From the Workflow** Fundraisers today wear a dozen hats but most of them weren’t in the job description. They’re not just responsible for fundraising strategy. They’re also pulling reports, segmenting audiences, building campaigns, formatting dashboards, analyzing performance, and preparing board decks, all while trying to cultivate major gifts and retain donors. Fundraisers are managing multiple platforms that were never designed to speak to one another. A CRM might hold gift history but not engagement signals. The email platform might track clicks but not feed that insight back to the donor file. And web analytics, social ad reports, and donation forms? All siloed, all fragmented, all manual. **What gets lost in this maze is time, clarity, and energy.** And eventually, that takes its toll, not just on performance, but on people. ## **Stop Doing the Work Your System Should Handle** Fundraisers aren’t meant to be data consolidators, report designers, or PowerPoint machines. They’re relationship builders, storytellers, strategists. And when they’re freed up to do *that*, donations grow. [This is why we created Avid](https://avidai.com/blog/built-for-fundraisers/). Not to replace fundraisers, but to **remove the repetitive, manual, reactive work that keeps them from doing what only they can do**. **Kevin** calls this “automating the dumb work”, so people can focus on the *human* work. That includes: - Writing a handwritten thank-you to a first-time donor. - Having coffee with a lapsed mid-level supporter. - Coaching a volunteer on how to speak at an event. - Calling a legacy donor just to say thanks. These are the touches that build trust. They create loyalty. They’re also the first things that fall off when fundraisers are stuck in a spreadsheet. ## **What Fundraisers Actually Need** Fundraisers don’t need more dashboards, **they need more direction.** That means more than access to numbers. It means: - A system that connects your [donor CRM](https://avidai.com/blog/avid-vs-nonprofit-crm-bi-tools/), email engagement, web behavior, and campaign results into one intelligent view. - Real-time visibility into what changed today, not last quarter. - Automated insights that surface the most important 3–5 shifts, based on your priorities. - Reporting that doesn’t just show outcomes, but recommends action. You need to know which metrics matter *right now* and what to do about them. [That’s what Avid delivers](https://avidai.com/how-avid-works/): decision-ready intelligence that actually works in a fundraiser’s daily rhythm. ## **When Systems Fail, Your Best People Leave** Burnout doesn’t start with a dramatic event. It starts with the slow erosion of purpose. Every time a fundraiser is pulled away from their core work to build a report, chase down a missing donor record, or clean up segmentation logic, they drift a little further from why they signed up for this work in the first place. Eventually, they leave. Or disengage. Or stop innovating. And when that happens, you lose more than just a person. You also lose institutional memory, donor relationships, and momentum. You lose growth potential. No dashboard is worth that. ## **Smarter Fundraising Teams Aren’t Working More. They’re Working Better** The most effective fundraising teams are reclaiming their time and energy by transforming how they work, not by working harder, but by working *smarter*. Here’s what they’re doing differently: **They’re connecting systems.** Not replacing tools, but integrating them so donor insights flow freely and automatically. **They’re automating reports and segmentation**, not once a quarter, but in real time. **They’re focusing on the right donors, at the right moment** with insights that point them to opportunities, not just metrics. And they’re choosing systems, like [Avid](https://avidai.com/pricing/), that deliver *direction*. ***“It’s like one of the best employees you can ever have without having an FTE on your staff.”*** That’s what it looks like when your systems finally work *for* you. ## **Free Your Team to Do the Work Only Humans Can Do** If you’re constantly asking your team to “do more with less,” it’s time to ask: **What could we stop doing entirely if our system just showed us what mattered?** Fundraising is hard enough. Don’t let your infrastructure make it harder. [Book a demo of Avid](https://avidai.com/demo/) and reclaim your time for the work that actually matters. **Categories:** Nonprofit Marketing --- ### [A Guide to Data and AI Ethics in Nonprofit Fundraising](https://avidai.com/blog/ethical-ai-nonprofit/) **Published:** May 21, 2025 **Author:** Avid Team **Excerpt:** Your donors trust you. Make sure your tech does too. This guide breaks down how ethical AI works—and why it matters now more than ever. **Content:** Fundraisers don’t need more data. They need to trust the systems that use it. Nonprofits are no strangers to trust. It’s the foundation of every donation, every recurring gift, every major donor relationship. And as artificial intelligence takes a larger role in fundraising technology, that trust is being tested in new ways. [AI has incredible potential](https://avidai.com/blog/how-ai-is-powering-fundraisers/) to help teams focus, predict, and act. But without strong ethical practices, even the best technology can create unease, or worse, erode the very relationships fundraisers work so hard to build. **At** [**Avid**](https://avidai.com/how-avid-works/)**, we believe AI should make fundraisers more human, not less.** That’s why ethical design is at the core of our platform. And it’s why this topic isn’t just technical. It’s mission-critical. Here’s what data ethics looks like when done right, and why it matters more than ever for the future of fundraising. ## **The Ethical Tension at the Heart of Modern Fundraising** AI is often sold as a magic bullet. Real-time forecasts! Smart segmentation! Automated journeys! But for many nonprofit leaders, there’s a quiet discomfort. How much does this tool *really* know about our donors? What’s it doing with that knowledge? **Could it accidentally cross a line?** These questions are more than hypothetical. In the recent [*Nonprofit Hub Podcast*](https://nonprofithub.org/transforming-nonprofit-data-revolutionizing-efficiency-and-ethical-insights-with-ai-tools-erik-tomali-and-kevin-peters/), Avid CTO Kevin Peters admitted it plainly: “Don’t trust AI any further than you can throw it.” That might sound surprising coming from a tech leader. But it reflects a deeper truth: AI isn’t inherently ethical. It reflects the intentions of those who design and deploy it. So when fundraisers worry about privacy, creepiness, or manipulation, they’re not being paranoid. They’re being responsible stewards of donor trust. And ethical AI systems should honor that. ## **Why AI Is (Still) Worth It** Let’s be clear: Ethical concerns shouldn’t scare nonprofits away from AI entirely. In fact, used well, **AI is one of the most powerful equalizers the sector has.** It helps small shops compete at scale. It cuts through reporting noise and surfaces clarity. It automates the “dumb work” so fundraisers can focus on personal connection. **The key is *how* AI is used, not whether it’s used.** Bad AI guesses at patterns and spits out generic predictions. Good AI reinforces human judgment, guides action, and respects boundaries. At Avid, [we use machine learning](https://avidai.com/blog/ai-for-nonprofit-fundraising/) to summarize, simplify, and elevate, not to decide, override, or exploit. Because we believe AI’s highest calling isn’t to replace fundraisers, it’s to amplify their impact ## **What Responsible AI Looks Like in the Nonprofit Industry** Here’s how responsible AI shows up in fundraising, and how [Avid](https://avidai.com/blog/built-for-fundraisers/) builds it in from day one. ### **1. It’s Transparent** If a system uses AI, it should say so. It should also make it clear what AI is doing and what it isn’t. For example, Avid uses machine learning to summarize trends, highlight anomalies, and recommend actions. But it doesn’t make decisions on behalf of a fundraiser. You’re always in control. That’s a core distinction between augmentation and automation. Augmentation enhances your ability to act. Automation removes you from the loop. Ethical systems prioritize the former. ### **2. It Respects Donor Privacy** [Donor data](https://avidai.com/blog/collecting-nonprofit-data-isnt-enough/) is sacred. Any AI model that ingests, analyzes, or learns from it must do so in ways that protect individual identities. That’s why Avid’s learning models never touch personally identifiable information. **All behavioral trends are anonymized before analysis.** The system doesn’t “read” donor records to predict behavior, it models macro patterns to guide micro decisions. This ensures your team gets smarter without sacrificing trust. ### **3. It’s Built Around Consent** Fundraising thrives on permission-based engagement. AI tools should follow that same standard. If a donor opts out of a communication channel, an AI shouldn’t “decide” they’re worth targeting anyway. If someone has expressed a clear preference, systems should honor it, even if that preference isn’t optimal for campaign performance. Technology shouldn’t try to outsmart donor intent. It should reinforce it. ### **4. It Elevates the Human Work** Perhaps most importantly, ethical AI should free fundraisers to do what machines can’t. As Kevin shared on the podcast, [Avid](https://avidai.com/blog/fundraising-agency-in-the-cloud/) was born from the desire to “automate the dumb work”; the repetitive, manual, click-and-format tasks that drain time and energy from high-value moments. When systems do that well, fundraisers have more room to: - Build major donor relationships. - Craft powerful appeals. - Coach their teams. - Celebrate impact. - Create space for strategy. That’s the heart of Avid’s ethical promise: AI that puts humans front and center, not behind a dashboard, but in front of donors, where they belong. ## **What Happens When You Get This Right?** When AI is designed ethically, it prevents harm and creates real value. - Donors receive messages that feel relevant, not robotic. - Fundraisers regain time for the work that matters most. - Small nonprofits access capabilities once reserved for enterprise orgs. - Data becomes a trusted ally, not a source of anxiety. ### **Ethics Isn’t a Department. It’s a Design Principle** Ultimately, data ethics isn’t a layer you add after building a product. It’s the foundation. That’s why **Avid** was designed with three non-negotiables: - **Human-first functionality**: AI that supports, not replaces, fundraisers. - **Donor-respecting infrastructure**: No unconsented modeling, no creepy personalization. - **Transparent logic**: Insights you can explain, not just trust blindly. We don’t believe in “growth at any cost.” We believe in **growth with integrity**. ## **Let Your Tech Match Your Values** If you’re evaluating AI tools, or wondering if your current systems are acting ethically, it’s time to ask: **Does your system reflect your mission?** Do your tools: - Help you act with clarity? - Respect donor dignity? - Reinforce consent and connection? - Free up fundraisers to be more human? You don’t need to sacrifice ethics to gain intelligence. With [Avid](https://avidai.com/pricing/), you can have both. **Ready to see what ethical, effective AI looks like in action?** [Book a demo](https://avidai.com/demo/) and see how Avid helps you turn data into decisions without compromising the values that brought you to this work in the first place. **Categories:** Nonprofit Marketing --- ### [How to Retain First-Time Donors: A First Anniversary Appeal Blueprint](https://avidai.com/blog/anniversary-appeal-blueprint/) **Published:** May 23, 2025 **Author:** Avid Team **Excerpt:** Struggling with donor retention? This 5-step anniversary appeal system helps you turn first-time donors into long-term supporters. **Content:** [6 in 10 first-time donors](https://www.dataro.io/blog/how-to-improve-donor-retention-data-insights-trends-strategies-for-nonprofits) will never give again. That’s a painful truth for most fundraising teams, especially if you’re pouring time and budget into acquisition. You could land 1,000 new gifts, only to lose 600 of them within a year. The real opportunity isn’t just getting more names on your list. **It’s keeping the ones you already have.** ## **Why Retention Beats Acquisition (and Costs 10x Less)** Retention is cheaper. Retention is more profitable. It compounds. Acquiring a new donor can [cost 10 to 20 times more](https://www.kineticfundraising.com/fundraising-costs-donor-acquisition-vs-renewal/) than renewing an existing one. Why? Because you’re starting from scratch. First-time donors need convincing. Renewing donors already believe in your mission, they just need a reason to stay engaged. And when they do, they’re far more likely to upgrade, give again, become monthly givers, or move into your major gifts pipeline. The best part is that boosting retention doesn’t require a massive new budget. It just takes **better timing, smarter targeting, and a system you can run on repeat**. With [Avid](https://avidai.com/how-avid-works/), retention becomes a system you can run on repeat, not a one-time push that burns out your team. ## **Why First-Year Donor Retention is So Challenging** When someone gives for the first time, they’re watching. They want to see if their gift mattered, if they’re remembered, and if the relationship is worth continuing. Too often, they get silence, or worse, a forgettable form letter. Here’s where things usually break down: ### **Donors are thanked like a transaction, not a person** Most donors receive a tax receipt and maybe a generic email. But what they need is meaningful recognition. They want to feel like their gift mattered, not just financially, but emotionally. If you miss that moment, the connection fades. ### **They never hear what their gift accomplished** First-time donors are watching closely: *Did this make a difference?* When impact isn’t clearly communicated, there’s no reinforcement to give again. Silence creates doubt and doubt erodes trust. ### **They get forgotten between systems** [CRMs don’t always sync](https://avidai.com/blog/avid-vs-nonprofit-crm-bi-tools/) with your email platform, ad accounts, or donation forms. As a result, even well-intentioned teams fall out of sync, sending emails too late, missing key anniversaries, or never making the second ask at all. ### **Your segments are static, not strategic** If you’re pulling lists manually, [you’re already behind](https://avidai.com/blog/fundraising-isnt-broken-but-it-is-stuck/). Rolling anniversaries get missed. Real-time engagement goes unnoticed. You can’t build a relationship if your tools don’t keep pace with your donors. ### **The messages feel… generic** Most first-year donors give for a specific reason: a campaign, an emotional appeal, a tribute. But too often, follow-ups ignore this context entirely. This results in messaging that feels templated, vague, and irrelevant. ### **You never actually ask again** It seems simple, but it’s surprisingly common: the donor gives once and never gets a direct, well-timed second ask. Most won’t give again unless prompted. The window for a second gift isn’t months wide, it’s days. **Avid** was built to solve these gaps by [unifying your data](https://avidai.com/blog/collecting-nonprofit-data-isnt-enough/), timing your outreach, and delivering personalized experiences automatically. ## **Donor Retention Doesn’t Happen by Accident** All of these issues point to a bigger truth: **Most donors don’t disappear because they’re unhappy, they disappear because they’re ignored.** If you want a donor to give again, you need to re-earn their trust, reinforce their impact, and reconnect at just the right moment. You can’t do that with spreadsheets and static segments. You need a system that knows who gave, why they gave, and when to show up again. ## **The Anniversary Appeal Blueprint: A Five-Step System for Second-Year Retention** That first gift opened the door. The anniversary is your best shot at walking through it. This isn’t a feel-good gesture. It’s a critical moment in the donor lifecycle. One that directly impacts long-term value and retention. And it only works if it’s consistent, timely, and built into your system. Here’s how to make it work at scale. ### **1. Build a Living Audience That Refreshes Nightly** The first step is [knowing who to target and when](https://avidai.com/blog/you-have-the-data-now-what/). Start with a segment of first-time donors whose gift date is 330–365 days ago. Exclude those who’ve already given again in the past 60 days. But don’t stop there, make it smarter. Advanced segmentation options include: - Gift size tiers (small, mid-level, major) - Giving channels (online, direct mail, event) - Campaign source or designation (restricted vs. general fund) - Engagement level (email opens, events attended, site activity) With Avid, you create this segment once, then [it auto-refreshes](https://avidai.com/always-on-data-sync/) so you’re always ready to act at just the right time. ### **2. Tell a Story That Makes Their First Gift Matter Again** Your anniversary message needs to do four things: **Thank → Show Impact → Bridge → Ask.** - **Thank** the donor by name and reference their specific first gift. - **Show impact** by highlighting a tangible result that connects to their original designation or appeal. - **Bridge** the gap between what they made possible and what comes next. - **Ask** clearly for a renewed gift, with a suggested amount and timeline. Use psychological cues like **authority bias** (a quote from frontline staff) and **availability bias** (a single, powerful story) to make your case stick. With Avid, once you write your core story, our AI auto-builds the full campaign: emails, landing page, even ads, from that central narrative. ### **3. Spin Multi-Channel Assets Without the Heavy Lift** Your appeal should meet donors where they are without overwhelming your team. Here’s what a full campaign looks like: **Channel****Asset Example****Strategy Tip**Email #1Warm “thank you” + impact story.Sent ~10 days before the anniversary.Email #2Follow-up with a testimonial or update.Triggered only if no gift.FB/IG Ad“You made this possible” carousel.Auto-paused upon donation.Landing PagePersonalized renewal ask.Matches story from email.Post-Gift EmailReinforce impact + invite deeper engagement.Sent within 48 hrs.[Avid](https://avidai.com/blog/built-for-fundraisers/) generates these assets automatically, then adapts them based on donor behavior. ### **4. Launch Once. Stay Synced Forever.** Most appeals fail because they’re built from static lists. The moment a donor gives, they should be removed from your ads, emails, and retargeting sequences, automatically. Otherwise, you’re wasting money, irritating donors, and missing moments. With real-time sync, Avid ensures: - Facebook ads stop the moment someone donates. - Email sequences adapt based on donor actions. - All your tools (CRM, email, ads, reports) stay in sync, - You never waste effort or donor goodwill. Avid reacts in real time so every touchpoint is clean, personalized, and timely. ### **5. Measure What Actually Moves Retention, Not Just Clicks** This is where most teams fall short. Vanity metrics look nice—but they don’t help you scale what works. **Track the metrics that matter:** - Second-year retention rate vs. prior year. - Average gift size (especially upgrades). - Response time from first touch to gift. - Engagement with follow-up or non-ask content. - Cost per retained donor. - 3-year value projection for retained donors. With Avid’s Scorecard, you can see not just what happened, but what your decisions today will mean for revenue in 6, 12, or 36 months. That kind of foresight turns retention from a reaction into a strategy. ## **Common Misfires (and the Quick Fixes)** Even smart, well-executed appeals can fall flat because of three common (but fixable) mistakes. Here’s what’s really going wrong and how to fix it: ### **❌ Generic Donation Pages That Break the Story** You craft a compelling email. You move the donor emotionally. But the second they click “donate,” they land on a cold, catch-all giving form. No context. No continuity. No connection. Build a landing page that matches the message. Carry your story through to the donation experience. If your email highlights a specific impact (like clean water or education), your donation page should reflect it, same image, same message, same ask. With Avid, your core narrative auto-generates the email, landing page, and even your survey—so they all work in sync. ### **❌ One-Size-Fits-All Emails That Feel Like a Mass Blast** Sending every anniversary donor the same message, regardless of their original gift, interests, or behavior, feels impersonal. It’s stewardship theater, not strategy. Use behavioral segments that reflect what they care about. Instead of guessing, use real engagement signals: What page did they convert on? Which campaigns did they respond to? Which programs have they historically supported? In Avid, your donor’s full engagement profile is unified across your existing tools so you can speak to what actually matters to them, not just what matters to you. ### **❌ Static Lists That Miss the Moment** Pulling a list of “donors who gave a year ago” and running a one-time campaign might feel like the job is done. But the moment that list is exported, it’s already out of date. Build dynamic segments that update daily. Your anniversary appeal isn’t a one-time send. It’s a rolling, always-on process that should catch donors based on *their* timelines, not yours. With Avid, dynamic audiences auto-refresh daily, ensuring you hit every donor’s anniversary window, right on time. ## **Turn Donor Retention Into a System, Not a Sprint** An anniversary appeal shouldn’t be a one-off lift. It should be a system that runs in the background and gets smarter over time. Here’s how to make it repeatable and scalable: - Let your dynamic segment update daily. No more stale lists. - Set your email and ad cadence to trigger automatically. - Track second-year retention right from your Avid dashboard, updated in real time. - Review performance monthly to optimize your story, not just your spend. The best teams don’t hope campaigns work. They build systems that do. ### **Avid Was Built to Make Second-Year Retention a System—Not a Struggle** Most teams struggle to run a second-year retention campaign because it takes too much time, too many tools, and too much guesswork. [Avid](https://avidai.com/) fixes that by turning your anniversary appeal into a repeatable, [automated system](https://avidai.com/blog/avid-is-more-than-automation-tool/). [Avid](https://avidai.com/customer-stories/) isn’t another platform to log into. [It’s your fundraising agency in the cloud:](https://avidai.com/blog/fundraising-agency-in-the-cloud/) strategy, data, and execution in one connected system. ### **What Avid Does for You:** - **Smart Segmentation:** Automatically finds first-year donors who are approaching their one-year mark and keeps the list updated daily. - [**AI-Powered Playbooks:**](https://avidai.com/ai-powered-playbooks/) Get emails, donation pages, ads, and surveys written for you, backed by thousands of tested fundraising campaigns. Personalized copy. - **Real-Time Sync Across Channels:** As soon as someone gives, Avid removes them from your ad campaigns, email drips, and donor segments. - **Live Scorecard & Forecasting:** See your second-year retention rate in real time. Track upgrades, revenue, and value projections, all in one dashboard. Without [Avid](https://avidai.com/pricing/), you’re stuck: - Manually pulling lists. - Writing every asset from scratch. - Stitching systems together. - Reporting on data that’s already out of date. Let’s make your retention system real. [Book a free demo](https://avidai.com/demo/) and we’ll show you the anniversary appeal your data’s already waiting to launch. **Categories:** Nonprofit Marketing --- ### [You Can’t Navigate Tomorrow’s Fundraising With Yesterday’s Map](https://avidai.com/blog/agile-fundraising/) **Published:** May 22, 2025 **Author:** Stephen Boudreau **Excerpt:** Donors change. Your fundraising can, too. Explore why navigating by old habits holds you back—and how agile fundraising connects you to donors today. **Content:** > “You can’t use an old map to explore a new world.” > > Albert Einstein I left my hometown at eighteen—eager, excited, ready to be somewhere new. It wasn’t that I disliked growing up in a sleepy border city in South Texas, nestled right on the Gulf. It was just that, well, it had never really felt like mine to begin with. By the time my closest friends and I hit our twenties, we’d scattered—Austin, Dallas, Houston, even out of state. The city we’d grown up in became less our “home” and more a place we nostalgically referred to as “where we grew up.” But a few years ago, I did go back—one of my few return visits—for a wedding. An old friend had stayed put, planted roots, and was finally getting married. I decided to make a weekend of it, even looking forward to revisiting old spots that had shaped my teenage years. But when I got there, everything felt just slightly off. My favorite Mexican restaurant—where I’d spent countless nights devouring tacos and plotting high-school dramas—had been replaced by a chain restaurant that proudly advertised “endless shrimp.” The two-lane road I’d driven hundreds of times was now an eight-lane interstate humming with unfamiliar traffic. And when I turned onto my old street, the houses looked the same, but the neighbors who had watched me learn to ride a bike or break curfew were gone, replaced by families I’d never met and kids who had no idea I’d once claimed this block as my own. I wasn’t exactly sad—just reflective. Places change. People move. And no matter how clearly we hold onto certain reference points, the truth is, the landscape never stays the same. The mental maps we draw for ourselves become outdated faster than we’d like to admit. ## Navigating by Memory Now, at the risk of stretching this metaphor too far—because, let’s face it, this is about fundraising and you probably knew we’d get here eventually—there really is a connection: just like my hometown, fundraising landscapes shift constantly. > Donors change. Interests evolve. Channels transform. And what worked beautifully five years ago—or even last year—can quickly become outdated. Yet, so many fundraising teams still plan initiatives as if nothing has changed, marking calendars with familiar dates, events, and appeals—guided by habit instead of real-time insight. Maybe the best fundraising isn’t about retracing the comfortable, well-worn routes year after year. Maybe it’s about acknowledging that streets change, landmarks disappear, and that finding our way forward means navigating not by memory, but by what we see clearly in front of us today. ## The Comfort Trap of Fundraising Calendars Every nonprofit has its own familiar calendar: the Annual Gala in spring, the Giving Day push in summer, the predictable end-of-year appeals. There’s genuine comfort in planning fundraising initiatives this way. Calendars feel safe. They’re predictable. They provide a reassuring rhythm in a world that’s anything but. But this comfortable familiarity has a cost. It subtly but surely distances fundraising teams from what their donors actually care about right now. > Over time, fundraising can become less about responding meaningfully to donor interests and more about repeating last year’s checklist. Communication then becomes routine instead of compelling. Appeals become generic rather than personal. The consequences of this habitual approach can quietly compound. Donors start tuning out the repetitive messages. Engagement gradually softens. Retention rates slip. And while teams continue investing resources into familiar initiatives—assuming they’re as effective as they’ve always been—the fundraising landscape shifts beneath their feet. Missed opportunities stack up. Teams overlook new donor interests, new communication channels, and evolving giving habits because they’re focused instead on the next predetermined date. In other words, they’re navigating by memory instead of insight. But there’s another way—one that acknowledges how quickly and dramatically the fundraising terrain changes, and responds by becoming strategic, agile, and responsive. ## From Calendar-Driven to Donor-Driven What exactly does strategic, agile fundraising look like? First, it means shifting the fundamental question you ask yourself when planning your initiatives. > Instead of starting with, *“What did we do last year?”* the agile fundraiser asks, *“What do our donors need from us right now?”* This small shift makes all the difference. It prioritizes real-time insights over habit. It puts donors at the center of your strategy—not calendars, not events, not tradition. Consider this: Imagine your donor data reveals an emerging segment of supporters increasingly interested in specific stories or urgent needs your nonprofit addresses—but your traditional calendar has nothing planned for months. A calendar-driven approach might make you wait until the next scheduled campaign to engage them. But a donor-driven approach lets you respond immediately, creating tailored communications or targeted appeals right when your audience’s interest and engagement are highest. This agility means recognizing opportunities as they arise—like a surge in engagement around a social media campaign, or a notable increase in giving toward a particular initiative. > Agile fundraising is about seeing these signals clearly and acting decisively. It’s about being flexible enough to pivot when something resonates deeply, rather than rigidly adhering to a preset annual plan. Does this mean abandoning annual events or familiar traditions? Not necessarily. These moments often hold significant emotional value for your supporters and your organization. But the difference is crucial: annual calendars become guidelines, not constraints. They anchor your fundraising, but don’t limit it. In this agile fundraising landscape, your donor data and insights are the compass. Instead of navigating by outdated memories of what worked in years past, agile fundraisers confidently plot their next steps based on what donors are telling them in real time. The result? Campaigns become sharper, more relevant, and better aligned with your donors’ current values and interests. Appeals feel timely, personal, and genuine—because they’re born out of immediate, actionable insights, not habit. ## Agile Fundraising in Action This isn’t just theory—it’s an actionable approach. Let’s take a closer look at what agile fundraising can mean in practice: Imagine your nonprofit unexpectedly gets featured in a popular local news story. Overnight, hundreds of new visitors flood your website, downloading impact stories, subscribing to updates, and even starting to make spontaneous donations. If you’re operating solely on a rigid fundraising calendar, you’re caught off guard—stuck exporting contact lists, manually cross-checking donor segments, crafting follow-up emails from scratch, and urgently trying to coordinate internal approvals, losing days (and potentially valuable supporters) in the process. But with an agile fundraising approach—and the right system behind it—your donor data and insights are unified in real-time. Instantly, automated segments identify these new potential donors. Pre-built email templates aligned with your brand and messaging are immediately ready to customize. Within hours—not days—you launch a personalized follow-up campaign, thanking new supporters, sharing relevant stories based on their interests, and inviting them to deepen their connection. Or consider a nonprofit that typically relies on a major annual fundraising event to carry its budget. When external circumstances suddenly disrupt the event—like unforeseen weather, economic changes, or even a global pandemic—the calendar-driven fundraiser might panic or scramble reactively. > Agile fundraisers, armed with real-time insights, quickly identify alternative donor segments, leverage immediate digital communication channels, and pivot their appeal to reflect current realities. The result isn’t merely recovery—it’s growth. New donors emerge, existing donors feel seen and valued, and fundraising goals are not only met but exceeded. These scenarios aren’t hypothetical; they’re representative of what happens when fundraising becomes truly agile. It’s about staying closely attuned to donors’ evolving interests and preferences, using data proactively, and cultivating a responsive mindset that turns potential disruptions into strategic opportunities. ## Change Doesn’t Mean Starting Over Now, if you’ve been fundraising for a while, you might feel understandably cautious about adopting a more agile approach. Change—even positive change—can feel risky or daunting. There’s comfort in repetition. Familiar approaches feel safe precisely because they’re known quantities. But shifting toward agile fundraising doesn’t mean tossing everything out and starting from scratch. It doesn’t mean abandoning annual events your community loves, or walking away from traditions that define your organization’s identity. It simply means becoming more intentional and responsive within your existing framework—letting your donor insights guide you toward smarter, more impactful decisions. > This change can happen gradually. It might start as simply as reviewing your current campaign calendar with fresh eyes, looking for spaces where donor data clearly suggests new possibilities. Perhaps it’s adding small, targeted campaigns in response to specific donor behaviors or interests. Maybe it’s experimenting occasionally, testing new ideas inspired directly by donor insights rather than solely historical precedent. And the benefits clearly outweigh the initial discomfort. Fundraising teams become more energized and empowered. Donors feel more seen, understood, and valued—building deeper connections and increasing their long-term loyalty. Results become less guesswork, more predictable, and consistently stronger. Ultimately, becoming agile isn’t about disruption. It’s about intentional evolution. It’s about recognizing the truth of your current landscape—and confidently, strategically adapting to meet it. ## Updating Your Fundraising Map When I returned to my hometown after years away, my outdated mental map left me momentarily lost. My familiar landmarks had shifted, and my old reference points no longer matched reality. But the solution wasn’t complicated—I simply had to look around clearly, see what had changed, and adjust accordingly. Fundraising today requires the same clarity. Relying on familiar routines and calendars might feel safe, but it can quietly lead us further from the reality of our donors’ current interests, behaviors, and values. Agile fundraising isn’t about abandoning what’s worked before—it’s about paying close attention, listening, and responding meaningfully to what’s right in front of us now. The good news? Your donors are already giving you the directions. Your data is providing clear signals. Your supporters’ interests and behaviors tell you exactly what paths to explore next. All you have to do is update your map. **Categories:** Fundraising Strategy --- ### [The “Easy Button” for Fundraising Segmentation](https://avidai.com/blog/the-easy-button-for-fundraising-segmentation/) **Published:** May 9, 2025 **Author:** Nathan Hill **Excerpt:** Modern fundraising requires a lot more segmentation. With Avid, fundraising segmentation is done for you—synchronizing audiences without manual lists pulls. **Content:** Modern fundraising requires more from you. More channels. More creative. More data and analytics. More audience segmentation. To keep up, you need an “easy button” solution. **Avid Pathways is the easy button you need to deploy better fundraising segmentation** faster and automatically. [See how it works in this interactive demo »](#interactive-demo "See how it works in this interactive demo") ## Modern Fundraising Demands More Time & Resources The resources that modern fundraising requires are rapidly growing. This is because **donors increasingly interact in a multi-channel fashion**—both with our organizations as well as with consumer brands. Fundraisers who embrace this multi-channel approach will see better results. But you’ll leave critical revenue behind if you fail to keep up. For example, Avid’s[ live fundraising benchmarks](https://avidai.com/benchmarks/ " live fundraising benchmarks") show that donors who give via the mail are **more likely to give larger gifts** and to retain longer if they’re cultivated using online channels—even if they never give online. ![Charts showing the increase revenue and retention when offline donors are cultivated with email](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Benchmarks-Showing-Revenue-and-Retention-Based-on-Channel-1024x503.png)Donors who only ever give online give larger gifts and **retain longer if they’re cultivated** using offline channels like direct mail. Beyond that, donors (and any consumer) in the modern era expects **personalization at every level**: from the ads they see on Instagram, to their TV show recommendations on Netflix, to their product suggestions on Amazon. Donors expect the organizations they support to personalize their communication as well. **The challenge:** *Expectations for personalization and segmentation have changed. Your budgets and resources have not.* In fact, if you’re like most nonprofits, your budget is likely tighter in 2025 than it was in 2020. Over the past 5 years, **revenue across the nonprofit sector has decreased by 12%.** Meanwhile, inflation has made it more expensive to fund your programs. Increasing costs and decreasing revenues means you have less to work with—even though donors are demanding more. ## The Benefits of Increased Fundraising Segmentation & Personalization [Luther Seminary discovered some significant issues](https://avidai.com/blog/luther-seminary/ "Luther Seminary discovered some significant issues") in their fundraising revenue. Using Avid, they identified that **every major segment of their donors was trending down**. Avid served up these insights to Luther Seminary and their team automatically—ensuring they could get ahead of the problem before it got out of hand. ![Chart showing declining performance across all fundraising channels](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Chart-Showing-Declining-Results-Across-All-Donor-Segments-1024x512.png)But they needed a plan. Digging deeper into their data using Avid’s Insights, the Luther Seminary team discovered **a large opportunity to reactivate lapsed donors**. **Their hypothesis**: *Re-engaging lapsed donors with offers delivered via Facebook / Meta advertising will lead to greater donor reactivation.* **The biggest challenge to their plan:** *Running a lapsed donor re-engagement campaign delivered via Facebook / Meta **advertising requires powerful segmentation**.* If they didn’t provide Facebook / Meta with the most up-to-date and enriched data available, their costs could skyrocket and their ROI may not be worth it. **Without Avid, this would have required a herculean effort:** - Pulling all their lapsed donor segments out of their CRM. - Merging their lapsed donor segments with their email engagement data to determine who to re-engage. - Cleaning and deduplicating their audience lists. - Uploading to Facebook / Meta for ad targeting. - Doing all of this over and over again to suppress donors who had already re-activated. **With Avid, all of this was accomplished in a matter of seconds** with a few quick clicks—enabling high performance, low advertising costs, and a 308% increase in reactivated donors. ## Fundraising Segmentation Is Done for You with Avid Whether you’re running a year-end campaign, a reactivation campaign, or sending out your monthly appeal—segmentation is one of the most critical keys to hitting your revenue goals. But **segmentation is usually one of the most labor-intensive** **tasks** and tedious aspects of getting a campaign off the ground. **Avid Pathways handles your segmentation for you.** Define your audience once, and Avid will keep it up to date forever—even deploying it to the channels of your choosing automatically. Here are some common fundraising segmentation examples that Avid is simplifying for modern-day fundraisers: ### Donor Suppression Lists Imagine it’s the last week of the year. Most of your direct mail and email appeals for your year-end campaign have already gone out. You’re getting ready for your final push to your goal. Your emails are drafted. Your ad creative is ready to deploy. Your donation page is optimized for urgency. But you’re stuck. **The suppression lists aren’t ready yet.** Your database admin is waiting on a few more gifts to be processed. Then they’ll re-run their reports to get you that essential suppression list. Without your suppression lists, you risk soliciting hundreds or even thousands of donors who have already given to the campaign. If that happens, you’ll **come across as tone deaf** and out of touch. **With Avid, you can setup your suppression lists before the campaign even gets started**. ![Screenshot showing how fundraising segmentation is done for you with Avid synchronizing donor suppression lists](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Keep-Your-Donor-Suppression-Lists-Up-to-Date-1024x336.png)Avid will keep them **up to date every single day**—synchronizing your CRM data with your email platform, your advertising, and any other channels where you need your suppression lists. No more late-night data pulls. No more worrying if the lists are accurate. No more stressing about getting the campaign out on time. Avid takes care of it for you. ### Reactivation Campaigns We all know it costs less to keep an existing donor than to acquire a new one. However, if we don’t stay on top of who we’ve already re-activated, our direct mail and our advertising budgets may be going to waste. The success of any **direct mail program relies on the quality and accuracy of the data** used to power your mailing lists. But the data used for direct mail is often out of date by the time it gets to your print vendor. The same is true in advertising. Your **ad campaign success is reliant upon the volume and accuracy of the data** you provide your ad platform. If you’re not constantly telling the platform who to target—and who to exclude—you risk wasting valuable advertising dollars on donors who have already reactivated. Avid changes all of this. **Avid watches every day to see who has given**, who has not, and which audience segments need to be updated. ![Screenshot showing how fundraising segmentation is done for you with Avid keeping donor reactivation audiences up to date](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Keep-Your-Reactivation-Audiences-in-Sync-1024x336.png)It allows you to **send the latest audience segments to your advertising channels** in real-time. It ensures that you can get the **most accurate, de-duplicated direct mail lists pulled the moment you need** to send them to the printer. All of this reduces your costs and improves your performance—on top of saving you precious time. ## See How Avid Pathways Simplifies Your Fundraising Segmentation I could keep telling you how Avid Pathways simplifies your fundraising segmentation. But for some fundraisers, **it sounds too good to believe.** **So why don’t you take a look for yourself?** Below you’ll find an interactive demo showing you how Avid lets you create audience segmentation in seconds. Not only is fundraising segmentation easier with Avid. Your segmentation is also better. Avid stitches together **data from every single one of your tools**—allowing you to build richer, deeper, and more accurate audience segments. Take a look for yourself in the interactive demo below: ## Get a Personal Tour of Avid Ready to See What’s Possible? Whether you’re navigating a complex CRM migration, trying to re-engage lapsed donors, or just tired of feeling stuck in reactive mode, Avid gives you the clarity to act and the confidence to move. Let’s stop patching tools together. Let’s start building momentum. 👉 [See Avid in action](https://avidai.com/demo/) **Categories:** Product Updates --- ### [Donor Retention Down? Look at Your Email Lists First](https://avidai.com/blog/donor-retention-email-list/) **Published:** May 7, 2025 **Author:** Avid Team **Excerpt:** Struggling with donor retention? Learn how hidden email suppressions cost gifts and follow a 5-step audit to re-engage supporters fast. **Content:** Most nonprofits don’t lose donors because their mission fades. They lose them because their emails do. [One of our clients](https://avidai.com/blog/luther-seminary/) found out that nearly half of their active donors (and 3/4 of lapsed ones) hadn’t clicked a single message in seven months. They discovered the culprit was a well-meaning HubSpot “suppress” checkbox. Removing that block and re-engaging those addresses ignited a **56% lift in retention and a 308% jump in reactivations** in just four months. If your own retention graph is sliding, your email list is the first place to dig. Here’s a step-by-step play, built on [Avid’s system-first philosophy](https://avidai.com/how-avid-works/), to find the leak, patch it, and turn silent donors back into supporters. ## **1. Spot the Silent Majority** ### **Pull the leading indicator** Lagging numbers ([year-end](https://avidai.com/blog/year-end-giving-stats-for-nonprofits/) retention) can’t save you today. Instead, generate a list of donors who **haven’t opened or clicked** in the last 90 days. If that list is more than 20% of your total donor emails, you have a visibility problem. [Avid](https://avidai.com/) surfaces this automatically in the [Scorecard](https://avidai.com/blog/customizing-the-fundraising-scorecard-to-work-for-you/), but you can export it from any ESP. ### **Ask: “Are they truly unreachable, or just un-targeted?”** In [Luther](https://avidai.com/blog/luther-seminary/)’s case, addresses were technically “deliverable,” yet a segmentation rule kept them off every send. Filtering errors, preference-center quirks, or stale suppression lists are common culprits. These are the kinds of issues that **never show up on your dashboard** but silently kill your [email performance](https://avidai.com/blog/nonprofit-email-marketing-statistics/) and retention. ## **2. Audit the List Logic (and Fix the Easy Stuff Fast)** Here’s what to look for (and what to do about it): **Quick Check****What to Look For****Fast Fix****Suppression Rules**Are donors excluded by default because they gave offline, opted out of *newsletters* but not *appeals*, or were marked “inactive” by an automation rule?Remove or narrow the rule; re-flag donors as “eligible”; run a re-engagement campaign.**Multiple CRMs / IDs**Does the same donor appear twice, one record subscribed, the other suppressed?Merge records so engagement in any channel keeps the address warm.**Preference Center**Do options confuse donors (e.g., “Unsubscribe from all” at top)?Rename buttons, reorder choices, and set a default “core updates” list that stays on.**Deliverability**Are bounces hard (dead inbox) or soft (temporary)?Purge hard bounces; retry soft bounces on next send.Time investment: < 1 day. Potential upside: thousands of addresses brought back into rotation. ## **3. Re-Engage with Value** ### **Reuse your best lead magnet** Luther didn’t create new creatives; they simply ran the same devotional ebook ads they use for acquisition and pointed them at the lapsed list through Facebook Custom Audiences. Cost? Just a few dollars a day. Result? Record reactivations. ### **Send a “You missed this” series** 1. **Hook:** Surface the resource (“Your 7-Day Devotional Is Waiting”). 2. **Context:** “We noticed you haven’t downloaded our most-requested guide yet.” 3. **Value:** Explain *why* it matters now (new stories, refreshed data, etc.). 4. **Soft CTA:** “Grab your copy—on us.” No guilt trip, no heavy ask, just relevance. ## **4. Automate the Safeguards** Manual uploads work once; systems keep you safe forever. [Avid](https://avidai.com/blog/fundraising-agency-in-the-cloud/)’s Impact Architecture pushes every new donor, lapse, or upgrade into the right Pathway automatically, so no checkbox can strand them again. Even if you’re not on [Avid](https://avidai.com/pricing/) yet, schedule a monthly script (or Zapier flow) that: - Re-imports CRM donor status to your ESP. - Flags anyone who clicks/opens back to “active”. - Drops the remainder into a re-engagement ad set ## **5. Measure What Moves** After 30 days, [track three metrics](https://www.donorsearch.net/resources/nonprofit-fundraising-metrics/): 1. **Re-engaged rate** – % of former non-clickers who opened/clicked. 2. **Reactivate rate** – % of lapsed donors who give again. 3. **List health delta** – Reduction in “inactive” segment size A single-digit lift here could compound into six- or seven-figure revenue over three years. For one organization, simply slowing the slide of donor retention rates forecasts to a $2.5 M increase over 3 years. ## **See Your Silent Donors and Bring Them Back with Avid** Retention woes aren’t a mystery, they’re often hiding in your ESP. Start with the audit, re-engage those emails, and watch the green arrows return. Want the shortcut? [**Connect your nonprofit CRM**](https://avidai.com/blog/avid-vs-nonprofit-crm-bi-tools/)**, ESP, and ad accounts to** [**Avid**](https://avidai.com/blog/avid-is-more-than-automation-tool/) and you’ll see your own silent-donor count (and how to fix it) in under an hour. [The old way was more tools](https://avidai.com/blog/fundraising-isnt-broken-but-it-is-stuck/). The new way is systems. When your system shows you who’s slipping, and re-routes them automatically, retention becomes a growth lever, not a headache. Ready to make that shift? [Book a demo](https://avidai.com/demo/) and see how [Avid](https://avidai.com/blog/built-for-fundraisers/) turns email silence into sustainable revenue, no new staff required. **Categories:** Nonprofit Consulting, Nonprofit Marketing --- ### [Fundraising Runs on Clarity, Not Just Data](https://avidai.com/blog/fundraising-runs-on-clarity-not-just-data/) **Published:** May 8, 2025 **Author:** Stephen Boudreau **Excerpt:** Fundraisers are drowning in data but starving for clarity. Discover what nonprofit teams actually need to move from overwhelm to confidence. **Content:** > “The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.” > > Hans Hofmann Early in our marriage, my wife and I observed a sacred weekly ritual we called Cheesecake Tuesday. Each Tuesday night, we’d claim our regular booth at The Cheesecake Factory—one of those massive, dimly-lit dining rooms that felt vaguely like eating inside a pharaoh’s tomb, if pharaohs had employed interior decorators from suburban Ohio. Every week unfolded the same: Maria, our regular waitress, would greet us warmly, sliding two enormous menus onto our table. Now, the Cheesecake Factory menu, if you’ve never had the pleasure, is not so much a menu as a spiral-bound existential crisis. Two hundred fifty items. Thirty-two pages. Advertisements. Yes, it has ads. Inside the menu. Sometimes, I swear it had appendices. Maria would smile knowingly. “Take your time,” she’d say, backing away gently, like someone who’s just handed you an explosive device. We’d spend the next ten minutes flipping through laminated pages with the intensity of nuclear physicists. My wife would glance up, hopeful but concerned: “Should we try something new tonight?” she’d ask. “Yes,” I’d declare bravely, “it’s definitely time for something new.” We’d study intently: SkinnyLicious salads, Tex-Mex Eggrolls, Thai Chicken Pasta, Bistro Shrimp Pasta—two pastas separated by approximately fifteen pages, perhaps for legal reasons. As we flipped deeper, confusion mounted. Maria, sensing panic, would drift back toward us cautiously. “Are we ready, or do we need another minute?” she’d ask gently. I’d glance at my wife, panic now fully set in. “Just one more minute, Maria,” I’d say apologetically, feeling like a failure at adulthood. But one minute became five. Five became fifteen. Other diners came and went, confidently ordering Cheeseburger Spring Rolls or Chicken Bellagio. We were paralyzed, caught in a menu vortex of our own making, drowning in possibilities. Eventually, after 20 agonizing minutes, we’d surrender. “I’ll have the turkey club,” I’d mumble weakly. “The chicken avocado sandwich,” my wife would say, equally defeated. Maria would scribble this down gently, without judgment. “So…the same as last week?” she’d confirm politely. “Yes,” we’d both say quietly, heads bowed slightly in shame. > It turns out that infinite choice wasn’t a gift. It was torture. More information, more options—didn’t clarify anything; it just increased our anxiety. We were drowning in options and starving for answers, overwhelmed by possibilities instead of empowered by them. Years later, when I talk with nonprofit fundraisers, I recognize that same panic in their eyes—the unmistakable dread of having more data than anyone could possibly use, more dashboards and reports than anyone could possibly want, but still feeling overwhelmed when it comes to deciding what to actually do next. ## Drowning in Data, Starving for Answers Fundraising today often feels like navigating the Cheesecake Factory menu: data-rich, clarity-poor, full of fancy distractions, and ultimately exhausting. Most fundraisers I’ve met in recent years share some variation of the same story. They’re not lacking information—quite the opposite. They’re swimming in donor data, awash in analytics dashboards, overwhelmed by colorful charts and AI-generated reports promising deep insights. But when the moment comes to actually act, to make a decision that will move their mission forward, they’re stuck. They’re me, on a Cheesecake Tuesday, staring blankly at page 17 and quietly wondering how so much information can somehow leave them less certain. > In the last few years, an entire industry has sprung up around the seductive promise that more data equals more clarity—that the answer to fundraising’s complexity is just another analytics dashboard away. But in practice, fundraisers are left exhausted, frustrated, and quietly mumbling their own version of, “Just give me the turkey club again”—because what they’ve actually received looks more like this: - **Generic, automated communications** that alienate donors instead of engaging them. Messages that lack warmth, authenticity, and the nuance that makes giving personal. - **AI-generated insights that offer no clear direction.** Fundraisers don’t need more dashboards showing vague trends—they need to know exactly what actions to prioritize today. - **Overly complex tools** that claim to streamline donor management but instead fragment the donor experience. Teams waste time juggling data from multiple platforms, struggling to piece together meaningful donor profiles. Because here’s the truth I learned from Maria and that massive menu: information isn’t clarity. More choices aren’t always empowering. Real clarity—the kind that leads to confident action—isn’t about more data; it’s about having the right insights at exactly the right time. ## Why Clarity Changes Everything What fundraisers actually need is simple: **clear, actionable insights.** They need a way to instantly cut through the noise, identify exactly which donors are most likely to give, and know precisely which outreach strategies will resonate best today. Imagine this reality for a fundraising team: - Instead of sifting through dozens of reports, they start their day by clearly seeing the five most important donor segments that deserve immediate attention—donors who need to be thanked, re-engaged, or cultivated further. - Rather than guessing what messages or campaigns might work, they have immediate access to proven fundraising playbooks that are data-driven, tested, and ready to execute. - Instead of spending hours analyzing data, fundraisers receive straightforward, prioritized guidance: *“Here’s exactly what you need to do next.”* This clarity isn’t theoretical—it’s practical and transformative. It’s the difference between guessing and knowing, between uncertainty and confidence. Teams with clear insights achieve higher donor retention, stronger campaigns, and reduced donor acquisition costs. That’s not innovation for innovation’s sake—it’s innovation that simplifies, empowers, and delivers real fundraising results. In other words, it’s what fundraising technology should always have been. ## Meet Avid: Clarity, Built for Fundraisers Avid isn’t just another platform promising vague analytics or automated email robots. Instead, think of it as your trusted partner: calm, clear, and focused—providing exactly the donor insights and actions you need to confidently move forward. Here’s what makes Avid fundamentally different: - **Clarity First, Always.** No dashboards just for the sake of dashboards, no graphs without a clear purpose. Avid surfaces only the critical donor insights you need each day—like who’s about to lapse, who’s ready to upgrade, or which segments urgently need engagement. - **Actionable Recommendations, Not Just Information.** Fundraisers using Avid don’t spend hours guessing what campaign to launch next. Avid provides clear, data-backed recommendations, giving teams immediate access to proven, ready-to-execute strategies. - **Personalization that Actually Feels Personal.** Avid doesn’t generate generic emails that erode donor trust. Instead, it empowers fundraisers to engage donors personally, at precisely the right moment, with the messages most likely to resonate. No guessing required. - **Built by Fundraisers, For Fundraisers.** Every feature of Avid is rooted in real fundraising experience—over 7,000 fundraising experiments, and data from hundreds of millions of donor interactions. We didn’t build another data tool. We built clarity itself, specifically for nonprofit fundraising. ## From Overwhelmed to Empowered When fundraisers finally have clarity, the results aren’t just incremental—they’re transformational. Organizations using Avid consistently see tangible outcomes: - **Lower donor acquisition costs. Fundraising teams know exactly where to invest their resources for maximum return, without wasting budget on uncertain strategies. - **Higher donor retention rates.** Fundraisers proactively identify at-risk donors and engage them meaningfully—deepening relationships instead of letting them quietly lapse. - **Greater fundraising ROI.** With clear, actionable guidance, teams launch smarter campaigns that resonate with the right donors, leading directly to increased giving. - **Reduced stress and greater confidence.** Perhaps most importantly, fundraisers no longer waste hours lost in data paralysis. They know exactly what steps to take, feel confident in their choices, and can finally refocus their energy on building donor relationships and advancing their mission. This is the reality nonprofits can—and should—experience every single day. Not complexity, not confusion, but clear, confident, actionable fundraising. Fundraising shouldn’t leave you overwhelmed by endless possibilities. It should feel clear, confident, and actionable—with a system that eliminates guesswork and shows you exactly what to do next. That’s fundraising clarity. And that’s exactly why we built Avid. Ready to skip the overwhelm and get straight to clarity? [Let’s talk.](https://avidai.com/demo/) **Categories:** Fundraising Strategy --- ### [Your Lapsed Donors Are Still Listening—Here’s How to Win Them Back](https://avidai.com/blog/how-to-win-back-lapsed-donors/) **Published:** May 7, 2025 **Author:** Avid Team **Excerpt:** Lapsed donors aren’t cold leads. Learn how to re-engage them using existing content, smart segmentation, and a system that makes reactivation automatic. **Content:** Lapsed donors aren’t strangers. Stop marketing to them like they are. Most nonprofits treat donor reactivation as if they’re starting from scratch; using the same emails, ads, and appeals they’d send to someone who’s never given before. But here’s the truth: **Reactivating a lapsed donor is 5x more likely to succeed than acquiring a brand new one when you treat them like they’ve been here before.** In a recent [live session hosted by Avid and NextAfter](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLD4RA4iXb0), the team shared how one organization flipped its reactivation rates by 308% *without* new content, *without* new tools, and *without* a big spend. Here’s what they did and how you can do the same. ## **The Problem: You’re Ignoring Your Warmest Leads** Lapsed donors aren’t anonymous prospects. They already said yes once. They’ve shown belief in your mission. They may have even donated more than once. But when they go silent, most teams toss them into the **cold acquisition funnel**: - Generic appeals. - One-size-fits-all ads. - Broad segmentation (or none at all). And the results are exactly what you’d expect: *flat reactivation, low engagement, and wasted ad spend.* ## **The Shift: Think “Re-Engagement,” Not “Acquisition”** When [Luther Seminary](https://avidai.com/blog/luther-seminary/) saw its donor reactivation drop by 12%, the team looked deeper. They discovered that **three-quarters of their lapsed donors hadn’t clicked an email in over 7 months**. But these weren’t unreachable addresses, they were just being ignored. What changed the game? Instead of building new reactivation campaigns from scratch, they reused the same high-performing lead magnet ads they were already running to attract new donors, and pointed them at their lapsed file. Same ads. Same creative. Different targeting. The result? **A 308% increase in online donor reactivation, their best in five years.** ## **Relevance > Reminders: The Science Behind Reactivation** Lapsed donors already know your brand. What they need isn’t more information, they need **relevance**. When you target them with content-rich offers (devotionals, ebooks, video series), you’re not just asking for a gift, what you’re really doing is **inviting them back in**. And when those offers match what attracted them the first time? It feels personal, even if it’s automated. ## **How to Reactivate Lapsed Donors Strategically** Here’s the 4-step play Avid-powered organizations use to win back donors without guesswork: ### **1. Segment Your Lapsed Donors Intelligently** Don’t just create one big “lapsed” list. Break it down by: - Time since last gift (e.g. 6–12 months, 12–24 months). - Last gift type (campaign, monthly, event). - Content they previously engaged with. Tools like [Avid Pathways](https://avidai.com/how-avid-works/) do this automatically, but you can start manually with any clean CRM + ESP setup. ### **2. Use Your Highest-Performing Lead Magnet. Yes, Again** Take the ebook, video series, or devotional that works best for new donors and **repurpose it for lapsed donors.** You don’t need to say “We miss you.” You don’t need to explain the lapse. Just deliver value that speaks to why they gave in the first place. ### **3. Build a Multi-Channel Touchpoint Journey** [Email alone](https://avidai.com/blog/nonprofit-email-marketing-statistics/) won’t cut it, especially if your lapsed list has gone cold. Run lightweight Facebook ad campaigns targeting: - Email addresses of lapsed donors. - Lookalikes based on engaged segments. - Former reactivation responders. With [Avid](https://avidai.com/blog/avid-is-more-than-automation-tool/), this sync happens automatically. But even with a manual upload, you can start today for just a few dollars per day. ### **4. Automate Reactivation with Smart, Self-Cleaning Lists** The problem with most reactivation campaigns? They’re **one-off pushes.** When you integrate your [donor CRM](https://avidai.com/blog/avid-vs-nonprofit-crm-bi-tools/), ESP, and ad platforms into [a central system](https://avidai.com/blog/customizing-the-fundraising-scorecard-to-work-for-you/) (like Avid), you can: - Auto-sync reactivation lists daily. - Exclude donors as soon as they reactivate. - Score future reactivation opportunities based on engagement signals. - Forecast how reactivation lifts affect long-term revenue. That’s how you turn a moment into momentum. ## **Fewer Cold Leads. More Donor Wins. Lower Costs** When you stop treating lapsed donors like strangers, you: - Reduce cost-per-donor vs. new acquisition. - Increase email click-through and conversion rates. - Boost retention, lifetime value, and forecasting accuracy. - Reclaim missed revenue without adding staff or tech debt. And when that system runs continuously? Reactivation becomes a **growth lever**, not just a one-time rescue mission. ## **Start with the Donors Who Are Most Likely to Return** If your donor reactivation rate is trending down, it’s not a dead end. It’s a signal and an opportunity. - Want to know how many of your lapsed donors are still reachable? - Want to identify which offers they’re most likely to re-engage with? - Want to set up a smart system to win them back automatically? You can do all of that today with Avid. [Book a demo here.](https://avidai.com/demo/) **Categories:** Fundraising Strategy, Nonprofit Marketing --- ### [7 New Rules for Smarter Fundraising Teams](https://avidai.com/blog/new-rules-for-smarter-fundraising/) **Published:** May 6, 2025 **Author:** Avid Team **Excerpt:** Stop reacting and start forecasting. Learn 7 modern rules for nonprofit fundraising teams—from smarter systems to reactivation strategies that actually work. **Content:** [Fundraising isn’t broken](https://avidai.com/blog/fundraising-isnt-broken-but-it-is-stuck/), it’s just disconnected. If you lead a nonprofit development team today, you’re likely doing more than ever: - More campaigns. - More tools. - More donor segments. - More reporting. And yet, the big challenges persist: Donor retention is down. Reactivation is sluggish. Revenue is unpredictable. What gives? The truth is, most fundraising teams aren’t struggling because of poor strategy or weak storytelling. They’re struggling because their **systems don’t support decision-making**. That’s why we created [Avid](https://avidai.com/how-avid-works/). And it’s why the most effective teams we work with are moving from disconnected tactics to unified, system-first fundraising. Here are 7 new rules for smarter fundraising teams each rooted in what we’ve seen across 100+ nonprofits using [Avid](https://avidai.com/blog/fundraising-agency-in-the-cloud/). ## **Rule 1: Start Leading with Forecasts, Not History** Year-end reports only tell you what already happened. They don’t help you course-correct when it counts. Modern fundraising teams are done steering by rearview mirror. The smarter approach? Live forecasts that reveal donor trends before they affect revenue. [Avid’s Scorecard](https://avidai.com/blog/customizing-the-fundraising-scorecard-to-work-for-you/) shows where retention and reactivation are headed and lets you model the impact of small changes in real time. It’s not guesswork. It’s strategic visibility. ## **Rule 2: Never Treat Lapsed Donors Like Strangers** When a donor stops giving, most teams treat it like a dead end, or worse, they throw that person into a cold acquisition campaign with messaging that assumes zero context. But lapsed donors aren’t new. They’ve already raised their hand once. And that makes them far more likely to respond again (if you speak to what mattered to them in the first place). You don’t need to invent a new journey to bring donors back. You just need a system that knows who they are, when they disengaged, and how to reach them with something that still feels familiar and valuable. ## **Rule 3: Don’t Add Tools. Use a System That Works Together** Your CRM knows your donor’s gift history. Your email platform tracks engagement. Your ads drive action. But none of these tools share a brain or a strategy. That’s where most fundraising inefficiency lives. Avid solves this by connecting your systems so they behave like one: sharing data, surfacing insights, and triggering coordinated action across platforms without manual effort. You don’t need more tools. You need **connected tools**. [Avid doesn’t replace your CRM](https://avidai.com/blog/avid-vs-nonprofit-crm-bi-tools/), it makes it smarter, faster, and proactive. ## **Rule 4: Use Benchmarks That Actually Matter Right Now** Stale benchmarks give you false confidence or unwarranted panic. What matters isn’t how your retention rate compared to last year’s sector average, it’s how it stacks up today. [Avid’s Benchmarks](https://avidai.com/benchmarks/) draws from 100+ connected nonprofits, refreshed daily, so you’re never making decisions in a vacuum. You don’t need generalizations. You need context and you need it now. ## **Rule 5: Reports That Don’t Recommend Action Are a Waste of Time** Reporting isn’t the goal. [Decision-making is.](https://avidai.com/blog/you-have-the-data-now-what/) Most fundraising reports end in open-ended discussions. But high-performing teams expect their dashboards to do more than describe performance. **They want direction.** [Avid](https://avidai.com/)’s reporting shows you what happened and prescribes what to do next. That includes who to target, what to prioritize, and how much revenue is on the line if you don’t. ## **Rule 6: Donor Churn Is Predictable If You Know What to Watch** You rarely “lose” donors overnight. Their email clicks drop off. Their giving cadence slows. Their upgrade potential stalls. The signals are there, you just have to connect them. **Avid** surfaces these patterns as they unfold, not months later in a quarterly recap. That gives your team the ability to act before donors disappear from your file entirely. ## **Rule 7: Growth Doesn’t Require More People, Just Better Timing** Hiring isn’t always the answer. Especially if the goal is sustainable, scalable growth. Smarter teams scale impact by automating donor journeys: reactivation flows, upgrade nudges, behavior-based outreach. With **Avid**, you can deploy the right segments at the right time into your automations and campaigns. That way you can spend more time on strategy, not list-building or guesswork. ## **Smarter Fundraising Isn’t About Doing More. It’s About Doing the Right Things** If your team is buried in tools, dashboards, or campaign plans but still struggling to grow, the issue isn’t your effort, it’s your infrastructure.. You don’t need another tool. [You need a system.](https://avidai.com/blog/fundraising-agency-in-the-cloud/) - One that connects your platforms. - Forecasts your outcomes. - Surfaces real opportunities. - And guides your next best step, automatically. That’s what [Avid](https://avidai.com/pricing/) was built to do. [Book a demo](https://avidai.com/demo/) to see how Avid helps fundraising teams work smarter. **Categories:** Fundraising Strategy, Nonprofit Marketing --- ### [Donor Loss Isn’t Random. Here’s What to Watch For](https://avidai.com/blog/donor-disengagement-signs/) **Published:** May 6, 2025 **Author:** Avid Team **Excerpt:** Donor loss isn’t sudden. It’s signaled. Learn what early signs predict donor lapse—and how to act fast with Avid’s real-time early warning system. **Content:** Retention drops aren’t a mystery. They’re a message. Nonprofit leaders often describe donor loss like it’s the weather; unexpected, uncontrollable, and impossible to predict. One day a donor gives. The next, they’re gone. But what if donor loss isn’t random at all? In [our recent webinar](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLD4RA4iXb0), we explored how real-time [donor data](https://avidai.com/blog/collecting-nonprofit-data-isnt-enough/), especially when unified across *systems*, tells a very different story. When you connect the right signals, donor lapses stop being surprises and start becoming opportunities. [**Donor loss isn’t sudden**](https://avidai.com/blog/fundraising-isnt-broken-but-it-is-stuck/)**. It’s signaled. And you can spot it before it happens.** Here’s what to look for and how smart nonprofits are acting early to prevent revenue decline. ## **The Early Signs of Donor Disengagement** ### **1. Low Click Activity Across Email Touchpoints** You’re emailing donors. But are they responding? In the [Avid platform](https://avidai.com/how-avid-works/), we often see that donors who eventually lapse begin disengaging *months* before their last gift. The clearest early warning? **A sharp drop in email clicks.** At [Luther Seminary](https://avidai.com/blog/luther-seminary/), over 50% of existing donors, and nearly 75% of lapsed donors, hadn’t clicked a single email in over 7 months. That’s not bad luck. That’s a fixable engagement breakdown. Watch for donors who stop clicking but haven’t unsubscribed. They’re fading, not gone. ### **2. Downward Gift Velocity** Donor value rarely falls off a cliff, it **slows down first**. A donor who gives quarterly suddenly shifts to once per year. A consistent $250 supporter sends just $50 this time. [Avid’s Scorecard](https://avidai.com/blog/customizing-the-fundraising-scorecard-to-work-for-you/) can track these patterns as they happen. It can identify donors who slow their gift cadence, reduce their average gift size, and downgrade their giving: all signs that a donor may be drifting. Watch for gift timing delays, skipped pledges, or decreasing gift sizes. They’re signals of decreased commitment, not just financial stress. ### **3. Missed Upgrade Opportunities** A quiet donor might not be a lost one, they might be waiting to be asked. One of the most overlooked signals that a donor may lapse is one who remains active but **never progresses**. No personal ask. No mid-level outreach. No upgrade trigger. These donors often drift, not because they’re dissatisfied, but because their giving wasn’t deepened when it could’ve been. [Avid](https://avidai.com/blog/fundraising-agency-in-the-cloud/) can flag upgrade-ready donors based on behavior, giving history, and peer benchmarks. If those signals are ignored, the donor doesn’t level up—they check out. Watch for donors who match upgrade patterns but haven’t received a tailored donation ask. That’s revenue *and* retention at risk. ## **When You Can See It Coming, You Can Stop It** Here’s how [Luther Seminary](https://avidai.com/blog/luther-seminary/) turned insight into action. They: - [Used Avid](https://avidai.com/blog/how-ai-is-powering-fundraisers/) to identify lapsed and at-risk donors based on [engagement data](https://avidai.com/blog/you-have-the-data-now-what/). - Synced those segments into Facebook ad campaigns and email flows. - Reused high-performing content (like devotionals) to reconnect donors. - Turned off auto-suppressions that were hiding donor addresses in HubSpot **The result?** - Reactivation jumped **308%.** - Retention improved **56%.** - Forecasted revenue loss flipped into net growth. All because they stopped guessing and started watching the right signals. ## **What to Do Next: Build Your Early Warning System** If you want to stop donor loss before it starts, you need: - **Unified data** [across CRM](https://avidai.com/blog/avid-vs-nonprofit-crm-bi-tools/), email, and ads. - **Live retention forecasting** (not static reports). - [**Automated alerts**](https://avidai.com/blog/avid-is-more-than-automation-tool/) when key metrics drop. - **Next-best-action recommendations** built into your system That’s exactly [what Avid delivers](https://avidai.com/blog/built-for-fundraisers/). Our platform doesn’t just show you what’s happened. It shows you *what’s likely to happen next* and helps you act before revenue walks out the door. **Don’t Let Donors Slip Away Silently** Every lost donor sends signals first. You just need to see them in time. Want to know who’s fading from your file right now? Want to stop the next retention dip before it costs you? You can with Avid. [Book a demo here.](https://avidai.com/demo/) **Categories:** Fundraising Strategy, Nonprofit Marketing --- ### [Fundraising Dashboards Are Lying to You—Here’s the Metric That Really Matters](https://avidai.com/blog/donor-retention-forecast-metric/) **Published:** May 6, 2025 **Author:** Avid Team **Excerpt:** Most nonprofit dashboards look helpful—but hide real risks. Learn which fundraising metric actually matters and how to forecast results in real time. **Content:** You don’t need more reports. You need a better compass. Most nonprofit dashboards look helpful. They show donor counts, year-to-date revenue, maybe even a green arrow or two. But here’s the problem: **those metrics are lagging**. They tell you what already happened, **not what’s coming**, and definitely not what to do next. In a recent [webinar hosted by Avid and NextAfter](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLD4RA4iXb0), the team exposed how traditional fundraising dashboards can leave you flying blind, especially when donor retention starts to slide. To course-correct, [you don’t need more data](https://avidai.com/blog/collecting-nonprofit-data-isnt-enough/). You need the *right* metric. ## **The Fundraising Metric That Matters: *Real-Time Donor Retention Forecasting*** When [retention drops](https://avidai.com/blog/fundraising-isnt-broken-but-it-is-stuck/), most organizations don’t notice until revenue is already down. That’s because they’re only looking at **retrospective retention rates**, a number frozen in time after year-end close. The metric that actually moves the needle? **Real-time donor retention forecasting.** This metric: - Shows **where your retention rate is headed**, not just where it was. - Predicts the **donor revenue at risk** over 12 to 36 months. - Helps you simulate the impact of small improvements. - Empowers you to act *while there’s still time* to fix it. In [Avid](https://avidai.com/how-avid-works/), this metric is always available. In traditional dashboards, it’s buried or invisible. ## **What Happens When You Look Ahead Instead of Back** Here’s a real life example from the [Avid](https://avidai.com/blog/fundraising-agency-in-the-cloud/) Scorecard: - An organization noticed their current trends projected a **$2.1 million loss** over three years due to dropping retention and reactivation rates. - But when they modeled modest changes, slowing reactivation decline from –34% to –20%, and nudging retention just a few points upward, they flipped that projection to a **$2.5 million increase.** Same staff. Same tools. Just better insight, and earlier action. ## **Why Most Dashboards Fail You** Here’s the honest truth: if you’re only reviewing fundraising performance monthly or quarterly, **you’re not measuring impact, you’re measuring damage**. Lagging indicators (like year-end revenue or quarterly donor counts) tell you where you’ve been. But by the time they reveal a problem, it’s already too late to do something about it. Let’s say your Q2 report shows a 6% drop in retention. By the time that number reaches your dashboard: - Your top [email prospects](https://avidai.com/blog/nonprofit-email-marketing-statistics/) have gone cold. - Your mid-level pipeline is thinning. - Your reactivation window is shrinking. - Your revenue forecast is off, and no one can say why. These metrics don’t help you lead. They force you to react. ### **What Smarter Fundraising Systems Do Instead** Avid’s Scorecard flips the model: Instead of lagging indicators, it shows you **what’s happening now** and **what will happen next** if no action is taken. It’s the difference between steering and skidding. **Traditional Dashboards****Avid’s Real-Time Scorecard**Retrospective (last month/quarter).Predictive (next 12–36 months).Manual, surface-level metrics.Unified, daily-updated forecasts.Fragmented by tool or channel.Connected view across email, ads, CRM.Show what happened.Show what’s at risk, and how to fix it.## **So, How Can Nonprofits Forecast Retention in Real Time?** In [Avid](https://avidai.com/pricing/), retention forecasting is built into your daily workflow. But even without the platform, you can start building the muscle by: 1. **Mapping your current donor lapse rate.** 2. **Segmenting by cohort** (new donors, 2nd years, key multi-years, reactivated). 3. **Tracking month-over-month retention changes.** 4. **Estimating donor value loss over 6–12 months.** 5. **Modeling impact of re-engagement efforts** (cultivation campaigns, reactivation ads, etc.). When your decisions are informed by these projections, not just static reports, you stop reacting and start steering. ## **What Retention Forecasting Made Possible for Luther Seminary** In the same webinar, Ardee Coolidge from NextAfter shared how [Luther Seminary](https://avidai.com/blog/luther-seminary/) used Avid’s insights to turn around retention and reactivation in just a few months. Here’s what they did: - Identified a hidden email suppression rule in HubSpot. - Reactivated lapsed donors using previously created acquisition ads. - Pushed segmented audiences to Facebook via Avid Pathways. The results: - **308% increase in donor reactivation.** - **56% improvement in donor retention.** - **Most successful digital reactivation campaign in five years.** These wins were the result of seeing **where things were headed**, not just where they had been. ## **Flip the Forecast Without Adding a Single Tool** You don’t need to overhaul your tech stack. [Avid](https://avidai.com/blog/avid-is-more-than-automation-tool/) doesn’t [replace your CRM](https://avidai.com/blog/avid-vs-nonprofit-crm-bi-tools/), email tool, or ad platform. It **connects them** and transforms your scattered tools into a coordinated, proactive fundraising system. We call it **Impact Architecture**: a way to [unify your data](https://avidai.com/blog/you-have-the-data-now-what/), spotlight what’s slipping, and trigger smart action the moment it’s needed. That’s how you turn insights into impact and dashboards into decisions. ## **See What Your Dashboard Isn’t Telling You With Avid** Retention forecasting isn’t a fancy, nice-to-have feature. It’s the **metric that matters most** if you want sustainable giving and long-term mission impact. - Want to know how much revenue you’re on track to lose or gain? - Want to see your real-time reactivation rate compared to your peers? - Want to identify the single lever that will move your forecast this year? **You can do that today with Avid. It shows what your dashboard never will.** The [Fundraising Scorecard](https://avidai.com/blog/customizing-the-fundraising-scorecard-to-work-for-you/) (part of the Avid system) provides: - A live snapshot of your retention rate. - A projection of how it will trend based on current donor behavior. - A calculated forecast of revenue at risk (or potential gain) over time. - The ability to simulate outcomes (e.g. what if reactivation improves 10%?). Interested in knowing more? [Book a demo of Avid here.](https://avidai.com/demo/) **Categories:** Fundraising Strategy --- ### [You Have the Data. Now What?](https://avidai.com/blog/you-have-the-data-now-what/) **Published:** April 30, 2025 **Author:** Stephen Boudreau **Excerpt:** If you’ve ever stared at a dashboard and thought, “Now what?”—this one’s for you. **Content:** > “In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is.” > > Yogi Berra A few weeks ago, I bought a pair of smart speakers for my office. The goal was simple: background music. A little ambient vibe while I worked. Nothing fancy—just music that made the room feel like it had its act together. Unfortunately, the setup spiral that followed was so unnecessarily complex, I briefly considered just humming to myself indefinitely. There were multiple apps involved. One for the speaker, one for the music service, and one that somehow already needed a software update. The speaker kept asking me questions. *“Assign to a room?”* Sure. *“Link voice profile?”* Fine. *“Would you like to optimize for spatial audio?”* Spatial audio? This felt a bit presumptuous, considering we hadn’t even gotten *regular* audio working yet. By the end of it, the speakers were technically online. Music was technically playing. But it was echoing softly from the hallway, through a different speaker I didn’t realize I’d activated. And somehow, even though I was the one who set them up…I was no longer in control. ## It shouldn’t feel this hard Honestly? That’s what a lot of fundraising tech feels like right now. We’ve got tools. We’ve got dashboards. We’ve got more donor data than anyone knows what to do with. And yet, somehow, it still feels harder than it should be to raise money and stay sane. I hear it in all kinds of ways: *“Our data’s everywhere, but we still end up making gut decisions.” “We’re collecting great info, but connecting the dots feels impossible.” “I honestly don’t even trust our data most days. It always feels a little incomplete.”* These are real challenges—the kind that impact both the big picture and the day-to-day. And they serve as an important reminder: the work is too important to keep stitching together disconnected tools that weren’t built to support the whole. ## What if the problem isn’t you? If you’ve ever looked around and thought, *“Maybe I’m the one doing it wrong”*—you’re not alone. Fundraising might not be broken—but it can sure feel that way sometimes. And it’s not hard to see why. The intention is good: give fundraisers better information so they can make better decisions. But the reality is often a maze of disconnected tools, dozens of dashboards, and enough segmentation logic to make a statistician cry. I’ve talked to so many fundraisers who feel like they’re doing everything right—pulling reports, building lists, trying to make the tools work together—and yet still asking, *“Why do I still feel stuck?”* Not because they’re not doing enough. But because the tools keep surfacing more and more *stuff*… without surfacing a clear path forward. ## The promise vs the reality You’ve seen the language — in product pages, sales decks, and onboarding emails: Targeted. Personalized. Automated. Optimized. Data-driven. AI-powered. 😵‍💫😵‍💫😵‍💫 At a certain point, it all starts to sound like noise. (And honestly? If you’ve read our site, you’ll spot those terms here too.) It’s a great promise—and on a slide deck, it looks effortless. But in the real world? Getting from where you are to that magical, optimized future often feels impossible. Disconnected platforms. Overlapping features. Tools that were meant to simplify things—but sometimes just shift the complexity around. So even with all the “right” tools in place, it can still feel hard to make real progress. And that shows up in the day-to-day: - Emails that use someone’s name, but still feel like a stranger wrote them. - Campaigns that take three platforms to launch—and still go out late. - Dashboards that surface insights, but not priorities. - Follow-ups that technically happen, but don’t really land. This isn’t about doing things wrong. It’s about doing too much, with too little support. It’s that most tools weren’t designed to carry the weight fundraisers are asked to hold. And when that’s the gap, it’s not just frustrating. It’s exhausting. ## This is the shift But what if there *was* a system designed to carry the weight? Not a tool that makes more noise. Not another inbox of insights. But something built by people who’ve sat in the fundraiser’s seat—and knew there had to be a better way to do this. Avid isn’t just fundraising software that uses AI. It’s shaped by how real fundraising actually happens. It’s been informed by 8,000+ experiments, 650 million donor interactions, and the very real day-to-day of teams trying to hit goals, grow relationships, and do more with less. It doesn’t replace fundraisers. It backs them up. It doesn’t promise magic. It delivers momentum. It helps you see clearly, act quickly, and launch campaigns that are ready when you are—across email, ads, web, and more. Avid helps in the ways that actually matter. And that can change everything about how you work. For the better. ## Here’s what Avid actually does Avid was built because we saw what fundraisers were up against: tech that gave them more to manage, not more to move with. So we flipped the order. Instead of surfacing more data, Avid surfaces the next move. Instead of giving you blank slates, it gives you ready-to-run campaigns—tailored to your donors, your goals, your timing. It connects your tools. It syncs your data. It identifies the highest-impact opportunities—then builds the emails, ads, and assets to reach them. All you have to do is hit launch. Or make a tweak. Or maybe—for the first time in a long time—actually take a day off without wondering what’s falling through the cracks. ## The way tech should feel Fundraising is already hard work. The tools shouldn’t make it harder. They should help you get to the good part faster—the part where you know what matters, who to reach, and what to say. That’s the system we’re building with Avid: One that supports your strategy, not just your storage. One that helps you focus less on managing workflows and more on making meaningful progress. If you’ve ever stared at a dashboard and thought, “Now what?”…you’re not alone. You just haven’t met Avid yet. 👉 [Book a demo](https://avidai.com/demo/) 👇 **See the system in action** **Categories:** Fundraising Strategy --- ### [Why Avid Isn’t Just Automation—It’s the System Fundraisers Have Been Waiting For](https://avidai.com/blog/avid-is-more-than-automation-tool/) **Published:** April 22, 2025 **Author:** Avid Team **Excerpt:** ​Avid isn't just another automation tool—it's your AI-powered fundraising strategist, unifying data, adapting in real time, and driving smarter campaigns.​ **Content:** If automation alone was the answer, we wouldn’t still be guessing ***“We built the workflow. We launched the campaign. And… we’re still behind.”*** Sound familiar? If you’ve ever set up automated donor journeys, triggered thank-you emails, and still ended up manually pulling reports and guessing what to do next, you already know: **Automation alone doesn’t *solve* the real problem.** Because the real problem isn’t speed. It’s strategy. Fundraisers need systems that allow them to do the *right* things at the *right* time. Automation saves time. But it doesn’t tell you where to focus. It doesn’t adapt to your donors. It doesn’t *think*. That’s the gap [Avid](https://avidai.com/how-avid-works/) was built to close. **Automation executes. Avid *decides*, then executes.** ## **Most Tools Automate Tasks. Avid Automates Strategy.** There are dozens of automation tools built for nonprofits: - Email platforms that send based on triggers. - Ad platforms that retarget. - CRMs that move contacts through stages. They’re helpful. But they’re all **reactive**. They only do what you tell them to do based on rules you set manually. [**Avid**](https://avidai.com/blog/built-for-fundraisers/) **is different.** It doesn’t wait for rigid instructions to act. It interprets live donor signals and moves quickly, always guided by your strategy, [AI-powered playbooks](https://avidai.com/ai-powered-playbooks/), and always under your control. Where most automation is static and rules-based, Avid is dynamic, adaptive, and strategy-driven. ### **This Isn’t Just Better Execution. It’s a New Operating Model.** Most automation tools were built to help teams move faster. **Avid,** [**the first fundraising agency in the cloud**](https://avidai.com/blog/fundraising-agency-in-the-cloud/)**, was built to help teams move *smarter*.** [The real bottleneck in fundraising](https://avidai.com/blog/fundraising-isnt-broken-but-it-is-stuck/) isn’t slow execution, it’s: - Fragmented data. - Static donor journeys. - Manual strategy pivots. - Missed opportunities. Avid replaces the patchwork with a **connected, AI-powered fundraising system** that thinks, adapts, and performs, automatically. ## **What Avid Does That Automation Tools Don’t** Here’s where the difference becomes crystal clear. **Most automation tools:** - Pull lists from your CRM. - Trigger actions based on fixed rules. - Send the same messages to the same segments until you update them. **Avid, on the other hand:** - [**Aggregates and unifies your data**](https://avidai.com/blog/collecting-nonprofit-data-isnt-enough/) across tools like Salesforce, Mailchimp, Classy, Meta Ads, and others. - **Surfaces high-priority opportunities** daily based on real-time behavior. - **Launches campaigns automatically** using proven, AI-powered playbooks. - **Adapts as it learns**, updating timing, segments, and tactics based on what’s working. Think of Avid less like another app and more like a strategist, analyst, and campaign manager that runs inside your stack. And the best part? You don’t have to replace anything. Avid plugs into your stack and makes it smarter. ## **Automation Executes. Avid Orchestrates.** Here’s an example. Let’s say a donor gives $100 today and opens your next three emails but doesn’t click or give again. **If you’re using automation:** They’re probably getting dropped into a fixed series. You might not notice they’ve disengaged until it’s too late. No one flags it. Nothing adapts. **If you’re using Avid:** It notices the engagement drop-off. It flags the donor as at-risk. It triggers a retention playbook (maybe an impact story, maybe a call from a major gifts officer) based on what’s worked for similar donors in the past. You didn’t set the rule. Avid saw the signal, matched it to a proven playbook, and launched the right response automatically. This is more than automations. This is an orchestrated response, triggered by **insight**, powered by **action**. **Success Story:** Discover how [Bible League Canada (BLC) saw a 20% reduction in cost per donor with Avid](https://avidai.com/blog/bible-league-canada/) here. ## **So… Is Avid an Automation Tool?** Automation is **just one part of what Avid does.** Powered by **Impact Architecture**, Avid’s real-time intelligence engine: - [Connects your data.](https://avidai.com/always-on-data-sync/) - Interprets signals. - Matches them to [pre-built, tested strategies](https://avidai.com/ai-powered-playbooks/). - Executes across your existing platforms. And it gets smarter every time you use it. [It sits on top of your CRM](https://avidai.com/blog/avid-vs-nonprofit-crm-bi-tools/), connects with your email platform, your ad channels, your donation processor, and turns all those tools into a unified, intelligent fundraising system. [Avid connects to:](https://avidai.com/integrations/) - Salesforce, Virtuous, Bloomerang, DonorPerfect. - Mailchimp, HubSpot, Outlook. - Google Ads, Meta Ads. - Classy, Givebutter, and more. And it doesn’t stop at integration. **Avid drives execution across your entire stack.** You don’t have to rip and replace anything. It just makes what you already have work *together.* ## **You Don’t Need More Automations. You Need a System.** Automation tools are great at doing what you tell them to. But what modern fundraising teams need is a system that can: - **Interpret complex data** in real time. - **Prioritize outreach** dynamically. - **Drive action across multiple channels.** - **Adapt continuously** as donor behavior shifts. That’s infrastructure. That’s a system. [**That’s Avid.**](https://avidai.com/for-fundraisers/) ## **Automation Alone Doesn’t Build Momentum. Avid’s Fundraising Intelligence Does.** If you’ve outgrown fixed workflows, static journeys, and disconnected tools, you’re not falling behind. You’re just ready for something smarter. Avid isn’t another automation platform. It’s your [fundraising intelligence](https://avidai.com/blog/donor-intelligence/) engine, designed to think, learn, and act like your best team would. **Avid isn’t just automation. It’s orchestration,** [**powered by AI**](https://avidai.com/blog/how-ai-is-powering-fundraisers/) **and fundraising intelligence.** ## **Want to See What Avid Actually Looks Like?** [Avid](https://avidai.com/pricing/) is the first fundraising system built to: - Think like your best strategist. - Act like your most efficient campaign manager. - Scale like the team you wish you had. It plugs into your existing tools. It adapts in real time. And it works automatically. **Book a demo** and see how Avid turns your data into momentum. **Categories:** Nonprofit Marketing --- ### [How Nonprofit Marketing Agencies Use Avid to Deliver Smarter Fundraising Results for Their Clients](https://avidai.com/blog/avid-for-nonprofit-agencies/) **Published:** April 23, 2025 **Author:** Avid Team **Excerpt:** ​Explore how Avid empowers nonprofit agencies with AI-driven tools to streamline operations, amplify impact, and foster deeper community engagement. **Content:** Nonprofit marketing agencies are under more pressure than ever. You’re expected to run more campaigns, track more data, prove ROI faster, and do it all for more clients, often with the same-sized team. But growth brings friction: - Disconnected tools. - Siloed client data. - Manual segmentation. - Reporting that eats up hours. - Smart strategies that stall at execution. You’re not short on ideas. You’re short on time, systems, and infrastructure that can keep up. **That’s where** [**Avid**](https://avidai.com/how-avid-works/) **comes in.** Avid is the [fundraising intelligence system](https://avidai.com/fundraising-intelligence/) agencies use to streamline execution, deliver results faster, and scale their impact across clients, without scaling complexity. ## **What Exactly is Avid?** Avid is a [fundraising intelligence](https://avidai.com/blog/donor-intelligence/) platform built specifically for nonprofit fundraising, and designed to support strategy, execution, and reporting in one place. [It’s not a CRM](https://avidai.com/blog/avid-vs-nonprofit-crm-bi-tools/), marketing automation tool, or BI dashboard. It’s a *system* that: - [Connects with your clients’ existing tools](https://avidai.com/integrations/) (CRMs, email platforms, donation tools, ad accounts). - [Unifies their donor data.](https://avidai.com/blog/collecting-nonprofit-data-isnt-enough/) - Identifies key fundraising opportunities. - Matches them with pre-tested, AI-powered campaign playbooks. - Launches campaigns automatically across email, ads, and more, - Tracks results and adapts in real time. You bring the strategy. **Avid** handles segmentation, orchestration, and performance reporting, at scale. No need to replace the platforms your clients already use. Avid just makes them work together and work smarter. ## **Avid Doesn’t Compete With Nonprofit Agencies—It Scales Them.** Let’s be clear: Avid isn’t here to replace your nonprofit agency. It’s built to support the work you already do and **eliminate the manual, time-consuming parts that slow you down.** While your team focuses on strategy, creative, and client relationships, **Avid runs in the background**: - Unifying data. - Surfacing high-priority opportunities. - Launching campaigns. - And automatically reporting performance. Avid helps you do more with fewer delays, fewer bottlenecks, and fewer spreadsheets. ## **Why Growing Nonprofit Marketing Agencies Turn to Avid** As nonprofit agencies grow, so do the operational headaches: - You’re rebuilding the same campaign workflows for different clients. - You’re pulling lists and updating segments manually. - You’re spending hours preparing reports to show clients what worked. - Your tools don’t sync, so everything requires a workaround. - Your team is stretched and new hires are expensive. These are infrastructure problems. And Avid was built to solve them. Avid helps agencies move faster, not by working harder, but by **replacing the repetitive, manual parts of campaign execution** with a *system* that’s already built to do them. ## **What Nonprofit Agencies Can Do With Avid** ### **1. Launch Campaigns in Minutes, Not Weeks** Avid identifies fundraising opportunities and instantly matches them to [ready-to-run campaign playbooks](https://avidai.com/ai-powered-playbooks/). You review, approve, and launch, with no need to start from scratch. ### **2. Run Multi-Channel Journeys Without Manual Work** Avid syncs your clients’ CRMs, email tools, and ad platforms so each campaign runs across every relevant channel, without you needing to manage each step manually. ### **3. Get Reporting Ready Before Your Client Even Asks** Avid automatically tracks campaign performance and generates client-ready reports. No more piecing together data from three systems the night before a check-in. ### **4. Automate Without Losing Strategic Control** You define the strategy. Avid executes it—handling segmentation, timing, delivery, and optimization. You stay in charge. Avid handles the execution. ### **5. Serve More Clients Without Growing Your Team** Avid helps one strategist manage campaigns across dozens of clients, cutting down hours of repetitive work and giving your team back time to focus on what matters. ## **What Makes Avid Different** Avid isn’t another tool agencies need to learn. It’s a system built to make your entire operation more efficient. At its core is **Impact Architecture**, a real-time intelligence engine that: - Connects and cleans client data across systems. - Tracks live donor engagement. - Prioritizes which segments to target next. - Launches pre-tested campaigns across multiple channels. - Adapts campaigns based on real-time performance. All of this happens without manual handoffs, exports, or delays. And since Avid sits on top of your existing stack, there’s **no need to replace any of your or your clients’ platforms**. ## **How Nonprofit Marketing Agencies Benefit from Using Avid** When nonprofit agencies partner with [Avid](https://avidai.com/), they gain: - A connected system that reduces setup time across campaigns. - Consistent execution across email, ads, donation forms, and more. - Client-ready reporting, without pulling data manually. - Built-in segmentation and targeting, ready to go. - A way to differentiate themselves from agencies still doing everything manually. Avid helps your agency deliver better service, faster campaigns, and real ROI to your clients, without growing your team or burning them out. ## **Your Nonprofit Agency Doesn’t Need More Tools. It Needs a System.** If you’re tired of rebuilding the same workflows, managing disconnected platforms, and racing to meet deadlines for every client, **you’re not doing it wrong. You’re just doing it without a system.** Avid turns your insight into action. Your strategy into execution. Your nonprofit marketing agency services into scalable, measurable results. ## **Ready to See What Avid Can Do for Your Nonprofit Marketing Agency?** [Avid](https://avidai.com/pricing/) helps nonprofit agencies: - Launch better campaigns, faster. - Scale execution without scaling headcount. - Track client performance across channels. - Reinforce their strategic value. - And stand out from competitors. [Book a demo](https://avidai.com/demo/) to see how Avid helps your nonprofit marketing agency serve more clients, deliver smarter results, and scale without burning out your team. **Categories:** Nonprofit Marketing --- ### [Most Nonprofit Marketing Best Practices Are Generic. Here's What Works in 2025](https://avidai.com/blog/nonprofit-marketing-best-practices/) **Published:** April 24, 2025 **Author:** Avid Team **Excerpt:** Get smarter about nonprofit marketing with best practices that boost reach, deepen engagement, and drive more mission-aligned action—without the fluff. **Content:** “Use email.” “Tell a story.” “Post on social media.” Most nonprofit marketing advice hasn’t changed in years. [But the world around it has](https://avidai.com/blog/fundraising-isnt-broken-but-it-is-stuck/). Supporters expect more personalization. Campaigns span more channels. Teams have less time, more tools, and rising pressure to show results. The goal isn’t to work harder but to focus on the right moves These five best practices show how high-performing nonprofit marketers are cutting through the clutter and building real momentum in 2025. ## **TL;DR:** - **Deep segmentation** based on real-time behavior, not just demographics. - **Multi-channel consistency** across email, social, and donation pages. - **Strategic storytelling** tied to specific goals and CTAs. - **Structured, repeatable campaigns** using modular templates. - **Real-time data use** to adjust mid-campaign, not just after. *Keep reading to see how top nonprofit teams are putting these into practice.* ## **Why Nonprofit Marketing Can Be Tough** Nonprofit Marketing doesn’t happen in a vacuum. When it’s disconnected from fundraising, programs, or donor services, even the best campaigns fall flat. And even when you’re following traditional marketing best practices, nonprofit marketing presents its own challenges. - **Your goals are complex:** raise funds, build awareness, grow community, all at once. - **Your audience isn’t one-size-fits-all.** You’re speaking to donors, volunteers, advocates, and program participants, often in the same campaign. - **Your tools may not talk to each other.** Or they were built for sales teams, not missions. - **Your team is likely small**, under-resourced, and managing 10 things at once. So knowing what to do isn’t the issue. It’s being able to do it, clearly, consistently, and with the resources you have. ### **Borrowing What Works From the For-Profit Playbook** To solve that challenge, many of the best nonprofit marketers are borrowing from a playbook that’s been evolving in another space for years: the for-profit world. For-profit teams have long embraced **systems, automation, and strategy** built around lifetime value. And while missions are different, the mechanics of loyalty, engagement, and conversion still apply. In 2025, the smartest nonprofit teams are applying those principles, not to sell, but to scale. They’re building adaptive journeys. **They’re** [**using data to guide decisions**](https://avidai.com/blog/collecting-nonprofit-data-isnt-enough/)**.** And they’re turning best practices into repeatable systems that actually get executed. The difference is in how they execute. ## **5 Nonprofit Marketing Best Practices That Actually Work in 2025** ### **1. Know Your Audience, Deeply and Continuously** Segmentation isn’t a new concept, but in 2025, it’s no longer optional. Generic blasts don’t move the needle. And if your donor file is still grouped by “active” and “inactive,” you’re not segmenting, you’re sorting. The best nonprofit marketers are building *dynamic audience profiles* based on real-time behavior, not static demographics. #### **Here’s what that looks like:** - You identify a group of donors who gave for the first time in Q4. - They opened your thank-you email but haven’t donated again. - You segment them into a “second-gift journey” and send a tailored message based on their original campaign source. - You suppress that segment from unrelated messages until they convert or lapse. This is how modern teams build personalization without adding chaos. #### **Not sure where to start?** - Pull a list of new donors from the last 90 days. - Filter for people who opened at least one email since their gift. - Build a 3-email series to thank them again, share an impact story tied to their gift, and invite a second gift with a soft CTA Even if you send this manually, it’s a smarter segment than “everyone who donated.” Ideally, you use a smart automation system that can flag this segment automatically and activate it at just the right time. **Do this:** Take your last campaign and filter for people who opened but didn’t click or give. That’s your next re-engagement segment. ## **2. Create Consistent, Multi-Channel Experiences** Supporters don’t see channels. They see *you*, your voice, your mission, your message. And when your emails, donation page, ads, and social posts don’t feel connected, the impact fades. Consistency builds trust, reinforces recognition, and makes it easier for supporters to follow through. #### **Here’s what that looks like:** - Your campaigns have a clear name, theme, and message carried across every channel. - Your donation page reflects the same look and language as your emails and ads. - Subject lines and headlines align across email, social, and paid media. - CTAs drive to one destination, not five slightly different ones. Even small shifts in wording or design can break the thread of trust. Consistency makes it easier for supporters to follow through. #### **Not sure where to start?** - Pull up your last campaign across channels. - Check: Does your email headline match the page it links to? Does your social post use the same CTA as your email? If not, start with your next campaign by aligning: Campaign name and theme, messaging tone and CTA, visuals and layout across email, ads, and donation page **Do this:** Pick one campaign and update its donation page headline and banner image to match the original email or ad. Consistency = conversions. ## **3. Use Storytelling Strategically, Not Just Emotionally** Storytelling is one of the most effective tools in your nonprofit marketing toolkit, but only when it’s connected to a clear goal. When stories feel disconnected from the audience or the ask, they create emotion but not action. In 2025, high-performing teams are using stories with intent: to educate, inspire, and guide supporters toward the next step. #### **Here’s what that looks like:** - You’re running a campaign to upgrade mid-level donors. - Instead of a general feel-good video, you share a story about a donor like them and the impact their second gift created. - The story ends with a personalized CTA to deepen their commitment. That’s how storytelling becomes a lever for conversion, not just connection. #### **Not sure where to start?** - Identify a campaign you’re running (retention, upgrade, reactivation, etc.). - Match that goal to a specific story: For upgrades, share a donor success story. For re-engagement, highlight a before/after program impact. For acquisition, tell a beneficiary’s first-person narrative. - Make sure the CTA connects directly to the story’s theme **Do this:** Take one story you’ve already used and write three CTAs for different segments (e.g., first-time donor, major donor, lapsed volunteer). One story, multiple journeys. ## **4. Build Campaigns That Are Structured, Not Scrappy** If your campaigns feel like one-off projects every time, you’re doing too much. Leading nonprofit marketers in 2025 aren’t reinventing the wheel. They’re building modular campaign structures they can reuse, remix, and relaunch quickly. #### **Here’s what that looks like:** - Your year-end appeal has three versions: one for first-time donors, one for recurring givers, one for major gift prospects. - Each version runs off the same structure: a personalized opener, a story segment, and a clear ask. - You launch it in 48 hours (not three weeks) because you’ve already built the playbook. This kind of repeatability keeps your messaging strategic and your team sane. #### **Not sure where to start?** - Choose one campaign that worked well last year. - Break it into sections: opening hook, story block, CTA. - Use that as a plug-and-play template for your next campaign with updated content. **Do this:** Clone one email from a past campaign. Replace the story, update the CTA, and relaunch it to a new segment this week. ## **5. Use Data to Learn, Refine, and Report** More platforms. More reports. More dashboards. But are you actually learning anything? Top-performing nonprofit marketers focus on the metrics that matter most and use them to make real-time adjustments. Data becomes valuable when it’s used to improve outcomes, not just track them. #### **Here’s what that looks like:** - You test two subject lines in a retention email. - One performs 15% better, so you update the rest of the series *before* it finishes running. - A week later, you present results to your executive team: higher open rates, lower attrition, and a tested formula to reuse. This is how data becomes a driver, not a dead-end. #### **Not sure where to start?** - Choose one active campaign. - Decide what you want to learn: open rate driver? CTA clicks? Segment engagement? - Test one variable. - Use results to improve the rest of the campaign, not just the next one. **Do this:** Before you launch your next campaign, write down the one insight you want to learn. Commit to acting on it within 7 days. ## **The Hidden Challenge: These Best Practices Take Time, Tools, and Coordination** By now, you’re probably thinking: “We know all of this. We’ve *tried* to do all of this. But doing it consistently across every campaign, every audience, every platform?” That’s the real challenge. Because these best practices aren’t theory. They work. But they require: - Real-time segmentation that evolves with your audience. - Campaigns that feel connected, not copy-pasted. - Automation that doesn’t sacrifice personalization. - Reporting that tells you what to do next, not just what happened. And most teams don’t struggle because they don’t care. They struggle because they’re trying to execute *modern strategies* on *manual infrastructure*. That’s where systems (not just tools) built for fundraisers start to make the difference. One that unifies your tools, adapts in real time, and takes action, so your team doesn’t have to do everything manually. That’s what we built [Avid](https://avidai.com/how-avid-works/) to do. We call it the first [Fundraising Agency in the cloud](https://avidai.com/blog/fundraising-agency-in-the-cloud/). ## **Avid’s Fundraising Intelligence and Automation Helps Nonprofit Marketers Execute What Works** [Avid](https://avidai.com/pricing/) is a [fundraising intelligence system](https://avidai.com/fundraising-intelligence/) designed to help nonprofit marketers turn strategy into execution without rebuilding segments, re-running reports, or rethinking every campaign from scratch. Here’s what it helps you do: - [**Connect your tools**](https://avidai.com/blog/avid-vs-nonprofit-crm-bi-tools/): your CRM, email platform, donation form, and ad channels into one coordinated system. - [**Surface daily opportunities**](https://avidai.com/always-on-data-sync/): like who’s ready to upgrade, who’s at risk, and who just gave. - **Launch proven, AI-powered campaigns** using [pre-tested playbooks](https://avidai.com/ai-powered-playbooks/). - **Track performance in real time**, so you can act fast, not wait for next quarter’s report. Success in 2025 doesn’t hinge on better ideas. It hinges on your ability to execute clearly, consistently, and at scale. If that’s what you’re trying to do, we’d love to help. 👉 [**Book a demo**](https://avidai.com/demo/) to see how Avid can help your team finally execute what works. ## **Nonprofit Marketing FAQ:** 1. **What is nonprofit marketing?** Nonprofit marketing is how mission-driven organizations promote their cause, engage supporters, and drive action. It includes strategies like storytelling, email campaigns, social media, events, and content that connect people to the mission and inspire donations, volunteering, or advocacy. 2. **What are the benefits of nonprofit marketing?** Effective nonprofit marketing increases donations, builds trust, grows awareness, and deepens supporter relationships. It helps organizations reach the right audience, tell compelling stories, and turn interest into long-term impact across fundraising, programs, and community engagement. 3. **What’s the marketing funnel in nonprofit marketing?** The nonprofit marketing funnel includes five key stages: Awareness, Engagement, Consideration, Conversion, and Loyalty. It helps organizations guide supporters from first **contact to long-term involvement, tailoring content and outr**each at each step. 4. **What’s the customer journey like in nonprofit marketing?** The nonprofit customer journey is nonlinear. Supporters move across channels and touchpoints: donating, volunteering, reading, or sharing content. That’s why connected, consistent experiences matter across email, social, ads, and websites. **Categories:** Nonprofit Marketing --- ### [Why Nonprofit CRMs Alone Won’t Cut It in 2025](https://avidai.com/blog/nonprofit-crm-are-no-longer-enough/) **Published:** April 21, 2025 **Author:** Avid Team **Excerpt:** Nonprofit CRMs aren’t broken—but they’re no longer enough. Discover why nonprofit teams are layering systems on top of their CRM to turn data into action. **Content:** “We have dashboards—but we’re still guessing.” If that’s you, your CRM isn’t failing. **It’s just not built for the job you’re asking it to do.** If your donor data still lives in a CRM, waiting for someone to dig it out, clean it up, and decide what to do with it, you’re missing out. In fact, you’re also not moving forward. Most [fundraising teams have more data than ever](https://avidai.com/blog/collecting-nonprofit-data-isnt-enough/). But more data doesn’t automatically mean more clarity. More strategy. More momentum. Because CRMs weren’t built for that. And in 2025? **Storing data isn’t enough.** ## **Fundraising has outgrown the CRM** Nonprofit CRMs still matter. They’re great at what they were built for: recordkeeping, contact management, donation tracking. But [fundraising in 2025 looks very different](https://avidai.com/blog/how-ai-is-powering-fundraisers/) than it did five years ago. Today’s fundraisers are being asked to: - Launch more effective campaigns. - Personalize every message. - Report performance in real time. - Retain donors and reduce churn. - And do it all without increasing headcount. That’s not something a CRM can do. And here’s what happens when teams try to stretch their CRM to be something it was never designed to be: - Segments are outdated before campaigns go live. - [High-value donors slip through the cracks](https://avidai.com/blog/the-donor-retention-crisis-why-fundraisers-need-to-sound-the-alarm-now/). - Campaigns take weeks to launch. - Teams are stuck reacting instead of leading. But it’s not that CRMs are broken. They’re just **not built for the job fundraisers are being asked to do now**. ## **You Need to Move From Storage to *Strategy*** CRMs were built for tracking. But [fundraising in 2025 demands something else](https://avidai.com/blog/fundraising-isnt-broken-but-it-is-stuck/): a **connected system that turns donor data into action** automatically, intelligently, and in real time. What does that look like? - Knowing **who’s most likely to lapse** and re-engaging them before they do. - Seeing **which donors are ready to upgrade**, without waiting for reports. - Launching campaigns in **minutes, not weeks**, with built-in best practices. - Having a system that doesn’t just store data but **decides what to do with it.** This is the shift we’re seeing across high-performing fundraising teams: They’re not working harder. They’re working inside smarter *systems*. ## **Can a BI Tool Solve the Problem?** Some teams try to patch the gap with *business intelligence tools*. And sure, BI dashboards can help visualize donor trends. But they still rely on someone interpreting that data and turning it into action. Here’s the truth: **You can’t launch a campaign from a dashboard.** **You can’t engage donors in real time from a spreadsheet.** **You can’t build momentum from insights that lag two weeks behind.** Dashboards are mirrors. What modern fundraising teams need are engines. ## **This is What High-Performing Nonprofit Teams Are Doing Instead** The most successful teams aren’t replacing their CRMs, they’re *complementing* them with something their stack was missing: **A system that connects insight with action automatically.** That’s why we’ve built [Avid](https://avidai.com/blog/built-for-fundraisers/). We call it [the first fundraising agency in the cloud](https://avidai.com/blog/fundraising-agency-in-the-cloud/). Avid is not another CRM. Not a prettier dashboard. Avid is the first-ever [fundraising intelligence](https://avidai.com/blog/donor-intelligence/) system [built to do what CRMs and BI tools can’t](https://avidai.com/blog/avid-vs-nonprofit-crm-bi-tools/): think, prioritize, and act automatically. **It** [**interprets your donor data in real time**](https://avidai.com/always-on-data-sync/)**, tells you what to do next, and executes campaigns across your tools automatically.** ## **What Makes Avid Different: A System Built for Fundraisers** [Avid](https://avidai.com/how-avid-works/) doesn’t ask you to start over. It makes what you already have (a CRM) smarter, faster, and more connected. Avid [plugs into the tools you already use](https://avidai.com/integrations/): Salesforce, Virtuous, Bloomerang, DonorPerfect, HubSpot, Mailchimp, Google Ads, Facebook Ads, donation platforms like Classy or Givebutter, and turns them into a unified, [intelligent fundraising system](https://avidai.com/fundraising-intelligence/). Here’s how it works: ### **Avid pulls in real-time data from across your stack** From CRM activity to email engagement, donation history, ad clicks, and more, [Avid](https://avidai.com/) continuously collects and connects the dots. ### **It interprets what’s happening and tells you what to do next** No more waiting on reports or guessing where to focus. Avid surfaces high-priority opportunities daily: who’s ready to upgrade, who’s at risk, who just gave. ### **Then it acts—automatically** [Avid](https://avidai.com/for-fundraisers/) analyzes and executes. Using proven, [AI-powered playbooks](https://avidai.com/ai-powered-playbooks/), it launches targeted campaigns across your existing tools in minutes—not weeks. So, instead of juggling exports, rebuilding lists, or coordinating between five platforms, Avid helps fundraisers: - Know exactly which donors to prioritize (and why). - Launch hyper-personalized campaigns across email, ads, and more. - Respond in real time to donor behavior and signals. - Spend less time managing tools and more time growing revenue. Avid, powered by AI, thinks, learns, and acts like a strategist, analyst, and campaign manager, all in one system. And the best part? You don’t have to change your tech stack. **Avid will make it smarter.** **Success Story:** Discover how [Bible League Canada (BLC) saw a 20% reduction in cost per donor with Avid](https://avidai.com/blog/bible-league-canada/) here. ## **Your Nonprofit CRM Was Never Meant to Do It All** The CRM was never meant to be your campaign engine. Or your strategist. Or your insights analyst. It was built to store what already happened. **Avid was built to drive what happens next.** So if you’ve outgrown reactive tools, spreadsheets, and campaign delays, you’re not falling behind. You’re ready to lead with a new kind of system. One that sees what’s happening. One that knows what to do. One that just…works. ### **Want to See What Avid’s Fundraising System Actually Looks Like?** [Avid](https://avidai.com/pricing/) is the first fundraising system built to think, learn, and act like your best team would automatically. - It plugs into your existing tools. - It shows you where to start. - It launches campaigns that perform. - It grows smarter every time you use it. [Book a demo](https://avidai.com/demo/) and see how Avid turns donor data into momentum. **Categories:** Nonprofit Marketing --- ### [Customizing the Fundraising Scorecard to Work for You](https://avidai.com/blog/customizing-the-fundraising-scorecard-to-work-for-you/) **Published:** April 24, 2025 **Author:** Nathan Hill **Excerpt:** Generic fundraising tools lead to generic insights and strategies. Avid's fundraising scorecard is built uniquely for you—whether you're an executive, a direct mail manager, or a digital fundraiser. **Content:** Most nonprofit technology and software is “one-size-fits-all”: It’s generic enough to work for any fundraising role. And it often leaves you wanting more. But tools like Avid’s Fundraising Scorecard are built uniquely for you. Because every role on your fundraising team has unique needs. The demands and requirements of a Chief Development Officer are vastly different from a Gift Officer or a Digital Fundraising Manager. Your **nonprofit technology should be intelligent enough to customize your experience** so that you get the best insights and tools for your role. That’s one way Avid stands apart from most other nonprofit technology—it’s customized to you. So you can **get the best insights to help you do your job better**. Let’s take a look at how customizing the Fundraising Scorecard for your role can make your work more impactful. ## The Fundraising Scorecard: An Overview The Fundraising Scorecard is one of my favorite tools inside of Avid. On the surface, it’s a snapshot of your fundraising program’s health. But the power of the tool goes much deeper. ![Screenshot of the Fundraising Scorecard showing the overall rating](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Avid-Scorecard-Overall-Rating-1024x258.png)![Screenshot of the Fundraising Scorecard showing rating in key categories](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Avid-Scorecard-4-Fundraising-Categories.png) The Fundraising Scorecard provides you with a 4-star rating system of each key area of your fundraising strategy: - **Retention**—how many of last year’s donors have given again? - **Acquisition**—how many new people are giving for the first time? - **Reactivation**—how many previous donors who did not give last year have given this year? - **Upgrade**—how many donors have increased their level of support? In addition to grading your performance, it also shows you both **near-term and long-term projections** of where your results will be if you continue your current pace. Plus, you can toggle a simple slider to see how **even small improvements might make a dramatic difference** on the long-term health of your organization. These tools allow people like a Chief Development Officer, a VP of Development, and other fundraising leaders to make more strategic decisions when it comes to things like: - **Prioritization**—understanding which key initiatives are going to make the biggest impact. - **Budget Planning**—visualizing what will happen if we cut or increase budget in various areas. - **Forecasting**—understanding the long-term impact of strategies & investments. ![Screenshot of the Fundraising Scorecard showing 3-year projections](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Avid-Scorecard-3-Year-Projections-1024x222.png)These types of decisions are critical to get right. And without a tool like the Scorecard, most fundraisers are flying blind. But success doesn’t come simply from a great annual plan. These **strategic decisions have to be made at every level**. Everyone on the team needs the ability to make the best strategic decisions for their area of the fundraising program. For your fundraising team to be the most effective, you need to be able to customize your tools to work for you. ## Making Your Scorecard Work for You Every role on a fundraising team is critical and unique. A small to mid-size organization might have 2 to 3 people each wearing 5 different hats. For a larger organization, you might have 8 to 10 people—plus various consultants and contractors assisting with aspects of your fundraising initiatives. To function like a well-oiled machine, **each person needs a unique and customized dashboard** to understand exactly how they can improve the results within their area of responsibility. That’s why Avid gives you the ability to **filter your Scorecard just for you**—providing insights to help you do your job better today. ### **Example: A Major Gift Officer** A major gift officer’s role is unique. You’re actively managing a portfolio of donors—making calls, sending emails to touch base, and having personal conversations to build strong, lasting relationships. If your Scorecard shows the all-in performance of every giving level plus all the various online and offline giving channels, it will be of little value to you. A generic dashboard is going to lead to poor decisions. - What if you could **see at a glance that your major donor reactivation rate** is down by 10%? - What if you could **instantly visualize the long-term impact of a small lift in reactivation**? - What if you could instantly see how your upgrade strategy is making **significant missional impact**? These insights might change what you focus on next. ### **Example: A Digital Fundraising Manager** A digital fundraising manager often spends a lot of time and energy developing assets like **donation pages, landing pages, creative for social, digital advertising campaigns**, and more. These initiatives are critical to staying top of mind, driving conversions, fueling acquistion, and even cultivating relationships with donors who only ever give offline. Yet digital fundraising can often get overlooked as being “insignificant” compared to other channels. You know that it has a major impact—but most generic tools don’t help you make the case. - What if your scorecard showed you exactly how your digital fundraising efforts **impacted long-term fundraising** results? - What if you could prove that even **a small investment in retention advertising could transform the result** of the program? - What if you could **instantly see that our digital acquisition strategy is fueling mission impact** for the next 3 years? Customizing your scorecard puts these insights at your fingertips. It allows you to make better strategic decisions today that directly impact your organization’s mission. ## Hands-On Demo: How to Customize Your Fundraising Scorecard In the self-guided demo below, you’ll **see exactly how you can make the Fundraising Scorecard work for you**. Whether you’re working exclusively with direct mail, you manage in-person events, or you’re overseeing ad campaigns—the scorecard can be customized for your unique needs. ## Not Using Avid Yet? Most **fundraising data is stuck** inside of several different platforms. It’s takes a herculean feat to stitch together what’s actually happening. And most nonprofits only get to see their data every few months. **Avid gives you instant data insights at your fingertips**—allowing you to make better strategic decisions. Avid is not just another tool. It’s not just another piece of software. It’s a system for your fundraising. It turns your data into action. And it helps you unlock better fundraising results. Want to see how the Fundraising Scorecard and other features can help you turn data into action? [Book some time with us to learn more](https://avidai.com/demo/ "Book a Demo") about Avid and how it can help you lift your results. **Categories:** Product Updates --- ### [Multiplying Agency Impact—Without Adding Overhead](https://avidai.com/blog/multiplying-agency-impact/) **Published:** April 22, 2025 **Author:** Stephen Boudreau **Excerpt:** Scaling an agency doesn’t have to mean burning out your best people. Here’s how Avid multiplies impact without adding overhead. **Content:** > “Efficiency is doing things right. Effectiveness is doing the right things.” > > Peter Drucker Every family has one. The person who shows up early, not to socialize—but to quietly make sure no one ruins anything. In my family, that person was Aunt Marcela. She’d arrive twenty minutes before anyone else, armed with a shopping bag full of mystery items: two lemons, a roll of masking tape, a backup potholder, and—on one memorable occasion—a single stick of butter wrapped in foil “just in case.” Before anyone had figured out where to put the coats, Marcela had rearranged the prep station, rotated the cutting board 45 degrees (“you’ll see why”), and swapped a chipped bowl for one from the back of the cabinet. She had a sixth sense for what was about to go wrong and a quiet genius for making it right—without interrupting the story you were telling. She was always in motion, but never in the way. No flair, no fuss. Just the right move at the right moment. And by the time the doorbell rang and someone shouted “We’re not ready!” Marcela had already lit the stove, set out some cheese and crackers, and pre-poured the drinks that would keep the early arrivers occupied until the rest of us caught up. She wasn’t the reason we gathered. But she was the reason it *worked*. ## The Unsung Role That Changes Everything I’ve thought about Aunt Marcela more times than I can count—at conferences, in pitch meetings, during the fifth revision of a client deck that was supposed to be “final.” Not because I needed comfort food (though, yes, always). But because I started to notice a pattern. The most successful teams I’ve worked with—the ones who make it look easy—always have a Marcela. Not a spotlight-seeker. Not a miracle worker. Just someone who quietly does the things that matter before anyone realizes they needed doing. The spreadsheet is cleaned up. The metrics are aligned. The client-ready version is already exported, with the logo in the corner and the right dates in the right cells. And no one’s exactly sure *who* did it. But everyone’s glad someone did. That’s the role that changes everything—not because it demands attention, but because it gives everyone else the space to shine. ## The Agency Reality Agencies are full of talent. That’s never been the issue. Strategy? Sharp. Creative? On point. Client instincts? Uncanny. You can walk into a room with half a brief and still come out with a campaign that feels like it’s been in development for six months. Agencies are, by nature, fast, adaptive, clever. > But even the best teams hit a wall—and it’s almost never about ideas. It’s the other stuff. The prep, the cleanup, the translation layer between brilliance and execution. It’s trying to scale personalized strategy across five (or fifteen) client accounts without pulling your analysts into a spreadsheet spiral. It’s reformatting the same donor data six different ways because no two systems want to talk to each other. It’s spending hours getting a report board-ready when what you *really* want is to act on what the data’s telling you. None of it’s glamorous. All of it’s essential. And most of it ends up being absorbed by the same people who are also trying to lead the creative, manage the relationship, and get the next pitch out the door. That’s not failure. That’s capacity hitting its ceiling. And when that happens, you don’t lose the work—you lose the *margin* to do your best work. ## Enter Avid: The Multiplier There’s a difference between growing and scaling. Agencies know how to grow—new clients, new campaigns, new wins. But scaling? That’s trickier. That’s when brilliance starts to get buried under busywork. That’s when the backend slows the front end down. > Every new client shouldn’t feel like an IT project. It shouldn’t require another round of platform gymnastics just to see what’s working. And it definitely shouldn’t mean your smartest people are stuck formatting exports while the campaign clock ticks down. That’s where Avid comes in. It connects the tools your clients already use—CRMs, email platforms, donation processors—and pulls the data together in one place. No reformatting. No renaming columns. No 86-tab spreadsheets that crash halfway through the export. It surfaces the right insights—automatically. Which segments are ready to give again. Which donors are starting to drift. Which campaign is quietly outperforming expectations and deserves a boost. It builds audiences in real time, so you don’t have to. You just select, sync, and go—email, ads, social, all connected. And when your client asks for a board-ready report, Avid can turn live campaign data into a polished slide deck in seconds. Charts, summaries, branded and shareable. You don’t need to design around the data. The data shows up ready to go. In short: Avid does what my Aunt Marcela would do. It handles the details. Preps the scene. Anticipates what’s needed before anyone says it out loud. You’re still running the show. Avid just takes care of everything that shouldn’t be slowing you down. ## Why This Matters Now Agency work has always had tension baked in: the pressure to move fast, think big, and still get the details right. But today’s clients aren’t asking for *less*. They’re asking for: - faster turnarounds, - sharper personalization, - deeper insights, - and scalable execution—on every channel, all at once. And they’re asking for it all with tighter budgets, tighter timelines, and expectations set by brands with infinite tech stacks and in-house data teams. The agencies that thrive in this environment won’t just be the most creative. They’ll be the most operationally intelligent. The ones who find ways to scale excellence without compromising what makes them special. That’s where Avid makes the difference. It’s not just about saving time. It’s about restoring capacity—for the work that actually needs your brain, your eye, your touch. When the bottlenecks are removed, the bandwidth returns. And suddenly, your team has the margin to lead—not just keep up. ## What Marcela Knew Marcela never called what she did “strategy.” She wouldn’t have used a word like “optimization.” But she knew what worked. She knew that small things weren’t small if they made everything else possible. She knew that when people arrived, they should feel like everything was already in motion. That the stove should be hot. The drinks should be ready. The hosts should look like they’d slept. She understood the difference between effort and orchestration. Everything seemed to fall into place—because she’d already done the invisible work of making it so. That’s the kind of presence most teams don’t know they’re missing until it’s there. And once it is, they realize how much weight they’d been carrying without it. > Avid was built in that spirit—not to take center stage, but to ensure everything behind the scenes runs exactly as it should. To keep the lights warm, the tools in sync, and the team focused on the part only they can do. Because you weren’t hired to run reports. Or wrangle data. You were hired to move missions. To guide clients. To create something remarkable. Marcela would’ve understood that. She probably would’ve shown up twenty minutes early to help you do it. **Categories:** Nonprofit Consulting --- ### [What Avid Does That Your Nonprofit CRM (and BI Tool) Can’t](https://avidai.com/blog/avid-vs-nonprofit-crm-bi-tools/) **Published:** April 15, 2025 **Author:** Avid Team **Excerpt:** CRMs store data. BI tools report it. Avid turns it into action. Discover what your stack’s missing—and how to finally move with confidence. **Content:** CRMs are great at storing data. BI tools are great at reporting it. But when it is time to decide who to engage, what to send, or when to act, everything goes quiet. So if you’re still spending hours digging through reports, trying to figure out who to reach out to, what to say, and when to launch the next campaign, you’re not alone. You don’t have a data problem—you have a *direction* problem. You need a system. And that’s exactly what [Avid](https://avidai.com/) solves. In this blog, we’ll break down what CRMs and BI tools do well, where they fall short, and how [Avid](https://avidai.com/) bridges the gap with fundraising intelligence designed for action. ## What CRMs and BI Tools Were *Actually* Designed to Do Most CRMs were never intended to be strategic tools. They’re databases. They’re meant to store information, track interactions, and help you keep donor records organized. BI tools? They came later to help nonprofits visualize what’s happening across their systems. They build dashboards. They automate reports. They help leadership understand trends and monitor performance. These tools are helpful for: - Looking back at what worked (or didn’t). - Showing historical giving and campaign results. - Storing donor contact and donation history. But here’s what they don’t do: - Prioritize outreach based on real-time behavior. - Predict who’s ready to upgrade, re-engage, or lapse. - Recommend what action to take next. - Automate execution across channels. CRMs store. BI tools summarize. But fundraisers still have to figure out what to do, and do it manually. That can quickly become a bottleneck. ## Where the CRM/BI Stack Starts Breaking Down Most fundraisers expect more from their tools than they were ever designed to deliver. Here’s where they fall short: ### 1. They Don’t Prioritize or Recommend Your CRM gives you a list. Your BI tool gives you a graph. But neither tells you which donors you should reach out to *today*. Fundraisers are left guessing or defaulting to “just email everyone.” This leads to generic appeals, burnout from decision fatigue, and missed moments with high-potential donors. ### 2. They don’t Personalize You can *manually* build segments, but it’s time-consuming and static. If you want to engage different donors with tailored messages based on intent, recency, or giving behavior, you’ll need a spreadsheet, a manual import, and usually, a lot of time you don’t have. This is how “one-size-fits-all” emails become the default; when your tech doesn’t make personalization easy. ### 3. They Don’t Launch Campaigns Your CRM might store the list. Your BI tool might show the results. But neither one actually *executes* your strategy. Fundraisers are left downloading CSVs, copy/pasting between systems, rebuilding segments for every campaign, and launching too late or not at all. You end up spending more time setting up campaigns than running them. ### 4. They Don’t Adapt in Real Time Let’s say you ran an appeal last week. Your BI tool will show the results next month. Your CRM will log the transactions. But what happens in between? Donors give and no follow-up goes out. Key supporters disengage and no one notices. Campaign momentum stalls. Static reports can’t adjust your strategy on the fly. And in fundraising, timing is everything. ### 5. They Weren’t Built For Fundraising Strategy They don’t know your goals. They can’t predict behavior. And they definitely don’t say, *“This segment is primed for a major gift, launch a play now.”* So while your data stack grows more complex, your team keeps getting pulled into admin work, and strategic thinking falls to the bottom of the to-do list. The truth? CRMs and BI tools are **tools**. You need a **system**, one that not only sees your data but knows what to do with it. This is where [Avid](https://avidai.com/) comes in. Avid is the **system that transforms donor data into strategy, execution, and outcomes.** ## What Avid’s Fundraising System Does That Your CRM and BI Tools Can’t Avid isn’t a CRM or a dashboard. It’s a **fundraising intelligence operating system** that helps your team do what no other system can: turn donor data into real-time strategy and execution. Here’s what Avid does that your CRM and BI tools simply can’t: ### Surfaces Daily Fundraising Opportunities You log in, and Avid tells you who’s at risk of lapsing, who’s ready for a re-engagement appeal, and which segment is showing high intent. No digging. No guessing. Just the actions that matter, right when they matter. ### Automatically Segments Your Donor Base Avid continuously updates segments based on behavior, history, and engagement patterns. No more downloading lists. No more manual sorting. Every campaign starts with smart, dynamic targeting, ready to go. ### Powers AI-Driven Playbooks Avid doesn’t just identify opportunities, it acts on them. It builds multichannel, personalized campaigns that reach donors across email, ads, and more. You choose the strategy. Avid runs with it. ### Connects with Your Stack Avid plugs into your existing CRM, donation platform, email tools, and ad platforms. It won’t replace your systems, it will make them smarter. ### Evolves with Your Data Avid doesn’t just run one-time reports. It will learn from what’s working and adapts campaigns in real time, based on real engagement. So every touchpoint gets smarter. Every message gets sharper. And every donor journey gets more relevant. It’s like having a strategist, data analyst, and campaign manager—on-demand—working behind the scenes 24/7. ## Why Smart Nonprofits Are Layering Avid *On Top* of Their CRMs Here’s the best part: you don’t need to rip anything out. [Avid](https://avidai.com/) isn’t here to replace your CRM. It’s here to make it smarter. [Avid](https://avidai.com/) works with the tools you already use, so you don’t have to overhaul your stack. You keep your data where it lives today and Avid makes it actionable. **It was built by fundraisers who were tired of static reports and endless list pulls.** It’s not another bolt-on tool. It’s the **first-ever fundraising agency in the cloud**; a platform that gives you strategy, segmentation, and execution in one place. ## See how Avid turns data into action You already have the donor data. What you’re missing is a *system* that turns it into action. [Book a demo](https://avidai.com/demo/) to see how Avid helps you prioritize the right donors, personalize at scale, and launch campaigns in minutes, not months. **Let your CRM hold the data. Let Avid tell you what to do with it.** **Categories:** Nonprofit Consulting --- ### [How AI for Year-End Nonprofit Fundraising Boosts Results](https://avidai.com/blog/ai-for-year-end-nonprofit-fundraising/) **Published:** November 21, 2024 **Author:** Avid Team **Excerpt:** Use AI for year-end nonprofit fundraising to reach the right donors, personalize outreach, and maximize giving season success with ease. **Content:** The final months of the year are the most critical for nonprofit fundraising. With 47% of annual donations coming in during this time, year-end giving isn’t just an opportunity—it’s a make-or-break moment for many organizations. But with this high-stakes season comes intense competition, tight timelines, and donor fatigue. Traditional fundraising tactics—mass emails, last-minute appeals, and generic messaging—no longer cut through the noise. So, how can nonprofits stand out and maximize impact? The answer is donor intelligence. With the right insights, nonprofits can reach the right donors, with the right message, at the right time—ensuring every ask is timely, relevant, and effective. Here’s how AI-powered donor intelligence (and Avid’s Fundraising Agency in the Cloud) helps fundraisers navigate year-end challenges and turn data into donations. ## What is Donor Intelligence (and Why Does It Matter)? Traditional fundraising relies on gut instinct—guessing who to contact, when to reach out, and what message will resonate. Donor intelligence replaces guesswork with clarity. **It answers big questions in real time:** ✔ **Who is most likely to give?** ✔ **When should I reach out?** ✔ **What messaging will resonate?** **Example:** Instead of sending the same email to everyone, donor intelligence identifies which donors gave last year—so you can craft a targeted appeal that speaks directly to their past support. With AI-powered donor intelligence, fundraisers get: - **Behavioral insights** – Know what motivates each donor. - **Predictive forecasts** – See who is likely to give again. - **Real-time data** – Adjust campaigns as they happen. The best part? You don’t need to be a data scientist to use it. With Avid, donor intelligence is built into the Fundraising Agency in the Cloud—so nonprofits can act on insights instantly, without manual work. ## 6 Year-End Fundraising Challenges (and How to Overcome Them) ### 1. Donor Attention is Harder to Capture Year-end giving season is crowded—every nonprofit is asking for support at the same time. Generic mass appeals blend into the noise. 💡 **How Donor Intelligence Helps:** **Hyper-Personalized Messaging** AI-driven donor intelligence analyzes past giving trends and engagement behavior—so fundraisers can create highly targeted messages instead of generic asks. 👉 **Example:** Instead of sending the same email to all donors, send custom messages based on giving history (e.g., “You supported X cause last year—here’s the impact you made”). **More relevant messages = more engagement.** ### 2. Small Teams, Limited Resources Nonprofit teams are stretched thin—too many tasks, not enough time. 💡 **How Donor Intelligence Helps:** **Automated Segmentation & Outreach** AI segments donors based on their giving patterns, engagement levels, and interests—automating personalized campaigns across email, social, and SMS. 👉 **Example:** Automate a multi-channel re-engagement sequence for lapsed donors without extra manual work. **More efficiency = more impact.** ### **3. Donor Fatigue & Over-Solicitation** Frequent, impersonal asks can turn donors off, leading to disengagement. 💡 **How Donor Intelligence Helps:** **Smart Frequency Control** AI analyzes past donor behavior to predict who should receive more touchpoints vs. who needs fewer asks—so nonprofits reach the right balance. 👉 **Example:** If a donor typically gives only at year-end, limit outreach to that timeframe—instead of overwhelming them throughout the year. **Smarter outreach = better donor relationships.** ### 4. Unclear Messaging & Timing Should you start in October or December? Should you send emails, texts, or social ads? Without data, it’s a guessing game. 💡 **How Donor Intelligence Helps:** **Optimized Timing & Messaging** AI analyzes historical giving patterns to identify when donors are most likely to give and what types of messages work best. 👉 **Example:** If impact stories drive donations in early December, prioritize that content at the start of the month—then shift to urgency-based appeals in the final days. **Data-driven timing = more conversions.** ### 5. Real-Time Adjustments Are Difficult If an appeal isn’t performing well, many nonprofits don’t realize it until it’s too late. 💡 **How Donor Intelligence Helps:** **Live Performance Tracking** AI-powered fundraising intelligence tracks: ✅ Open rates & engagement ✅ Click-through rates ✅ Donation trends in real time 👉 **Example:** If an email has low open rates, adjust the subject line and resend to unopened recipients instantly. **Agility = higher success rates.** ### 6. Siloed Data Creates Blind Spots Many nonprofits use separate systems for CRM, email, and donations—making it hard to get a full picture of donor behavior. 💡 **How Donor Intelligence Helps:** **Unified Donor Profiles** Avid’s Fundraising Agency in the Cloud integrates data from multiple sources—creating a single, 360-degree donor view. 👉 **Example:** If a donor engages on social media but hasn’t donated recently, send them a targeted ad with a cause they care about. **Connected data = better donor engagement.** ## BONUS: Quick Wins for Year-End Success Want immediate impact? Try these AI-powered quick wins: 🎯 **Thank Your Most Loyal Donors** – Send a personalized thank-you email before your appeal to boost engagement. 🎯 **Reactivate Dormant Donors** – Target past donors who haven’t given in 12+ months with a tailored re-engagement message. 🎯 **Segment & Target High-Value Donors** – Identify top supporters and send a customized matching gift campaign. 🎯 **Encourage Monthly Giving** – Invite repeat donors to join a monthly giving program, framing it as ongoing impact. These data-driven moves can increase engagement without extra effort. ## Why Avid is the Smartest AI Partner for Year-End Fundraising Many fundraising tools store data. Avid activates it. Avid’s Fundraising Agency in the Cloud combines: ✅ **Donor Intelligence** – Aggregates data from CRM, email, and donation systems into a single view. ✅ **Automated Outreach** – Pushes insights into email, SMS, and social for seamless execution. ✅ **Live Performance Tracking** – Ensures real-time adjustments for maximum results. **The result? More donors. More revenue. Less stress.** ## Ready to Transform Year-End Giving with AI-Powered Donor Intelligence? Don’t let limited resources or outdated strategies hold your year-end fundraising back. With Avid’s Fundraising Agency in the Cloud, nonprofits can: 🚀 **Engage the right donors** 🚀 **Optimize every message** 🚀 **Maximize results—without extra effort** **Categories:** AI & Automation, Fundraising Strategy **Tags:** Year End Giving --- ### [Year-End Giving Stats for Nonprofits to Maximize Giving](https://avidai.com/blog/year-end-giving-stats-for-nonprofits/) **Published:** December 12, 2024 **Author:** Avid Team **Excerpt:** Year-end giving stats for nonprofits show that timing, personalization, and multi-channel outreach are key to maximizing year-end donations. **Content:** Year-end giving is the nonprofit sector’s Super Bowl—the highest-stakes moment for donor engagement and revenue generation. With 31% of annual donations happening in December—and 12% in the last three days alone—this is the time when fundraising strategy matters most. But here’s the reality: Success isn’t about sending more emails or making more asks. It’s about making smarter, data-driven decisions. That’s why we’ve gathered the most important year-end fundraising statistics to help you: - Understand donor behavior and engagement trends. - Optimize your outreach across multiple channels. - Maximize donations with personalization and stewardship. Let’s break down what the data says—and how Avid’s Fundraising Agency in the Cloud can help you make this your most successful year-end campaign yet. ## Year-End Giving by the Numbers Fundraising isn’t about transactional asks—it’s about understanding donors and meeting them where they are. Here’s what the data reveals about donor behavior, engagement trends, and key opportunities for nonprofits. ### 1. Donors Need Multiple Touchpoints to Give 💡 **What the Data Says:** - **31% of annual donations happen in December, with 12% in the final 3 days.** (Double the Donation) - **Donors need 3-5 touchpoints during year-end to decide to give.** (Nonprofit Hub) - **55% of people who engage with nonprofits on social media take action.** (Empower Agency) **What This Means for Nonprofits:** The best-performing year-end campaigns don’t rely on a single email. They use multiple touchpoints across email, social media, and direct mail to build engagement. **Action Step:** Use Avid’s AI-powered donor intelligence to map out donor engagement journeys and deliver personalized multi-channel outreach. ### 2. Email is a Powerhouse—But Only When It’s Personal **What the Data Says:** - Email accounted for 14% of digital revenue during year-end giving in 2022 (M+R Benchmarks) - Year-end fundraising emails see a 20% higher open rate than other emails (The Nonprofit Email Report) - Segmented campaigns drive 50% higher engagement rates (Swifterm) **What This Means for Nonprofits:** Mass emails aren’t enough. Personalization drives engagement and donations. **Action Step:** Use Avid’s dynamic segmentation to tailor email content based on donor history, past giving, and engagement patterns. ### 3. Donor Retention & Stewardship Drive Long-Term Growth **What the Data Says:** - Only 25% of first-time donors give again, but stewardship efforts can increase retention by 20% (Fundraising Report Card) - Matching gift campaigns increase average donation size by 20% (Double the Donation) - 12% of December donations happen in the final 72 hours (Donor Box) **What This Means for Nonprofits:** Year-end fundraising isn’t just about new donors—it’s about keeping the ones you already have engaged and inspired. **Action Step:** Use Avid’s donor insights to automate personalized thank-you sequences and highlight matching gift opportunities to boost donation size. ### 4. Online Giving is Dominating—Especially on Mobile **What the Data Says:** - 28% of all online donations in 2023 came from mobile devices (Blackbaud Charitable Giving Report) - The average online donation size during year-end is $128 (Nonprofit Source) - 44% of Millennials and 42% of Gen Z would have less trust in an organization without an easy online giving experience (Why America Gives) **What This Means for Nonprofits:** If your donation page isn’t mobile-optimized, you’re losing donors. **Action Step:** Ensure your donation process is seamless across mobile devices, with clear calls to action and fast-loading pages. **Bonus Tip:** Use Avid’s multi-channel donor intelligence to track online engagement and adjust campaigns in real time. ### 5. Smart Nonprofits Invest in Efficiency & Automation **What the Data Says:** - Year-end campaigns generate 25-50% of a nonprofit’s annual revenue (Neon One) - ROI for year-end fundraising averages 3:1—$3 raised for every $1 spent (Classy Trends Report) - Nonprofits using automation save 10-15 hours per week on tasks like data entry, email responses, and campaign reporting (The Nonprofit Technology Network) **What This Means for Nonprofits:** Fundraising teams waste too much time on manual tasks instead of focusing on strategy, storytelling, and donor engagement. **Action Step:** Avid’s Fundraising Agency in the Cloud automates segmentation, outreach, and reporting—so nonprofits can focus on what matters most. ## This Year, Let Data Drive Your Strategy Year-end giving isn’t about working harder—it’s about working smarter. With Avid’s AI-powered fundraising intelligence, nonprofits can: - Identify high-value donors and optimize outreach timing - Personalize emails, social, and text campaigns for engagement - Track campaign performance in real time and adjust instantly **Categories:** Fundraising Strategy **Tags:** Year End Giving --- ### [What is the Fundraising Agency in the Cloud?](https://avidai.com/blog/fundraising-agency-in-the-cloud/) **Published:** April 16, 2025 **Author:** Stephen Boudreau **Excerpt:** You’re doing everything right—and it’s still too hard. Meet the system built to bring clarity, confidence, and momentum to fundraising. **Content:** > “All organizations are perfectly designed to get the results they are now getting. If we want different results, we must change the way we do things.” > > Tom Northup I used to think the most stressful job in nonprofit fundraising was trying to convince someone to give you money. Then I met data. Not long after leaving my role as “the web guy” at a nonprofit, I started a digital agency. Back then—the early 2000s—nonprofits were just beginning to explore what the internet could actually *do.* Everyone wanted a website. Brochure sites. Donation pages. Email signups that mostly worked. If you had a PayPal button and a halfway decent cause, you were basically ahead of the curve. At first, it felt great. We were helping nonprofits get online. But it didn’t take long for the shine to wear off. Because while the internet promised transformation, most of what we delivered felt… superficial. Like patching drywall over a crumbling foundation. The bigger questions—the ones about *impact*—were always lurking under the surface. ### Under the surface: fundraising’s real problem Eventually, we found our way to them. Specifically, to fundraising. That’s where the real transformation was supposed to happen. But here’s what no one tells you: the closer you get to a nonprofit’s actual fundraising operation, the more you realize how patchwork the plumbing really is. Money would come in through a campaign. Great. But no one could tell you where it came from, who it was from, or what it meant. Maybe it showed up in a spreadsheet. Maybe someone updated the CRM manually. Maybe it just… vanished. There was no reliable way to know if “Jane Smith” who gave $50 online was the same Jane Smith who wrote a check last month—or the same one who forwarded your newsletter to her bridge group. Which is how you end up with 13 different Jane Smiths in your database, none of whom are getting thanked. ### The illusion of fixing things At first, we tried to fix it with integrations. Then better forms. Then naming conventions, documentation, spreadsheets with tabs labeled “PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH.” We duct-taped dashboards together and crossed our fingers at year-end. And still, the same problems kept showing up: - Donors not getting thanked. - Communications missing the mark. - Teams burning out, not because they didn’t care, but because they *did*. Eventually, it stopped feeling like digital transformation and started feeling more like treading water. So we added more tools. A form builder here. An analytics layer there. A “quick workaround” that lived in someone’s head and nowhere else. The tools themselves weren’t bad. In fact, most of them were good. Helpful, even. But clarity never came. The stack got taller. The workflows got messier. And the hope stayed the same: *maybe this next thing will finally bring order to the chaos.* It didn’t. Because the problem wasn’t the tools. It was the absence of a system. ### Why does this still feel so hard? There was nothing to hold it all together—no shared foundation, no built-in rhythm, no throughline that turned data into direction and strategy into action. Just more dashboards. More meetings. More late nights comparing reports that should’ve said the same thing. And in the background of it all, that persistent question: *why does this still feel so hard?* > The truth is, behind every missed connection and manual fix, the same pattern keeps showing up. We are asking human beings to do the impossible: to be strategists, analysts, campaign architects, and magicians—without the time, clarity, or infrastructure to pull it off. So when I first saw the Avid system, I didn’t just get it—I recognized it. **The Fundraising Agency in the Cloud.** A system that *thinks* like a strategist, *acts* like a campaign team, and *scales* like software. Built for people who are tired of duct-taping dashboards and tired promises. And that’s where this story really begins. ## The Fundraising Agency in the Cloud When we say *“The Fundraising Agency in the Cloud,”* we’re not just naming a feature. We’re naming a shift. Because what most fundraisers need right now isn’t a slightly better dashboard. Or a marginally faster report. Or a new integration that solves one problem while introducing three more. What they need is what a great agency delivers at its best— *Strategy. Direction. Execution. Confidence.* —only now, it’s accessible, scalable, and built into the workflows they already use. Because even with the best support from internal teams, trusted advisors, or seasoned agencies—that foundational friction still shows up. Data is scattered. Tools don’t talk. Campaigns stall waiting on reports… or segmentation lists… or yet another round of cleanup. That’s where Avid comes in. ### What makes Avid different The Fundraising Agency in the Cloud is a new kind of model— A system that thinks like a strategist, acts like a campaign team, and scales like software. It connects all your systems—CRM, email, donation platform, ads—and finally makes them work together. It analyzes your donor data and surfaces your top opportunities. It gives you the playbooks, the audiences, the recommendations. And it helps you launch, optimize, and scale campaigns—across every channel—without having to start from scratch every time. Not a tool you have to manage. Not a ticket you have to open. Not a plan you have to explain twice. A system that’s always on. Built for people who are already doing everything right—but still feel like they’re falling behind. > Whether you’re a solo fundraiser wearing every hat, a consultant supporting multiple missions, or an agency delivering big strategy across clients—Avid becomes the layer that makes it all work together. You bring the insight. The instincts. The big ideas. **Avid brings the infrastructure.** The execution. The scale. Together, it just works. Not in place of your big ideas—but built to carry them further. Because the future of fundraising isn’t just more tools. It’s one system that brings them all together—and finally makes them work. > Avid isn’t here to replace smart people. It’s here to make smart work scale—whether you’re an in-house team, a solo fundraiser, or an agency doing strategy across clients. ## When fundraising stops feeling like survival Fundraising hasn’t failed. It’s just been forced to operate inside systems that were never built to support it. Disconnected data. Disjointed tools. Long timelines. Limited visibility. Constant guesswork. None of it reflects the urgency, creativity, or care that fundraisers bring to their work every day. **Avid doesn’t patch over that reality. It changes it.** Because when you unify the tools, the data, and the strategy—everything else starts to shift. - Campaigns don’t start with a blank page. - Reports don’t take a week to pull. - Donors don’t fall through the cracks. - Teams stop running on fumes. - Fundraising stops feeling like survival—and starts feeling like momentum. You still need story. Strategy. Empathy. Craft. **Avid doesn’t replace that—it makes space for it.** Because when you’re not stuck pulling lists or deciphering dashboards, you get time back. Time to thank a donor personally. To test a new idea. To take a breath between campaigns. To lead. ### What it looks like when it works We’ve seen it firsthand—when Avid clicks, the numbers follow: - Acquisition costs drop by over 40% - Donor retention jumps nearly 40% - ROI climb 30% or more - Broad-based giving grows by 50% or higher Not from working longer hours. Not from heroic spreadsheets. But from having a system that makes everything—and *everyone*—work better. With Avid, your tools are connected. Your strategy is clear. You’re not rebuilding the wheel every time. What used to take weeks now takes minutes—and moves the mission forward. That’s what the Fundraising Agency in the Cloud makes possible: *Clarity, capacity, and the freedom to focus on what really matters.* ## This is fundraising, rebuilt If you’ve ever thought, *“We’re doing everything right—and it still feels too hard,”* you’re not alone. It’s not you. It’s not your team. It’s the system you’ve been forced to work around. And now—for the first time—there’s a better one. Avid doesn’t replace your tools. It makes them work like a team. It doesn’t ask you to work harder. It helps you work smarter. It doesn’t promise to fix everything—just the parts that have been slowing you down for far too long. So you can spend less time fighting with your data. And more time leading like the strategist you are. This isn’t just a product story. It’s a permission slip— To expect more. To do less duct-taping. To get your time—and your clarity—back. ### When you’re ready, we’ll show you how it works. 👉 [Book a demo](https://avidai.com/demo/) 👉 [Download the guide: *Fundraising, Rebuilt*](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/) 👇 **See the system in action** **Categories:** Fundraising Strategy --- ### [This is Why Collecting Donor Data Isn’t Enough for Fundraising Success](https://avidai.com/blog/collecting-nonprofit-data-isnt-enough/) **Published:** April 15, 2025 **Author:** Avid Team **Excerpt:** You’ve got the data. But do you know what to do with it? Discover how smart fundraisers turn data into decisions—and results. **Content:** Your donor data is like a half-finished puzzle. You know the pieces are all there, but seeing the full picture—and knowing where to start—is a different story. Nonprofits have never had more access to donor data. *CRMs*, donation *platforms*, email *tools*, and analytics *dashboards* are overflowing with insights. But if you’re like most fundraising teams, that data hasn’t translated into better results. Why? **Because collecting data ≠ using data.** ## So What’s The Problem? → Data Without Action You don’t have a *data* problem. You have an *action* problem. You were told that more data would help you fundraise smarter. That better reporting would unlock better outcomes. That tracking every donor interaction would help you personalize and retain supporters. But here’s the reality: - [81.4% of first-time donors](https://virtuous.org/blog/donor-retention-the-ultimate-guide-for-nonprofits/) never give again. - Most teams are still guessing which donors to prioritize. - And CRMs? They store data, but without a *system* to interpret and act on it, fundraisers are left in the dark. You’re not alone. Many nonprofits are sitting on mountains of donor data… and still struggling to act on it. Let’s break down why nonprofits with the most donor data don’t always win. ### 1. Donor Data Doesn’t Automatically Equal Strategy You know your top 100 donors. But can you tell who’s at risk of lapsing? You track email open rates. But do you know which segments respond best to each message? Without a *system* that surfaces these insights for you, the data sits unused, or worse, misused. Even the most complete donor file is just a list until you know what to do with it. ### 2. Most Tools Were Built to Store. You Need a System That *Activates* Many nonprofits still rely on legacy CRMs that were designed to store donor information—not activate it. Reports are static. Dashboards are siloed. Strategy is still guesswork. The problem isn’t just the tools themselves—it’s that they weren’t built to work together or move things forward. They collect data, but they don’t turn it into direction. A true system doesn’t just store information—it connects it, interprets it, and takes action. That’s the difference. Most nonprofit platforms can’t support: - Real-time segmentation. - Dynamic donor journey mapping. - AI-driven recommendations. And that means teams spend more time pulling lists than launching campaigns. ### 3. Nonprofits Aren’t Measuring What Matters You can’t improve what you don’t measure. Not tracking KPIs like retention rates, second-gift conversion, or campaign ROI means you can’t prove (or improve) your strategy. If you’re not measuring what matters, you’re just hoping something sticks. ### 4. Capacity Gaps Keep Teams from Using What They Have Most nonprofits don’t have a full-time data analyst, or the time to dig through endless reports. Even with great data, teams often lack: - Staff with analytics expertise. - Time to clean, segment, and activate data. - Leadership buy-in to prioritize a data strategy. Data use requires capacity, not just collection. ### 5. Bad Data Leads to Missed Opportunities Old addresses. Duplicate records. Incomplete donation histories. It all adds up. **Bad data = bad decisions.** Outdated or inaccurate donor data leads to misfires in targeting, missed opportunities, and loss of trust. ## The Real Issue Isn’t Data Collection, It’s Data Activation This is the part most fundraising tech doesn’t tell you: Having donor data doesn’t make it useful. Acting on it does. CRMs were built to hold information. Dashboards were built to summarize it. Reports were built to display it. But none of them were built to turn data into strategy—or strategy into action. That takes more than a tool. It takes a system. The result? - Your team spends hours digging through reports instead of reaching donors. - Campaigns get delayed while you try to figure out targeting. - High-potential donors fall through the cracks because no one flagged them in time. ### You’re Not Alone, And the Numbers Prove It [90% of nonprofits collect donor data](https://www.funraise.org/podcast/humanizing-nonprofit-technology), but only 5% actually use it to make decisions. That means most fundraising teams are sitting on a goldmine of insights… and still flying blind. **The truth is, most fundraising platforms weren’t built for action.** They collect data, sure. But they don’t know how to turn it into strategy—or strategy into execution. They store it. Visualize it. Maybe even automate a few emails. But they still leave you and your team guessing about what to do next. The problem isn’t a lack of data—it’s a lack of direction. A lack of systems. Fundraisers need a system that doesn’t just show you what’s happening, but tells you what to do next. That’s why we built [Avid](https://avidai.com/), not as another non-profit tool, but as a *system*. A *system* that unifies your data, interprets it, and activates it automatically. ## Nonprofits Use Avid to Turn Donor Data Into Outcomes The most successful nonprofits aren’t collecting more data. They’re **using** the data they already have to take fast, focused action. They’re getting valuable insights on: - Who’s at risk of lapsing? - Who’s ready to upgrade their gift? - Which segments are most likely to respond right now? - And most importantly: What should we do next? They’re focused on activation—because donor data is only powerful if you can act on it. You already have the data. Avid helps you make it work. [Avid](https://avidai.com/) is the first *fundraising system* designed to think, learn, and execute like your best strategist would. We call it [the first-ever fundraising agency in the cloud.](https://avidai.com/how-avid-works/) It comes with a library of proven, AI-powered playbooks—strategies developed from 7,000+ experiments and 650M+ donor interactions. Whether you’re reactivating lapsed donors, upgrading mid-level givers, or guiding first-time donors to a second gift, Avid delivers tested frameworks that drive results. No guesswork. No blank pages. Just strategy that adapts in real time to your donors. Here’s what **Avid** does: - Surfaces your highest-impact fundraising opportunities, daily - Uses AI-powered playbooks to show you exactly who to engage, when, and how - Automatically pushes segmented lists into your email, CRM, or ad platform - Tracks performance and evolves your strategy as your data changes You still bring the heart. [Avid](https://avidai.com/fundraising-intelligence/) brings the horsepower. ## Want to See What Your Donor Data Could Actually Do? Most teams already have the data. What they’re missing is the direction. [**Avid**](https://avidai.com/) **is the *system* that turns donor data into action, automatically, intelligently, and at scale.** So you can spend less time analyzing, and more time engaging the people who matter most. Read how a [Leading Nonprofit Achieved 12x Growth with Data-Driven Fundraising](https://avidai.com/leading-nonprofit-achieves-12x-growth-with-data-driven-fundraising/) here. Want to see Avid in action? [Book a demo with one of our experts here.](https://avidai.com/demo/) **Categories:** Fundraising Strategy --- ### [The Donor Retention Crisis: Why Fundraisers Need to Sound the Alarm Now](https://avidai.com/blog/the-donor-retention-crisis-why-fundraisers-need-to-sound-the-alarm-now/) **Published:** April 11, 2025 **Author:** Nathan Hill **Excerpt:** Donor retention fell by 8 points over the past 5 years. Nonprofits are on the cusp of a massive funding crisis. See how you can solve it for your nonprofit. **Content:** Over the past five years, donor retention has fallen by a staggering eight percentage points. That’s not just a minor dip—it’s a full-blown crisis that threatens nonprofit sustainability. [Avid’s real-time benchmark data](https://app.avidai.com/register) from 100+ nonprofit organizations confirms it: At the same time, individual giving is declining. The latest numbers from *Giving USA* show a concerning downward trend in charitable giving. Many organizations felt a surge in 2021—what some called the “COVID bump”—when giving rebounded after a rocky 2020. **But the big influx of giving in ‘21 was an anomaly.** Since then, individual giving resumed its steady decline. And when you factor in inflation, the real impact is even worse. **You have to raise 21% more in 2025 to make the same level of impact** that you had in 2021. And many organizations are struggling just to raise the same dollars—let alone more. ![chart showing donor retention rates dropping by 8 percentage points since 2021](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Retention-has-declined-by-8-points.png)So, the big question is: If we have better tools and strategies than ever before, why is donor retention still dropping? ## Our acquisition obsession is hurting long-term growth The nonprofit sector spends an incredible amount of time, energy, and budget on acquisition. The conversation is relentless: ![gif showing someone riding an exercise bike really dramatically](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/fitness-piera.gif) - *What’s the next best tactic to grow acquisition?* - *What’s the ideal cost to acquire a donor?* - *How much should we spend on acquisition this year?* - *How do we start to bring in new Gen Z donors?* Acquisition is essential, but here’s the reality: > ***Investing in acquisition while ignoring retention, is like riding a stationary bike.*** > > ***You’re working hard, but you’re not going anywhere.*** If we don’t stop donors from walking out the back door, it doesn’t matter how many new ones we bring in. Yet, in many organizations, donor retention is still an afterthought. That has to change—before the damage becomes irreversible. ### The numbers are sounding the alarm—are we listening? When donor retention declines, nonprofits are forced into an endless cycle of replacing lost donors just to stay even. And it’s getting harder. The Facts: - **Retention has dropped 8 percentage points** in just five years. That’s thousands—if not millions—of donors disappearing from nonprofit databases annually. - **Acquisition costs are rising.** With competition for attention increasing and digital ad prices climbing, it costs more to replace every lost donor. - **Inflation is squeezing nonprofits.** Even if your fundraising revenue remains flat, inflation means your impact is shrinking. Take a look at the chart below: It shows how individual giving has dropped since 2021 when adjusted for inflation (data from Giving USA). ![chart showing the decline in individual giving since 2021 when adjusted for inflation](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Individual-Giving-Adjusted-for-Inflation-1024x629.png)The result? A growing crisis that could cripple fundraising efforts if left unchecked. ## 3 donor retention questions every fundraiser needs to ask—right now How do you turn things around for your organization? It starts by putting donor retention front and center. Here are three critical questions every fundraiser should be asking today: ### 1️⃣ How much of your 2025 development budget is focused on donor retention? Retention isn’t a “nice-to-have” strategy—it’s a core component of sustainable fundraising. ❌ If your budget is only allocating advertising and media spend toward acquisition, expect retention to keep declining. But fixing retention doesn’t only mean spending money on ads. It could be **investing in staff** to create more capacity for retention & stewardship initiatives. It could be **dedicated funds for a campaign** to potential 2nd year donors to try and get them to renew. **The point is: growth won’t happen organically. You have to make a plan.** ### 2️⃣ **What initiatives can you test next to influence donor retention?** Small adjustments can yield massive results. The things that move the needle don’t always have to be ground-breaking innovations. - Can you implement **personalized new donor onboarding** plan? - Can you create more **automated ways to check in with donors** in an authentic way? - Can you run a **high-touch campaign** focused on upgrading donors? 💡 Start experimenting now. The earlier you take action, the bigger the impact. If you wait around for the next big conference to discover an “experts” magic retention formula—you’ll have wasted precious time where you could be learning what works for your specific donors. ### 3️⃣ **Have you considered the long-term revenue impact of even a small retention improvement?** A modest increase in donor retention can dramatically improve your long-term revenue. It’s not just about keeping more donors—it’s about maximizing lifetime value. In the example below, powered by the [Avid Scorecard](https://kb.avidai.com/scorecard-understanding-the-state-of-your-fundraising-program), you can see the retention rate trends of a nonprofit. In the top example, their **retention rate is down by 18%**. At this rate, they’re projected to **lose $0.3M** over the next 3 years. ![screenshot of the Avid scorecard showing a $0.3M loss due to declining donor retention](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Retention-Decline-by-18-1024x345.png)What if they could **slow the decline of their retention rate to just a 9% decrease**? Their forecast radically changes. Now they can actually grow by $3.5M over the next 3 years. That’s a **$3.5M difference in additional mission impact**—just by **slowing** retention decline. 📌 **The takeaway?** Retention isn’t just about keeping donors—it’s about maximizing lifetime value. ![screenshot of the Avid scorecard showing a $3.5M gain when improving donor retention](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Retention-Decline-by-9-1024x336.png)**Don’t have a tool to visualize the long-term impact of retention improvements?** [Book an Avid demo](https://avidai.com/demo/ "Book a Demo") to see how the Scorecard can help you make more strategic decisions to ensure the long-term health of your mission. ## Retention is the future of fundraising Donor retention isn’t a feel-good initiative—it’s a survival strategy. It’s also a mission multiplier. If the current trends continue, nonprofits will face even greater financial instability in the years ahead. But there’s hope. Organizations that prioritize retention will emerge stronger. That means investing in donor relationships, personalizing communications, and create meaningful engagement. This means more loyal donors, higher value donors, and ultimately more stable funding to make greater impact. The question is: Will you act before it’s too late? 🚨 **The alarm bells are ringing.** It’s time to stop ignoring donor retention and start making it a top priority. **Categories:** Fundraising Strategy --- ### [Leading Nonprofit Achieves 12x Growth with Data-Driven Fundraising](https://avidai.com/blog/leading-nonprofit-achieves-12x-growth-with-data-driven-fundraising/) **Published:** September 9, 2024 **Author:** Avid Team **Excerpt:** Learn how a leading nonprofit used Avid to unify donor data, optimize ad targeting, and automate engagement—driving 12x growth in donor conversions. **Content:** #### The Results ## Smarter Data, Higher Growth - 12x increase in donor conversions through better ad targeting - Over $1 million in previously unattributed revenue identified in minutes - Automated donor segmentation for email and ad campaigns - Faster, more accurate reporting—insights in minutes instead of days By integrating Avid’s fundraising intelligence and automation, this nonprofit was able to target the right donors, optimize engagement, and scale growth like never before. #### The Challenge ## Scaling Impact in a Changing Digital Landscape This nonprofit reaches millions with investigative reports, online journalism, and mission-driven content, influencing public opinion and inspiring action. But as digital fundraising evolved, so did the challenges. - **Rising ad costs and changing social media algorithms** made donor acquisition more expensive and unpredictable. - **Siloed data across CRM, marketing platforms, and ad networks** made it difficult to optimize engagement. - **A complex data visualization tool was underutilized**—only their consulting firm could navigate it, limiting in-house access to key insights. Despite steady year-over-year growth, they needed a smarter, more automated approach to keep up with their expanding donor base. #### The Solution ## Avid Turns Data into Actionable Strategy With Avid, the nonprofit seamlessly integrated its donor data across systems, gaining real-time insights and unlocking fundraising breakthroughs that were previously out of reach. ### 1. $1 Million in Hidden Revenue Identified in Minutes Within the first week of using Avid, the data team uncovered over $1 million in unattributed revenue—a long-standing issue that was resolved in just 15 minutes thanks to Avid’s intuitive data mapping. Instead of struggling with manual data cleanup and unclear revenue sources, they now have instant, accurate reporting that the entire team can use. ### 2. Smarter Ad Targeting = 12x Growth in Donor Conversions Previously, the organization relied on basic integrations to build lookalike audiences for ads. With Avid Pathways, they could sync richer donor data, improving audience targeting and acquisition strategies. Using Avid, they built lookalike audiences based on: - First-time donors who gave $100 or more - Lapsed donors primed for reactivation - Second-year donors likely to upgrade their giving The result? A 1,200% increase in donor conversions compared to traditional ad targeting. ### 3. Automated Donor Segmentation for Smarter Campaigns Before Avid, manual segmentation slowed down email campaigns—every list had to be exported, sorted, and re-uploaded before each campaign. Now, with Avid Pathways’ automated segmentation, donor lists are updated in real time, powering: - Personalized second-gift and donor upgrade campaigns - Automated donor engagement journeys based on giving milestones - Integrated social media and direct mail reactivation efforts With automation handling donor segmentation, the nonprofit can focus on strategy and storytelling—rather than managing spreadsheets. #### The Impact ## A Scalable, Data-Driven Fundraising Model Avid didn’t just improve efficiency—it transformed how the entire team engaged with donor data. - Donor insights are now accessible to the whole team, not just consultants. - Reporting takes minutes, not days, giving fundraisers real-time performance insights. - Automation has replaced manual data tasks, freeing up time for high-impact strategy. > **“When we found that some gifts in our CRM appeared in an undefined channel in external reports, we used Avid to streamline the reporting process and accurately identify the source channel of those gifts—with just 15 minutes of work.”** – Data Manager ## Better Insights. Smarter Targeting. Bigger Impact. This nonprofit isn’t alone—organizations using Avid’s fundraising intelligence see: - Up to a 41% reduction in donor acquisition costs - Automated audience syncing across Facebook, email, and CRM - Real-time performance tracking for smarter fundraising decisions **Categories:** Customer Stories --- ### [How Donor Intelligence Drives Fundraising Growth](https://avidai.com/blog/donor-intelligence/) **Published:** November 7, 2024 **Author:** Avid Team **Excerpt:** Leverage donor intelligence to boost retention, optimize campaigns, and make fundraising decisions with confidence using Avid. **Content:** Every fundraiser knows keeping donors engaged is harder than ever. Donor retention rates are at an all-time low—only 1 in 4 donors give a second time. That’s a problem. Because growing a nonprofit isn’t just about acquiring donors—it’s about keeping them. But here’s the challenge: Most nonprofits are sitting on donor data they don’t know how to use. You already have insights about who your donors are, what drives them, and when they’re most likely to give—but if that data isn’t clear, connected, and actionable, it’s just another spreadsheet collecting dust. That’s where Avid comes in. Avid is the first-ever Fundraising Agency in the Cloud, giving nonprofits access to proven fundraising strategies, real-time insights, and ready-to-use campaign playbooks—all powered by data. Instead of spending hours pulling reports or guessing where to focus, Avid helps fundraisers activate their donor data—so every decision is clear, strategic, and impactful. This is fundraising intelligence done for you—so your nonprofit can grow smarter, raise more, and build stronger donor relationships. ## What Is Donor Intelligence? (And Why It Matters More Than Ever) Donor intelligence isn’t just about collecting data. It’s about understanding donors deeply—so every campaign, message, and ask feels personal and timely. At its core, donor intelligence helps you answer questions like: - Who is most likely to give again? - Which donors are at risk of lapsing? - What messaging and channels drive the best engagement? - How can we turn one-time donors into long-term supporters? When used effectively, donor intelligence turns raw data into real growth. The challenge? Most fundraising teams don’t have the time or tools to analyze donor data at scale. That’s why Avid exists. With Avid’s Fundraising Agency in the Cloud, organizations can easily access donor insights, identify high-value opportunities, and take action—all in one platform. ## Why Nonprofits Struggle to Use Donor Data Effectively Most nonprofits already have donor data. What they’re missing is: 🚧 **A clear way to connect the dots** – Data is scattered across CRMs, email platforms, donation tools, and social media. 🚧 **Time to analyze and act** – Fundraisers are stretched thin, juggling multiple roles. They don’t have hours to dig into reports and pull insights. 🚧 **A data-driven strategy** – Understanding donor data isn’t the same as knowing how to use it effectively to craft winning fundraising campaigns. 🚧 **Technology that works for fundraisers** – Most tools give you charts and graphs. But what fundraisers actually need is clear next steps and ready-to-go campaign strategies. That’s where Avid steps in. Instead of just showing you data, Avid tells you exactly where to focus and what to do next—so your team can spend more time engaging donors and less time decoding spreadsheets. ## The Fundraising Agency in the Cloud: How Avid Makes Donor Intelligence Actionable Avid works like a full-service fundraising partner—helping nonprofits connect their donor data, uncover insights, and execute strategic campaigns with confidence. ### Here’s how it transforms donor data into growth: 1️⃣ **Unifies Your Donor Data** No more silos. Avid connects your CRM, email, ads, donation history, and engagement data into one simple, organized system—so you can see the big picture. 2️⃣ **Identifies High-Value Donor Opportunities** Avid scans your data and surfaces **your most valuable donor segments**, including: - Past donors likely to give again - Lapsed donors ready to be re-engaged - New prospects with high giving potential 3️⃣ **Builds Personalized Fundraising Playbooks** Instead of making you figure out what to do next, Avid delivers step-by-step playbooks tailored to your nonprofit’s donor trends. - Suggested messaging and timing - Best channels to reach each donor segment - Campaign themes optimized for engagement 4️⃣ **Helps You Optimize in Real Time** Fundraising isn’t static. That’s why Avid doesn’t just deliver a plan and walk away. It continuously analyzes campaign performance and provides recommendations to adjust strategy on the fly. This is fundraising intelligence built for action—not just analysis.. ## How Nonprofits Are Using Avid to Drive Growth Organizations using Avid have seen: 📈 **39% higher donor retention rates** 📉 **41% lower donor acquisition costs** 💰 **32% increase in fundraising ROI** 📊 **50% growth in broad-based donors** And the best part? They’re doing it with insights that help them take action—without adding complexity or cost. Avid turns confusing donor data into clear, strategic fundraising moves—so fundraisers can execute with confidence and focus on building relationships, not managing tools. ## Donor Intelligence Isn’t a Luxury—It’s the Future of Fundraising Fundraising is about people, not spreadsheets. But without donor intelligence, fundraisers risk: 🚫 **Sending generic, one-size-fits-all appeals that don’t resonate** 🚫 **Losing high-value donors because engagement isn’t personalized** 🚫 **Guessing instead of making data-backed fundraising decisions** With Avid, you can finally fundraise smarter, not harder—using insights that guide every move, just like a world-class fundraising team would. **Categories:** Fundraising Strategy --- ### [Raise More on Giving Tuesday with AI-Powered Insights](https://avidai.com/blog/ai-powered-insights/) **Published:** November 14, 2024 **Author:** Avid Team **Excerpt:** Make Giving Tuesday 2024 your best yet with AI-powered insights, donor segmentation, and smarter fundraising strategies. **Content:** Every Giving Tuesday, nonprofits face the same challenge: standing out in a flood of fundraising appeals, engaging donors meaningfully, and turning a moment of generosity into long-term impact. But most teams rely on the same playbook—sending emails, posting on social media, hoping for the best. That’s not a strategy. That’s guesswork. The difference between a good campaign and a record-breaking one isn’t just working harder—it’s working *smarter*. The nonprofits that grow their Giving Tuesday results don’t rely on instinct alone. They use data to identify the right donors, craft the right messages, and make real-time adjustments to maximize engagement and giving. ### The Power Shift: From Guesswork to Precision Enter Avid: the first-ever Fundraising Agency in the Cloud—a platform designed to do more than just surface insights. Avid *analyzes* your donor data, *builds* optimized campaign strategies, and *guides* you through the highest-impact next steps—so every move is backed by intelligence. Instead of sifting through dashboards and reports, Avid shows you exactly where to focus. This is fundraising intelligence reimagined—not just tracking donor data but *activating* it to predict outcomes, personalize engagement, and maximize revenue. No consultants, no endless spreadsheets, no scrambling mid-campaign. ## How Avid Transforms Giving Tuesday From A Guess Into a Strategy Avid eliminates busywork and amplifies results in three core ways: 1. **Unifies Your Data** All your donor interactions—CRM, email, ads, social media—finally in one place, automatically synced. No silos. No blind spots. 2. **Pinpoints Your Best Opportunities** Avid scans your data and identifies your top Giving Tuesday segments: - **Last year’s donors** who are primed to give again**Lapsed donors** who just need the right nudge**High-value prospects** with the capacity to give more These aren’t just reports—they’re actionable insights that tell you *exactly* where to focus. 3. **Builds Smarter Campaigns** Avid isn’t just about analysis—it helps you take action. - **Creates segmented campaign strategies** for email, ads, and social channels. - **Recommends adjustments in real time**, such as messaging tweaks or timing shifts based on donor engagement. - **Keeps lists updated dynamically**, so your outreach stays relevant and effective. ### Giving Tuesday Playbook: The 5 Keys to AI-Driven Fundraising Avid transforms your Giving Tuesday campaign into a *data-driven, high-impact initiative* with five core pillars: #### 1. Know Your Donors Before They Give Giving Tuesday isn’t the time to figure out who’s engaged. Avid analyzes past Giving Tuesday data to surface: - Who gave last year, and at what level - Which donors engaged but didn’t donate - What messaging and timing drove the highest conversions With this data, Avid automatically builds pre-qualified donor segments, so you’re ready to personalize at scale. #### 2. Predict & Optimize in Real Time What if you knew *mid-campaign* that your email appeals weren’t converting—but social media was gaining traction? With live campaign tracking and AI-powered recommendations, Avid ensures you’re always making informed adjustments. For example: - If donations spike from Facebook ads, Avid suggests shifting more budget to that channel. - If email engagement lags, Avid recommends alternative subject lines or send times based on real-time donor behavior. It’s like having a fundraising strategist at your side, helping you make the most of every moment. #### 3. Build, Don’t Just Launch On Giving Tuesday, speed matters. Avid helps you move fast by: - Building segmented email, ad, and social strategies aligned to donor behavior. - Generating personalized messaging recommendations based on what’s worked in past campaigns. - Keeping donor lists fresh and dynamic, ensuring that outreach efforts stay relevant. Instead of spending hours manually compiling data, Avid equips your team with everything needed to execute with confidence. #### 4. Expand Reach With Smarter Acquisition Giving Tuesday isn’t just about re-engaging past donors—it’s about bringing in new ones. Avid’s fundraising intelligence builds hyper-targeted lookalike audiences based on your best donors, syncing those segments to: - Facebook and Google Ads - Email acquisition campaigns - Retargeting efforts Translation: You’ll reach more high-value prospects for less money, while reducing donor acquisition costs. #### 5. Don’t Stop at One Gift—Turn Donors Into Lifelong Supporters Most nonprofits treat Giving Tuesday as a one-day event. But the smartest organizations use it as a launchpad for long-term engagement. Avid automatically segments donors after Giving Tuesday based on: - Gift size and frequency - Engagement behavior (email clicks, social interactions) - Likelihood to give again Then, it guides your follow-up strategy, from tailored thank-you sequences to automated recurring gift upgrades. ## Avid in Action: Giving Tuesday Results That Speak for Themselves Organizations using Avid have seen: - 41% lower donor acquisition costs - 39% higher donor retention rates - 50% growth in broad-based donors - 12x fundraising growth powered by data-driven engagement The difference? Fundraising intelligence that doesn’t just inform—it helps you take action. ## Your Most Impactful Giving Tuesday Yet Starts Now The old way of running a Giving Tuesday campaign? - Spend months preparing - Launch and hope for the best - Scramble to make sense of results afterward The Avid way? - Plug in your data, and Avid does the work of building insights and strategies - Real-time recommendations guide your every move - Optimized segmentation and donor insights ensure every outreach is strategic Your donors aren’t just data points—they’re people who care about your mission. Avid helps you reach them in the moments that matter most. **Categories:** AI & Automation --- ### [How to Use Data-Driven Year-End Fundraising to Raise More](https://avidai.com/blog/data-driven-year-end-fundraising/) **Published:** November 28, 2024 **Author:** Avid Team **Excerpt:** Use data-driven year-end fundraising to engage donors, optimize outreach, and maximize giving season success with AI-powered insights. **Content:** Did you know that 31% of all annual giving happens in December—with 12% in the final three days alone? Year-end fundraising is a critical moment for donor engagement, where personalized outreach and data-driven strategy can mean the difference between meeting—or missing—fundraising goals. But standing out is harder than ever. Inboxes are overflowing, donor attention is limited, and nonprofits need smarter ways to connect with supporters before the clock runs out. That’s where AI-powered donor intelligence comes in. With the right data-driven approach, nonprofits can: - **Identify top donor opportunities** based on past giving behavior. - **Send the right message at the right time** with predictive insights. - **Optimize campaigns in real time** to maximize year-end giving. The good news? You don’t need a data scientist to make this happen. With Avid’s Fundraising Agency in the Cloud, nonprofits can harness real-time donor intelligence and automated execution—without the guesswork. Let’s dive into five proven strategies to help you raise more this year-end season. ## What We Mean by “Data-Driven Decision-Making” Most fundraising strategies rely on intuition, past experience, and manual analysis. But the best fundraisers use data to drive every move. Being data-driven means: - **Knowing which donors are most likely to give**—before you reach out. - **Understanding donor behavior**—so messages feel personal, not generic. - **Making informed, real-time adjustments**—so every campaign performs at its best. With Avid’s real-time donor intelligence, nonprofits move from guessing to knowing—turning data into clear, strategic fundraising actions. ## 5 Data-Driven Strategies to Maximize Year-End Giving ### 1. Identify Your Highest-Value Donors & Prioritize Outreach Not all donors engage the same way during year-end giving. Who should you focus on first? 💡 **How AI-Powered Donor Intelligence Helps:** AI-driven insights analyze donor behavior to surface: - **Past Year-End Donors** – Those who gave last December are most likely to give again. - **Loyal & Recurring Donors** – Recognizing them strengthens relationships. - **Lapsed Donors** – A well-timed, data-driven appeal can bring them back. 🎯 **Action Step:** Use Avid’s Fundraising Agency in the Cloud to segment your donors and send highly personalized year-end appeals—so your most valuable supporters hear from you first. ### 2. Personalize Messaging for Maximum Engagement Generic, one-size-fits-all messaging doesn’t work anymore. Donors expect personalized outreach. 💡 **How AI-Powered Donor Intelligence Helps:** - **First-Time Donors?** A welcome message with a mission impact story. - **Loyal Donors?** A thank-you + an opportunity to deepen their impact. - **Lapsed Donors?** A tailored “We Miss You” campaign with a compelling reason to give again. 🎯 **Action Step:** Use Avid to dynamically personalize messaging—ensuring every email, text, or ad aligns with the donor’s past behavior. ### 3. Optimize Timing Based on Donor Behavior Sending year-end appeals too early or too late can mean lost donations. 💡 **How AI-Powered Donor Intelligence Helps:** AI identifies when donors are most likely to give, such as: - **Early December:** Some donors prefer giving before the rush. - **Mid-December:** Donors respond well to impact-driven storytelling. - **Final 48 Hours:** A major donation surge happens at the last minute. 🎯 **Action Step:** Time your appeals strategically—leveraging Avid’s predictive insights to send the right message at the right time. ### 4. Engage Donors Across Multiple Channels Most donors don’t engage in just one place. To maximize year-end giving, nonprofits must connect with supporters wherever they are most active. 💡 **How AI-Powered Donor Intelligence Helps:** - **Email** – Personalized asks based on past giving behavior. - **Social Media & Digital Ads** – Targeted retargeting campaigns. - **SMS & Text Reminders** – High-converting donation deadline nudges. 🎯 **Action Step:** Use Avid’s cross-channel automation to ensure donors receive a consistent message across email, social, and text—without extra manual effort. ### 5. Track & Adjust Campaign Performance in Real Time Most nonprofits launch their year-end campaigns and hope for the best. But the best fundraisers track live performance and adjust on the fly. 💡 **How AI-Powered Donor Intelligence Helps:** - **Monitor email open & click rates**—optimize underperforming subject lines. - **Adjust donation page messaging** based on conversion trends. - **Resend appeals to non-openers** at the optimal time. 🎯 **Action Step:** Use Avid’s real-time tracking to optimize messaging, adjust donor segmentation, and ensure no opportunity is lost. ## BONUS: Quick Wins for Year-End Success - **Send a gratitude-first email before making an ask.** - **Launch a “Last Chance to Give in 2024” campaign.** - **Use social proof—highlight donor impact stories.** - **Offer a matching gift challenge to increase urgency.** These simple, data-driven moves can increase donations even in the final hours. ## Why Avid’s Fundraising Agency in the Cloud is Essential for Year-End Giving Most nonprofit fundraising tools store data. Avid activates it. ### With Avid, nonprofits can: **Aggregate donor data** from CRM, email, and social platforms. - **Identify high-value donor segments** in real time. - **Automate multi-channel engagement** across email, SMS, and ads. - **Optimize appeals based on AI-driven insights.** - **Track campaign results live**—so nonprofits can adjust and improve. The result? More personalized engagement. More donations. Less manual work. ## Make This Year-End Your Best Yet Fundraising success isn’t about sending more appeals—it’s about sending smarter ones. With **AI-powered donor intelligence**, nonprofits can: 🚀 **Engage the right donors** with the right message. 🚀 **Optimize every touchpoint** for higher conversions. 🚀 **Drive maximum impact**—without overloading their teams. **Categories:** Fundraising Strategy --- ### [The Truth About AI for Nonprofit Fundraising & Security](https://avidai.com/blog/ai-for-nonprofit-fundraising/) **Published:** December 5, 2024 **Author:** Avid Team **Excerpt:** Worried about AI for nonprofit fundraising? Avid’s ethical AI protects donor privacy while delivering real-time insights to grow your impact. **Content:** AI is everywhere. It’s transforming industries, streamlining operations, and driving smarter decision-making. And in the nonprofit world, AI is no longer a futuristic concept—it’s an essential tool for fundraising success. More nonprofit leaders are using AI-powered donor intelligence to understand donor behavior, personalize outreach, and make data-driven decisions that maximize their impact. But alongside AI’s promise comes a critical question: Is it secure? At Avid, we believe nonprofits should benefit from AI’s efficiency without ever compromising donor privacy or trust. That’s why we’ve built the first-ever Fundraising Agency in the Cloud—a platform that makes AI-powered fundraising both powerful and privacy-first. Here’s how Avid ensures AI works for fundraisers—safely, securely, and transparently. ## How Avid Uses AI to Help Nonprofits Grow AI, when used responsibly, is an amplifier—not a replacement. Avid doesn’t replace fundraisers—it empowers them by turning complex data into clear, actionable insights. Here’s how Avid’s AI-driven Fundraising Agency in the Cloud helps nonprofits: ✅ **Unifies Donor Data** – Avid brings together CRM, email, social, and web data into one seamless system, eliminating silos. ✅ **Maps the Donor Journey** – AI categorizes donor behavior across key fundraising stages like Retention, Acquisition, and Reactivation, helping you see where donors are in their giving lifecycle. ✅ **Identifies Growth Opportunities** – By analyzing patterns from 7,000+ nonprofit marketing experiments, Avid pinpoints what’s working, what’s not, and what to do next. ✅ **Syncs Campaign Audiences** – Avid ensures that donor segments are automatically updated across email, ads, and social platforms—so fundraisers can confidently execute campaigns with precision. At every step, AI is a tool for clarity—helping nonprofits focus on what matters most: engaging donors and growing impact. ## How Avid Ensures AI is Secure, Private, and Ethical Fundraising runs on trust—and that means AI must be built with security and transparency at its core. ### 1. Privacy-First AI: No Personal Donor Data is Exposed Avid ensures that no personally identifiable information (PII) or transaction-level data is ever directly accessed by AI models. Instead of analyzing individual donor records, Avid uses aggregate insights—meaning donor trends and behaviors are identified without compromising individual privacy. ### 2. Heuristic Analysis: AI That Sees Patterns, Not People Avid’s AI doesn’t dig into personal details—it identifies trends, patterns, and opportunities at a broader scale. Our proprietary heuristic analysis approach: - Processes donor data without touching individual transactions - Generates actionable insights without storing personal donor records - Delivers clear, strategy-ready recommendations—without privacy risks ### 3. Ethical AI: No “Black Box” Decision-Making One of the biggest concerns with AI is transparency. How does it work? What’s driving decisions? At Avid, we prioritize explainable AI—so nonprofits always understand why a recommendation is made. No guessing. No mystery. Just clear, data-driven insights you can trust. ## 3 Common AI Myths (and Why Fundraisers Don’t Need to Worry) Fundraisers often ask, *“Is AI too complicated? Too risky? Too impersonal?”* The truth is, AI isn’t here to replace human connection—it’s here to strengthen it. Let’s debunk some common AI misconceptions: ### Myth #1: “AI Puts Donor Data at Risk” **Reality:** Avid’s AI is built for security-first fundraising. It never exposes donor PII or transaction-level data, ensuring insights are valuable, not vulnerable. ### Myth #2: “AI Will Replace the Human Touch” **Reality:** AI enhances, not replaces, human connection. By automating data analysis and segmentation, fundraisers have more time to focus on personalized donor engagement. ### Myth #3: “AI Is a ‘Black Box’ That Can’t Be Trusted” **Reality:** Avid’s AI is built for transparency. Every insight comes with clear explanations and strategic recommendations—so you always know the “why” behind every move. ## AI is a Powerful Ally—When It’s Built Right The question isn’t whether AI should be part of fundraising—it’s how it should be used responsibly. At Avid, we’ve designed AI to: - **Empower nonprofits**—not replace them - **Safeguard donor trust**—not put it at risk - **Deliver clear, actionable insights**—not overwhelm with complexity Nonprofits deserve both the power of AI and the peace of mind that comes with security and transparency. With Avid’s Fundraising Agency in the Cloud, you get both. **Categories:** AI & Automation --- ## Pages ### [Avid — The AI Fundraising Operating System for Nonprofits](https://avidai.com/) **Published:** June 24, 2026 **Author:** Stephen Boudreau **Content:** The AI Fundraising Operating System # Sync your tools. Spot opportunities. Launch your next move. Avid is the premier AI solution for fundraising teams. Built by real fundraisers and trained on 8,000+ real-world fundraising experiments—Avid lets your team scale the human work that only you can do. [Get a Demo](/demo/) [ Watch the 6-min tour](https://avidai.com/activate-your-tour-of-avid/) **$78B+** in giving tracked Works with **the CRMs you already use** **SOC 2 Type II** ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/brand-awareness-scaled.jpg) Trusted by mission-driven teams ![Bible League Canada](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/avidbridge-bibleleague-canada-2026.png)![Buckner International](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/buckner-international-561fab.svg)![CURE International](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/cure-international.png)![Hope for the Heart](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/hope-for-the-heart-scaled.png)![Operation Smile Canada](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/operation-smile-canada-848172.svg)![HonorHealth Foundation](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/honorhealth-foundation-c33c8f.svg)![CBN](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/cbn-3e7e5a.svg)![EWTN](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/ewtn.png)![ADRA](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/adra.png)![Bethel University](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/bethel.png)![Dallas Theological Seminary](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/dts-logo-dark.webp)![Chicago Scholars](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/chicago-scholars.webp)![Polar Bears International](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/polar-bears-international.png)![Lustgarten Foundation](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/lustgarten-1a521b.svg)![Capital Area Food Bank](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/capital-area-food-bank.png)![Charity Navigator](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/charity-navigator-4ee0b2.svg)![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/avidbridge-bibleleague-canada-2026.png)![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/buckner-international-561fab.svg)![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/cure-international.png)![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/hope-for-the-heart-scaled.png)![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/operation-smile-canada-848172.svg)![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/honorhealth-foundation-c33c8f.svg)![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/cbn-3e7e5a.svg)![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/ewtn.png)![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/adra.png)![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/bethel.png)![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/dts-logo-dark.webp)![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/chicago-scholars.webp)![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/polar-bears-international.png)![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/lustgarten-1a521b.svg)![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/capital-area-food-bank.png)![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/charity-navigator-4ee0b2.svg) Start where you are ## What’s pulling at you right now? Wherever your program is today, there’s a place to begin. Find the one that sounds like you — that’s where Avid goes to work first. ### “We’re short-staffed.” Avid’s first move A lean team can still run a full program. Avid runs the analysis and the outreach around the clock — so nothing slips when you’re a person down. ### “We’re switching CRMs.” Avid’s first move A migration usually means months of flying blind while you rebuild your donor insight from scratch. Avid carries your history across the move and keeps reading every system — so the transition never costs you a campaign. ### “We’ve got a big push coming.” Avid’s first move The segmenting, the asks, the send sequence — drafted before you start, so you’re refining instead of scrambling. ### “Donors are slipping faster than we can respond.” Avid’s first move By the time a lapsed-donor report reaches you, the moment has usually passed. Avid catches the early signals — the second gift that never came, the opens that stopped — and surfaces who to reach while they’re still reachable. [See what Avid would do →](/meet-edna/) See it in one place ## Your whole program, finally in one view. All your fundraising data, pulled together and read continuously — so what’s working, what’s slipping, and what to do next is right in front of you. Dashboard Log out My Dashboard+ Settings Share Catalog ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/avidbridge-icon-dashboard-2026.png) ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/avidbridge-icon-scorecard-2026.png) ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/avidbridge-icon-playbooks-2026.png) ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/avidbridge-icon-insights-2026.png) ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/avidbridge-icon-benchmarks-2026.png) ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/avidbridge-icon-pathways-2026.png) ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/avidbridge-icon-directmail-2026.png) ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/avidbridge-icon-edna.png) ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/avidbridge-icon-lockstep.png) ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/avidbridge-icon-settings-2026.png) Daily Top 3 Insights Midlevel ($1K–$5K) Donors 3.2K|8.6% decrease Recurring Donors 6.5K|3.2% increase Offline Gifts 12.4K|3.1% increase Midlevel Donor Overview: Midlevel ($1K–$5K) Donors 6K4K2K0 3.4K3.5K3.6K3.5K3.2K FYTD22FYTD23FYTD24FYTD25FYTD26 137 Days Until Giving Tuesday Donor Retention 75%50%25%0 20222023202420252026 BenchmarkYour Organization Audiences Suggested Audience Lapsing Mid-Level Donors **Contacts** 1,912**Source** Edna FYTD26 2nd-Year Donors, Not Yet RecurringNew **Contacts** 4,994**Date Created** 07/03/2026 Year-end letter locks Friday. Approve the mail-house proof and confirm the River Guardians ask amounts. Then the fun part — call the first ten matching-gift donors, just to say thank you. Connections (3) ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/avidbridge-intg-fundraiseup.webp) StatusConnected Last Sync7/17/2026 ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/virtuous_logo_square.webp) StatusConnected Last Sync7/17/2026 ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/mailchimp_logo_square.svg) StatusConnected Last Sync7/17/2026 ### One true record per donor. Every channel — CRM, email, ads, online giving, events — blended into a single, current record. For the first time, the number you’re looking at is the true one. ConnectionsAll in sync CRM Email Ads Online Giving Events Finance ### The truth’s already on the page. Open Avid and your program’s health is right there: retention, acquisition, reactivation, upgrade. No Monday report to rebuild, no four dashboards to reconcile. Program healthFYTD26 Retention7.2% decrease Acquisition12.2% increase Reactivation11.6% increase Upgrade1.5% decrease You can see everything now. But seeing isn’t doing. Meet Edna ## Not a chatbot. An agent who does the work. Most tools hand you a report and walk away. Edna recognizes what’s changing across your stack and brings you the work already done — with every source shown. A chatbot adds to your to-do list. **Edna gets you ahead of the work.** [See everything Edna does →](/meet-edna/) Mid-Level Retention Why are we running behind plan? ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/avidbridge-icon-edna.png) ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/avidbridge-icon-edna.png) Revenue is tracking **−5% to plan** for FYTD26. The cause is upstream, in one segment: **Mid-level second-year retention has slipped from 68% to 54%** — broadbase and major are holding steady. Open the chart: Second-Year Retention by Giving Level. What’s my best next move? ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/avidbridge-icon-edna.png) ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/avidbridge-icon-edna.png) Your best next move: **re-engage the ~1,900 mid-level donors** from last year’s class who haven’t renewed. Mid-level carries **27% of your revenue**, and this group is slipping against its own history — reached now, most stay. Want me to build that audience? [ How can I help? ](/demo/) Second-Year Retention by Giving Level Fiscal year to date · by giving level Broadbase Midlevel Major FYTD22FYTD23FYTD24FYTD25FYTD26 ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/avidbridge-icon-edna.png)Want to see Edna in action? This is a quick preview. A guided tour shows how Edna would work for your team. [Get a Demo →](/demo/) Built on fundraising itself ## A general AI has read about fundraising. Edna has done it. So when Edna surfaces a move, it isn’t a guess and it isn’t a prediction — it’s recognition. Avid came out of the work itself — years of running real fundraising, where Edna learned what actually works. This is the experience behind every move she makes. How is this different from ChatGPT? → 8,000+ controlled fundraising experiments. Proven, not guessed. 650M+ donor interactions behind the patterns. More than any one program could see in a lifetime. Avid never trains its AI on your data — your donor file is always, only yours. · [How Avid protects your data →](https://trust.avidai.com) How Avid works ## Your CRM remembers. Avid thinks. You decide. One loop, running continuously — carrying the work forward between campaigns, so your program never goes quiet. 1. A### Aggregate CRM, email, ads, giving, events — every system, one current file, refreshed daily. 2. V### Visualize The shift stands out: mid-level second-year retention, 68% → 54%. 3. I### Identify Avid recognizes the moment: ~1,900 lapsing mid-level donors — your biggest lever right now. 4. D### Deploy Edna stages the re-engagement — a human hits send. [See how the loop runs →](/how-it-works/) What you get back ## You were made for the mission. Avid was made for the rest. You didn’t take this job to wrangle spreadsheets. Avid isn’t another hire to manage or another tool to run — it takes the grind and hands it back done. **More of your time on the mission. More of the mission, done.** ![A fundraiser and a donor in an unhurried conversation over coffee.](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/what-you-get-back.jpg) LockStep ## Avid comes with a team. Every Avid plan includes LockStep: a dedicated team that knows your program. Not an add-on, more than a help desk. **When it counts, LockStep is right there with you.** - They untangle your dataYour specialist wires up your stack and makes the numbers agree. Then you go live together. - They’re in your cornerWhere to focus, what to prioritize — people who know fundraising and your program help you call it. - They stay closeThe same team, year after year. They know your history, not just your tickets. ![Your dedicated LockStep team, working together.](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/lockstep-team.jpg) Proof ## More for the mission. In their own numbers. What results have nonprofits seen? → ![Jody Matheson, Director of Marketing at Bible League Canada](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/jody-matheson.jpg) −20%in cost per donor ![Bible League Canada logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/avidbridge-bibleleague-canada-2026.png) > “Before Avid, we could reach donors. Now we can actually optimize how we engage them across every channel — and maximize every campaign.” Jody MathesonDirector of Marketing, Bible League Canada [Read case study →](/blog/bible-league-canada/) [ ![Luther Seminary logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/logo-luther.png) +308% increase in donor reactivation ](/blog/luther-seminary/) [ ![Amplify Fundraising logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/logo-amplify.webp) +19% recurring donor retention ](/blog/how-kcbi-lifted-recurring-donor-retention-by-19-using-avid/) [ ![Tarrant Area Food Bank logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/logo-tarrant.webp) +200% increased retention ](/blog/fundraising-automation-increases-retention-by-200/) Works with your stack ## Avid sits on top of the tools you already run. Connect your CRM, your email, your data. Avid reads across all of it — and your data stays yours. Any tool can read your data. **Avid knows which of it moves your mission.** [Explore integrations →](/integrations/)[Visit the Trust Center →](https://trust.avidai.com) Isn’t this just another CRM? → - ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/salesforce_logo_square.svg)Salesforce - ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/blackbaud-raiser-s-edge-nxt.webp)Blackbaud - ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/virtuous_logo_square.webp)Virtuous - ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/hubspot_logo_square.svg)HubSpot - ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/mailchimp_logo_square.svg)Mailchimp - ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/bloomerang_logo_square.svg)Bloomerang - ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/meta.png)Meta - ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/donorperfect.png)DonorPerfect - + many more → ## Get ahead of the work. See what getting ahead looks like for a program like yours. [Get a Demo](/demo/) --- ### [Frank's Booking Page | Avid](https://avidai.com/create-a-campaign-with-frank/) **Published:** July 20, 2026 **Author:** Riley Young **Content:** ![Avid](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Avid-Logo-Dark-300x140.webp) ![Avid LaunchLabs Logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/LaunchLabs-Full-1024x199.png) ## Get a ready-to-launch campaign. ### Built in 30 minutes with Avid. Fundraising teams are overworked. And yet you’re asked to raise more. Meanwhile, the work it takes to get campaigns out the door keeps growing: 1. More **lists** to pull 2. More **segments** to build 3. More **tools** to coordinate 4. More **channels** to manage 5. More **reporting** on performance 6. More **analysis** of the learnings ![Playbooks dashboard showing a Donor Anniversary Upgrade Appeal project with touchpoints and email templates, plus overlaid documents](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/LaunchLabs_Hero-1024x749.png) ### The *Real* Problem Holding Back Fundraising Growth The problem holding you back from fundraising growth is not your strategy. It’s not your team. It’s not your skills. It’s usually not even your fundraising tools. **The real problem?** Your data is stuck in silos. Insights take too long to surface. Lists go stale by the time you import them. Campaigns are overwhelmingly complex. *Growth opportunities slip away because there aren’t enough hands to take action in time.* ### Avid Gives Your Team Capacity for Growth When your reserve your **free Launch Lab session**, you’ll see how Avid gives your team the extra capacity it needs for growth. After 30 minutes with an Avid expert, you’ll have a **customized, ready-to-launch campaign**—backed by tactics proven to work from over 8,000 fundraising experiments. [ Reserve Your Launch Lab Session » ](#launch) ![benchmarks icon](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/benchmarks.webp) 1. Get a Personalized Benchmark Assessment Use Avid Benchmarks to get a **personalized assessment of where to focus**, comparing your performance to real-time performance of your peers. [ Reserve Your Launch Lab Session » ](#launch) ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Rectangle-1024x1024.webp) 2. Build a Ready-to-Launch Campaign Use Avid Playbooks to build a **custom campaign strategy**—along with copy for every touchpoint and key audience segment. [ Reserve Your Launch Lab Session » ](#launch) ![Avid LaunchLabs Logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/LaunchLabs-Full-1024x199.png) ## Reserve Your Launch Lab Session Today Get a personalized fundraising assessment. A custom campaign strategy. Ready-to-launch copy for a multi-channel campaign. All this in 30 minutes using Avid when you reserve your Launch Lab session using the form below. ### Reserve Your Launch Lab Session with Frank ### What Fundraisers Are Saying About Their LaunchLab Session “Utilizing Avid Playbooks to generate a truly multi-channel campaign **saved our team hours, if not days, worth of work**. It gave us new ways of communicating our value proposition, but in a refreshed and more effective way. This resulted in **higher conversion rates** and a more engaged audience.” ![Professional head-and-shoulders portrait of a smiling woman with shoulder-length brown hair in a black blazer, neutral background.](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Mary-Butler-Headshot.jpeg) Mary Butler Director of Annual Giving **Cook Children’s Health Foundation** What are the minimum requirement to participate in a Launch Lab? To participate in a Launch Lab, you must: 1. Raise at least **$1M in individual donations** annually. 2. Have **a CRM** including (but not limited to) Virtuous, Raiser’s Edge, Salesforce, Hubspot, DonorPerfect, etc. If you don’t meet these requirements, a Launch Lab is not a good fit for you right now. What organizations benefit most from Launch Labs? The nonprofits that get the most out of a Launch Lab usually: - Raise at least $3M annually from individual donors. - Invest $10k+ per month on donor acquisition advertising. - Have a fundraising team—not just a solo fundraiser. - Use multiple tools and channels in their fundraising tech stack—CRM, email, donation platform, advertising, etc. What will I receive after my Launch Lab? After your 30 minute Launch Lab session, you’ll walk away with: 1. A **customized campaign strategy** to address a current opportunity or pain point in your fundraising. 2. **Ready-to-launch copy** for every channel & segment in your campaign. 3. Free, **lifetime access to Avid+Wiland benchmarks** to stay up-to-date on how your performance compares to your peers in real time. --- ### [Avid + Powered By Text | Integration](https://avidai.com/integrations/powered-by-text/) **Published:** September 11, 2026 **Author:** Nathan Hill **Content:** + ![Powered By Text](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Powered-By-Text-Logo.png) # Any Audience. Synced Automatically. With Avid + Powered By Text, your SMS campaign audiences are kept in sync automatically. No more imports and exports. No more manual updates. Build any audience once, and keep it in sync across all your fundraising tools. [ Get Started → ](#apbt-get-started) [ See How it Works ](#apbt-demo) Three steps## How it Works Connect your tools once, build the audience you need, and let Avid keep every segment in sync — including Powered By Text. 1. ![The Powered By Text connection card in Avid, tagged for use with both Insights and Pathways.](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/Add-a-System-Avid-Powered-By-Text-1.png) *1* Step One ### Connect Your Tools Avid makes your fundraising tools work in sync. Connect your CRM. Donation Platform. Email Platform. Ad Channels. And Powered By Text. No custom integrations needed. Just authenticate, and you’re ready to start building audiences. 2. 3. 4. ![Edna in Avid, answering a request to create an audience of active donors who have a phone number by drafting that audience for review.](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/Build-an-Audience-Avid-Powered-By-Text-1.png) *2* Step Two ### Build Your Audience With all your fundraising tools connected, you can build any audience you can dream. Just tell Edna — Avid’s AI Fundraising Agent — who you’d like to target. She’ll recommend the targeting. You review and approve. 5. 6. 7. ![An Avid sync sending the Active Donors audience of 380 records to Powered By Text on a daily frequency.](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/Sync-Your-Segment-Avid-Powered-By-Text-1.png) *3* Step Three ### Sync Your Segments Keep your segments in sync across all your fundraising tools — including Powered By Text. No more manual exports. No more refreshing your data before the next SMS goes out. Avid keeps your audience up to date with the most recent data every day. [ Get Started → ](#apbt-get-started) In practice## How Fundraisers Use Avid with Powered By Text Common ways that fundraising teams use Avid + Powered By Text to simplify and automate their campaigns and workflows. - Recipe 01### Sync Your Donor List for Your Next Campaign Looking to send an SMS campaign asking donors to give again? Select your “Active Donor” list, sync it to Powered By Text, and your donor list is ready to send to right away. The recipe: Active Donor list, plus sync to Powered By Text, equals ready to send. Active Donor list + Auto-sync = Ready to send - Recipe 02### Suppress New Donors as Soon as they Give Don’t keep sending SMS messages to donors who already gave. Use Avid Pathways to automatically suppress recent donors from your next outreach. The recipe: a new gift, plus an Avid Pathway, equals the donor is automatically suppressed. New gift + Avid Pathway = Auto-suppressed - Recipe 03### Orchestrate Multi-Channel Campaigns with Ease The best fundraising campaigns are multi-channel. Use Avid Pathways to keep your targeting in sync across SMS, email, ad channels, and more. All without a single list import or export. The recipe: one audience, plus an Avid Pathway, equals SMS, email and ads all in sync. One audience + Avid Pathway = SMS + email + ads Watch the walkthrough## See How it Works Watch how the Avid + Powered By Text integration works to make segmentation simpler — and power more effective SMS campaigns. [ Get Started → ](#apbt-get-started) Get started## Start syncing your SMS audiences Pick the path that matches where you are today. ### Already Using Avid? Add Powered By Text on as a Connection to get started. [ Activate the Powered By Text Connection (opens in a new tab) ](https://help.avidai.com/hc/en-us/articles/54322784760339-Powered-by-Text) ![Avid Pathways](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Avid-Wiland_Visual-02-scaled.png)### Not using Avid yet? Activate Avid Pathways for just $500 / month to start simplifying your segmentation and powering more effective SMS campaigns with Powered By Text. [ Activate Avid Pathways → ](https://app.avidai.com/signup/wiland) ## Activate Avid Pathways --- ### [Security](https://avidai.com/security/) **Published:** September 11, 2026 **Author:** chris mechsner **Content:** # Security at Avid Avid is the Fundraising Operating System for nonprofit organizations. The data our customers trust us with is sensitive, and we treat it that way. ### Certifications and frameworks We maintain SOC 2 Type II certification and TX-RAMP Level 1 certification. Our security program is aligned to the NIST Cybersecurity Framework and NIST SP 800-53. Real-time compliance monitoring is available at [trust.avidai.com](https://trust.avidai.com). ### Hosting and infrastructure Avid runs exclusively on the infrastructure of a leading enterprise cloud provider, in US-based regions. Regional data location options are available for Australia, Canada, and the EU where applicable. Our system status is published at [status.avidai.com](https://status.avidai.com). ### Data isolation Avid is multi-tenant with strict logical data isolation. Each customer’s data is stored in a dedicated, isolated data environment. Customer data is never commingled. ### Encryption Data is encrypted at rest and in transit using current industry standards. Encryption keys used to protect customer data are not accessible to our infrastructure provider. ### Application security We operate an enterprise-grade web application firewall with protections addressing the OWASP Top 10. External vulnerability scanning is performed on an ongoing basis, and static and dynamic application security testing are built into our development lifecycle. Source code is maintained in secure version control systems. Critical and high vulnerabilities are remediated within defined SLA windows; average remediation is under 48 hours. ### Identity and access Single sign-on is supported via SAML and OAuth. Multi-factor authentication is enforced for administrative access. ### Logging and monitoring Infrastructure logs are retained in our cloud logging platform. Application-level audit logs are retained for a minimum of 12 months. ### Incident response We maintain a documented incident response plan and 24×7 incident response capability. We carry cyber liability insurance. ### Personnel security Background checks and security awareness training are required for all staff. ### Payments Avid does not receive, process, or store cardholder data. Billing for Avid subscriptions is handled through a PCI DSS compliant third-party payment provider using a hosted payment interface. The Avid platform is out of scope for PCI DSS. ### Privacy Our privacy policy is available at [app.avidai.com/privacy\_policy](https://app.avidai.com/privacy_policy). ### Reporting a vulnerability If you believe you have found a security vulnerability in Avid, we want to [hear about it](https://avidai.com/vulnerability). --- ### [Reporting a Vulnerability](https://avidai.com/vulnerability/) **Published:** September 11, 2026 **Author:** chris mechsner **Content:** # Reporting a Vulnerability We welcome reports from security researchers, customers, and anyone who finds a problem. If you’ve found something, we want to hear about it. **Send reports to .** #### What to include - A description of the issue and the affected system or endpoint - Enough detail for us to reproduce or confirm it - The date and approximate time of your testing - The account or identifier you tested from, if applicable - Your view of the potential impact Reports may be submitted anonymously. We don’t require you to identify yourself. #### What you can expect from us - We’ll acknowledge your report within **three business days** - If we can’t reproduce it, we’ll come back to you for more detail rather than closing it - We’ll give you an initial assessment, including our severity determination, within **ten business days** - We’ll keep you updated at least every **30 days** until it’s resolved - We’ll tell you when it’s fixed Our assessed severity may differ from yours based on what we know about our architecture and real-world exploitability. #### Safe harbor If you research in good faith and follow the rules below, Avid will: - Consider your research authorized under applicable computer access and misuse laws, including the U.S. Computer Fraud and Abuse Act - Not pursue civil claims against you - Not refer your research to law enforcement - Not treat your research as a violation of our Terms of Use - Work with you to get the issue resolved If a third party takes legal action against you for research conducted under this policy, we’ll make that authorization known. #### Rules of engagement **Test only as far as you need to.** Limit your testing to what is reasonably necessary to show a vulnerability exists, and stop as soon as you’ve confirmed it. This is the line between security research and exploitation. Please don’t: - Keep pulling records after you’ve confirmed the issue exists - Extract, download, or retain Avid or customer data in bulk - Include real private or sensitive data in any published writeup - Modify, delete, or take down any data or system - Use a vulnerability to reach systems, accounts, or data beyond what’s needed to demonstrate it - Degrade or disrupt availability - Access or store personal data of any Avid customer, user, or donor beyond what’s incidental - Social engineer our people, customers, or vendors - Test using accounts that aren’t yours or that you didn’t create for the purpose #### If you access something you shouldn’t have Stop testing and tell us. Securely delete every retained, cached, or local copy within 24 hours of filing your report, and confirm the deletion in writing. Doing this promptly and in good faith keeps your safe harbor protection. #### In scope - `app.avidai.com` and the Avid application API - `avidai.com` and our public web properties - Publicly routable Avid-operated infrastructure #### Out of scope - Third-party services we use, including Google Cloud Platform, Stripe, HubSpot, and Zendesk. Report those to the vendor - Scanner output without demonstrated impact - Denial of service, volumetric, or load testing - Social engineering - Physical security testing - Software version or configuration reports without a demonstrated exploit path - Model jailbreaks, system prompt extraction, or prompt injection without demonstrated impact on application data or APIs - Model hallucinations, bias, or output quality #### Coordinated disclosure Please give us a reasonable window to fix things before going public. We ask that you hold details for **90 days** from your report, or until we confirm remediation, whichever comes first. If you think a different window makes sense, talk to us. --- ### [eBook Confirmation](https://avidai.com/ebook-thank-you/) **Published:** July 2, 2026 **Author:** Nathan Hill **Content:** ![Avid](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Avid-Logo-Dark-300x140.webp) ## Thanks! Your resource is on it's way to your inbox. You’ll get an email shortly with a link to access your resource immediately. ### **Before you go, there’s something you should know.** *Fundraising is human work.* Every fundraising leader knows this. But fundraising **teams are increasingly pulled away from the human work**, trying to keep up with the growing complexity of campaigns, data, reporting, segmentation, and more. **We believe that you were made for the mission.** Which is why we built Avid to be the fundraising agent that handles the rest. The reporting. The analysis. The segmentation. Even campaign creation. All of this and more can be **done in a click or a prompt**—in a way that’s secure, maintains your voice, and keeps humans at the center—so that **your team can focus on the human work**. *All that probably sounds too good to be true.* But more and more fundraising teams are making it their new reality. In fact, one Avid customer recently said this: *If I was starting a non-profit, this would be the product I would start with. I would build everything off of Avid. I think there’s a lot of value to it. Every non-profit I talk to, I just say, ‘Reach out to Avid… everything you need to do at scale can be done by this product.’* *– Jody Matheson, Dir. of Marketing @ Bible League Canada* **Should we grab 30 minutes to see if Avid is a fit for your organization?** Your time is immensely valuable, so we will always be honest about where we think Avid fits and where it doesn’t. You can schedule a short, 30 minute tour to see if Avid is a good fit for you using the form below. ## Schedule Your Tour of Avid ![Avid Product Icon Stack image](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/ProductStack-Avid-1024x237.png.webp) #### Teams that Trust Avid as their Fundraising Agent ![ : ](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-ewtn-v2-1.webp) ![ : ](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-cure-1.webp) ![ : ](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/logo-Lustgarten-pancreatic-Cancer-Research.svg) ![ : ](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-polar-bears-international-2-1.webp) ![ : ](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-boys-girls-club.webp) ![ : ](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/parkland-logo-dark-wide.webp) ![ : ](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/dts-logo-dark.webp) ![ : ](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-university-of-central-missouri-stacked.webp) ![ : ](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-bible-league-canada.webp) ![ : ](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-adra.webp) ![ : ](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-the-cure-starts-now.webp) [ ![Avid logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Avid.svg) ](https://avidai.com/?page_id=2664) The Fundraising Operating System - © 2026 Avid Group. All Rights Reserved. --- ### [The State of Nonprofit Fundraising | Free Benchmark Report](https://avidai.com/the-state-of-nonprofit-fundraising/) **Published:** May 4, 2026 **Author:** Riley Young **Content:** [ ![Avid logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Avid.svg) ](https://avidai.com/?page_id=2664) # The State of Nonprofit Fundraising Revenue is up. Donors are down. And the structure holding it all together is quietly shifting. This free Fundraising Benchmark Report draws on real data from 1,000+ nonprofits and $14B in annual revenue—not surveys. It’s built to show you what’s actually happening in nonprofit fundraising right now, and where the cracks are forming beneath the surface. - Why revenue growing 4.1% while active donors decline isn't a success story, it's a warning sign. - The volatility in acquisition—and how results are radically different depending on your vertical and size. - How online channels continue to dominate as the primary way to acquire new donors. - Why acquisition and reactivation may be your best investments for the remainder of the year. ![The State of Nonprofit Fundraising - Fall 2026 - Benchmark Report Image](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/The-State-of-Nonprofit-Fundraising-Fall-2026-scaled.png.webp) --- ### [Webinar | The SNAP Gap: A Food Bank Playbook for Keeping Donors Through the Cuts](https://avidai.com/snap-gap-food-bank-playbook-for-keeping-donors-through-cuts/) **Published:** August 11, 2026 **Author:** Riley Young **Content:** ![Avid](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Avid-Logo-Dark-300x140.webp) ### RSVP for the Live Discussion # The SNAP Gap: A Food Bank Playbook for Keeping Donors Through the Cuts *A Live Discussion with Jennifer Caldwell, Meghan Myers, and Frank Mumford* **Last fall’s government shutdown sent a surge of “rage” and disaster donors to food banks.** When the surge slowed, many food bank fundraising teams were left with questions: - Which new donors were worth chasing? - What do you say to bring them back? - How do these new donors differ from COVID donors? - How do you do it all with a small team and an overspent budget? **Food Share of Ventura County and Food Bank of Iowa lived this in real time.** And on Sept. 15th, you can join Jennifer Caldwell and Meghan Myers for a **live discussion** to help you prepare for more cuts ahead. **This November, the SNAP cuts in the One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB) take effect**, which means demand will climb right as development budgets tighten. In this live session, **Jennifer will walk through what actually worked for Food Share of Ventura County** — the messages, the segments, the numbers — and what she’s planning to do differently this November. **Meghan will provide insight into how Food Bank of Iowa’s partnership with Brad Cecil & Associates and Avid** helped their team meet the demand last year and how their preparing for the season ahead. [ RSVP for the Live Discussion ](#rsvp) #### Additional Details ![🗓️](https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/17.0.2/svg/1f5d3.svg) **Date:** Sept. 15, 2026 ![🕛](https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/17.0.2/svg/1f55b.svg) **Time:** Noon Central Time ##### Featured Speakers ![Professional head-and-shoulders portrait of a smiling woman with dark brown hair, wearing a navy blazer and gold jewelry against a blue-gray background.](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/Jennifer-Caldwell-headshot.png.webp)### Jennifer Caldwell Chief Development Officer @ Food Share of Ventura County ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/meghan_myers_headshot.png.webp)### Meghan Myers Senior Manager Philanthropy Operations @ Food Bank of Iowa ![Smiling man in a light blue polo shirt, cropped at chest against a neutral background](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/Frank-Mumford-headshot-scaled.jpg.webp)### Frank Mumford, CFRE Sr. Account Executive @ Avid ### RSVP for the Live Discussion RSVP for the free webinar using the form below. Everyone who RSVPs will receive a recording after the discussion ends. ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/Food-Bank-Webinar-Sept-15-2026-w-BCA-logo-1024x576.png.webp) © 2026 [Avid Software](https://avidai.com). All Rights Reserved. --- ### [AvidPathways — for Wiland Customers](https://avidai.com/components/pathways-with-wiland/) **Published:** June 10, 2026 **Author:** Nathan Hill **Content:** ![Avid + Wiland](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Avid-Wiland-Logo.svg) ![AvidPathways Logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Avid-Wiland_Visual-02-scaled.png) # Update monthly. Deploy instantly. When your **Wiland data** is current, your results show it—up to **76% better response rates**. Avid Pathways keeps your data current automatically, and lets you deploy audiences to your channels in a click. [ Activate Avid Pathways » ](#activate) ![Pathways screen for pushing a selected donor audience to marketing destinations (illustrative)](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/pathways-landing-crop-1024x831.webp) #### The PROBLEM #### Your data isn't current. Your results show it. Sending data to Wiland takes time, costs money, and requires someone to remember to do it every cycle—so most organizations end up updating quarterly or less. Your model runs on older data. And your results reflect it. ![AvidPathways Logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Avid-Wiland_Visual-02-1024x162.png) Avid Pathways is designed uniquely for Wiland customers to **keep your data current** and let you **deploy your audiences** instantly. ## 1 #### KEEP YOUR DATA CURRENT #### Current data. Better performance. Avid Pathways **keeps your data current** with Wiland automatically. No more manual transfers. No more agency fees. No more “we’ll get to it eventually.” **The result?** Up to 76% better response rates. ## No more manual transfers. ## Your CRM connects directly to Wiland through Avid. No files to pull, format, or send. It just happens. ## A model that reflects your current donors. ## Monthly updates happen automatically, so Wiland always has what it needs to build your best-performing audiences. ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/arrow-down-blue.svg) ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/arrow-down-blue.svg) ## 2 #### Deploy your audiences​ #### Synced audiences. Faster deployment.​ Avid Pathways **keeps all your audiences in sync** with your advertising tools, email tools, and more. As the lists change? Avid keeps them up-to-date automatically. **No more manual imports and exports.** Just accurate audiences—ready to launch at a moment’s notice. ## Audiences the instant you need them. ## Wiland audiences live inside Avid—push them to your ad platforms, download them, or build derivative segments. No handoffs, no list rebuilding. ## Audiences built from your own file too. ## Avid builds audiences from your donor data alongside Wiland's—external and internal, in one place. #### How it works #### Avid keeps your audiences ready at a moment's notice. ##### Your Data ![CRM icon](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/CRM.png)### CRM Giving history and transaction data. ![Email Marketing icon](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Email-Marketing.png)### Email Marketing & Advertising Critical donor engagement data. ![AvidPathways Logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Avid-Wiland_Visual-02-1024x162.png) ![Connect Tools icon](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/ConnectTools.png)Connect your tools. ![Generate Audiences icon](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/GenerateAudiences.png)Generate audiences. ![Sync to Channels icon](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/SynctoChannels.png)Sync to your channels. ![Benchmark icon](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Benchmark.png)Benchmark your performance. ![Wiland logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/WilandLogo_202501.png) ![Predictive Modeling icon](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/PredictiveModeling.png)### Predictive Modeling Understand who to target. ![Housefile Scoring icon](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/HousefileScoring.png)### Housefile Scoring Insight into your donors' potentials. #### Continuous Monthly Updates ![Horizontal dotted process flow with three downward arrows along the line and a small central upward peak.](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Avid-Wiland_Visual-1024x68.png) #### Keep Audiences in Sync Across Channels ![Email Platforms icon](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/EmailPlatforms.png) ##### Email Platforms Power your sends and automation in Hubspot, Marketing Cloud, Mailchimp, +. ![Advertising icon](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Advertising.png) ## Advertising Auto-sync donor lists and modeled lists to Meta, Google Ads, +. ![Download icon](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Download.png) ## Download Export audiences for use in direct mail campaigns and other channels. ![Build Segments icon](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/BuildSegments.png) ## Build Segments Build advanced segmentation using a simple prompt. ![Head-and-shoulders portrait of a smiling man in a light blue polo against a neutral background.](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Jesse-Brooks-Headshot.jpeg) Avid’s integration with Wiland has saved us hours of work each month and, more importantly, has **improved the results of our donor acquisition efforts.** —Jesse Brooks, Chief Development Officer ![Quotation Mark Icon](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Quotation_Blue-7f955f.svg) #### Avid Pathways Increases Response. #### Real Data. Real Wiland Cutomers. The numbers are in. The more current your data—the better the results. Up to 76% better **response rates.** Up to 81% more **dollars per ask.** All because your data is kept current. You can do this automatically using Avid Pathways. The Proof Response rate Dollars per ask All organizations +76% +81% Animal-Related +161% +241% Environment +163% +94% Religion +133% +91% Arts, Culture, & Humanities +179% +54% Health & Human Services +59% +53% General Nonprofit +79% +125% ![AvidPathways Logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Avid-Wiland_Visual-02-scaled.png) #### Update monthly. Deploy instantly. **Trade your old data routines for better campaign results.** Activate Avid Pathways using the form below. #### Activate Avid Pathways --- ### [Webinar Confirmation](https://avidai.com/webinar-thank-you/) **Published:** July 15, 2026 **Author:** Nathan Hill **Content:** ![Avid](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Avid-Logo-Dark-300x140.webp) ## Thanks! You're registered for the webinar. You’ll get a confirmation of your webinar registration in your inbox shortly. ### **Before you go, there’s something you should know.** *Fundraising is human work.* Every fundraising leader knows this. But fundraising **teams are increasingly pulled away from the human work**, trying to keep up with the growing complexity of campaigns, data, reporting, segmentation, and more. **We believe that you were made for the mission.** Which is why we built Avid to be the fundraising agent that handles the rest. The reporting. The analysis. The segmentation. Even campaign creation. All of this and more can be **done in a click or a prompt**—in a way that’s secure, maintains your voice, and keeps humans at the center—so that **your team can focus on the human work**. *All that probably sounds too good to be true.* But more and more fundraising teams are making it their new reality. In fact, one Avid customer recently said this: *If I was starting a non-profit, this would be the product I would start with. I would build everything off of Avid. I think there’s a lot of value to it. Every non-profit I talk to, I just say, ‘Reach out to Avid… everything you need to do at scale can be done by this product.’* *– Jody Matheson, Dir. of Marketing @ Bible League Canada* **Should we grab 30 minutes to see if Avid is a fit for your organization?** Your time is immensely valuable, so we will always be honest about where we think Avid fits and where it doesn’t. You can schedule a short, 30 minute tour to see if Avid is a good fit for you using the form below. ## Schedule Your Tour of Avid #### Teams that Trust Avid as their Fundraising Agent ![ : ](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-ewtn-v2-1.webp) ![ : ](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-cure-1.webp) ![ : ](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/logo-Lustgarten-pancreatic-Cancer-Research.svg) ![ : ](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-polar-bears-international-2-1.webp) ![ : ](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-boys-girls-club.webp) ![ : ](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/parkland-logo-dark-wide.webp) ![ : ](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/dts-logo-dark.webp) ![ : ](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-university-of-central-missouri-stacked.webp) ![ : ](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-bible-league-canada.webp) ![ : ](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-adra.webp) ![ : ](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-the-cure-starts-now.webp) [ ![Avid logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Avid.svg) ](https://avidai.com/?page_id=2664) The Fundraising Operating System - © 2026 Avid Group. All Rights Reserved. --- ### [Thank You - Schedule Agency Demo](https://avidai.com/schedule-agency-demo/) **Published:** June 24, 2025 **Author:** Avid Team **Content:** # Thanks for requesting a demo! We’ll take a look at your info and be in touch with you shortly. In the mean time, you can get a sneak peak of what Avid can do for you in the short video tour below. ### Watch the 6-Minute Tour of What's New in Avid ### Avid is Your AI Fundraising Agent --- ### [Webinar | 7 AI-Powered Segmentation Ideas for Year-End Fundraising](https://avidai.com/7-ai-powered-segmentation-ideas-for-year-end-fundraising-webinar/) **Published:** August 25, 2026 **Author:** Nathan Hill **Content:** ![Avid](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Avid-Logo-Dark-300x140.webp) ### RSVP for the Live Discussion # 7 AI-Powered Segmentation Ideas for Year-End Fundraising It’s the busiest time of year. Segments to create. Personalization to write. Lists to export. Lists to import. And just when you think you’re done—you’ve got to do it all again the next week. Fundraising **segmentation during year-end season takes constant care** to target the right people with the right message. But how do you know you’re talking to the right people? And how do you build segmentation efficiently and generate the best results? In this live discussion Karina Rodriguez and Nathan Hill will help you **identify 7 key fundraising segments that are worth your focus** this year-end season. Plus, you’ll get tips along the way on how to **leverage an AI-assist to save time** building your segments. RSVP for the live discussion to discover 7 AI-powered segments for your year-end campaign. [ RSVP for the Live Discussion ](#rsvp) #### Additional Details ![🗓️](https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/17.0.2/svg/1f5d3.svg) **Date:** Sept. 17, 2026 ![🕛](https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/17.0.2/svg/1f55b.svg) **Time:** Noon Central Time ##### Featured Speakers ![Portrait of a smiling person wearing a red T-shirt with white script text, visible from chest up.](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/A7R07423-Cropped-scaled.jpg.webp)### Karina Rodriguez VP of Fundraising Strategy @ Avid ![Headshot of Nathan Hill](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/A7R07280-Cropped-scaled.jpg)### Nathan Hill VP of Marketing @ Avid ### RSVP for the Live Discussion RSVP for the free webinar using the form below. Everyone who RSVPs will receive a recording after the discussion ends. ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/7-AI-Powered-Segmentation-Ideas-for-Year-End-Fundraising-1024x576.png.webp) © 2026 [Avid Software](https://avidai.com). All Rights Reserved. --- ### [Free Assessment - Fundraising Tools or System?](https://avidai.com/fundraising-tools-or-system-assessment/) **Published:** August 19, 2026 **Author:** Nathan Hill **Content:** [ ](https://avidai.com/) About your organization Step 1 of 7 Free Assessment # Fundraising Tools or System? Identify your data gaps, missing insights, and unrealized growth opportunities. Most fundraising teams have more tools than they need. But more tools does not equal better results. In fact, every tool you add to your fundraising tech stack adds more complexity. - More data to sync. - More metrics to analyze. - More channels to coordinate. - More insights trapped in silos. This complexity? It’s straining your capacity, keeping your team from the most meaningful fundraising work. Find out if your tools are straining your capacity or working as a system. Take the free assessment 6–8 minutes. Instant results. All responses stay private. **21** Your result **A Disconnected Toolset** *8 tools outside your CRM · 6 with no connection* Mailchimp**No Connection** Classy**Partial** Meta Ads**No Connection** ROI Potential**Capped** Data Security**Protected** ## What you’ll get from the free assessment This free assessment will help you evaluate the state of your fundraising tools: #### A fundraising operating system Designed to reduce complexity, automate coordination, and get you back to the human work of fundraising. #### Or a mess of tools Adding unnecessary complexity that drains your team’s ability to focus on the most important work. **Find out where you stand with this free assessment.** Take the free assessment to understand the state of your fundraising tech stack—and identify the growth opportunities of a cohesive fundraising operating system. Take the free assessment ## How does the assessment work? Six short sections, mostly multiple choice. Nothing to look up before you start, and no wrong answers — “I’m not sure” tells us as much as a number does. 1. **1**#### Name your tools Pick your CRM, email platform, and donation forms from a list. Then your ad channels, enrichment tools, and anything else your program runs on. 2. **2**#### Rank the connections We build a list of every tool you named and ask one question about each: does its data reach your CRM automatically, partly, or only when a person moves it? 3. **3**#### Tell us about AI and your program Which AI tools your team uses and what data they can reach. Then your fundraising focus, donor count, and four core metrics. 4. **4**#### Get your results Leave your name and email and your personalized assessment builds in about twenty seconds. Nothing to wait for in your inbox. Part 2 · Your core toolsWhat’s your primary CRM? Blackbaud Raiser’s Edge NXT Which ad channels do you use? *MetaGoogleLinkedInTikTok* Part 3 · Identifying data gaps Mailchimp*No ConnectionPartialFull* Classy*No ConnectionPartialFull* DonorSearch*No ConnectionPartialFull* Donor retention rate, past 12 months **43%** ## What will I receive? A personalized read on your stack — your tools, your program, your numbers. Not a score and a sales page. - **Your Tools vs. System score** — one number, what it means day to day, and the sharpest cost of your setup today. - **Your stack at a glance** — every tool you named and its connection status, in one table. - **Your data gaps** — six categories, each with what’s driving it, what you can’t currently do, and how Avid closes it. - **Your AI opportunity** — an ROI Potential read on your data, and a Data Security read on whether donor PII reaches a model. - **Your metrics** — your four core numbers against Avid’s live nonprofit benchmarks. 01 · Your data gaps **Limited segmentation**Driven by Mailchimp (no connection); Classy (partial). Every list you build starts with an export and a re-upload. **What you’re missing:** You can’t currently segment on the behavior your CRM never sees. **How Avid helps:** Audiences built from a prompt. Kept in sync automatically. 03 · Your metricsOverall donor retention**43%***50.7%* New donors from online**72%***65.4%* Active donors giving monthly**Not sure***23.6%* ## Will my answers be kept private? Yes. You’re telling us about your organization’s systems, and we treat that the way we’d want ours treated. - **Never shared publicly.** Your answers don’t appear in a benchmark report, a case study, or a leaderboard. Nothing with your organization’s name on it goes anywhere. - **Never sold or passed to a third party.** Not to a data broker, not to a partner, not to anyone. - **Used only to build your assessment.** The Avid team uses your responses to write your personalized results and, if you ask for a review, to make that conversation useful instead of generic. - **No donor data required.** We’re asking about your tools and your program-level numbers. Don’t send us anything about an individual donor — the assessment never asks for it. ## Find out where you stand. Understand the state of your fundraising tech stack—and identify the growth opportunities of a cohesive fundraising operating system. Take the free assessment 6–8 minutes. Instant results. All responses stay private. **21** Your result **A Disconnected Toolset** *8 tools outside your CRM · 6 with no connection* Mailchimp**No Connection** Classy**Partial** Meta Ads**No Connection** ROI Potential**Capped** Data Security**Protected** Part 1 ## About your organization We use this to tailor your results and benchmark you against comparable programs. Organization name \* Please enter your organization name. Organization website Back Continue Part 2 · Understanding your tools ## Your core tools The three tools that hold most of your donor data. Duplicates in any one of these are the most common source of silos. 1### CRM What's your primary CRM? Which CRM? Do you have multiple CRMs? No Yes How many in total? Which ones? 2### Email What's your primary email communication tool? Which tool? Do you have multiple email tools? No Yes How many in total? Which ones? 3### Donation platform What's your donation platform or donation form tool? Which platform? Do you have multiple donation platforms? No Yes How many in total? Which ones? Back Continue Part 2 · Understanding your tools ## Channels, data & everything else Each of these creates data your CRM may or may not ever see. 4### Advertising Which ad channels do you use in your marketing and fundraising?Select all that apply. Which other channels? 5### Data & enrichment Do you use any 3rd party tools for data and enrichment?Wealth screening, appends, propensity scores, address hygiene. No Yes Which ones? Which other tools? 6### Data visualization Do you use any 3rd party tools for data visualization? No Yes Which ones? Which other tools? 7### Other tools Are there other primary fundraising tools you use?Events, peer-to-peer, texting, direct mail, grants management, prospect research… No Yes What is it? How do you use it? Back Continue Part 3 ## Identifying data gaps **No Connection** — any data sync requires a manual effort. **Partial** — some data is synced automatically, but not all. **Full** — all data is syncing automatically to my CRM. Your Tools Connection to Your CRM Back Continue Part 4 ## Leveraging AI opportunities AI is only as good as the data it can reach. Let's see what yours can reach today. What AI tools does your team currently leverage?Select all that apply. What are they? How do you use them? What level of data access do you give your AI tools? Tell us how it works How would you rate the success of your AI investment so far? Back Continue Part 5 ## About your fundraising program We'll compare your answers to the latest nonprofit fundraising benchmarks. If you don't know a number, that's a finding too — say so. What is the primary focus of your fundraising efforts right now?Select all that apply. Tell us more How many individual donors give to you annually? Back Continue Part 6 ## About you Where should we send your results? First name \* Required. Last name \* Required. Work email \* Please enter a valid email address. Job title By submitting, you agree Avid may contact you about your results. We never sell your data. Back See my results Analyzing your stack ## Reading your answers… This usually takes about 20 seconds. Hang tight — we're building your personalized assessment. Your result # — — Your stack at a glance ## — 01 · Your data gaps ## What the disconnects are costing you 02 · Your AI opportunity ## — 03 · Your metrics ## — Compared against [Avid's live nonprofit fundraising benchmarks](https://avidai.com/blog/the-latest-nonprofit-fundraising-benchmark-insights-march-2026/). Results not found ## Sorry! We can’t seem to find your results. If you believe this is in error, you may reach out to us at . But you may find it easier to simply re-take the assessment and get the latest evaluation of your fundraising tools. [Re-take the assessment](#) --- ### [Event | United Way Western Conference](https://avidai.com/uw-western-conference-happy-hour/) **Published:** August 19, 2026 **Author:** Riley Young **Content:** ![Avid](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Avid-Logo-Dark-300x140.webp) ### Join us for happy hour # Enjoy a drink, on us, and enter for a chance to win a gift of your choice We’d love for you to join us for a networking happy hour with other United Way peers at Spoke & Fork inside the Hyatt Regency Portland on Tuesday, Aug 25. Fill out the form below to let us know where to send your free drink ticket and to enter the raffle for a chance to win your choice of a Tillamook cheese basket or a gift from Willamette Valley Vineyards. #### Additional Details ![🗓️](https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/17.0.2/svg/1f5d3.svg) **Date:** Aug. 25, 2026 ![🕛](https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/17.0.2/svg/1f55b.svg) **Time:** 5pm – 6pm PDT 📍 **Location:** Spoke & Fork @ Hyatt Regency, 375 NE Holladay St, Portland, OR 97232 ##### Hosted by ![Smiling man in a light blue polo shirt, cropped at chest against a neutral background](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/Frank-Mumford-headshot-scaled.jpg.webp)### Frank Mumford, CFRE Sr. Account Executive @ Avid © 2026 [Avid Software](https://avidai.com). All Rights Reserved. --- ### [Event | Happy Hour - Confirmation](https://avidai.com/happy-hour-confirmation/) **Published:** August 19, 2026 **Author:** Riley Young **Content:** ![Avid](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Avid-Logo-Dark-300x140.webp) ## Thanks! Your free drink ticket is on its way. You’ll get an email with your free drink ticket in your inbox shortly. We’ll be in touch if you win the raffle. Before you go, we put together a short, 6-minute tour of how Avid works as **the Fundraising Agent within your team.** Watch the brief tour below—and if it looks like a fit for your team, you can [schedule a full tour » ](#tour) ### Watch the 6-Minute Tour ### Avid is Now Your Fundraising Agent ### Common Questions About Avid How does Avid access my data? → How is Avid different from my CRM? → What tools does Avid connect to? → What can Edna help me do? → Are Edna's plays effective? → Can Edna help with segmentation? → How is my data kept secure? → Get Avid for your team → ![Avid](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Avid-Logo-Dark.webp) ## Tour the Full Fundraising Operating System ### Schedule a Time to See How Avid Works with Your Team ## Schedule Your Tour of Avid #### You were made for the mission. Avid was made for the rest. [ ![Avid logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Avid.svg) ](https://avidai.com/?page_id=2664) The Fundraising Operating System - © 2026 Avid Group. All Rights Reserved. --- ### [LockStepFWD | Workshop Confirmation](https://avidai.com/lockstep-fwd-workshop-thank-you/) **Published:** August 20, 2026 **Author:** Riley Young **Content:** ![LockStep](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/lockstep-logo-300x65.webp) ## Thanks! You're registered for the workshop. You’ll get a confirmation of your workshop registration in your inbox shortly. Before you go, we put together a **library of all of our past LockStepFWD sessions below.** Browse through it below and see if there’s a new way to use Avid that you haven’t tried before. # Events and Webinars ## LockStep*FWD* Sessions Revisit past LockStep*FWD* sessions to explore things like new Avid features, case studies from Avid users, and practical training to help your team get the most out of Avid. ![Avid LockStep support hub with a dedicated expert, ticket tracking, and training sessions (illustrative)](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/LockStep_Hero-scaled.png) © 2026 [Avid Software](https://avidai.com). All Rights Reserved. --- ### [LockStepFWD | Edna Builds Your Analysis Workshop](https://avidai.com/lockstepfwd-edna-builds-your-analysis/) **Published:** August 20, 2026 **Author:** Riley Young **Content:** ![LockStep](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/lockstep-logo-300x65.webp) ### RSVP for the LockStepFWD workshop # Edna Builds Your Analysis **This LockStep*FWD* is a little different.** We’re getting a small group of customers together to test a new capability in Edna: **building an analysis for you.** We’ll walk through the feature together, put it to work on real fundraising questions, and get your feedback in real time. Our Chief Product Officer, Chris Mechsner, will also join us for the conversation. Because this is a small-group workshop, **space is limited and registration is required.** [ RSVP for the workshop ](#rsvp) #### Additional Details ![🗓️](https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/17.0.2/svg/1f5d3.svg) **Date:** Aug. 27, 2026 ![🕛](https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/17.0.2/svg/1f55b.svg) **Time:** Noon Central Time ##### Featured Speakers ![Portrait of a smiling person wearing a red T-shirt with white script text, visible from chest up.](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/A7R07423-Cropped-scaled.jpg.webp)### Karina Rodriguez VP of Fundraising Strategy ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/Chris-Mechsner-headshot-scaled.jpg.webp)### Chris Mechsner Chief Product Officer ### RSVP for the workshop RSVP for the LockStepFWD workshop using the form below. Everyone who RSVPs will receive a calendar invite with the details to connect. ![Brand banner for LockStepFWD featuring a purple logo on the left and a purple 'LIVE' badge with a play icon on the top-right corner.](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/LockStepFWD-Thumbnail-General-1024x576.png.webp) © 2026 [Avid Software](https://avidai.com). All Rights Reserved. --- ### [Schedule a Personal Review — Fundraising System Assessment](https://avidai.com/schedule-your-personal-review/) **Published:** August 20, 2026 **Author:** Riley Young **Content:** [ ![Avid logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Avid.svg) ](https://avidai.com) ## Schedule your results review below. # See what your Tools vs. System score means for your program, and where the fastest wins are. You just found out whether your tools work as a system or work against you. This personal review is where we make that useful. In a thirty minute, one on one session we’ll go through your results: your score, your stack, your gaps, and what closes them. - Your score, explained. Walk through your Tools vs. System score and exactly which connections in your stack are driving it. - Your data gaps, prioritized. Of the six gap categories we flagged, which one is costing you the most right now, and what fixing it actually looks like. - Your AI opportunity, made concrete. What your ROI Potential and Data Security reads mean in practice, and what changes once your data can safely reach a model. - Your metrics against benchmarks. Where your retention, acquisition, and monthly giving numbers stand next to Avid's live nonprofit benchmarks, and what's realistic to close. This is your assessment, made actionable. **Schedule your results review below** to meet with an expert and see what your Tools vs. System score means for your program. ![Avid Product Icon Stack image](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/ProductStack-Avid-1024x237.png.webp) #### Schedule your results review below. ##### Fundraising Teams that Trust Avid ![ : ](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-ewtn-v2-1.webp) ![ : ](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-cure-1.webp) ![ : ](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/logo-Lustgarten-pancreatic-Cancer-Research.svg) ![ : ](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-polar-bears-international-2-1.webp) ![ : ](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-boys-girls-club.webp) ![ : ](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/parkland-logo-dark-wide.webp) ![ : ](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/dts-logo-dark.webp) ![ : ](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-university-of-central-missouri-stacked.webp) ![ : ](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-bible-league-canada.webp) ![ : ](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-adra.webp) ![ : ](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-the-cure-starts-now.webp) ##### Recent Success Stories Using Avid ***Tarrant Area Foodbank:** 200% increase in retention with Avid-powered segentation.* ***Bible League Canada:** 20% reduction in cost per donor using Avid Pathways.* ***Lifesavers Wild Horse Rescue:** 200% increase in appeal revenue using Avid Playbooks.* ***Luther Seminary:** 308% increase in reactivation using Avid Insights and Pathways.* © 2026 [Avid Software](https://avidai.com). All Rights Reserved. --- ### [Apply for a Strategy Session with Karina](https://avidai.com/customer-strategy-session-application/) **Published:** August 19, 2026 **Author:** Nathan Hill **Content:** ![Avid](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Avid-Logo-Dark-300x140.webp) ![LockStep](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/lockstep-logo-1024x221.webp) ### Customer Strategy Session # Apply for your free session Use the form below to apply for your free Avid customer strategy session with Karina Rodriguez. These are limited to current Avid customers only. ![Portrait of a smiling person wearing a red T-shirt with white script text, visible from chest up.](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/A7R07423-Cropped-1024x1024.jpg.webp) **Karina Rodriguez** VP of Fundraising Strategy **Avid** © 2026 [Avid Software](https://avidai.com). All Rights Reserved. --- ### [Webinar | Avid Pathways Preview](https://avidai.com/avid-pathways-preview-webinar/) **Published:** June 16, 2026 **Author:** Nathan Hill **Content:** ![Avid](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Avid-Logo-Dark-300x140.webp) ![Wiland logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/WilandLogo_202501-300x69.png) ![AvidPathways Logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Avid-Wiland_Visual-02-1024x162.png) ### RSVP for the Live Discussion # How Automatic Wiland Updates Can Lift Response by 76% **Automatic Updates. Instant Deployment.** When your Wiland data is current, your results show it—up to 76% better response rates. Avid Pathways keeps your data current automatically, and lets you deploy audiences to your channels in a click. On Sept. 3rd, join Avid and Wiland for a live preview and Q&A session on Avid Pathways. See how it can: - keep your data current automatically - improve your response rates - give you instant access to Wiland audiences to deploy to your channels. [ RSVP for the Live Discussion ](#rsvp) #### Additional Details ![🗓️](https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/17.0.2/svg/1f5d3.svg) **Date:** September 3, 2026 ![🕛](https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/17.0.2/svg/1f55b.svg) **Time:** Noon, Central Time ##### Hosted By ![Headshot of Nathan Hill](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/A7R07280-Cropped-scaled.jpg)### Nathan Hill VP of Marketing @ Avid ![Amy Carroll - Headshot](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/Amy-Carroll-Headshot.jpg.webp)### Amy Carroll Senior Client Success Director @ Wiland ### RSVP for the Live Discussion RSVP for the free webinar using the form below. Everyone who RSVPs will receive a recording after the discussion ends. ![Hero header with AvidPathways and Wiland logos and the headline about automatic Wiland updates boosting response up to 76% on a pastel-gradient card.](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/AvidPathways-Webinar-Image-1024x576.png) © 2026 [Avid Software](https://avidai.com). All Rights Reserved. --- ### [Accessibility](https://avidai.com/accessibility/) **Published:** August 11, 2026 **Author:** Stephen Boudreau **Content:** # Accessibility at Avid Fundraising is human work — and a website should work for every human who visits it. We want everyone, including people who use assistive technology, to be able to learn about Avid, explore how it works, and reach our team without barriers. ## Our standard We aim to conform to the **Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1, Level AA** across avidai.com. ## What we do - Accessibility is built into our design system — color contrast, keyboard focus, heading structure, and reduced-motion support are standards for every new page, not afterthoughts. - We test continuously with industry-standard tools (axe-core and WAVE) across the full site, and by hand with keyboard-only navigation. - We completed a comprehensive, site-wide accessibility remediation in August 2026 and re-test on an ongoing schedule. - New pages are checked before they’re published. ## Known limitations We’re honest about what’s still in progress: - A small number of older pages use heading structures that don’t step down cleanly; these pages are being rebuilt on our current design system. - Some content is provided by third-party services (embedded video players, scheduling, and form tools). We choose vendors carefully and pass along accessibility feedback, but their content may vary from our standard. ## Tell us if something’s in your way If any part of this site is hard to use with your technology, we want to know — and we’ll fix it or provide the information you needed another way. **Email:** We aim to respond within two business days. *Last reviewed: August 2026. We review this statement whenever the site changes materially, and at least twice a year.* --- ### [Webinar | Your Year-End Fundraising Plan](https://avidai.com/your-year-end-fundraising-plan-webinar/) **Published:** July 28, 2026 **Author:** Nathan Hill **Content:** ![Avid](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Avid-Logo-Dark-300x140.webp) ### RSVP for the Live Discussion # Your Year-End Fundraising Plan ### Live Benchmark Trends and What They Mean for Your Year-End Strategy The teams that win during year-end don’t start planning in October. **The best fundraising teams start now**, equipped with the right data. So far, this year has seen many big shifts both in fundraising performance as well as the tools that power growth. In this free webinar from Avid + Wiland, Nathan Hill & Karina Rodriguez will unpack how **fundraising has performed through the first half of 2026** — and what it means for your year-end strategy. Drawing on real-time benchmark **data from 1,000+ nonprofits**, you’ll walk away knowing: - **What’s shifted** in fundraising performance this year - How the data compares to **Giving USA’s** latest findings - Insights to drive your **year-end strategy** - **Practical ways** to apply these insights before year-end crunch hits Reserve your spot for the free webinar to get equipped with the right data and insights to power a successful year-end fundraising season. [ RSVP for the Live Discussion ](#rsvp) #### Additional Details 🗓️ **Date:** August 20, 2026 🕛 **Time:** Noon Central Time ##### Featured Speakers ![Portrait of a smiling person wearing a red T-shirt with white script text, visible from chest up.](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/A7R07423-Cropped-scaled.jpg.webp)### Karina Rodriguez VP of Fundraising Strategy @ Avid ![Headshot of Nathan Hill](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/A7R07280-Cropped-scaled.jpg)### Nathan Hill VP of Marketing @ Avid ### RSVP for the Live Discussion RSVP for the free webinar using the form below. Everyone who RSVPs will receive a recording after the discussion ends. ![Hero banner showing Avid Live branding and the headline 'Your Year-End Fundraising Plan' with subheading text on the left; on the right, two speaker cards titled 'Featuring Karina Rodriguez' and 'Featuring Nathan Hill' with headshots.](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Your-Year-End-Fundraising-Plan-Webinar-Thumbnail-1024x576.png.webp) © 2026 [Avid Software](https://avidai.com). All Rights Reserved. --- ### [Year-End Strategy Session](https://avidai.com/year-end-strategy-session/) **Published:** October 6, 2025 **Author:** Avid Team **Content:** ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Avid-1.svg) # Your year-end fundraising strategy session. 30 minutes with an Avid fundraising expert to help you plan your most effective year-end campaign — built around what’s actually working across the sector. ## Schedule your session 👉 We reserve a limited number of sessions each month to keep them focused and valuable. ## What you'll gain - **Clarity:** Identify your biggest year-end opportunities and gaps. - **Strategy:** Learn data-backed tactics proven to lift year-end results. - **Focus:** Walk away with a 60–90 day roadmap you can start using immediately. ## Why this is different Not a sales demo. Not a generic consultation. This is a focused strategy session built to help you plan, prioritize, and execute your year-end campaign with confidence — guided by insights from thousands of fundraising experiments. ## Who this is for Fundraising and development leaders preparing their year-end push who want clear priorities, practical next steps, and stronger results. ## How to prepare Bring your fundraising goals and a snapshot of your current campaigns or donor segments — we’ll help you identify the best next steps. ## What happens next - Share a little context about your organization and goals. - Book a time that works for you. - Spend 30 minutes with us → leave with a personalized plan and practical ideas to maximize year-end giving. ## Schedule your session 👉 We reserve a limited number of sessions each month to keep them focused and valuable. ## Schedule your session 👉 We reserve a limited number of sessions each month to keep them focused and valuable. --- ### [Launch Your Next Campaign in Days, Not Weeks](https://avidai.com/year-end-launch-lab/) **Published:** October 20, 2025 **Author:** Avid Team **Content:** ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Avid-1.svg) ##### Year-End Launch Lab # Launch Your Next Campaign in Days, Not Weeks **Get a custom-built campaign—strategy, audiences, creative, and all—in a single guided session.** Campaigns that are ready to launch shouldn’t take two weeks to assemble. With Avid, you’ll work with a fundraising strategist to build a complete campaign—mapped to your donors, grounded in what’s worked before, written in your voice. ## You'll walk away with: - **Campaign Map:** Choose your campaign and we'll map out every channel, touchpoint, and key audience segment. - **Ready-to-Use Copy:** Get customized copy for every email, donation page, SMS, ad, and more—segmentation included. - **AI Powered Playbook:** Your take-home ebook for data-driven year-end campaign success. All in a 50-minute session. No callbacks. No back-and-forth. ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Year-End-Launch-Lab-Image-IA3.webp) 👉 We reserve a limited number of sessions each month to keep them focused and valuable. --- ### [Workshop Confirmation](https://avidai.com/workshop-thank-you/) **Published:** July 17, 2026 **Author:** Nathan Hill **Content:** ![Avid](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Avid-Logo-Dark-300x140.webp) ## Thanks! You're registered for the workshop. You’ll get an official calendar invitation in your inbox shortly with all the details you’ll need for the workshop. Before you go, we put together a short, 6-minute tour of how Avid works as **the Fundraising Agent within your team.** Watch the brief tour below—and if it looks like a fit for your team, you can [schedule a full tour » ](#tour) ### Watch the 6-Minute Tour ### Avid is Now Your Fundraising Agent ### Common Questions About Avid How does Avid access my data? → How is Avid different from my CRM? → What tools does Avid connect to? → What can Edna help me do? → Are Edna's plays effective? → Can Edna help with segmentation? → How is my data kept secure? → Get Avid for your team → ![Avid](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Avid-Logo-Dark.webp) ## Tour the Full Fundraising Operating System ### Schedule a Time to See How Avid Works with Your Team ## Schedule Your Tour of Avid #### You were made for the mission. Avid was made for the rest. [ ![Avid logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Avid.svg) ](https://avidai.com/?page_id=2664) The Fundraising Operating System - © 2026 Avid Group. All Rights Reserved. --- ### [Workshop Registration - September 2, 2026 - Dallas, TX](https://avidai.com/workshop-september-2-2026-dallas/) **Published:** July 30, 2026 **Author:** Nathan Hill **Content:** ![Avid](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Avid-Logo-Dark-300x140.webp) # Fundraising is Human Work ### How to Scale with AI and Keep Humans at the Center ### Free Workshop for Fundraising Leaders in Dallas Your team is stretched. The campaigns are more complex. The tools keep multiplying. Somewhere in all of it, **the actual human work of fundraising is getting pushed out.** You know AI can help — but the wrong AI implementation puts your donor relationships at risk. This workshop is built for fundraising leaders who are ready to move past the hype of AI and make smart, deliberate decisions about **where AI fits — and where it doesn’t.** We’ll work through why fundraising teams are losing capacity to complexity, what a **human-centered AI strategy** actually looks like in practice, and how to identify the right opportunities without disrupting what’s working. **What you’ll walk away with:** - A clear picture of where AI is actually **moving the needle** in fundraising right now - A **practical framework** for auditing where your team should spends its time - A **repeatable model** for deciding what to hand off to AI and what to protect as human work - Concrete ways to use AI to **deepen donor relationships** — not automate around them This session is hands-on and discussion-based — expect to think out loud, share what’s working, and leave with more than just slides. #### Workshop Details ![🗓️](https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/17.0.2/svg/1f5d3.svg) **Date:** September 2, 2026 ![🕛](https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/17.0.2/svg/1f55b.svg) **Time:** 1pm-5pm Central Time ![📍](https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/17.0.2/svg/1f4cd.svg)**Location:** Conference Center at Pegasus Park; 3000 Pegasus Park Drive, Dallas, TX ##### Workshop Instructors ![Smiling man in a navy blazer and light blue shirt, cropped at the shoulders against a plain light background.](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/A7R07018-Cropped-scaled.jpg)### Kevin Peters Founder & CTO @ Avid ![Headshot of Erik Tomalis](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/A7R07026-Cropped-scaled.jpg)### Erik Tomalis Chief Community Officer @ Avid ![Headshot of Nathan Hill](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/A7R07280-Cropped-scaled.jpg)### Nathan Hill VP of Marketing @ Avid ##### Other Important Info - ****Lunch will be provided**** at 12:30pm, before we begin. - **Happy hour & networking** reception to follow at Community Beer Co. Taproom & Restaurant. - **What to bring:** a laptop, a pen, and a notebook are recommended. - **What to expect:** This workshop will be **highly interactive**—be prepared to participate and collaborate. ### RSVP for the Workshop ![🗓️](https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/17.0.2/svg/1f5d3.svg) **Date:** September 2, 2026 @ 1pm (*Please arrive by 12:30pm to grab lunch and get settled in.*) ![📍](https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/17.0.2/svg/1f4cd.svg)**Location:** Conference Center at Pegasus Park; 3000 Pegasus Park Drive, Dallas, TX This free workshop will equip you with a framework to scale your fundraising using AI—while keeping humans at the center. **RSVP to attend in person using the form below.** ![Tall glass-front office building under a blue sky, with trees and a landscaped lawn in the foreground and orange silhouette figures scattered on the lawn.](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/Pegasus-Park-Exterior-Photo-Quad-4-1024x684.webp) © 2026 [Avid Software](https://avidai.com). All Rights Reserved. --- ### [Fundraising Leaders](https://avidai.com/who-its-for/fundraising-leaders/) **Published:** March 25, 2026 **Author:** Stephen Boudreau **Content:** For Fundraising Leaders # Spend your days on the donors, not the getting-ready. You know the moves worth making. Avid does the getting-ready — pulling the data together, building the audience, drafting the campaign — so the judgment, the relationships, and the calls only you can make stop losing to the prep. [Get a Demo](/demo/) [ Watch the 6-min tour](https://avidai.com/activate-your-tour-of-avid/) ![A development director at her desk at the end of the day, notebook open, looking toward the window in warm evening light.](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/fundraising-leader.jpg?v=2) Trusted by fundraising teams like yours ![Bible League Canada](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/avidbridge-bibleleague-canada-2026.png)![Buckner International](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/buckner-international-561fab.svg)![CURE International](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/cure-international.png)![Hope for the Heart](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/hope-for-the-heart-scaled.png)![Operation Smile Canada](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/operation-smile-canada-848172.svg)![HonorHealth Foundation](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/honorhealth-foundation-c33c8f.svg)![CBN](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/cbn-3e7e5a.svg)![EWTN](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/ewtn.png)![ADRA](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/adra.png)![Bethel University](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/bethel.png)![Dallas Theological Seminary](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/dts-logo-dark.webp)![Chicago Scholars](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/chicago-scholars.webp)![Polar Bears International](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/polar-bears-international.png)![Lustgarten Foundation](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/lustgarten-1a521b.svg)![Capital Area Food Bank](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/capital-area-food-bank.png)![Charity Navigator](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/charity-navigator-4ee0b2.svg)![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/avidbridge-bibleleague-canada-2026.png)![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/buckner-international-561fab.svg)![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/cure-international.png)![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/hope-for-the-heart-scaled.png)![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/operation-smile-canada-848172.svg)![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/honorhealth-foundation-c33c8f.svg)![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/cbn-3e7e5a.svg)![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/ewtn.png)![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/adra.png)![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/bethel.png)![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/dts-logo-dark.webp)![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/chicago-scholars.webp)![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/polar-bears-international.png)![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/lustgarten-1a521b.svg)![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/capital-area-food-bank.png)![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/charity-navigator-4ee0b2.svg) Re-engage ~1,900 lapsing mid-level donors — before the window closes - Pull the audienceday 3 — still exporting - Reconcile the numbersCRM ≠ email totals - Wait on the reportdue Friday - Chase the sign-offfollow-up sent Nothing’s shipped. ## You know what to do. You just can’t get to it. You can see it coming — the segment starting to slip, the major donor gone quiet, the second-gift window about to close. You know exactly what to do about each one. But doing it means assembling the picture first: pulling the audience, reconciling the numbers, waiting on the report, chasing the sign-off. By the time it’s ready, the window’s shut — the re-engagement goes out late and generic, the call never gets made. Next cycle, the same. You’re not short on judgment. **The work you were hired to do keeps losing to the work of getting ready to do it.** ## One of these is quietly eating the other. The getting-ready keeps winning, and the donor work keeps waiting — not because you’re doing it wrong, but because there’s more of the first than any team has hours for. ### The work piling up Avid carries this - Assembling the picture before you can move — audience pulled, numbers reconciled - Rebuilding last cycle’s segment from scratch - Waiting on the report before a campaign can start - Chasing sign-off to get a campaign out the door ### The work only you can do your time goes here - The call on the donor in front of you — the one no model makes for you - The re-engagement, the ask, the thank-you that only lands if it’s you - The relationships that compound over years - Rallying the team behind the plan ## How Avid helps you get back to the donors. ### The picture’s already built when you log in. Your CRM, email, ads, and forms reconciled into one current view — with the shift worth acting on surfaced and the reason it matters. No assembling the case before you can move. How does Avid decide what to show me first? → Dashboard Log out My Dashboard+ Settings Share Catalog ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/avidbridge-icon-dashboard-2026.png) ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/avidbridge-icon-scorecard-2026.png) ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/avidbridge-icon-playbooks-2026.png) ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/avidbridge-icon-insights-2026.png) ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/avidbridge-icon-benchmarks-2026.png) ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/avidbridge-icon-pathways-2026.png) ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/avidbridge-icon-directmail-2026.png) ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/avidbridge-icon-edna.png) ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/avidbridge-icon-lockstep.png) ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/avidbridge-icon-settings-2026.png) Daily Top 3 Insights Midlevel ($1K–$5K) Donors 3.2K|8.6% decrease Recurring Donors 6.5K|3.2% increase Offline Gifts 12.4K|3.1% increase Midlevel Donor Overview: Midlevel ($1K–$5K) Donors 6K4K2K0 3.4K3.5K3.6K3.5K3.2K FYTD22FYTD23FYTD24FYTD25FYTD26 137 Days Until Giving Tuesday Donor Retention 75%50%25%0 20222023202420252026 BenchmarkYour Organization Audiences Suggested Audience Lapsing Mid-Level Donors **Contacts** 1,912**Source** Edna FYTD26 2nd-Year Donors, Not Yet RecurringNew **Contacts** 4,994**Date Created** 07/03/2026 Year-end letter locks Friday. Approve the mail-house proof and confirm the River Guardians ask amounts. Then the fun part — call the first ten matching-gift donors, just to say thank you. Connections (3) ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/avidbridge-intg-fundraiseup.webp) StatusConnected Last Sync7/17/2026 ![Virtuous logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/virtuous_logo_square.webp) StatusConnected Last Sync7/17/2026 ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/mailchimp_logo_square.svg) StatusConnected Last Sync7/17/2026 ### The audience is ready before you ask. The re-engagement you’d have to stop and build is already built from your file — and it stays current as donors give, lapse, and upgrade. Do the audiences stay up to date on their own? → Suggested Audience ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/avidbridge-icon-edna.png)by Edna Lapsing Mid-Level Donors Contacts **1,912**Source Edna Why Edna suggested this Mid-level giving carries 27% of your revenue, and its second-year retention has slipped from 68% to 54%. These donors gave $1K–$5K last year and haven’t yet renewed — re-engaging them, with the $25,000 match as the deadline, is the largest lever in your program right now. - Second-year retention slipping — 68% → 54% among mid-level donors - 1,912 not yet renewed from last year’s $1K–$5K class - Mid-level carries 27% of revenue — the program’s quiet engine SaveCreate PathwayUse in PlayDismiss ### The campaign’s drafted in your voice. The ask, the sequence, the thank-you — staged while the window’s still open. You review, adjust, and send. A human always hits send. Will the outreach actually sound like us? → You’re about to launch **12** touchpoints. Edna places them in your connected tools, ready to go. - Email · 7LinkedReady - Donation Page · 1LinkedReady - Ad · 4LinkedReady A human always hits send Launch Play ### And a team who knows the work — in your corner. Every plan includes LockStep — experienced people fluent in nonprofit fundraising, from strategy to data to the technical. They help you read what Avid surfaces and decide what to do. You’re never running it alone. What does LockStep actually do? → ![Your dedicated LockStep team, working together.](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/lockstep-team.jpg) ## Get back to the donors. See what Avid would carry for your team — and where your hours go once it does. [Get a Demo](/demo/) More seats [Marketing & Communications](/who-its-for/marketing-and-communications/) [Executive Leadership](/who-its-for/executive-leaders/) [Operations & Data](/who-its-for/operations-and-data/) [Overview](/who-its-for/) --- ### [Webinar Confirmation](https://avidai.com/webinar-thank-you-2/) **Published:** July 29, 2026 **Author:** Nathan Hill **Content:** ![Avid](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Avid-Logo-Dark-300x140.webp) ## Thanks! You're registered for the webinar. You’ll get a confirmation of your webinar registration in your inbox shortly. ### **Before you go, there’s something you should know.** *Fundraising is human work.* Every fundraising leader knows this. But fundraising **teams are increasingly pulled away from the human work**, trying to keep up with the growing complexity of campaigns, data, reporting, segmentation, and more. **We believe that you were made for the mission.** Which is why we built Avid to be the fundraising agent that handles the rest. The reporting. The analysis. The segmentation. Even campaign creation. All of this and more can be **done in a click or a prompt**—in a way that’s secure, maintains your voice, and keeps humans at the center—so that **your team can focus on the human work**. *All that probably sounds too good to be true.* But more and more fundraising teams are making it their new reality. In fact, one Avid customer recently said this: *If I was starting a non-profit, this would be the product I would start with. I would build everything off of Avid. I think there’s a lot of value to it. Every non-profit I talk to, I just say, ‘Reach out to Avid… everything you need to do at scale can be done by this product.’* *– Jody Matheson, Dir. of Marketing @ Bible League Canada* **Should we grab 30 minutes to see if Avid is a fit for your organization?** Your time is immensely valuable, so we will always be honest about where we think Avid fits and where it doesn’t. You can schedule a short, 30 minute tour to see if Avid is a good fit for you using the form below. ## Schedule Your Tour of Avid #### Teams that Trust Avid as their Fundraising Agent ![ : ](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-ewtn-v2-1.webp) ![ : ](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-cure-1.webp) ![ : ](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/logo-Lustgarten-pancreatic-Cancer-Research.svg) ![ : ](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-polar-bears-international-2-1.webp) ![ : ](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-boys-girls-club.webp) ![ : ](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/parkland-logo-dark-wide.webp) ![ : ](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/dts-logo-dark.webp) ![ : ](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-university-of-central-missouri-stacked.webp) ![ : ](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-bible-league-canada.webp) ![ : ](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-adra.webp) ![ : ](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-the-cure-starts-now.webp) [ ![Avid logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Avid.svg) ](https://avidai.com/?page_id=2664) The Fundraising Operating System - © 2026 Avid Group. All Rights Reserved. --- ### [Virtual Workshop Registration - August 18, 2026](https://avidai.com/virtual-workshop-august-18-2026/) **Published:** July 17, 2026 **Author:** Nathan Hill **Content:** ![Avid](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Avid-Logo-Dark-300x140.webp) # Fundraising is Human Work ### How to Scale with AI and Keep Humans at the Center ### Free Workshop for Faith-Based Fundraising Leaders Your team is stretched. The campaigns are more complex. The tools keep multiplying. Somewhere in all of it, **the actual human work of fundraising is getting pushed out.** You know AI can help — but the wrong AI implementation puts your donor relationships at risk. This workshop is built for fundraising leaders who are ready to move past the hype of AI and make smart, deliberate decisions about **where AI fits — and where it doesn’t.** We’ll work through why fundraising teams are losing capacity to complexity, what a **human-centered AI strategy** actually looks like in practice, and how to identify the right opportunities without disrupting what’s working. **What you’ll walk away with:** - A clear picture of where AI is actually **moving the needle** in fundraising right now - A **practical framework** for auditing where your team should spends its time - A **repeatable model** for deciding what to hand off to AI and what to protect as human work - Concrete ways to use AI to **deepen donor relationships** — not automate around them This session is hands-on and discussion-based — expect to think out loud, share what’s working, and leave with more than just slides. #### Additional Details 🗓️ **Date:** August 18, 2026 🕛 **Time:** Noon-2pm Central Time ##### Workshop Instructors ![Smiling man in a navy blazer and light blue shirt, cropped at the shoulders against a plain light background.](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/A7R07018-Cropped-scaled.jpg)### Kevin Peters Founder & CTO @ Avid ![Headshot of Nathan Hill](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/A7R07280-Cropped-scaled.jpg)### Nathan Hill VP of Marketing @ Avid ##### Other Important Info - All registrants will receive a **DoorDash gift card** to cover your lunch. - This workshop will be **highly interactive**—plan to have your camera on and be prepared to collaborate. ### RSVP for the Virtual Workshop This free virtual workshop will equip you with a framework to scale your fundraising using AI—while keeping humans at the center. **RSVP to attend using the form below.** © 2026 [Avid Software](https://avidai.com). All Rights Reserved. --- ### [Webinar | Video Storytelling for Multi-Channel Fundraising](https://avidai.com/video-storytelling-for-multi-channel-fundraising-webinar/) **Published:** April 24, 2026 **Author:** Stephen Boudreau **Content:** ![Avid and MemoryFox logos](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Avid-MemoryFox-Logo-scaled-1-1024x172.webp) ## Free Webinar ## Video Storytelling for Multi-Channel Fundraising ### 4 Ways to Use Video to Enhance Multi-Channel Fundraising Strategies 🗓️ **Date:** April 9, 2026 🕛 **Time:** 12:00 PM CDT Effective fundraising has gotten increasingly more complex. Even though donors are active in more channels than ever before **it’s harder than ever to win a donor’s attention.** The fundraising teams seeing growth are the ones telling **effective, meaningful stories** across all their channels in a cohesive way. And they’re using unique creative to do it. In this free webinar with Avid and MemoryFox, you’ll learn how to **blend video storytelling with multi-channel campaigns** to drive greater giving. ![Headshot of Natalie Monroe](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Natalie-Monroe-headshot-1.webp)**Natalie Monroe of MemoryFox** will share about the psychology behind powerful video storytelling—as well as tips and prompts to create effective videos in a simplified way. ![Headshot of Nathan Hill](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Nathan-Hill-Headshot-April-2025-Sqaure-Black-and-White.webp)**Nathan Hill of Avid** will share how this video storytelling can plug into multi-channel campaigns including: - Giving Days - Giving Anniversary Appeals - Cultivation Campaigns - End of Fiscal Year Campaigns **Register for the free webinar with Avid & MemoryFox** to discover how to inspire greater giving using multi-channel video campaigns. ![Webinar video thumbnail with the Avid logo and a red Live badge](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Wistia-Webinar-Thumbnail-scaled-1.webp) © 2026 [Avid Software](https://avidai.com). All Rights Reserved. --- ### [Webinar | Unlocking 25% Growth in Donor Acquisition](https://avidai.com/unlocking-25-percent-growth-in-donor-acquisition-webinar/) **Published:** April 24, 2026 **Author:** Stephen Boudreau **Content:** ![Avid](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Avid-Logo-Dark-300x140.webp) ### RSVP for the Live Discussion # Unlocking 25% Growth in Donor Acquisition Healthy, growing nonprofits spend a lot of budget on advertising—especially when it comes to acquiring new donors. Even 1-2% improvements in performance can make a major impact on your fundraising revenue. But imagine the additional impact you could have with **a 25% increase in acquisition performance**. In this **live discussion for fundraising teams,** we’ll unpack how Bible League Canada used Avid + Fundraise Up to unlock a 25% improvement virtually overnight. During the discussion you’ll discover: - The **donor acquisition philosophy** being used by rapidly growing nonprofits - The strategy and **potential roadblocks** to achieving growth - A break down of both the **impact of acquisition growth** - **How to implement** the 25% growth strategy using Avid + Fundraise Up RSVP for the webinar to see how you can lead your nonprofit to significant growth in your acquisition advertising. [ RSVP for the Live Discussion ](#rsvp) #### Additional Details 🗓️ **Date:** June 2, 2026 🕛 **Time:** Noon Central Time ##### Featuring ![Speaker with dark hair in a gray T-shirt on stage, wearing a lapel mic and gesturing with a small object in hand](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/NH-Speaker-Headshot.jpg)### Nathan Hill VP of Marketing @ Avid ![Smiling man with short gray hair and glasses wearing a black polo outdoors.](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Jody-Matheson.jpg)### Jody Matheson Director of Marketing @ Bible League Canada ![Headshot of Sean Staggs](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Sean-Staggs.webp)### Sean Staggs Senior Solutions Engineer @ Fundraise Up ### RSVP for the Live Discussion RSVP for the free webinar using the form below. Everyone who RSVPs will receive a recording after the discussion ends. ![Unlocking 25% Growth in Donor Acquisition - Webinar Image](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Untitled-May-28-2026-at-14.45.12-11-1024x576.png) © 2026 [Avid Software](https://avidai.com). All Rights Reserved. --- ### [This is Avid](https://avidai.com/this-is-avid/) **Published:** April 1, 2025 **Author:** Stephen Boudreau **Content:** ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Avid-1.svg) # This is Avid ## Fundraising doesn’t need another tool. It needs a system built for the people doing the work. Avid connects your data, strategy, and execution in one intelligent system—so your team can move faster, act smarter, and raise more with less. [ Get the Guide: *Fundraising, Rebuilt* ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/) [Ready to see more? **Book a demo →**](https://avidai.com/demo/) ![Smiling fundraiser holding a laptop in front of an Avid insights dashboard with donor metrics (illustrative)](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Fundraising-Intelligence-3.webp) ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Startup-Hero-BG-2.webp) ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Startup-Hero-BG-2.webp) ##### The system is the problem ## Why It Feels Like You’re Always Behind It’s not that you don’t have the tools. It’s that none of them were built to work together. - Your data is scattered. - Your strategy lives in a slide deck. - Your execution is mostly manual. - And your insights show up after the moment has passed. Even great teams can’t move forward when the system is working against them. [ Get the Guide: *Fundraising, Rebuilt* ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/) Understand the shift from fragmented tools to a unified system—and how it’s helping fundraisers move faster, act smarter, and raise more with less. ##### The shift that changes everything ## From stack to system ![All Together, Finally.](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Aggregate.svg) ### All Together, Finally. No more juggling disconnected tools. Avid connects your data, strategy, and execution in one system—so everything works the way it should: together. ![Insights, Right on Time.](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Identify0A.svg) ### Insights, Right on Time. Avid delivers timely, AI-powered insights—so your team knows where to focus, what to do next, and how to move with confidence. ![Fundraising, Unblocked.](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Deploy.svg) ### Fundraising, Unblocked. No more stitching campaigns together by hand. Avid removes the manual lift—so your team can focus on donors, not dashboards. ##### The engine underneath it all ## Impact Architecture Most tools stop at data. Avid goes further—because it’s built on something deeper: **Impact Architecture.** It’s what connects your systems, powers your insights, and drives execution—so strategy doesn’t stay stuck in slides, and action doesn’t depend on guesswork. It’s the reason Avid works when everything else hasn’t. [ Get the Guide: *Fundraising, Rebuilt* ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/) [Ready to see more? **Book a demo →**](https://avidai.com/demo/) ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/iA.webp) ##### Built by people who’ve lived it ## Built by Fundraisers, for Fundraisers Avid wasn’t built for sales teams. It wasn’t built from the sidelines. It was built by people who’ve written appeals, segmented lists, and scrambled through year-end. We know what it feels like to be in the work—and what it takes to scale it without burning out. **That’s why Avid isn’t just software.** It’s a system designed by people who’ve done the work— and built for the people still doing it. #### Avid is your team, on demand. Your strategist, analyst, and campaign manager—ready when you are. Built to think like your best people, and scale like software. #### Backed by what works. Powered by over 600M donor interactions and 7,000+ fundraising experiments—so every insight is tested, trusted, and built for impact. #### Built to fit you. Avid adapts to your mission, your team, and your tech stack—so it works the way you already do, not the other way around. [ Get the Guide: *Fundraising, Rebuilt* ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/) [Ready to see more? **Book a demo →**](https://avidai.com/demo/) ## Start with the guide ## This Is the Future of Fundraising Top-performing teams aren’t waiting for the right time to fix their systems. They’ve already started. They’re moving beyond the patchwork. They’re trading reactivity for clarity. They’re choosing a system that helps them scale—without burning out. **They’re not just using Avid. They’re running on it.** [ Start Reading ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/introduction/) [ Download PDF ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/download/) ![Ebook cover: Fundraising, Rebuilt — how Avid is transforming the way nonprofits raise money](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/ebook-fundraising-rebuilt-1.webp) --- ### [Webinar | The State of Nonprofit Fundraising in 2026](https://avidai.com/the-state-of-nonprofit-fundraising-in-2026/) **Published:** April 24, 2026 **Author:** Stephen Boudreau **Content:** ![Avid + Wiland](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Avid-Wiland-Logo.svg) ## Free Webinar ## The State of Nonprofit Fundraising in 2026 ### Insights From 1000+ Nonprofits & Over $14B in Giving 🗓️ **Date:** March 31, 2026 🕛 **Time:** 12:00 PM CDT Donor expectations are rising. Giving behavior is shifting. New fundraising tools emerge seemingly every day. If you want to grow your fundraising revenue in 2026, your strategies, teams, and technology require a plan to adapt. **The best plans for growth are built on data.** What’s working? What’s not? Where do we need to focus next? In this free webinar from Avid + Wiland, you’ll see the most accurate and up-to-date picture of the state of fundraising today. Drawing on **insights from 1,000+ nonprofits** representing over $14B in annual revenue, this webinar will help you see: - Where is the natural giving momentum? - What areas are slipping and need extra attention? - Where are the biggest opportunities for growth? You’ll find insights on key metrics like donor acquisition and retention, as well as complex metrics around donor lifecycle, donor contactability, and more. RSVP for the free webinar to get the most accurate and up-to-date analysis of the state of fundraising in 2026. **Can’t make it live? If you RSVP, we’ll be sure to send you the recording to watch later and share with your team. ![Webinar video thumbnail with the Avid logo and a red Live badge](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Wistia-Webinar-Thumbnail-scaled-1.webp) --- ### [Webinar | The State of Health & Human Services Fundraising](https://avidai.com/the-state-of-health-and-human-services-fundraising-may-20-2026/) **Published:** May 6, 2026 **Author:** Nathan Hill **Content:** ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Avid.svg) ## Free Webinar ## The State of Health & Human Services Fundraising ### How Shifts in Giving Are Impacting 2026 Results 🗓️ **Date:** May 20, 2026 🕛 **Time:** 12:00 PM CDT Donor expectations are rising. Giving behavior is shifting. New fundraising tools emerge seemingly every day. With nearly half the year already on the books, the question isn’t whether your plan needs adjustment — it’s where. **The best plans are built on data.** What’s working so far this year? What’s slipping? Where should you focus from here? In this free webinar from Avid, you’ll see how health-related fundraising is performing so far in 2026 — and where the data points your team for the second half. Drawing on **insights from Avid+Wiland Benchmarks,** this webinar will help you see: - Where the natural giving momentum is showing up across health-related programs - What areas are softening and warrant the most attention - Where the biggest opportunities sit for health & human services fundraising You’ll find insights on **the metrics that matter most** — donor acquisition and retention, donor lifecycle, donor contactability, and more — and what they mean specifically for your fundraising team. RSVP for the free webinar to get the clearest view of **where to focus your fundraising plan** for the rest of 2026. **Can’t make it live?** If you RSVP, we’ll be sure to send you the recording to watch later and share with your team. ![Avid Live Thumbnail](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Avid-Live-Thumbnail.jpg) --- ### [Webinar | The State of Faith-Based Fundraising](https://avidai.com/the-state-of-faith-based-fundraising-may-22-2026/) **Published:** May 6, 2026 **Author:** Nathan Hill **Content:** ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Avid.svg) ## Free Webinar ## The State of Faith-Based Fundraising ### How Shifts in Giving Are Impacting 2026 Results 🗓️ **Date:** May 22, 2026 🕛 **Time:** 2:00 PM CDT Donor expectations are rising. Giving behavior is shifting. New fundraising tools emerge seemingly every day. With nearly half the year already on the books, the question isn’t whether your plan needs adjustment — it’s where. **The best plans are built on data.** What’s working so far this year? What’s slipping? Where should you focus from here? In this free webinar from Avid, you’ll see how faith-based fundraising is performing so far in 2026 — and where the data points your team for the second half. Drawing on **insights from Avid+Wiland Benchmarks,** this webinar will help you see: - Where the natural giving momentum is showing up across faith-based programs - What areas are softening and warrant the most attention - Where the biggest opportunities sit for faith-based fundraising You’ll find insights on **the metrics that matter most** — donor acquisition and retention, donor lifecycle, donor contactability, and more — and what they mean specifically for your fundraising team. RSVP for the free webinar to get the clearest view of **where to focus your fundraising plan** for the rest of 2026. **Can’t make it live?** If you RSVP, we’ll be sure to send you the recording to watch later and share with your team. ![Avid Live Thumbnail](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Avid-Live-Thumbnail.jpg) --- ### [Webinar | The State of Education Fundraising](https://avidai.com/the-state-of-education-fundraising-may-19-2026/) **Published:** May 6, 2026 **Author:** Nathan Hill **Content:** ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Avid.svg) ## Free Webinar ## The State of Education Fundraising ### How Shifts in Giving Are Impacting 2026 Results 🗓️ **Date:** May 19, 2026 🕛 **Time:** 12:00 PM CDT Donor expectations are rising. Giving behavior is shifting. New fundraising tools emerge seemingly every day. With nearly half the year already on the books, the question isn’t whether your plan needs adjustment — it’s where. **The best plans are built on data.** What’s working so far this year? What’s slipping? Where should you focus from here? In this free webinar from Avid, you’ll see how education fundraising is performing so far in 2026 — and where the data points your team for the second half. Drawing on **insights from Avid+Wiland Benchmarks,** this webinar will help you see: - Where the natural giving momentum is showing up across education programs - What areas are softening and warrant the most attention - Where the biggest opportunities sit for education fundraising You’ll find insights on **the metrics that matter most** — donor acquisition and retention, donor lifecycle, donor contactability, and more — and what they mean specifically for your fundraising team. RSVP for the free webinar to get the clearest view of **where to focus your fundraising plan** for the rest of 2026. **Can’t make it live?** If you RSVP, we’ll be sure to send you the recording to watch later and share with your team. ![Avid Live Thumbnail](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Avid-Live-Thumbnail.jpg) --- ### [The Executive's Guide to 25% Growth in Donor Acquisition Advertising | Free Guide](https://avidai.com/the-executives-guide-to-25-growth-in-donor-acquisition-advertising-free-guide/) **Published:** January 20, 2026 **Author:** Avid Team **Content:** ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Avid-1.svg) ## Free Download ## The Executive’s Guide to 25% Growth in Donor Acquisition Advertising High-performing fundraising programs invest heavily in donor acquisition advertising. But when you’re spending at scale, even small inefficiencies can quietly drain performance. This free guide shows you how leading nonprofits improve donor acquisition results by up to 25 percent by reducing wasted spend, improving targeting, and using automation to keep audiences fresh and effective. **What’s inside:** - Where donor acquisition advertising waste actually comes from and how to eliminate it - The acquisition philosophy top fundraising teams use to drive long-term growth - A practical framework for improving targeting and suppression without adding manual work ![Ebook cover: The Executive's Guide to 25% Growth in Donor Acquisition Advertising](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Screenshot-2026-01-20-at-1.05.15-PM.webp) © 2025 [Avid Software](https://avidai.com). All Rights Reserved. --- ### [Thank You! Schedule a Demo to Learn More | Avid](https://avidai.com/thank-you-demo/) **Published:** June 4, 2026 **Author:** Nathan Hill **Content:** [ ![Avid logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Avid.svg) ](https://avidai.com/?page_id=2664) ### Thanks! Your resource is on its way to your inbox. # Want to see how Avid works with your tools? Avid is the Fundraising Operating System. It connects your tools, sees what changed, and keeps the work moving—so every campaign builds on the last instead of starting over. Schedule 30 minutes to see how it would work for your team. - See what changed, while it still matters Signals surfaced and prioritized, so the next move is obvious before the window closes. - Launch campaigns that build on the last Strategy, audiences, creative—already taking shape by the time you're ready to move. - Stop rebuilding the work every cycle Audiences stay current. Learning carries forward. The team gets back to the work that moves donors. ![ : ](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-ewtn-v2-1.webp) ![ : ](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-cure-1.webp) ![ : ](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/logo-Lustgarten-pancreatic-Cancer-Research.svg) ![ : ](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-polar-bears-international-2-1.webp) ![ : ](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-boys-girls-club.webp) ![ : ](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/parkland-logo-dark-wide.webp) ![ : ](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/dts-logo-dark.webp) ![ : ](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-university-of-central-missouri-stacked.webp) ![ : ](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-bible-league-canada.webp) ![ : ](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-adra.webp) ![ : ](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-the-cure-starts-now.webp) #### Tell us about your fundraising. --- ### [Resource Download - Campaign Creation Session Offer](https://avidai.com/resource-download-launch-lab-offer/) **Published:** October 22, 2025 **Author:** Avid Team **Content:** ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Avid-1.svg) ##### Thank you! ## Your resource is on ITS way to your inbox While you’re here… want us to build you a custom fundraising campaign? ##### Campaign Creation Session # Let Avid Build Your Next Campaign There are plenty of campaigns you know could raise more funds. But who’s going to launch them? There’s **not enough time, resources, or people** to get it all done. Avid Playbooks gives you the scale you need for growth without scaling your team—generating customized campaigns based on proven fundraising strategies. Every channel. Every touchpoint. Every audience segment. **Want to see how it works?** Apply for a campaign creation session using the form. If approved, we’ll build your next campaign for free. ## What You'll Get: - **Campaign Strategy:** Get a fully customized campaign strategy tailored to your mission, your donors, and your goals. - **Ready-to-Use Copy:** Get personalized, segmented copy for every email, donation page, SMS, ad, and more. - **Launch Document:** Walk away with a campaign launch document including copy and timing for each touchpoint. ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Year-End-Launch-Lab-Image-IA3.webp) ## Apply for A Campaign Creation Session 👉 We reserve a limited number of sessions each month to keep them focused and valuable. ##### The Benefits ## Your Next Campaign, Built For You Each campaign creation session delivers a personalized campaign plan built using Avid Playbooks and insights from 8,000+ fundraising experiments. **Here’s what you’ll walk away with:** ![1. Your Campaign Strategy](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Aggregate.svg) ### 1. Your Campaign Strategy Avid will draft your entire campaign strategy, customized to your mission, your donors, and your goals. ![2. Your Ready-to-Launch Copy](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Identify0A.svg) ### 2. Your Ready-to-Launch Copy Avid will generate tailored creative for every email, donation page, SMS, ad, and more—ready to launch to each channel. ![3. Segmented & Personalized Touchpoints](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/target-red-3.svg) ### 3. Segmented & Personalized Touchpoints Touchpoints and copy are tailored to key audience segments including customized messaging and personalization. ![4. Your Launch Plan](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Deploy.svg) ### 4. Your Launch Plan Walk away with a Launch Plan document including your strategy, copy, and timing for each campaign touchpoint. ##### The Output ## Everything You Need to Launch a Proven Campaign Walk away with a complete campaign—all built from data, not guesswork. Every touch point is designed with Avid Playbooks and built on proven strategies from 8,000+ fundraising tests. You’ll walk away with: - A customized **campaign strategy** - Segmented and **personalized** touchpoints - A **Launch Plan** with copy for you whole campaign [ Apply Now ](#form) ![Avid Playbooks campaign builder showing year-end touchpoints and generated campaign copy (illustrative)](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Launch-Lab-Image-2.webp) ## How It works ![Apply for a Campaign Creation session](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Aggregate.svg) ### Apply for a Campaign Creation session Fill out the quick intake form and **select which campaign you want to run** next based on your current goals and needs. ![Meet with a Fundraising Expert](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Identify0A.svg) ### Meet with a Fundraising Expert Our team will analyze your goals and use Avid Playbooks to **build your customized campaign in real time**. ![Leave with Your Ready-to-Launch Campaign](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Deploy.svg) ### Leave with Your Ready-to-Launch Campaign Walk away with a complete campaign strategy for every email, page, SMS, ad, and more—all **customized for you**. ## Built on Real Results. Too many nonprofits build campaigns on what they’ve seen work in the past. **Launch Lab** builds them on what’s *proven* to work. It uses insights from over 8,000 fundraising tests and Avid’s AI-powered Playbooks to design campaigns grounded in real data, not gut feeling. It’s not a brainstorm. It’s a blueprint for results. [ Apply Now ](#form) ##### Customer Stories ## Used by Fundraisers Behind the World’s Leading Nonprofits Every campaign plan built in the Launch Lab is guided by Avid’s fundraising intelligence—backed by thousands of experiments and proven best practices. [ Apply Now ](#form) ##### Frequently Asked Questions ## Still Have Questions? Here’s everything you need to know before applying for your complimentary campaign creation session powered by Avid Playbooks. [ Apply Now ](#form) ##### What exactly is a campaign creation session? A campaign creation session is a one-to-one working session where an Avid fundraising expert will use Avid Playbooks to build a complete, customized fundraising campaign for you. Each campaign is built on data from over 8,000 fundraising experiments. You’ll leave with ready-to-launch copy for your emails, donation pages, SMS, ads, and more. ##### How much time will it take? Each session takes 30 minutes. You’ll spend a few minutes sharing information about your nonprofit, and our team will handle the rest—building your campaign strategy in real time so you can leave with everything ready for launch. ##### What types of campaigns can I choose from? During the application, you can select from a variety of different campaigns including: - **Recurring Giving Acquisition** — a campaign designed and proven to grow your base of monthly donors. - **Donor Anniversary Appeal** — a specific appeal for donors at their giving anniversary designed to inspire another year of giving. - **High Urgency Campaign** — a dedicated campaign designed to activate donors around a specific need, goal, or deadline. Or choose **“Help Me Decide”** and an Avid expert can help determine the right campaign for you based on your needs. ##### Do I need to be an Avid customer to participate? Nope! These session are open to any nonprofit looking to improve its year-end campaign strategy. You don’t need to use Avid to participate — just come ready to share your goals, and we’ll handle the rest. ##### What will I get after the session? You’ll walk away with: - A complete campaign built with Avid’s AI-powered Playbooks - Personalized copy for your emails, donation pages, SMS, advertising, and more - Customized copy for key segments including ## READY. SET. LAUNCH. Apply for a campaign creation session and walk away with a complete, data-backed campaign built to raise more when it matters most. [ Apply Now ](#form) --- ### [Download The Recurring Giving Campaign Worksheet](https://avidai.com/recurring-giving-worksheet-download/) **Published:** May 14, 2025 **Author:** Nathan Hill **Content:** ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Avid-1.svg) ## Free Download ## The recurring giving campaign worksheet. Use this worksheet to guide you through the primary elements needed to launch your campaign. **What’s inside:** - Prompts to help you outline your value proposition - Key questions to consider around audience segmentation - Options for adding supporting channels to boost results ![Image of the Recurring Giving Acquisition Campaign Worksheet](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Recurring-Giving-Acquisition-_-Campaign-Outline-Worksheet_Page_1-scaled.png) © 2025 [Avid Software](https://avidai.com). All Rights Reserved. --- ### [Q&A Session with Kevin Peters | April 21, 2026](https://avidai.com/q-and-a-session-with-kevin-peters-april-21-2026/) **Published:** April 24, 2026 **Author:** Stephen Boudreau **Content:** ![Avid](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Avid-1.svg) ##### Founder Discussion ## Closing the Biggest Gap in Fundraising Discover the latest trends and challenges facing nonprofits, and how to start closing the gap between insights and execution. Watch the replay of the the live Q&A session with Avid’s founder, Kevin Peters. ## Want to See Avid in Action? Let us build a campaign for you for free. ##### Campaign Creation session # Get a Custom Built Fundraising Campaign There are plenty of campaigns you know could raise more funds. But who’s going to launch them? There’s **not enough time, resources, or people** to get it all done. Avid Playbooks gives you the scale you need for growth without scaling your team—generating customized campaigns based on proven fundraising strategies. Every channel. Every touchpoint. Every audience segment. **Want to see how it works?** Apply for a campaign creation session using the form. If approved, we’ll build your next campaign for free. ## What You'll Get: - **Campaign Strategy:** Get a fully customized campaign strategy tailored to your mission, your donors, and your goals. - **Ready-to-Use Copy:** Get personalized, segmented copy for every email, donation page, SMS, ad, and more. - **Launch Document:** Walk away with a campaign launch document including copy and timing for each touchpoint. ![Avid Playbooks year-end campaign on a tablet: ads, emails, and donation page copy ready to launch (illustrative)](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Year-End-Launch-Lab-Image-IA3.webp) ## Book a Campaign Creation Session ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-ewtn-v2.webp) ![CURE International logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-cure.webp) ![Ronald McDonald House Charities logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-rmhc-2.webp) ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/logo-Lustgarten-pancreatic-Cancer-Research.svg) ![Polar Bears International logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-polar-bears-international-2.webp) ![Boys & Girls Clubs of Northeast Ohio logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-boys-girls-club.webp) ![Parkland Health Foundation logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-parkland.webp) ![ADRA logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-adra.webp) ![The Cure Starts Now logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-the-cure-starts-now.webp) ![IMB logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/imb-logo-dark-wide.webp) ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/bucker-logo-dark-2.webp) ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-bible-league-canada.webp) ![University of Central Missouri logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-university-of-central-missouri-stacked.webp) ![DTS logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/dts-logo-dark.webp) --- ### [Pricing](https://avidai.com/pricing/) **Published:** April 22, 2026 **Author:** Stephen Boudreau **Content:** #### Avid Pricing # Every campaign, smarter than the last. Avid is the Fundraising Operating System. [ Book a guided tour ](https://avidai.com/demo/) #### Avid Operating System For teams ready to run fundraising as a continuous system. [ Let's talk pricing ](https://avidai.com/demo/) See what changed. Decide what's next. - Insights that find the shifts worth acting on - Scorecard projections that show three-year impact, live as you test scenarios - Live Benchmarks from $11B+ across 1,000+ nonprofits—is it you or the sector? - Goal tracking by channel, giving level, portfolio, or rep—paced to your seasonality - Board-ready decks exported in seconds—every chart, in your branding - Dashboards tailored to each role—leadership, marketing, development, ops - Your CRM reconciled with everything else—wealth files, SFTP, custom data Turn decisions into launched campaigns. - 25+ proven campaigns, tailored to your program before you open them - Or describe your own—drafted around your goal, audience, and channels - Strategy briefs from your mission, what's working, and what worked - Every message in your voice, grounded in your real stories of impact - Ask amounts that know what each donor has given before - Audiences that update themselves as donors give, lapse, and upgrade - Deployed directly into your tools—Meta, Google Ads, HubSpot, and more #### Avid Intelligence For teams that know what to do, but spend too long figuring out where to start. #### from $1,500/mo Insights, Scorecard, Benchmarks, Goal tracking, board-ready decks, role-based dashboards, and Pathways—all running on your CRM, enriched with wealth files, SFTP, and custom data. [ Let's talk Intelligence ](https://avidai.com/demo/) #### Avid Playbooks For teams ready to stop rebuilding the same things every campaign. #### from $1,000/mo 25+ proven campaigns plus custom drafting tailored to your program. Strategy briefs and creative in your voice, delivered to your team’s Google Doc. Pathways keeping audiences current. [ Let's talk Playbooks ](https://avidai.com/demo/) #### What's included in every Avid subscription. - Unlimited users - Unlimited integrations - Unlimited Pathways - 6-week guided onboarding - A Fundraising Strategist who runs alongside you - Edna, the AI keeping the work moving between campaigns - Annual pre-renewal strategy review ![Edna, the Avid agent, shown as an iridescent orb with a looped knot emblem](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Edna-1024x602.webp) ![LockStep](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/lockstep-logo-scaled.webp) #### You're never running Avid alone. Because a system only works when the team can use it with confidence. Every customer gets an experienced fundraiser who helps get you running—and stays close once you are. ![LockStep ticket board with a dedicated support expert and a schedule-a-call option (illustrative)](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/lockstep-crop-4-1024x563.webp) #### Let's talk. A 30-minute call with someone who knows nonprofit fundraising. We’ll talk about your program and what would actually work for a team like yours. [ Book a guided tour ](https://avidai.com/demo/) --- ### [Meet Edna](https://avidai.com/meet-edna/) **Published:** June 24, 2026 **Author:** Stephen Boudreau **Content:** Meet Edna # She does the work. You make the call. Edna is the agent inside Avid. Ask her anything about your fundraising and she answers with the source behind every number — then surfaces what’s worth acting on and builds the campaign to act on it. Edna never talks to your donors. She makes sure you do. [Get a Demo](/demo/) [See how she works ↓](#how) A **source on every answer** Built on **8,000+ experiments** **A human always hits send** Major donor giving How’s our major donor giving trending this year? ![Edna icon](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/avidbridge-icon-edna.png) ![Edna icon](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/avidbridge-icon-edna.png) Major donor revenue is **up about 4.8×** year over year — strong, but very lumpy. A single large gift in May drove most of it, and last month came in near zero. The steadier signal is elsewhere. Open the chart: Revenue by Month. How do we rebuild our major-gift pipeline? ![Edna icon](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/avidbridge-icon-edna.png) ![Edna icon](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/avidbridge-icon-edna.png) Start with your **midlevel donors ($1K–$5K)** — your most likely upgrade candidates. That pipeline is quietly growing: **112 midlevel donors**, up from 97, with revenue up from $41K to $61K. I can build that segment now. **Want me to?** [ Ask Edna anything… ](/demo/) Revenue by Month FYTD26 · major-donor revenue by month **avg $52K** $2K $47K $12K $41K $210K $1K JanFebMarAprMayJun ![Edna icon](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/avidbridge-icon-edna.png)Want to see Edna in action? This is a quick preview. A guided tour shows how Edna would work for your team. [Get a Demo →](/demo/) How it works ## From answer to action. Ask her a question and watch how far she takes it — from a sourced answer, to the opportunity worth acting on, to the campaign that’s ready to send. You stay in control the whole way. 1 · She surfaces it ## A head start on what’s next. There’s more happening in your data than anyone has time to watch. Edna watches all of it — so when something’s worth acting on, it’s already on your desk, with the audience built and her thinking in plain sight. How does Edna decide what to suggest? → Suggested Audience ![Edna icon](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/avidbridge-icon-edna.png)by Edna Lapsing Mid-Level Donors Contacts **1,912**Source Edna Why Edna suggested this Mid-level giving carries 27% of your revenue, and its second-year retention has slipped from 68% to 54%. These donors gave $1K–$5K last year and haven’t yet renewed — re-engaging them, with the $25,000 match as the deadline, is the largest lever in your program right now. - Second-year retention slipping — 68% → 54% among mid-level donors - 1,912 not yet renewed from last year’s $1K–$5K class - Mid-level carries 27% of revenue — the program’s quiet engine SaveCreate PathwayUse in PlayDismiss 2 · You steer it ## Your campaign, in your words. Before she writes a word, Edna shows you the brief — the goal, the message, the angle — in plain language you can change. Refine any of it, or just tell her what you want. It’s your campaign; she drafts from your direction. Strategy Brief StrategyAudiencesTouchpoints Campaign Description Refine A re-engagement campaign to bring back last year’s lapsed mid-level donors — carried by a $25,000 match. Value Proposition Refine The work you made possible is still moving — and right now, every gift goes twice as far. Your Input Refine Many of these donors have given for years — lead with gratitude, not the ask. Tell Edna what to change… 3 · She drafts all of it ## Every message, drafted for you. Then she writes the entire campaign — every message, across every channel — in your voice and ready to review. Open anything to change it; nothing goes out until you say so. Can Edna really build a whole campaign? → Mid-Level Re-Engagement Appeal Draft12 touchpoints · showing 5 Renewal Launch EmailEmail · day 1Edit **Subject:** \[First name\], thank you — and a matched way to come back **Body:** Dear \[First name\], before anything else: thank you. The work you made possible is still moving — and this month, a $25,000 match doubles every gift… Ready Match Ad for Lapsing Mid-Level DonorsAd · day 5 Ready Your impact, by the numbersEmail · day 14 Ready Match Giving PageDonation page · day 1 Ready Match Reminder AdAd · day 18 Ready 4 · You deploy ## The last click is always yours. When it’s ready, Edna lines it all up in the tools you already use. You give it a final look, change anything you want, and launch when you’re ready. A human always hits send. You’re about to launch **12** touchpoints. Edna places them in your connected tools, ready to go. - Email · 7LinkedReady - Donation Page · 1LinkedReady - Ad · 4LinkedReady A human always hits send Launch Play Why you can trust what she finds ## A general-purpose AI read about fundraising. Edna has done it. Avid was born from the work itself: years of running real fundraising, where Edna learned what actually moves a donor. That experience is behind every finding she brings you. A general-purpose AI Read about fundraising Trained on the open web. It can sound right — but it has never seen what actually moves a donor. vs ![Edna icon](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/avidbridge-icon-edna.png)Edna Built on fundraising itself Recognition, not guesses — every finding matched to what’s actually worked across real programs. 8,000+controlled experiments behind her judgment 650M+donor interactions of what works Avid never trains its AI on your data — your donor file is always, only yours. [How Avid protects your data →](https://trust.avidai.com) Voice · brain · workforce ## Edna is the voice. Behind her, a whole system. Running a fundraising program means working across every tool, channel, and decision — continuously. No single AI can do that. So Edna is the voice you talk to, an orchestrator decides what runs when, and 16+ specialized agents do the work — coordinated as one team, always on. And it isn’t only software. Every paid plan includes LockStep — a dedicated Avid team of real fundraisers who know your program and stay in it with you. Does Edna replace my fundraisers? → ![Edna icon](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/avidbridge-icon-edna.png) **Edna**The voice you talk to Voice **The Orchestrator**Decides what runs, when Brain Workforce 16+ specialized agents, coordinated as one team One coordinated system · always on. Safe with your donors ## Donor data never reaches the AI. You can still ask Edna *“Who are my top donors this year?”* and get back real names, gifts and trends — the AI just never sees a single name. Is my donor data safe with Edna? → How it stays privateFollowing one donor-level question, start to finish The AI never sees a name You ask Edna “Who are my top donors this year?” **Names hidden** The AI Sees only tokens, never a name **Names restored** Edna’s answer Your top donors, by name SOC 2 Type II PII tokenized — never reaches the AI Fundraising.AI signatory Full detail at [trust.avidai.com](https://trust.avidai.com). ## The work, handled. The call, yours. Book a guided tour and watch Edna do the work — surface the opportunity, draft the campaign, hand it over ready for your go. We’ll show you how it’d look for a team like yours. [Book a guided tour](/demo/) --- ### [LockStepFWD - Customer Webinars](https://avidai.com/lockstep-fwd-customer-webinars/) **Published:** May 11, 2026 **Author:** Nathan Hill **Content:** # Events and Webinars ## LockStep*FWD* Sessions Join upcoming LockStep*FWD* sessions to learn along side other Avid users. Sessions cover topics including new Avid features, case studies from Avid users, and practical training to help your team get the most out of Avid. ![Avid LockStep support hub with a dedicated expert, ticket tracking, and training sessions (illustrative)](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/LockStep_Hero-scaled.png) --- ### [Launch Your Next Campaign in Days, Not Weeks](https://avidai.com/launch/) **Published:** May 26, 2026 **Author:** Stephen Boudreau **Content:** ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Avid-1.svg) ##### Year-End Launch Lab # Launch Your Next Campaign in Days, Not Weeks **Get a custom-built campaign—strategy, audiences, creative, and all—in a single guided session.** Campaigns that are ready to launch shouldn’t take two weeks to assemble. With Avid, you’ll work with a fundraising strategist to build a complete campaign—mapped to your donors, grounded in what’s worked before, written in your voice. ## You'll walk away with: - **Campaign Map:** Choose your campaign and we'll map out every channel, touchpoint, and key audience segment. - **Ready-to-Use Copy:** Get customized copy for every email, donation page, SMS, ad, and more—segmentation included. - **AI Powered Playbook:** Your take-home ebook for data-driven year-end campaign success. All in a 30-minute session. No callbacks. No back-and-forth. ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Year-End-Launch-Lab-Image-IA3.webp) 👉 We reserve a limited number of sessions each month to keep them focused and valuable. --- ### [How To Convert Year-End Supporters Into Monthly Donors | Free Fundraising Guide](https://avidai.com/how-to-convert-year-end-supporters-into-monthly-donors/) **Published:** December 30, 2025 **Author:** Avid Team **Content:** ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Avid-1.svg) ## Free Download ## How To Convert Year-End Supporters Into Monthly Donors The last week of December brings a surge of generosity. But long-term growth does not happen by chance. This free guide shows you how to turn year-end supporters into committed monthly donors using practical, proven strategies that build sustainable revenue beyond December. **What’s inside:** - A clear framework for identifying which year-end donors are most likely to become monthly supporters - Practical tactics for introducing monthly giving without increasing donor fatigue - Messaging and follow-up strategies that help donors feel valued, not pressured ![Guide cover: How to Convert Year-End Supporters into Monthly Donors, an AI-powered playbook](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Screenshot-2025-12-30-at-9.19.58-AM.webp) © 2025 [Avid Software](https://avidai.com). All Rights Reserved. --- ### [Learning: Keep the momentum building](https://avidai.com/how-it-works/learning/) **Published:** April 11, 2026 **Author:** Stephen Boudreau **Content:** [01 — Data](https://avidai.com/how-it-works/data/) [02 — Insight](https://avidai.com/how-it-works/insight/) [03 — Decision](https://avidai.com/how-it-works/decision/) [04 — Execution](https://avidai.com/how-it-works/execution/) [05 — Learning](https://avidai.com/how-it-works/learning/) Learning # It's January again. Something is different this time. ### A year makes all the difference. A year has passed. Year-end is closed. The spring planning cycle is about to begin. Sarah, Marcus, and Elena are in the same positions they were in twelve months ago, facing the same moment they face every January. But the moment feels different. Not because the work got easier. Because the weight shifted. The system is carrying what the team used to carry—and for the first time in a long time, they’re back inside the work instead of buried under it. ![Three fundraising teammates smiling as they review results together around a laptop](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/sarah-marcus-elena-working-4-1024x1024.webp) ### Elena opens Avid. Elena opens Avid. There’s no reconciliation to run. No spreadsheet to build. No exports to cross-reference before anyone else can move. The data aligned continuously through the year—every campaign, every gift, every channel update—so the foundation she’s working from today reflects what’s actually true right now. She checks the insight queue and forwards two things to Sarah before the first standup. ![Fundraiser starting her morning with coffee at her desk, reading her screen](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/elena-coffee-1024x1024.webp) ### Sarah already knows what to do. Sarah’s queue shows the mid-level segment trending in the right direction. The $2,500–$5,000 range is recovering. But there’s a new signal—second-year mid-level donors showing engagement patterns that look almost identical to last year’s lapsers. The window is still open. Six weeks, maybe eight. She doesn’t need two hours to find it. She doesn’t need to know where to look. It’s already there, flagged and explained, with the audience already defined. She forwards it to Marcus with one line: same play, new cohort. ![Smiling fundraiser working at her laptop with a printed report at hand](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/sarah-smile-1024x1024.webp) ### Marcus doesn't start from scratch. Marcus opens Playbooks. Last year’s re-engagement campaign is sitting in Previous Plays — the audiences, the touchpoints, the creative, the timing. He doesn’t rebuild it. He opens it, updates the audience to reflect the second-year cohort, adjusts the ask amounts, and reviews the touchpoints. Most of them are already ready. It’s Monday morning. The spring campaign launches this week. And no one started from scratch — because this time, nothing got left behind. ![Fundraiser walking two colleagues through sketches on a whiteboard](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/marcus-team-relaxed-1024x1024.webp) ## This is what momentum looks like. Sarah’s team isn’t better at fundraising than they were a year ago. They’re the same people, with the same strategy, the same instincts, the same mission. What’s different is that nothing they’ve learned has been left behind. Every campaign built on the last. Every signal caught in time. Every window acted on while it was still open. That’s not luck. That’s not effort. That’s what happens when the work finally carries forward—when a system keeps running between campaigns so the team never has to start over. And when the work carries forward, something else appears: confidence. Not because the team has better ideas, but because they can act on the ideas they already have. The next campaign doesn’t feel like a decision that needs to be revalidated. It feels like the next step in a program that’s already in motion. And with confidence comes space. Space to focus on donors. On relationships. On the moments that lead to action. The system holds the rest together. ### See Avid for yourself. [ Book a guided tour ](https://avidai.com/demo/) --- ### [Insight: See what actually changed](https://avidai.com/how-it-works/insight/) **Published:** April 11, 2026 **Author:** Stephen Boudreau **Content:** [01 — Data](https://avidai.com/how-it-works/data/) [02 — Insight](https://avidai.com/how-it-works/insight/) [03 — Decision](https://avidai.com/how-it-works/decision/) [04 — Execution](https://avidai.com/how-it-works/execution/) [05 — Learning](https://avidai.com/how-it-works/learning/) Insight # The data was always there. The signal was buried inside it. ### Sarah starts digging. The foundation is solid. Everyone is looking at the same numbers. But the numbers have a problem. Mid-level revenue is down 4.2%. The file is quietly shrinking underneath a year that looked fine on the surface. She needs to know why before Marcus can build anything. So she starts digging. Filtering by giving level. Splitting by cohort. Cross-referencing channel performance. Two hours later, she’s three pivot tables deep. ![Fundraiser comparing printed reports against a spreadsheet on her laptop](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/sarah-research-1024x1024.webp) ### The signal she almost missed. The drop isn’t coming from everywhere. It’s concentrated in one place: mid-level donors in the $2,500–$5,000 range, down 39% this cycle. Not because they left. Not because they disengaged. They gave less—or didn’t give at the level they had before. She digs further. The $7.5K–$10K range grew. Online giving surged. The file isn’t collapsing—it’s shifting. And if no one catches the shift, the mid-level pipeline quietly erodes while the top-line numbers look stable enough to ignore. ![Fundraiser taking a phone call by her office window](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/sarah-phone-1024x1024.webp) ### Two hours to find one signal. She found it. But it took two hours and the kind of pattern recognition that only comes from years of doing this work. And there are still signals in that same data she’ll never find—patterns that only surface if someone already knows to check. Every signal she finds takes time she doesn’t have. Every signal she misses costs money she’ll never see. ![Two fundraising teammates combing through reports side by side at a conference table](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/sarah-elena-researching-1024x1024.webp) ## What Avid surfaces. Sarah spent two hours finding one signal. Avid was watching all of them. When she opens Avid the morning after year-end closes, this is already waiting: ![Avid Insights midlevel giving report with revenue trends and plain-English takeaways (illustrative)](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/midlevel-screen-scaled.webp) The overall dip. The giving level breakdown. The $2.5K–$5K erosion. Already flagged, already explained, before she’s touched a single filter. And the signals Sarah would have found eventually arrive alongside the ones she never would have looked for—because Avid doesn’t wait for someone to know where to look. She forwards it to Marcus. He has his segment. He can start. But Sarah isn’t done. She knows what happened. Now she has to prove what to do about it—in a room with the CEO, with the budget on the line. ### Insight isn't enough. Now she needs a forecast. [ Chapter 03: Decision ](https://avidai.com/how-it-works/decision/) --- ### [Execution: Move while it still matters](https://avidai.com/how-it-works/execution/) **Published:** April 11, 2026 **Author:** Stephen Boudreau **Content:** [01 — Data](https://avidai.com/how-it-works/data/) [02 — Insight](https://avidai.com/how-it-works/insight/) [03 — Decision](https://avidai.com/how-it-works/decision/) [04 — Execution](https://avidai.com/how-it-works/execution/) [05 — Learning](https://avidai.com/how-it-works/learning/) Execution # The campaign is approved. Now it has to be built. ### This is where the clock starts. Marcus has been waiting for this moment since the second week of January. He knows the segment. He knows the goal. The budget is approved. He can finally build. And in most cycles, this is where the work begins. And where the calendar starts working against him. ![Designer at a desktop computer laying out campaign artwork, color swatches at hand](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/marcus-working-1024x1024.webp) ### The rebuild happens every time. He opens the CRM to pull the segment. He exports it, formats it for the email platform, uploads it—and realizes the suppression file isn’t current. Some donors gave through the year-end campaign that just closed. He goes back to Elena. She re-runs it. He re-uploads. Now he can start building. Email sequence. Ask amounts personalized by gift history. Landing pages, donation forms, ad suppression, a direct mail pull for the donors who respond better offline. Each of these is a step. Each step is a handoff. Each handoff is a day. ![Two colleagues rebuilding a report, comparing a laptop spreadsheet with binders of printouts](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/marcus-elena-working-1024x1024.webp) ### The window that doesn't wait. Two weeks in, he’s still building. The window for the earliest donors has already started closing. He launches what he has. It’s not wrong. But it’s not what it could have been. **The opportunity doesn’t expire because the team is slow. It expires because everything has to be rebuilt before anyone can move.** ![Fundraiser sketching a campaign plan on a whiteboard for three teammates in a busy office](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/marcus-team-work-1024x1024.webp) ## What Avid makes possible. When the budget is approved, Marcus opens Playbooks. And the first thing he notices is that someone has already done the work. Not a template. Not a starting point. A campaign—built around the organization’s voice, the segment Avid has been watching, and everything the team learned from every campaign that came before it. The strategy is written. The audience is defined. The emails are drafted, segmented by donor history and giving level. The ads are ready. The donation pages are configured. The direct mail pull is separated and formatted for the print vendor. ![Avid Playbooks home screen listing ready-to-launch campaign plays and draft campaigns (illustrative)](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/pb-home-landing-scaled.webp) Marcus didn’t brief anyone. He didn’t export a list or rebuild a suppression file or spend a half-day cross-referencing ask amounts. The system was running while the team was waiting for budget approval. And by the time the decision was made, the campaign had already been taking shape. What isn’t complete takes him an afternoon. Not two weeks. ![Avid Playbooks campaign output: strategy brief, audiences, and 67 ready-to-launch touchpoints (illustrative)](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/playbooks-full-output2-2.webp) He reviews. He refines. He launches—on day three, inside the window for every donor in the segment. This is what it feels like when the system never stops working. Not a tool that makes the work faster. A fundraising operating system that does the work between the work—so that when Marcus is finally ready to move, almost everything is already waiting for him. **What used to take two weeks is mostly already done. What’s left is the work only Marcus can do.** ### The campaign is live. This time, nothing gets left behind. [ Chapter 05: Learning ](https://avidai.com/how-it-works/learning/) --- ### [Decision: Know what happens before you act](https://avidai.com/how-it-works/decision/) **Published:** April 11, 2026 **Author:** Stephen Boudreau **Content:** [01 — Data](https://avidai.com/how-it-works/data/) [02 — Insight](https://avidai.com/how-it-works/insight/) [03 — Decision](https://avidai.com/how-it-works/decision/) [04 — Execution](https://avidai.com/how-it-works/execution/) [05 — Learning](https://avidai.com/how-it-works/learning/) Decision # Seeing it isn't enough. You have to show it. ### The case that's hard to make. Sarah has the signal. The mid-level segment is eroding. The fix is clear: a dedicated re-engagement campaign targeting donors who gave less or stopped giving in the $2,500–$5,000 range. The whole team believes it’s right. But the spring budget is already committed. To fund the campaign properly, Sarah needs to shift dollars from a digital acquisition channel that’s been softening for two quarters—one the CEO has championed personally. The math points one direction. The conversation is harder than that. ![Executive standing at a conference table reviewing a report on a tablet](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/sarah-research-conference-room-1024x1024.webp) ### The numbers that won't connect. So Sarah and Elena spend an afternoon building the case together. Elena pulls historical retention rates. Sarah reconstructs acquisition trends from the last three cycles. They try to project what improving mid-level renewal does to revenue over three years—and what reallocating from a softening channel does to overall acquisition over the same period. The problem is the numbers don’t connect cleanly. Retention and acquisition live in different reports, measured differently, over different windows. ![Two colleagues comparing numbers between a laptop and printed reports](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/sarah-elena-researching-2-1024x1024.webp) ### The ask that can't be proven. Sarah can make a case for the segment’s value. But she can’t show what the trade actually looks like over time. She can’t make the compounding effect visible in a way that will hold up in the room. She builds a slide deck with what she has. When the CEO asks what happens to the three-year revenue picture if the channel mix shifts, Sarah says she believes the program comes out stronger. That’s not the same as showing it. **The problem isn’t judgment. It’s making a consequential decision without being able to show the consequences.** ![Fundraising leader presenting a statistics slide to executives around a conference table](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/sarah-ceo-4-1024x1024.webp) ## What Avid makes possible. Sarah and Elena open the Scorecard. Retention is already flagged: two stars, down 3.2%. The three-year projection shows exactly where the file is heading if nothing changes. Then Sarah moves the “What If” slider. ![Avid fundraising scorecard grading retention and acquisition, with projections and a what-if slider (illustrative)](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/scorecard-retention-scaled.webp) The three-year revenue projection updates in real time—built from the organization’s own data, their own retention curves, their own giving patterns. The compounding effect she couldn’t show on a slide is now on a single screen, adjustable by anyone in the room. The CEO doesn’t have to take Sarah’s word for it. She can see it. She can move the slider herself. She can watch the projections respond to her own assumptions. The conversation that used to end with “I believe it recovers” ends with everyone looking at the same future. The budget is approved in full. ### The campaign is funded. Now it has to be built. [ Chapter 04: Execution ](https://avidai.com/how-it-works/execution/) --- ### [Data: Start from a foundation you trust](https://avidai.com/how-it-works/data/) **Published:** April 10, 2026 **Author:** Stephen Boudreau **Content:** [01 — Data](https://avidai.com/how-it-works/data/) [02 — Insight](https://avidai.com/how-it-works/insight/) [03 — Decision](https://avidai.com/how-it-works/decision/) [04 — Execution](https://avidai.com/how-it-works/execution/) [05 — Learning](https://avidai.com/how-it-works/learning/) Data # Before the work can move, the data has to agree with itself. ### Everyone is waiting on Elena. Elena runs data and operations for a six-person development team at a regional children’s hospital foundation managing a $9M individual giving program. It’s the second week of January. Year-end just closed. And her inbox already has two requests in it. Sarah, the VP of Development, needs to know what happened to the mid-level segment in Q4. Marcus, the campaign manager, needs the spring donor audiences built. Both of them need Elena before they can do anything else. ![Collage of nonprofit staff at work: fielding calls, sorting reports, and mapping a campaign wall](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/sarah-elena-marcus-collage-2a-1024x1024.webp) ### Where did 458 people go? She pulls the mid-level donor list from the CRM—847 records. She uploads it to the email platform to check against active subscribers. Only 612 match. She cross-references the ad platform for the suppression list. The overlap drops to 389. Three platforms. Three different numbers. Somewhere in the gap, 458 donors have effectively disappeared. She has to find them before she can hand anything to Sarah or Marcus. Because if she gives them a number they can’t trust, every decision downstream is built on the same shaky ground. ![Fundraiser working between an email inbox and a donor spreadsheet on two monitors](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Elena-Checking-email-1024x1024.webp) ### When Elena stops, everything stops. It takes two days. Neither Sarah nor Marcus can start until she’s done. **Elena isn’t slow.** She isn’t disorganized. She is, in fact, the only reason the work holds together at all. That’s the problem. **The tools aren’t broken.** Each one does its job, but none of them were built to agree with the others. So Elena became the agreement. Every cycle, she reconciles what they can’t. And every cycle, two days disappear before anyone else can move. ![Three colleagues gathered over laptops and papers in a small conference room](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/sarah-elena-marcust-meeting-4-1024x1024.webp) ## What Avid does. The 458 missing donors aren’t missing. They were never lost—the tools just couldn’t see each other. When the tools connect to Avid—there’s no more manual export, no Excel sheet in the middle, no file handed from one person to the next. Every gift, every donor, every interaction pulls into one place. On Monday morning, Elena opens Avid. The entire program is already there—every donor, every channel, every gift—reconciled, current, and waiting. Not because she spent two days building it. Because the system never stopped running while she wasn’t looking. She forwards the report to Sarah and Marcus before her second cup of coffee. The whole team is looking at the same numbers, from the same source, at the same time. Sarah opens it. Mid-level revenue is down 4.2%. The file is telling her something. She just has to figure out what. ![Avid settings screen showing connected data sources like Salesforce and Google Analytics (illustrative)](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/settings-screen-crop-scaled.webp) ### The data finally agrees with itself. [ Chapter 02: Insight ](https://avidai.com/how-it-works/insight/) --- ### [How It Works](https://avidai.com/how-it-works/) **Published:** April 8, 2026 **Author:** Stephen Boudreau **Content:** How Avid works # Working for you, around the clock. Your other tools wait for you to run them. Avid doesn’t — it works your program between every campaign, so the work stops outrunning you. It’s yours to direct. [Get a Demo](/demo/) [See how it runs ↓](#how) **SOC 2 Type II** Donor PII is **tokenized** — it never reaches the AI Your data is **never used to train** a shared model [Trust Center →](https://trust.avidai.com) ![A nonprofit fundraiser pauses with a coffee in a bright, plant-filled office — calm and unhurried.](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/avidbridge-fundraiser-coffee.jpg) The capacity trap ## The harder you work, the further behind you fall. The work that keeps you afloat — pulling the data together by hand, every cycle — is the same work that keeps you from ever getting ahead of it. So you never do. Working harder doesn’t break the loop; it feeds it. Do I just need to hire more people? → 01Every cycle starts behind 02The data never comes together 03What matters stays buried 04So you do it all by hand 05The next cycle starts behind Buried under the work Lost The cost is real even when it never shows up in a report. - The major donor whose window quietly passed. - The lapsed giver who’d have come back for the call no one made. - The first-timer who gave once and never heard from you again. - The thank-you that landed too late to feel like thanks. Not missed metrics. **Missed relationships.** ## You were never the problem. It was never about working harder or buying another tool — the trap is structural. Change the structure and the same loop that drained you flips: the data ready before you reach for it, every cycle starting ahead instead of behind. How is Avid not just another tool? → The AVID loop ## Now the loop works for you. Four moves, one continuous loop: **A**ggregate → **V**isualize → **I**dentify → **D**eploy, between every campaign. Where the trap drained your hours, this one hands them back. Does Avid really run continuously, between campaigns? → A Aggregate The data, ready before you reach for it V Visualize What matters, already surfaced I Identify The next move, already clear D Deploy The work, ready before you sit down ![Edna icon](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/avidbridge-icon-edna.png) **Ahead** of the work Edna, working for you A · Aggregate ## Your data, whole and current. Your CRM, email, ads, online forms, the mail file — reconciled into one current record for every donor, automatically. You stop exporting and stitching data together just to trust the numbers. Does connecting Avid change anything in my CRM? → Avid — ConnectionsSyncing CCRMsynced EEmailsynced AAdssynced FFormssynced MSFTP mail feeddaily Your donor file reconciled, end to end Active donors**32,047** Sources merged**5** Duplicates resolved**1,204** Refreshed**Daily** ● One picture, current V · Visualize ## What matters, already surfaced. That one record shows you the few things that need your attention — brought to you, not hunted for across dashboards. What does Avid actually surface? → Avid — InsightsLive Mid-level revenue $200K$100K$0 20212022202320242025 ![Edna icon](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/avidbridge-icon-edna.png)Why is this a priority? Your **mid-level revenue** is down **4.2%** — in the $1K–$5K range — marking it as a critical priority for your program today. Dive Deeper I · Identify ## Your next move, already clear. Avid shows you the next move — which audience to reach and what to say. It’s recognizing a pattern it’s seen work before, not guessing, and it shows its reasoning — so you can check the call before you act. How does Avid decide what matters — is it guessing? → Suggested Audience ![Edna icon](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/avidbridge-icon-edna.png)by Edna Mid-Level Donors, Starting to Slip Contacts **312**Source Edna Why Edna suggested this Mid-level giving is down 4.2%, concentrated in the $1K–$5K range — it matches a pre-lapse pattern Avid has seen before. Reached now, most of these donors stay. - Gift timing stretching — 12 → 16 months between gifts - Engagement cooling — opens and clicks easing off across the segment - 312 donors match — concentrated in the $1K–$5K range How to talk to this audience Lead with their impact and a personal check-in — not an ask. SaveCreate PathwayUse in PlayDismiss D · Deploy ## The response, ready before you sit down. Avid builds it — the audience, the messages, the sequence. The campaign that used to take weeks arrives drafted in your voice; you adjust it and hit send. A person always makes the call. Does Avid contact my donors on its own? → You’re about to launch **6** touchpoints. Mid-Level Re-Engagement, drafted in your voice — Edna places every piece in your connected tools. Nothing sends until you hit launch. - Email · 3LinkedReady - Text · 1LinkedReady - Donation page · 1LinkedReady - Ad · 1Review A human always hits send Launch Play The hands on the loop ## The loop runs for you. You stay in charge. Avid is your fundraising agent — it works for you, not the other way around. You hold the relationship; Avid works around it — drafting, preparing, following up — and hands it back. A human always hits send — and Edna never talks to your donors; she makes sure you do. Two hands, both working for you: one that never rests, one who knows you. ![Edna icon](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/avidbridge-icon-edna.png)Edna ### [The agent that carries the work.](/meet-edna/) Runs the loop around the clock — drafting, surfacing, preparing — and hands it back ready for your call. Meet Edna → ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/avidbridge-icon-lockstep.png)LockStep ### [The people who know your program.](/components/lockstep/) Every paid plan includes LockStep — a dedicated team built into the product, so you’re never running the loop alone. See how LockStep works → ## Your hours, for what only you can do. Presence in the room. Time to actually listen. The story only this donor needs to hear. Trust, built across years. That’s where the hours go. [Get a guided tour →](/demo/) [See what your role gets back →](/who-its-for/) --- ### [Fundraising Strategy Session](https://avidai.com/fundraising-strategy-session/) **Published:** September 24, 2025 **Author:** Avid Team **Content:** ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Avid-1.svg) # Your fundraising strategy session. 30 minutes with our team to uncover where your tools slow you down and explore how Avid’s system helps you move faster. ## Schedule your session 👉 We reserve a limited number of sessions each month to keep them focused and valuable. ## What you'll gain - **Clarity:** Spot bottlenecks in your current tools. - **Direction:** Practical ideas for faster, more effective campaigns. - **Insight:** See what’s possible with a true fundraising system. ## Why this is different Not a sales pitch. Not a generic demo. This is a focused conversation designed to give you clarity and show how a system-first approach changes the way you work. ## Who this is for Fundraising leaders, campaign managers, and ops teams who need speed and focus. ## How to prepare Bring your fundraising goals and a sense of the tools you’re using today. ## What happens next - Share a little context about your org and goals. - Book a time that works for you. - Spend 30 minutes with us → leave with clearer priorities and a better sense of how Avid can help you act on them. ## Schedule your session 👉 We reserve a limited number of sessions each month to keep them focused and valuable. --- ### [The AI-Enabled Fundraising Team - The Future](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/the-future/) **Published:** March 31, 2025 **Author:** Stephen Boudreau **Content:** [ The AI-Enabled Fundraising Team ](#elementor-action%3Aaction%3Doff_canvas%3Aopen%26settings%3DeyJpZCI6IjFiNzk0MzUiLCJkaXNwbGF5TW9kZSI6Im9wZW4ifQ%3D%3D) #### Contents Share Story Chapter 07 # The Future: The AI-Powered Fundraising Landscape ![Overhead view of five colleagues meeting in an open office lounge](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Future-1024x768.webp) [ Download Guide as PDF ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/download/) ## What Happens If Nonprofits Don’t Adapt? The world of fundraising is evolving—fast. - Donor expectations are shifting. - Digital engagement is accelerating. - And forward-thinking organizations are already operating with smarter systems **Those that cling to manual workflows and fragmented tools?** They’ll be working twice as hard for half the results. Here’s what happens when nonprofits stay stuck: - **Rising churn:** Without personalized, timely engagement, donors disengage - **Inefficient operations:** More time managing tools, less time building relationships - **Declining relevance:** As others scale personalization and precision, lagging teams get left behind Fundraising isn’t broken—it’s built for a world that no longer exists. ## The System Shift: From Trend to Transformation AI isn’t just coming—it’s here. And in the most effective organizations, it’s already integrated into the way work gets done. But here’s the truth: AI alone doesn’t fix anything. **It’s the system it lives inside that determines what it can actually do.** When nonprofits pair AI with a system that’s built to execute, they unlock a new operating model: - Real-time clarity - Adaptive strategy - Action that scales without added headcount This isn’t about using new tools. It’s about working inside a smarter foundation. ## Why AI is No Longer Optional **Data-Driven Decision-Making The best teams aren’t guessing—they’re acting on live donor signals. **Personalization at Scale Every message. Every moment. Tailored automatically across every channel. **Smarter Efficiency Campaigns launch faster. Donor journeys adapt in real time. The system does the heavy lifting. Together, these aren’t just features—they’re the new foundation for how fundraising teams grow. Because the future of fundraising won’t be built on more tools. It will be built on better systems. ## Executive Takeaway: The Question Isn’t If. It’s How Soon. This isn’t hype. It’s the new baseline for fundraising. The most forward-thinking organizations have already made the shift, while others risk spending more to raise less as donor expectations continue to climb. What once felt like innovation is now the minimum standard. **So the only question left is this: Are you ready to stop patching tools together—and start running a system built for what comes next?** Next [ 08 / Solution: The First Fundraising Agency in the Cloud ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/solution/) Are your fundraising tools leaving gaps in your data? [ Take the Free Assessment » ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-tools-or-system-assessment/) ## Interactive Ebook ## [The AI-Enabled Fundraising Team](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/) [ Download Guide as PDF ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/download/) - [#### 01 / Introduction ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/introduction/) - [#### 02 / Data ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/data/) - [#### 03 / Strategy ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/strategy/) - [#### 04 / Execution ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/execution/) - [#### 05 / Teams ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/teams/) - [#### 06 / Platform ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/platform/) - [#### 07 / The Future ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/the-future/) - [#### 08 / The Fundraising Agency in the Cloud ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/solution/) --- ### [The AI-Enabled Fundraising Team - Platform](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/platform/) **Published:** March 31, 2025 **Author:** Stephen Boudreau **Content:** [ The AI-Enabled Fundraising Team ](#elementor-action%3Aaction%3Doff_canvas%3Aopen%26settings%3DeyJpZCI6IjFiNzk0MzUiLCJkaXNwbGF5TW9kZSI6Im9wZW4ifQ%3D%3D) #### Contents Share Story Chapter 06 # Platform: How Avid Creates AI-Powered Fundraising Teams ![Team members discussing work around a table with laptops and tablets](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Platform-1024x637.webp) [ Download Guide as PDF ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/download/) ## Why Avid Stands Out: Unifying Intelligence and Execution Most fundraising software falls into one of two categories: 1️⃣ **Data & Reporting Tools** – CRMs and analytics platforms store donor data and generate reports, but leave fundraisers to interpret insights and execute strategies manually. 2️⃣ **Automation Platforms** – Email marketing tools and ad platforms help with outreach but don’t provide the intelligence needed to make data-driven decisions. Avid does something different. It doesn’t just give you information—or automation. It connects the two, inside one system that learns, adapts, and executes in real time. Think of Avid as the strategist, the analyst, and the campaign manager—all rolled into one intelligent engine. It doesn’t just tell you what happened. It tells you what to do next—and then helps you do it. **With Avid, fundraising teams don’t have to:** - Spend hours pulling reports across platforms - Manually segment donor lists and hope they’re still relevant - Guess which donors are ready to engage—or which ones are slipping away Instead, they get a system that: - Surfaces high-value donor opportunities automatically - Delivers AI-powered playbooks based on live data - Launches and adapts campaigns—across channels, with minimal manual effort It’s not about doing more. It’s about doing what works—faster, smarter, with less lift. And that’s exactly what Avid was built for. ## Turning Insights into Immediate Action Fundraising teams today are drowning in dashboards—but starved for clarity. Even when they have the data, they’re left asking: - Where do we start? - What should we do next? - How do we move faster without making mistakes? Avid answers those questions—automatically. - AI-powered recommendations guide the next best action - Pre-built campaign playbooks take strategy from theory to launch - Real-time personalization adapts outreach to every donor, on every channel **The guesswork is gone. The system takes over. The team moves faster.** ## The Avid Advantage: Capabilities That Transform Fundraising With Avid, fundraising teams can: - **Unify & activate donor data** across systems in real time - **Identify key opportunities instantly**—and act on them - **Run AI-powered campaigns** without needing to build every piece manually - **Optimize outreach** across email, ads, and direct mail automatically - **Stay synced**—so donor data and behavior is always up to date **Generate instant insights** with built-in action recommendations ## The Bottom Line: Fundraising Without Avid vs. Fundraising With Avid **Without Avid:** - Teams are reactive, chasing lagging reports and stale lists - Donor engagement is inconsistent - Campaigns take weeks to build—and often miss the moment **With Avid:** - Fundraisers move faster—with confidence - Outreach is smarter, more timely, and more personalized - Results improve—without increasing the workload **Avid isn’t just the platform you log into. It’s the system that makes everything else work.** Next [ 07 / The Future: The AI-Powered Fundraising Landscape ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/the-future/) Are your fundraising tools leaving gaps in your data? [ Take the Free Assessment » ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-tools-or-system-assessment/) ## Interactive Ebook ## [The AI-Enabled Fundraising Team](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/) [ Download Guide as PDF ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/download/) - [#### 01 / Introduction ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/introduction/) - [#### 02 / Data ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/data/) - [#### 03 / Strategy ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/strategy/) - [#### 04 / Execution ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/execution/) - [#### 05 / Teams ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/teams/) - [#### 06 / Platform ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/platform/) - [#### 07 / The Future ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/the-future/) - [#### 08 / The Fundraising Agency in the Cloud ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/solution/) --- ### [The AI-Enabled Fundraising Team - Introduction](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/introduction/) **Published:** March 31, 2025 **Author:** Stephen Boudreau **Content:** [ The AI-Enabled Fundraising Team ](#elementor-action%3Aaction%3Doff_canvas%3Aopen%26settings%3DeyJpZCI6IjFiNzk0MzUiLCJkaXNwbGF5TW9kZSI6Im9wZW4ifQ%3D%3D) #### Contents Share Story Chapter 01 # Introduction ![Team members collaborating around a table, one working on a laptop](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Page-34-1024x683.webp) [ Download Guide as PDF ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/download/) The old way of fundraising was never designed for the world we live in now. Disconnected systems. Gut-based strategy. Reactive outreach. And the sector’s answer has always been the same: Buy another tool. Hire another consultant. Add another dashboard. But the system was never built to work together in the first place. At Avid, we believe that fundraising doesn’t need another app. **It needs a system—one that connects your data, strategy, and execution in real time. One that learns as it goes, adapts to each donor, and turns insight into action automatically.** We call that system **impact architecture**. And it’s what makes everything in this ebook possible. This is the story of the teams already fundraising that way. Smarter. Faster. With more clarity and more impact—because the system finally works. ## The Changing Landscape of Fundraising Fundraising isn’t broken—but if your team is still operating the way it did five years ago, it’s falling behind. Nonprofit leaders today face a perfect storm of challenges: - **Donors expect more**—personalized engagement, transparency, and meaningful interactions. - **Teams are stretched thin**—fewer staff, tighter budgets, and rising acquisition costs. - **Fundraising has become more complex**—more channels, more data, and more pressure to deliver results. **Consider this:** - 66% of first-time donors never give again. - Acquiring a new donor can cost 5x more than retaining an existing one. - Most nonprofits spend more time managing tools than engaging donors. For nonprofit leaders, these aren’t just operational headaches—they’re existential threats. Growth is unsustainable when teams are stuck in reactive cycles, constantly chasing short-term revenue instead of building lasting donor relationships. The real question isn’t whether fundraising is getting harder—it’s whether the way we’ve always done it still works. ## The AI Shift: How Technology is Transforming Fundraising AI has already transformed industries like finance, retail, and sales: - **Finance:** AI detects fraud before it happens. - **Retail:** AI personalizes shopping experiences in real-time. - **Sales:** AI-driven CRMs forecast revenue and optimize engagement. So why is fundraising still relying on gut instinct, outdated reports, and manual execution? The truth is: Insight-driven fundraising is no longer a competitive advantage—it’s a necessity. **But AI alone isn’t the answer. It only works when it’s connected to a system designed to act on it.** Nonprofits that embrace AI inside a smarter system will operate faster, adapt in real time, and scale with less stress. Those that don’t will fall behind. ## A New Vision: AI-Powered Fundraising Teams Imagine a world where fundraisers aren’t buried in disconnected tools and manual processes—but instead have a unified system powered by real-time insights, automated workflows, and AI recommendations. With AI-powered fundraising: - **Data is no longer fragmented**—it’s unified and instantly actionable. - **Campaigns are no longer built on guesswork**—they are optimized in real-time. - **Fundraisers aren’t overworked and reactive**—they’re strategic and proactive. This shift isn’t coming—it’s already here. The best teams aren’t just using AI. They’re fundraising inside systems built to take action—automatically, intelligently, and at scale. So, the question isn’t whether fundraising will change. The question is: **Will your team evolve with it?** Next [ 02 / Data: Taking Your Systems from Chaos to Clarity ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/data/) Are your fundraising tools leaving gaps in your data? [ Take the Free Assessment » ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-tools-or-system-assessment/) ## Interactive Ebook ## [The AI-Enabled Fundraising Team](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/) [ Download Guide as PDF ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/download/) - [#### 01 / Introduction ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/introduction/) - [#### 02 / Data ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/data/) - [#### 03 / Strategy ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/strategy/) - [#### 04 / Execution ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/execution/) - [#### 05 / Teams ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/teams/) - [#### 06 / Platform ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/platform/) - [#### 07 / The Future ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/the-future/) - [#### 08 / The Fundraising Agency in the Cloud ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/solution/) --- ### [Download The AI-Enabled Fundraising Team](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/download/) **Published:** March 31, 2025 **Author:** Stephen Boudreau **Content:** ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Avid-1.svg) ## Free Download ## The AI-enabled fundraising team. See how today’s top fundraising teams are using AI to move faster, cut manual work, and raise more—with fewer resources. **What You’ll Learn** - How to identify your best fundraising opportunities—instantly - Ways to automate segmentation and personalize outreach at scale - Strategies to lower campaign costs and boost donor retention - How AI can eliminate busywork and give your team back hours each week - What it looks like to turn donor data into action—automatically ![The AI-Enabled Fundraising Team cover](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/the-ai-enabled-fundraising-team.png) © 2025 [Avid Software](https://avidai.com). All Rights Reserved. --- ### [The AI-Enabled Fundraising Team](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/) **Published:** March 30, 2025 **Author:** Stephen Boudreau **Content:** ## Interactive Ebook ## The AI-enabled fundraising team. **See how modern fundraising teams are using AI to act faster, engage smarter, and drive better results—without burning out.** Learn practical strategies to automate busywork, scale campaigns, and finally turn your donor data into action. [ Start reading ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/introduction/) [ Download PDF ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/download/) ![The AI-Enabled Fundraising Team cover](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/the-ai-enabled-fundraising-team.png) ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Startup-Hero-BG-2.webp) ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Startup-Hero-BG-2.webp) ![Team members collaborating around a table, one working on a laptop](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Page-34-1024x683.webp) ## 01 / Introduction Fundraising isn’t broken—but the systems behind it are. This chapter sets the stage for why more tools, more effort, and more dashboards haven’t worked—and why a new system is needed. [ Read Now ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/introduction/) ![Fundraising, Rebuilt: Data](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Data-683x1024.webp) ## 02 / Data ### Taking Your Systems from Chaos to Clarity Fundraising isn’t broken—but the systems behind it are. This chapter sets the stage for why more tools, more effort, and more dashboards haven’t worked—and why a new system is needed. [ Read Now ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/data/) ![Fundraising Rebuilt, Strategy](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Page-14-683x1024.webp) ## 03 / Strategy ### From Short-Term Wins to Long-Term Growth Fundraisers are stuck on the treadmill. Here’s how AI + systems help teams stop reacting and start building momentum that lasts. [ Read Now ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/strategy/) ![Fundraising, Rebuilt: Execution](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Page-20-683x1024.webp) ## 04 / Execution ### From Manual Work to Smart Campaigns See how teams are turning insights into execution—automatically—with AI-powered outreach that moves faster and performs better. [ Read Now ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/execution/) ![Fundraising, Rebuilt: Team](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Teams-683x1024.webp) ## 05 / Teams ### The Rise of AI-Powered Fundraising Teams This chapter explores how roles are changing—and how fundraisers are moving from juggling tools to leading with strategy. [ Read Now ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/teams/) ![Team members discussing work around a table with laptops and tablets](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Platform-1024x637.webp) ## 06 / Platform ### How Avid Powers It All Pulling back the curtain on the system: Impact Architecture. This is where Avid’s intelligence and execution come together to deliver results. [ Read Now ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/platform/) ![Overhead view of five colleagues meeting in an open office lounge](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Future-1024x768.webp) ## 07 / The Future ### From Hype to Operating Model AI isn’t a trend. It’s already changing how fundraising teams work. This chapter lays out what happens next—and how to stay ahead. [ Read Now ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/the-future/) ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Solution-768x1024.webp) ## 08 / The Solution ### The Fundraising Agency in the Cloud This is where it all comes together. Meet the system fundraisers are switching to—and what fundraising looks like when everything finally works. [ Read Now ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/solution/) ## Is this guide for you? Whether you’re leading strategy, running campaigns, or managing client accounts—this guide is built to help you raise more with less effort. [ Start Reading ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/introduction/) [ Download PDF ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/download/) ![For Fundraisers](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/nonprofit.svg) ### For Fundraisers If you’re juggling campaigns, lists, and reports—this guide shows how an AI-powered system can cut busywork and scale what actually works. ![For Agencies & Consultants](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/agency.svg) ### For Agencies & Consultants If you’re helping clients grow but buried in spreadsheets, learn how a connected system can streamline execution and amplify your strategy. ![For Leaders & Ops Teams](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Identify0A.svg) ### For Leaders & Ops Teams If you’re chasing results while managing messy tech, this guide shows how system-first fundraising drives clarity, alignment, and action. ##### Frequently Asked Questions ## Still have questions? You’re not the only one rethinking how fundraising should work. Explore common questions—or reach out and we’ll walk you through it. [ Contact Us ](https://avidai.com/contact/) ##### What is Avid? **Avid is the first AI-powered Fundraising Operating System.** It connects your CRM, email, donation tools, and ads—then turns donor data into daily priorities, ready-to-launch campaigns, and real-time results. No more juggling tools. Just faster launches, clearer priorities, and fewer barriers between strategy and execution. ##### What problems does Avid solve? **Fundraisers don’t need more tools. They need results.** Avid is built to solve the five biggest blockers to effective fundraising today: - Scattered data with no clear next steps - Tools that don’t talk to each other - Campaigns that take too long to launch - Small teams with limited capacity - Outreach that feels generic and fails to connect Avid turns all of that into a system that helps fundraisers move faster, personalize smarter, and execute with less effort. ##### How is Avid different from a CRM, BI tool, or fundraising platform? **CRMs store donor data. BI tools show what happened. Avid tells you what to do next—and helps you launch it.** Unlike traditional tools, Avid connects your existing stack, identifies your best opportunities, and automates campaign setup and delivery. It’s not just insight. It’s execution. ##### Do I need to replace my current tools? **No. Avid isn’t a replacement—it’s the system that connects everything you already use.** Your CRM, email platform, donation tools, and ad channels stay in place. Avid brings them together so you can actually act on the data you’ve been collecting. Workflows stay familiar. Results get faster. ##### How does Avid stay in sync with my data and tools? **Avid keeps everything connected in real time—no exports, no delays.** It syncs your donor segments across your CRM, email tools, and ad platforms automatically. Whether you’re launching a campaign or reviewing results, you’re always working with the most up-to-date data. No more stale lists or spreadsheet exports. Just clean, connected fundraising. ##### What kinds of campaigns does Avid create? **Avid includes pre-built Playbooks for the campaigns you run every day—and the ones you haven’t had time to try.** From reactivation and recurring upgrades to new donor welcomes and acquisition, Avid builds multichannel campaigns across email, ads, landing pages, and donation forms. All from one place. All ready to launch. ##### What kinds of insights does Avid provide? **Avid delivers live performance dashboards, predictive insights, and clear direction on what to do next.** See campaign performance, donor engagement trends, and AI-backed recommendations—all in real time. You don’t just get reports. You get results. ##### Can I control how campaigns are launched? **Yes. Avid gives you full visibility and control—set it to run automatically, or review and approve every step.** Whether you want fully automated execution or hands-on review, Avid adapts to your team’s preferences. Automate what you want. Customize what you need. You stay in control. ##### Who is Avid for? **Avid is built for hands-on fundraisers.** Whether you’re leading development at a nonprofit, managing campaigns across clients, or juggling strategy and execution on a small team—Avid helps you do more, faster. If you’re responsible for launching campaigns, managing donor engagement, and driving revenue, Avid was built for you. If you’re the one doing the work, this is the system that works for you. ##### Is Avid a fit for small teams or orgs without a dedicated marketing staff? **Yes. Avid is built to multiply your capacity, not increase your workload.** Whether you’re a one-person development shop or a small team managing every channel, Avid helps you move faster, launch smarter, and stay focused on what matters. You don’t need a big team to launch great campaigns. You just need a better system. ##### Can Avid support consultants and agencies? **Yes—Avid helps agencies and consultants scale execution across multiple clients without adding overhead.** Automate reporting, launch campaigns faster, and keep every client’s donor data synced—without jumping between platforms or building everything manually. Less time managing tools. More time delivering results. --- ### [eBook Confirmation - Fundraising is Human Work](https://avidai.com/fundraising-is-human-work-thank-you/) **Published:** July 10, 2026 **Author:** Nathan Hill **Content:** ![Avid](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Avid-Logo-Dark-300x140.webp) ## Thank you! Your free guide is ready. ![Avid logo in the top left with a large headline 'Fundraising is Human Work' and a subtitle about scaling with AI, on a white background.](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Fundraising-is-Human-Work-ebook-Image-791x1024.png) [ Download the Guide ](https://secure.avidai.com/hubfs/Lead%20Magnets/Fundraising%20is%20Human%20Work%20ebook.pdf) Before you go, we put together a short, 6-minute tour of how Avid works as **the AI Agent within your team.** Watch the brief tour below—and if it looks like a fit for your team, you can [schedule a full tour » ](#tour) ### Watch the 6-Minute Tour ### Avid is Now Your Fundraising Agent ### Common Questions About Avid How does Avid access my data? → How is Avid different from my CRM? → What tools does Avid connect to? → What can Edna help me do? → Are Edna's plays effective? → Can Edna help with segmentation? → How is my data kept secure? → Get Avid for your team → ![Avid](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Avid-Logo-Dark.webp) ## Tour the Full Fundraising Operating System ### Schedule a Time to See How Avid Works with Your Team ## Schedule Your Tour of Avid #### You were made for the mission. Avid was made for the rest. [ ![Avid logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Avid.svg) ](https://avidai.com/?page_id=2664) The Fundraising Operating System - © 2026 Avid Group. All Rights Reserved. --- ### [Free Training: 5 Ways to Increase Giving in the Last Week of the Year](https://avidai.com/free-training-increase-giving-last-week/) **Published:** December 9, 2025 **Author:** Avid Team **Content:** ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Avid-1.svg) ##### Free Training ## 5 Ways to Increase Giving in the Last Week of the Year A rapid-fire session unpacking **5 specific tactics that can increase giving** during the last week of the year. ## Ready to See it in Action? Let us build your Year-End Campaign for you. ##### Year-End Launch Lab # Get a Custom Built Year-End Campaign Effective year-end fundraising requires more channels, touch points, and segmentation than you have time for. With a free, 30-minute **Year-End Launch Lab** session, you’ll walk away with a customized campaign for your choice of **Giving Tuesday**, **December Cultivation**, or the **Last Week of the Year**. All backed by 8,000+ fundraising tests and created in minutes using Avid Playbooks. ## What You'll Get: - **Campaign Map:** Choose your campaign and we'll map out every channel, touchpoint, and key audience segment. - **Ready-to-Use Copy:** Get customized copy for every email, donation page, SMS, ad, and more—segmentation included. - **AI Powered Playbook:** Your take-home ebook for data-driven year-end campaign success. ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Year-End-Launch-Lab-Image-IA3.webp) ## Apply for A Year-End Launch Lab Session 👉 We reserve a limited number of sessions each month to keep them focused and valuable. ##### The Benefits ## Your Next Campaign, Built For You Each Launch Lab experience delivers a personalized campaign plan built using Avid Playbooks and insights from 8,000+ fundraising experiments. **Here’s what you’ll walk away with:** ![1. Your Campaign Map](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Aggregate.svg) ### 1. Your Campaign Map An Avid expert will draft your year-end focused campaign, fully mapped with every channel and touchpoint. ![2. Your Ready-to-Use Copy](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Identify0A.svg) ### 2. Your Ready-to-Use Copy We’ll write the copy for every email, donation page, SMS , ad, and more—ready to deploy to each fundraising channel. ![3. Your AI-Powered Playbook](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/target-red-3.svg) ### 3. Your AI-Powered Playbook A complete year-end campaign guide complete with data-driven insights and segmentation ideas to boost results. ![4. Your Launch Plan](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Deploy.svg) ### 4. Your Launch Plan A clear, data-backed rollout plan showing exactly when to send each message and to maximize year-end donations. ##### The Output ## Everything You Need to Launch a Proven Year-End Campaign Walk away with a complete campaign package for your choice of **Giving Tuesday, December Cultivation**, or the **Last Week of the Year**—all built from data, not guesswork. Every touch point is designed with Avid Playbooks and built on proven strategies from 8,000+ fundraising tests. You’ll walk away with: - A year-end **campaign plan** - **Copy for every channel and touch point** - A PDF **strategy guide** for the year-end season [ Apply Now ](#form) ![Avid Playbooks campaign builder showing year-end touchpoints and generated campaign copy (illustrative)](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Launch-Lab-Image-2.webp) # The Year-End Clock is ticking. The final stretch of the year can drives 30% or more of annual giving, but only for campaigns built on proven fundraising strategies. Apply for the **Launch Lab** and we’ll design your next campaign—complete with copy for every channel and touchpoint—before the window closes. **🕒 *Giving Tuesday Countdown:*** Days Hours Minutes Seconds ## How Launch Lab works ![Apply for a Launch Lab session](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Aggregate.svg) ### Apply for a Launch Lab session Fill out a quick intake form and select which campaign you want to create—**Giving Tuesday, December Cultivation, or Last Week of the Year.** ![Meet with a Fundraising Expert](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Identify0A.svg) ### Meet with a Fundraising Expert In your Launch Lab session, our team will analyze your goals, then use Avid Playbooks to build your customized campaign in real time. ![Leave with Your Year-End Campaign](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Deploy.svg) ### Leave with Your Year-End Campaign You’ll walk away with a complete strategy including copy for every email, donation page, SMS, ad, and more—all **customized and personalized** for you. ## Built on Real Results. Too many nonprofits build campaigns on what they’ve seen work in the past. **Launch Lab** builds them on what’s *proven* to work. It uses insights from over 8,000 fundraising tests and Avid’s AI-powered Playbooks to design campaigns grounded in real data, not gut feeling. It’s not a brainstorm. It’s a blueprint for results. [ Apply Now ](#form) ##### Customer Stories ## Used by Fundraisers Behind the World’s Leading Nonprofits Every campaign plan built in the Launch Lab is guided by Avid’s fundraising intelligence—backed by thousands of experiments and proven best practices. [ Apply Now ](#form) ##### Frequently Asked Questions ## Still Have Questions About Launch Lab? Here’s everything you need to know before applying for your complimentary Year-End Campaign Launch Lab. [ Apply Now ](#form) ##### What exactly is the Year-End Campaign Launch Lab? The Launch Lab is a one-to-one working session where an Avid fundraising expert will build your choice of a Giving Tuesday, December Cultivation, or Last Week of the Year campaign. Each campaign is built on data from over 8,000 fundraising experiments. You’ll leave with ready-to-launch copy for your emails, donation pages, SMS, ads, and more. ##### How much time will it take? The Launch Lab takes 30 minutes. You’ll spend a few minutes sharing information about your nonprofit, and our team will handle the rest — building your campaign plan in real time so you can leave with everything ready for launch. ##### What types of campaigns can I choose from? During the application, you’ll select one of three campaign types: - **Giving Tuesday** — activate new donors and build momentum at the start of the year-end season. - **December Cultivation** — strengthen donor relationships so they respond better to your final year-end push. - **Last Week of the Year** — maximize results during the busiest giving week of the year by increasing visibility and urgency. ##### Do I need to be an Avid customer to participate? Nope! The Launch Lab is open to any nonprofit looking to improve its year-end campaign strategy. You don’t need to use Avid to participate — just come ready to share your goals, and we’ll handle the rest. ##### What will I get after the session? You’ll walk away with: - A complete campaign built with Avid’s AI-powered Playbooks - Personalized copy for your emails, donation pages, SMS, advertising, and more - Customized copy for key segments including donors, non-donors, lapsed donors, and more. ## READY. SET. LAUNCH. Apply for a Year-End Launch Lab session and walk away with a complete, data-backed campaign built to raise more when it matters most. [ Apply Now ](#form) --- ### [Free Training: Build a Sustainable Donor Pipeline Without Increasing Ad Spend](https://avidai.com/free-training-build-sustainable-donor-pipeline-without-increasing-ad-spend/) **Published:** April 24, 2026 **Author:** Stephen Boudreau **Content:** ![Avid](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Avid-1.svg) ##### Free Training ## Build a Sustainable Donor Pipeline Without Increasing Ad Spend Learn how to **unlock 25% growth in your donor acquisition advertising** by fixing data silos, automating targeting, and building a sustainable acquisition engine. ## Ready to See it in action? Schedule an intro call to see how Avid would work with your tools to unlock this 25% growth. # Schedule your intro call. Tell us a little about your fundraising goals, and we’ll set up a quick call to learn more about your team, your challenges, and your opportunities. If it’s a fit, we’ll follow up with a personalized demo built around your data and your donors. ## What You'll Get: - **A conversation** about your goals and challenges. - **Practical ideas** to save time and launch faster. - **Clear next steps** so you know the path forward. ## SCHEDULE YOUR INTRO CALL ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-ewtn-v2.webp) ![CURE International logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-cure.webp) ![Ronald McDonald House Charities logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-rmhc-2.webp) ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/logo-Lustgarten-pancreatic-Cancer-Research.svg) ![Polar Bears International logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-polar-bears-international-2.webp) ![Boys & Girls Clubs of Northeast Ohio logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-boys-girls-club.webp) ![Parkland Health Foundation logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-parkland.webp) ![ADRA logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-adra.webp) ![The Cure Starts Now logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-the-cure-starts-now.webp) ![IMB logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/imb-logo-dark-wide.webp) ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/bucker-logo-dark-2.webp) ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-bible-league-canada.webp) ![University of Central Missouri logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-university-of-central-missouri-stacked.webp) ![DTS logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/dts-logo-dark.webp) --- ### [Free Training: AI Powered Year-End Fundraising Playbook](https://avidai.com/free-training-ai-fundraising-playbook/) **Published:** November 5, 2025 **Author:** Avid Team **Content:** ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Avid-1.svg) ##### Free Training ## Unlock the AI-Powered Year-End Fundraising Playbook Learn how top nonprofits are using AI to build smarter, faster, and more effective year-end campaigns. ## Ready to See it in Action? Let us build your Year-End Campaign for you. ##### Year-End Launch Lab # Get a Custom Built Year-End Campaign Effective year-end fundraising requires more channels, touch points, and segmentation than you have time for. With a free, 30-minute **Year-End Launch Lab** session, you’ll walk away with a customized campaign for your choice of **Giving Tuesday**, **December Cultivation**, or the **Last Week of the Year**. All backed by 8,000+ fundraising tests and created in minutes using Avid Playbooks. ## What You'll Get: - **Campaign Map:** Choose your campaign and we'll map out every channel, touchpoint, and key audience segment. - **Ready-to-Use Copy:** Get customized copy for every email, donation page, SMS, ad, and more—segmentation included. - **AI Powered Playbook:** Your take-home ebook for data-driven year-end campaign success. ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Year-End-Launch-Lab-Image-IA3.webp) ## Apply for A Year-End Launch Lab Session 👉 We reserve a limited number of sessions each month to keep them focused and valuable. ##### The Benefits ## Your Next Campaign, Built For You Each Launch Lab experience delivers a personalized campaign plan built using Avid Playbooks and insights from 8,000+ fundraising experiments. **Here’s what you’ll walk away with:** ![1. Your Campaign Map](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Aggregate.svg) ### 1. Your Campaign Map An Avid expert will draft your year-end focused campaign, fully mapped with every channel and touchpoint. ![2. Your Ready-to-Use Copy](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Identify0A.svg) ### 2. Your Ready-to-Use Copy We’ll write the copy for every email, donation page, SMS , ad, and more—ready to deploy to each fundraising channel. ![3. Your AI-Powered Playbook](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/target-red-3.svg) ### 3. Your AI-Powered Playbook A complete year-end campaign guide complete with data-driven insights and segmentation ideas to boost results. ![4. Your Launch Plan](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Deploy.svg) ### 4. Your Launch Plan A clear, data-backed rollout plan showing exactly when to send each message and to maximize year-end donations. ##### The Output ## Everything You Need to Launch a Proven Year-End Campaign Walk away with a complete campaign package for your choice of **Giving Tuesday, December Cultivation**, or the **Last Week of the Year**—all built from data, not guesswork. Every touch point is designed with Avid Playbooks and built on proven strategies from 8,000+ fundraising tests. You’ll walk away with: - A year-end **campaign plan** - **Copy for every channel and touch point** - A PDF **strategy guide** for the year-end season [ Apply Now ](#form) ![Avid Playbooks campaign builder showing year-end touchpoints and generated campaign copy (illustrative)](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Launch-Lab-Image-2.webp) # The Year-End Clock is ticking. The final stretch of the year can drives 30% or more of annual giving, but only for campaigns built on proven fundraising strategies. Apply for the **Launch Lab** and we’ll design your next campaign—complete with copy for every channel and touchpoint—before the window closes. **🕒 *Giving Tuesday Countdown:*** Days Hours Minutes Seconds ## How Launch Lab works ![Apply for a Launch Lab session](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Aggregate.svg) ### Apply for a Launch Lab session Fill out a quick intake form and select which campaign you want to create—**Giving Tuesday, December Cultivation, or Last Week of the Year.** ![Meet with a Fundraising Expert](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Identify0A.svg) ### Meet with a Fundraising Expert In your Launch Lab session, our team will analyze your goals, then use Avid Playbooks to build your customized campaign in real time. ![Leave with Your Year-End Campaign](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Deploy.svg) ### Leave with Your Year-End Campaign You’ll walk away with a complete strategy including copy for every email, donation page, SMS, ad, and more—all **customized and personalized** for you. ## Built on Real Results. Too many nonprofits build campaigns on what they’ve seen work in the past. **Launch Lab** builds them on what’s *proven* to work. It uses insights from over 8,000 fundraising tests and Avid’s AI-powered Playbooks to design campaigns grounded in real data, not gut feeling. It’s not a brainstorm. It’s a blueprint for results. [ Apply Now ](#form) ##### Customer Stories ## Used by Fundraisers Behind the World’s Leading Nonprofits Every campaign plan built in the Launch Lab is guided by Avid’s fundraising intelligence—backed by thousands of experiments and proven best practices. [ Apply Now ](#form) ##### Frequently Asked Questions ## Still Have Questions About Launch Lab? Here’s everything you need to know before applying for your complimentary Year-End Campaign Launch Lab. [ Apply Now ](#form) ##### What exactly is the Year-End Campaign Launch Lab? The Launch Lab is a one-to-one working session where an Avid fundraising expert will build your choice of a Giving Tuesday, December Cultivation, or Last Week of the Year campaign. Each campaign is built on data from over 8,000 fundraising experiments. You’ll leave with ready-to-launch copy for your emails, donation pages, SMS, ads, and more. ##### How much time will it take? The Launch Lab takes 30 minutes. You’ll spend a few minutes sharing information about your nonprofit, and our team will handle the rest — building your campaign plan in real time so you can leave with everything ready for launch. ##### What types of campaigns can I choose from? During the application, you’ll select one of three campaign types: - **Giving Tuesday** — activate new donors and build momentum at the start of the year-end season. - **December Cultivation** — strengthen donor relationships so they respond better to your final year-end push. - **Last Week of the Year** — maximize results during the busiest giving week of the year by increasing visibility and urgency. ##### Do I need to be an Avid customer to participate? Nope! The Launch Lab is open to any nonprofit looking to improve its year-end campaign strategy. You don’t need to use Avid to participate — just come ready to share your goals, and we’ll handle the rest. ##### What will I get after the session? You’ll walk away with: - A complete campaign built with Avid’s AI-powered Playbooks - Personalized copy for your emails, donation pages, SMS, advertising, and more - Customized copy for key segments including donors, non-donors, lapsed donors, and more. ## READY. SET. LAUNCH. Apply for a Year-End Launch Lab session and walk away with a complete, data-backed campaign built to raise more when it matters most. [ Apply Now ](#form) --- ### [Free Training: Acquire More Monthly Donors From Your Existing Supporters](https://avidai.com/free-training-acquire-monthly-donors-from-existing-supporters/) **Published:** December 30, 2025 **Author:** Avid Team **Content:** ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Avid-1.svg) ##### Free Training ## How to Acquire More Monthly Donors From Your Existing Supporters Discover practical strategies for **acquiring new monthly recurring donors** by talking to your existing supporters. ## Ready to See it in Action? Let us build your next Fundraising Campaign for you. ##### Campaign Creation Session # Let Avid Build Your Next Campaign There are plenty of campaigns you know could raise more funds. But who’s going to launch them? There’s **not enough time, resources, or people** to get it all done. Avid Playbooks gives you the scale you need for growth without scaling your team—generating customized campaigns based on proven fundraising strategies. Every channel. Every touchpoint. Every audience segment. **Want to see how it works?** Apply for a campaign creation session using the form. If approved, we’ll build your next campaign for free. ## What You'll Get: - **Campaign Strategy:** Get a fully customized campaign strategy tailored to your mission, your donors, and your goals. - **Ready-to-Use Copy:** Get personalized, segmented copy for every email, donation page, SMS, ad, and more. - **Launch Document:** Walk away with a campaign launch document including copy and timing for each touchpoint. ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Year-End-Launch-Lab-Image-IA3.webp) ## Apply for A Campaign Creation Session 👉 We reserve a limited number of sessions each month to keep them focused and valuable. ##### The Benefits ## Your Next Campaign, Built For You Each campaign creation session delivers a personalized campaign plan built using Avid Playbooks and insights from 8,000+ fundraising experiments. **Here’s what you’ll walk away with:** ![1. Your Campaign Strategy](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Aggregate.svg) ### 1. Your Campaign Strategy Avid will draft your entire campaign strategy, customized to your mission, your donors, and your goals. ![2. Your Ready-to-Launch Copy](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Identify0A.svg) ### 2. Your Ready-to-Launch Copy Avid will generate tailored creative for every email, donation page, SMS, ad, and more—ready to launch to each channel. ![3. Segmented & Personalized Touchpoints](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/target-red-3.svg) ### 3. Segmented & Personalized Touchpoints Touchpoints and copy are tailored to key audience segments including customized messaging and personalization. ![4. Your Launch Plan](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Deploy.svg) ### 4. Your Launch Plan Walk away with a Launch Plan document including your strategy, copy, and timing for each campaign touchpoint. ##### The Output ## Everything You Need to Launch a Proven Campaign Walk away with a complete campaign—all built from data, not guesswork. Every touch point is designed with Avid Playbooks and built on proven strategies from 8,000+ fundraising tests. You’ll walk away with: - A customized **campaign strategy** - Segmented and **personalized** touchpoints - A **Launch Plan** with copy for you whole campaign [ Apply Now ](#form) ![Avid Playbooks campaign builder showing year-end touchpoints and generated campaign copy (illustrative)](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Launch-Lab-Image-2.webp) ## How It works ![Apply for a Campaign Creation Session](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Aggregate.svg) ### Apply for a Campaign Creation Session Fill out the quick intake form and **select which campaign you want to run** next based on your current goals and needs. ![Meet with a Fundraising Expert](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Identify0A.svg) ### Meet with a Fundraising Expert Our team will analyze your goals and use Avid Playbooks to **build your customized campaign in real time**. ![Leave with Your Ready-to-Launch Campaign](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Deploy.svg) ### Leave with Your Ready-to-Launch Campaign Walk away with a complete campaign strategy for every email, page, SMS, ad, and more—all **customized for you**. ## Built on Real Results. Too many nonprofits build campaigns on what they’ve seen work in the past. **Launch Lab** builds them on what’s *proven* to work. It uses insights from over 8,000 fundraising tests and Avid’s AI-powered Playbooks to design campaigns grounded in real data, not gut feeling. It’s not a brainstorm. It’s a blueprint for results. [ Apply Now ](#form) ##### Customer Stories ## Used by Fundraisers Behind the World’s Leading Nonprofits Every campaign plan built in the Launch Lab is guided by Avid’s fundraising intelligence—backed by thousands of experiments and proven best practices. [ Apply Now ](#form) ##### Frequently Asked Questions ## Still Have Questions? Here’s everything you need to know before applying for your complimentary campaign creation session powered by Avid Playbooks. [ Apply Now ](#form) ##### What exactly is a campaign creation session? A campaign creation session is a one-to-one working session where an Avid fundraising expert will use Avid Playbooks to build a complete, customized fundraising campaign for you. Each campaign is built on data from over 8,000 fundraising experiments. You’ll leave with ready-to-launch copy for your emails, donation pages, SMS, ads, and more. ##### How much time will it take? Each session takes 30 minutes. You’ll spend a few minutes sharing information about your nonprofit, and our team will handle the rest—building your campaign strategy in real time so you can leave with everything ready for launch. ##### What types of campaigns can I choose from? During the application, you can select from a variety of different campaigns including: - **Recurring Giving Acquisition** — a campaign designed and proven to grow your base of monthly donors. - **Donor Anniversary Appeal** — a specific appeal for donors at their giving anniversary designed to inspire another year of giving. - **High Urgency Campaign** — a dedicated campaign designed to activate donors around a specific need, goal, or deadline. Or choose **“Help Me Decide”** and an Avid expert can help determine the right campaign for you based on your needs. ##### Do I need to be an Avid customer to participate? Nope! These sessions are open to any nonprofit looking to improve its year-end campaign strategy. You don’t need to use Avid to participate — just come ready to share your goals, and we’ll handle the rest. ##### What will I get after the session? You’ll walk away with: - A complete campaign built with Avid’s AI-powered Playbooks - Personalized copy for your emails, donation pages, SMS, advertising, and more - Customized copy for key segments including donors, non-donors, lapsed donors, and more. ## READY. SET. LAUNCH. Apply for a campaign creation session and walk away with a complete, data-backed campaign built to raise more when it matters most. [ Apply Now ](#form) --- ### [Free Training: Acquire More Monthly Donors From Your Existing Supporters](https://avidai.com/free-training-acquire-monthly-donors-from-existing-supporters-2/) **Published:** April 24, 2026 **Author:** Stephen Boudreau **Content:** ![Avid](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Avid-1.svg) ##### Free Training ## How to Acquire More Monthly Donors From Your Existing Supporters Discover practical strategies for **acquiring new monthly recurring donors** by talking to your existing supporters. ## Ready to See it in Action? Let us build your next Fundraising Campaign for you. ##### Campaign Creation Session # Let Avid Build Your Next Campaign There are plenty of campaigns you know could raise more funds. But who’s going to launch them? There’s **not enough time, resources, or people** to get it all done. Avid Playbooks gives you the scale you need for growth without scaling your team—generating customized campaigns based on proven fundraising strategies. Every channel. Every touchpoint. Every audience segment. **Want to see how it works?** Apply for a campaign creation session using the form. If approved, we’ll build your next campaign for free. ## What You'll Get: - **Campaign Strategy:** Get a fully customized campaign strategy tailored to your mission, your donors, and your goals. - **Ready-to-Use Copy:** Get personalized, segmented copy for every email, donation page, SMS, ad, and more. - **Launch Document:** Walk away with a campaign launch document including copy and timing for each touchpoint. ![Avid Playbooks year-end campaign on a tablet: ads, emails, and donation page copy ready to launch (illustrative)](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Year-End-Launch-Lab-Image-IA3.webp) ## Apply for A Campaign Creation Session 👉 We reserve a limited number of sessions each month to keep them focused and valuable. ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-ewtn-v2.webp) ![CURE International logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-cure.webp) ![Ronald McDonald House Charities logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-rmhc-2.webp) ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/logo-Lustgarten-pancreatic-Cancer-Research.svg) ![Polar Bears International logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-polar-bears-international-2.webp) ![Boys & Girls Clubs of Northeast Ohio logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-boys-girls-club.webp) ![Parkland Health Foundation logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-parkland.webp) ![ADRA logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-adra.webp) ![The Cure Starts Now logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-the-cure-starts-now.webp) ![IMB logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/imb-logo-dark-wide.webp) ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/bucker-logo-dark-2.webp) ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-bible-league-canada.webp) ![University of Central Missouri logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-university-of-central-missouri-stacked.webp) ![DTS logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/dts-logo-dark.webp) --- ### [Free Training: 3 Fundraising Challenges for Faith-Based Nonprofits in 2026 - Watch Page](https://avidai.com/free-training-3-fundraising-challenges-for-faith-based-nonprofits-watch/) **Published:** April 24, 2026 **Author:** Stephen Boudreau **Content:** ![Avid](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Avid-1.svg) ##### Free Training ## 3 Fundraising Challenges for Faith-Based Nonprofits in 2026 Build sustainable growth without adding complexity to your team with these **practical plays for faith-based fundraising and marketing teams**. ## Ready to See it in action? Schedule an intro call to see how Avid would work with your tools to apply these strategies. ##### BUILD YOUR NEXT CAMPAIGN IN 30 MINUTES # Get a Custom Built Fundraising Campaign Effective fundraising requires more channels, touch points, and segmentation than you have time for. With a free, 30-minute **Campaign Creation** session, you’ll walk away with a customized campaign that’s ready to launch. All backed by 8,000+ fundraising tests and created in minutes using Avid Playbooks. ## What You'll Get: - **Campaign Map:** Choose your campaign and we'll map out every channel, touchpoint, and key audience segment. - **Ready-to-Use Copy:** Get customized copy for every email, donation page, SMS, ad, and more—segmentation included. - **AI Powered Playbook:** Your take-home ebook for data-driven fundraising campaign success. ![Avid Playbooks year-end campaign on a tablet: ads, emails, and donation page copy ready to launch (illustrative)](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Year-End-Launch-Lab-Image-IA3.webp) ## Apply for A Campaign Creation Session 👉 We reserve a limited number of sessions each month to keep them focused and valuable. ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-ewtn-v2.webp) ![CURE International logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-cure.webp) ![Ronald McDonald House Charities logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-rmhc-2.webp) ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/logo-Lustgarten-pancreatic-Cancer-Research.svg) ![Polar Bears International logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-polar-bears-international-2.webp) ![Boys & Girls Clubs of Northeast Ohio logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-boys-girls-club.webp) ![Parkland Health Foundation logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-parkland.webp) ![ADRA logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-adra.webp) ![The Cure Starts Now logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-the-cure-starts-now.webp) ![IMB logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/imb-logo-dark-wide.webp) ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/bucker-logo-dark-2.webp) ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-bible-league-canada.webp) ![University of Central Missouri logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-university-of-central-missouri-stacked.webp) ![DTS logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/dts-logo-dark.webp) --- ### [Fundraising Operating System 4](https://avidai.com/fos4/) **Published:** June 19, 2026 **Author:** Nathan Hill **Content:** ![Avid](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Avid-Logo-Dark-300x140.webp) ![FOSS4 logo: rounded square icon with colorful circuit lines and the text 'FOSS4' to the right.](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/FOS4-Full-1024x323.png) ## Fundraising Operating System ### Avid is Now Your Fundraising Agent You have the **tools.** The **data.** The **team.** *But opportunities still slip away.* **The challenge?** You don’t have time for all the work. With FOS4, **Avid is now your Fundraising Agent**— so your team finally gets ahead of the work, instead of buried under it. [ Meet Edna ](#edna) [ See Your New Dashboard ](#dashboard) [ Watch the Tour ](#tour) ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Edna-App-3-58b84b.svg) ## Meet Edna ### Insight to Action. One Conversation. Not a chatbot. Not a search bar. Edna knows your program inside and out. #### Ask Edna What's Happening What’s the biggest change in my fundraising? What’s happening with planned giving? Edna gives you **clear intelligence.** Not just a link to a chart—but insight into what’s working, what’s not, and where you need to focus next. #### Ask Edna Why Why are more donors lapsing? Why is reactivation stalling? Edna doesn’t just give you more numbers—she helps you take action. She analyses **the trends.** She recommends **the audience.** She suggests **the next Play.**It’s the kind of research work you’d do if you had the time. Now you just ask Edna and it’s done—all you have to do is approve the next step. #### Before you ask? Edna shows you what’s next. An **audience** to focus on. The **segment** to target. The **Play** to run. Edna does the research. Makes the suggestion. Preps the list. You decide when to take action. ![Question banner: “What’s the biggest change in my fundraising?” with a blue circular upload/up-arrow button on the right.](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Edna_WhatsHappening-1024x227.png) ![Chat assistant interface showing three speech bubbles: a blue bubble reading 'Why is reactivation stalling?', a gradient bubble saying 'Looking into that…', and a gray bubble below asking 'How can I help?'](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Edna_Why-1024x503.png) ![Panel titled Current FY Major Donors with 565 contacts sourced from Edna and Export/Save actions.](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Edna_Audience-1024x262.png) ![Pastel-gradient rounded square badge with a central star emblem (decorative icon).](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Trustworthy_Icon-1024x1024.png) #### A Trustworthy Assistant Trust in your team isn’t assumed. It’s earned. Edna is no exception. Four ways Edna earns your trust: ##### Recognizing—not predicting. Edna doesn’t guess. She recognizes patterns drawn from **8,000+ fundraising experiments** and 650M+ donor interactions — more than any one program could see in a lifetime. She knows what she’s looking at because **she’s seen it before.** How is Edna trained? → ##### Showing the work. With every answer, **Edna shows her sources** and the reasoning behind it—the report, the strategy brief, or the donor story referenced. You **see exactly how Edna got there** before you decide anything. Where does Edna get her information? → ##### Protecting your donor data. Edna **never sees your donors’ personal data**. She’ll surface it if you ask—but no AI can see it. Personal details like names, emails, and contact info are tokenized so AI can’t trace it to a person. Edna spots the patterns—the **identities stay secure** in Avid. What data can Edna see? → ##### Giving you the final call. Edna doesn’t launch anything unless you ask. The donor outreach, the strategic judgment, the final yes — the **decision to act never leaves your hands.** What are Edna's capabilities? → ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/DashboardRaserized-202538.svg) ## Your Personal Dashboard ### The Hunt for Answers is Over. The latest campaign results. The most recent gifts. The most critical trends. Available in **your personal dashboard** at a moment's notice—no BI tools needed. ![Welcome back card for John: avatar on left, email john@openarms.org, current trial Avid FOS ends in 24 days; bottom bar shows 'Benchmarks Updated' May 10, 2026 and an 'Explore Plans' button.](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Dashboard1_User-1024x768.png) ![Notifications screen with three message cards: Donor audience suggestion, Google Doc for review, and pathway progress completed.](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Dashboard2_Notifications-1024x768.png) ![Screenshot of an app panel titled 'Audiences' with three rounded cards showing donor segments and stats (e.g., 'Lapsed Donors with High Retarget...', Contacts 376, Type Owned).](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Dashboard3_Audience.png) ![Donor Retention bar chart on a mobile screen showing two series—gray Benchmark and red Your Organization—from 2022 to 2026. Amounts up to $1.5K.](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Dashboard4_Gift-Amount-1024x768.png) ![Connections screen showing four rounded cards with status and last sync dates; right pane says 'Select a connection to view details'.](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Dashboard5_Connections-1024x512.png) #### The Old Way to Get Answers You build a custom BI report. You ask IT to run a query. And you're still left with uncertainty. You know the routine. You open your tools and start hunting for answers—pulling the same reports as last time. **20 minutes of work before you make a single decision.** ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/arrow-down-blue.svg) #### The Avid Way Open Avid. Get Answers. Take Action. Just **pin a chart from anywhere** in Avid—with your exact filters—and it will live on your personal Dashboard to see at a moment’s notice. Rename the chart in your team’s **language.**Add a note to give it **context.**Drop in a countdown to your next **campaign.**Your new Avid Dashboard isn’t just the one your IT team hands you. It’s the one you customize every day—**automatically tailored to your role** from your first login and continuously shaped for your daily work. What can I see on my Dashboard? → ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/DashboardRaserized-202538.svg) ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/arrow-down-blue.svg) ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Edna-App-3-58b84b.svg) #### Dashboard + Edna Edna and your Dashboard work hand-in-hand. Your Dashboard shows where things stand. Edna shows you what to do. Together, you’ll **spend the first 20 minutes of your day taking action**—not hunting for answers. Less time running reports. More time doing the work only you can do. Ask how Edna works with your Dashboard → ![Smiling woman with shoulder-length red hair wearing a red blazer and striped blouse, indoors with decorative wall art behind.](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Sharon-MacPherson-Headshot.jpeg) ![Operation Smile Canada logo featuring a blue globe and red swoosh beside the text 'Operation Smile Canada'.](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Operation-Smile-Canada-Logo.png) *I am excited for our team to leverage the new dashboard. The ability to **monitor significant KPIs in real time** and generate professional, data-driven reports will significantly improve efficiency while providing **actionable insights** that can be **quickly translated into strategic decisions** and measurable results. —Sharon MacPherson, VP of Marketing & Operations ![Quotation Mark Icon](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Quotation_Blue-7f955f.svg) ## More of What's New in FOS4 ![Avid sidebar with the Edna panel open: 'Need answers? Ask Edna.' above a chat input (illustrative)](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Snippet_Edna-Menu-911x1024.png) ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Edna-App-3-58b84b.svg) ## Ask Edna for Reports, Metrics, Audiences, Campaign Ideas and More ![Mobile app screen titled 'Audiences' with colorful rounded card outlines and audience entries showing name and stats (Contacts, Type).](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Snippet_Audiences-911x1024.png) ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Edna-App-3-58b84b.svg) ## Edna Suggests the Next Best Audience to Target ![Hero area showing a dashboard UI with a blue rounded 'Dashboard' button and a user avatar card on the left side panel, plus welcome text partially visible.](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Snippet_Add-Dashboard-911x1024.png) ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/DashboardRaserized-202538.svg) ## Create Up to 5 Custom Dashboards ![Cursor clicking a circular light-blue toggle button on a white UI card.](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Snippet_Pin-911x1024.png) ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/DashboardRaserized-202538.svg) ## Pin Charts from Anywhere in Avid to Your Dashboard ![Mobile app UI with the Catalog tab highlighted in the bottom navigation; cursor pointing at it.](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Snippet_Catalog-911x1024.png) ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/DashboardRaserized-202538.svg) ## Customize Your Dashboard with a Catalog of Widgets​ ![Share settings modal showing Schedule Email tab with options for Weekly frequency, timezone America/New York, and subject template {{dashboard}} - {{date}}](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Share-Dashboard-911x1024.png) ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/DashboardRaserized-202538.svg) ## Share a Dashboard with Your Team, Board, or Other Colleagues​ ![Countdown widget: 207 Days Until Giving Tuesday on a rounded blue tile beside the header on a white dashboard card.](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Snippet_Countdown-911x1024.png) ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/DashboardRaserized-202538.svg) ## Add a Countdown to Your Next Campaign on Your Dashboard​ ![Mobile app note showing a lime-green rounded card with the heading 'Benchmark review before Thursday’s board meeting.' and reminder text about checking benchmarking metrics before the meeting.](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Snippet_Sticky-911x1024.png) ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/DashboardRaserized-202538.svg) ## Add Context to Your Dashboard with Sticky Notes​ ![Onboarding screen with a rounded gradient card reading 'Need help?' and a blue Start button; a secondary card with a campaign image to the right.](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Snippet_Playbooks-1-911x1024.png) ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Edna-App-3-58b84b.svg) ## Generate a Play with Edna Using a Simple Prompt ![Mobile app screen showing History and Prompts tabs on a peach gradient panel, listing four prompts about campaigns and donors.](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Snippet_Edna-Prompts-911x1024.png) ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Edna-App-3-58b84b.svg) ## Recommended Prompts to Get Deeper Donor Intelligence​ ![FOSS4 logo: rounded square icon with colorful circuit lines and the text 'FOSS4' to the right.](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/FOS4-Full.png) ## Get a 6 Minute Tour of FOS4 ### See What It's Like to have Avid as Your Fundraising Agent Add Avid to your team and finally get ahead of the work — instead of buried under it. Watch the 6-minute tour of Avid to **meet Edna** and **see what it’s like to have Avid as your Fundraising Agent** within your team. ## Activate Your 6-Minute Tour of FOS4 By Filling Out the Form Below #### You were made for the mission. Avid was made for the rest. [ ![Avid logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Avid.svg) ](https://avidai.com/?page_id=2664) The Fundraising Operating System - © 2026 Avid Group. All Rights Reserved. --- ### [Watch the Tour of FOS4](https://avidai.com/fos4-video-demo/) **Published:** June 19, 2026 **Author:** Nathan Hill **Content:** ![Avid](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Avid-Logo-Dark-300x140.webp) ### Watch the 6-Minute Tour ### Avid is Now Your Fundraising Agent ### Common Questions About FOS4 How does Avid access my data? → How is Avid different from my CRM? → What tools does Avid connect to? → What can Edna help me do? → Are Edna's plays effective? → Can Edna help with segmentation? → How is my data kept secure? → Get Avid for your team → ![FOSS4 logo: rounded square icon with colorful circuit lines and the text 'FOSS4' to the right.](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/FOS4-Full.png) ## Tour the Full Fundraising Operating System ### Schedule a Time to See How Avid Works with Your Team ## Schedule Your Tour of Avid #### You were made for the mission. Avid was made for the rest. [ ![Avid logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Avid.svg) ](https://avidai.com/?page_id=2664) The Fundraising Operating System - © 2026 Avid Group. All Rights Reserved. --- ### [Fundraising Operating System 4 - Coming Soon | Avid](https://avidai.com/fos4-coming-soon/) **Published:** May 29, 2026 **Author:** Nathan Hill **Content:** ![Avid](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Avid-Logo-Dark-300x140.webp) ### Coming to Avid on June 24 # Fundraising Operating System 4 **You have the data.** You just need the answers. **You have the tools.** You just need them in sync. **You have the team.** You just need more capacity. On June 24th, **Edna** will be here to help. ![FOSS4 logo: rounded square icon with colorful circuit lines and the text 'FOSS4' to the right.](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/FOS4-Full-1024x323.png) ### See how FOS4 gives your team capacity and finally gets you ahead of the work. Reserve your spot for a live webinar on June 24th @ Noon CT to be the first to see everything that’s new in FOS4. [ ![Avid logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Avid.svg) ](https://avidai.com/?page_id=2664) The Fundraising Operating System - © 2026 Avid Group. All Rights Reserved. --- ### [Faith-Based Benchmark eBook | eBook Download](https://avidai.com/faith-based-benchmark-report/) **Published:** July 6, 2026 **Author:** Riley Young **Content:** ![Avid](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Avid-Logo-Dark-300x140.webp) ### Get the free report # The State of Faith-Based Fundraising ### Revenue is up. Donors are down. And faith-based organizations are navigating it differently than the rest of the sector. This free 2026 Benchmark Report draws on real data from **139 faith-based nonprofits** and **$2B in giving,** not surveys. It’s the only report built specifically to show you what’s happening in faith-based fundraising **right now**, and where the pressure is building beneath the surface. In the report you’ll unpack: - Why faith-based organizations have the highest **donor retention** of any vertical, and why that advantage is quietly eroding - The real story behind **mid-level donors**: why they’re carrying more of the load and getting less of the attention - How the rapid shift to **online acquisition** is exposing gaps in how faith-based teams onboard, steward, and reactivate donors - Why **recurring giving** is outperforming the rest of the sector, and what the numbers say about building on it ![Hero for Avid's The State of Faith-Based Fundraising 2026 Benchmark Report: Avid logo with bold title on the right and a vertical column of colorful app icons on the left, plus dashboard previews.](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Faith-Based-Benchmark-eBook-Image.png) ### Get your free report See what’s happening in faith-based fundraising right now and learn how your organization compares. Get the report by letting us know where to send it below. ![Benchmarks chart comparing average gift amount to peers, 2021 to 2025 (illustrative)](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Benchmarks-Graph-Apng-1-1024x606.webp) Complete the form to get a free copy of The State of Faith-Based Fundraising. © 2026 [Avid Software](https://avidai.com). All Rights Reserved. --- ### [eBook Confirmation](https://avidai.com/ebook-thank-you-2/) **Published:** July 29, 2026 **Author:** Nathan Hill **Content:** ![Avid](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Avid-Logo-Dark-300x140.webp) ## Thanks! Your resource is on it's way to your inbox. You’ll get an email shortly with a link to access your resource immediately. ### **Before you go, there’s something you should know.** *Fundraising is human work.* Every fundraising leader knows this. But fundraising **teams are increasingly pulled away from the human work**, trying to keep up with the growing complexity of campaigns, data, reporting, segmentation, and more. **We believe that you were made for the mission.** Which is why we built Avid to be the fundraising agent that handles the rest. The reporting. The analysis. The segmentation. Even campaign creation. All of this and more can be **done in a click or a prompt**—in a way that’s secure, maintains your voice, and keeps humans at the center—so that **your team can focus on the human work**. *All that probably sounds too good to be true.* But more and more fundraising teams are making it their new reality. In fact, one Avid customer recently said this: *If I was starting a non-profit, this would be the product I would start with. I would build everything off of Avid. I think there’s a lot of value to it. Every non-profit I talk to, I just say, ‘Reach out to Avid… everything you need to do at scale can be done by this product.’* *– Jody Matheson, Dir. of Marketing @ Bible League Canada* **Should we grab 30 minutes to see if Avid is a fit for your organization?** Your time is immensely valuable, so we will always be honest about where we think Avid fits and where it doesn’t. You can schedule a short, 30 minute tour to see if Avid is a good fit for you using the form below. ## Schedule Your Tour of Avid ![Avid Product Icon Stack image](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/ProductStack-Avid-1024x237.png.webp) #### Teams that Trust Avid as their Fundraising Agent ![ : ](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-ewtn-v2-1.webp) ![ : ](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-cure-1.webp) ![ : ](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/logo-Lustgarten-pancreatic-Cancer-Research.svg) ![ : ](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-polar-bears-international-2-1.webp) ![ : ](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-boys-girls-club.webp) ![ : ](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/parkland-logo-dark-wide.webp) ![ : ](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/dts-logo-dark.webp) ![ : ](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-university-of-central-missouri-stacked.webp) ![ : ](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-bible-league-canada.webp) ![ : ](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-adra.webp) ![ : ](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-the-cure-starts-now.webp) [ ![Avid logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Avid.svg) ](https://avidai.com/?page_id=2664) The Fundraising Operating System - © 2026 Avid Group. All Rights Reserved. --- ### [Download How One Nonprofit Increased Donor Reactivation by 308%](https://avidai.com/download-how-one-nonprofit-increased-donor-reactivation-by-308/) **Published:** May 15, 2025 **Author:** Avid Team **Content:** ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Avid-1.svg) ## Free Download ## How one nonprofit increased donor reactivation by 308%. See how one nonprofit uncovered the root cause of donor churn, launched a re-engagement campaign in minutes, and activated more lapsed donors than they had in 5 years. **What’s inside:** - The overlooked data issue that was blocking email engagement - The reactivation strategy that boosted results across every donor segment - How Avid helped launch the campaign instantly, without spreadsheets or manual uploads ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Screenshot-2025-05-15-at-3.14.12 PM.png) © 2025 [Avid Software](https://avidai.com). All Rights Reserved. --- ### [Supercharge DonorPerfect for Fundraising Growth with Avid](https://avidai.com/download-donorperfect-avid/) **Published:** September 16, 2025 **Author:** Nathan Hill **Content:** ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Avid-1.svg) ## Supercharge DonorPerfect with Avid # More Clarity. Less Spreadsheet Chaos. DonorPerfect gives you the foundation. Avid gives you the lift. Together, they unlock reporting clarity, campaign speed, and growth you can feel right away. **Inside, you’ll see how Avid + DonorPerfect:** - Turn messy spreadsheets into clear, instant reports - Sync your data with any modern email platform - Power smarter ads that lower costs and raise more ![DonorPerfect + Avid - Supercharge Your CRM for Fundraising Growth | Resource Image](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/DonorPerfect-Avid-How-to-Supercharge-Your-CRM-and-Unlock-Greater-Fundraising-Growth-scaled.webp) © 2025 [Avid Software](https://avidai.com). All Rights Reserved. --- ### [Download How to Train ChatGPT to Write Better Fundraising Appeals](https://avidai.com/download-how-to-train-chatgpt-to-write-better-fundraising-appeals/) **Published:** May 15, 2025 **Author:** Avid Team **Content:** ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Avid-1.svg) ## Free Download ## How to train ChatGPT to write better fundraising appeals. A free, step-by-step guide for fundraisers who want to use ChatGPT effectively—without losing their voice or sending bland, generic appeals. **What’s inside:** - A plug-and-play prompt template for training ChatGPT on your brand voice - Step-by-step instructions for crafting better appeals in less time - Practical guidance to avoid robotic language and create copy that converts ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Screenshot-2025-05-15-at-11.02.38 AM.png) © 2025 [Avid Software](https://avidai.com). All Rights Reserved. --- ### [Book a Demo](https://avidai.com/demo/) **Published:** February 28, 2025 **Author:** Stephen Boudreau **Content:** [ ![Avid logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Avid.svg) ](https://avidai.com) # See what it's like to have a fundraising agent on your team.​ Avid is the fundraising agent—in your program around the clock, finding what needs attention, building the response, ready the moment you say go. You stay on the mission. Avid handles the rest. Schedule 30 minutes to see how it would work for your team. - Your data, finally all in one place. Avid brings all your siloed data together under one roof—ready to take action. - Critical fundraising insights, already surfaced. Your most important metrics and insights, ready on your dashboard each morning. - Segments and key donors, identified automatically. Complex segmentation synced across your tools—all done with a prompt and a click. - Your next campaign, drafted and ready to launch. Multichannel campaigns ready for launch in minutes—with segmentation built in. ![ : ](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-ewtn-v2-1.webp) ![ : ](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-cure-1.webp) ![ : ](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/logo-Lustgarten-pancreatic-Cancer-Research.svg) ![ : ](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-polar-bears-international-2-1.webp) ![ : ](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-boys-girls-club.webp) ![ : ](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/parkland-logo-dark-wide.webp) ![ : ](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/dts-logo-dark.webp) ![ : ](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-university-of-central-missouri-stacked.webp) ![ : ](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-bible-league-canada.webp) ![ : ](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-adra.webp) ![ : ](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-the-cure-starts-now.webp) #### Tell us about your fundraising. --- ### [Year-End Launch Lab - Customers](https://avidai.com/customer-year-end-launch-lab/) **Published:** November 3, 2025 **Author:** Avid Team **Content:** ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Avid-1.svg) ##### Year-End Launch Lab with LockStep # Get a Custom Built Year-End Campaign Effective year-end fundraising requires more channels, touch points, and segmentation than you have time for. With a free, 30-minute **Year-End Launch Lab** session with a LockStep expert, you’ll walk away with a customized campaign for your choice of **Giving Tuesday**, **December Cultivation**, or the **Last Week of the Year**. All backed by 8,000+ fundraising tests and created in minutes using Avid Playbooks. ## What You'll Get: - **Campaign Map:** Choose your campaign and we'll map out every channel, touchpoint, and key audience segment. - **Ready-to-Use Copy:** Get customized copy for every email, donation page, SMS, ad, and more—segmentation included. - **AI Powered Playbook:** Your take-home ebook for data-driven year-end campaign success. ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Year-End-Launch-Lab-Image-IA3.webp) ## Schedule Your Year-End Launch Lab Session With a Lockstep Expert 👉 We reserve a limited number of sessions each month to keep them focused and valuable. ##### The Benefits ## Your Next Campaign, Built For You Each Launch Lab experience delivers a personalized campaign plan built using Avid Playbooks and insights from 8,000+ fundraising experiments. **Here’s what you’ll walk away with:** ![1. Your Campaign Map](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Aggregate.svg) ### 1. Your Campaign Map An Avid expert will draft your year-end focused campaign, fully mapped with every channel and touchpoint. ![2. Your Ready-to-Use Copy](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Identify0A.svg) ### 2. Your Ready-to-Use Copy We’ll write the copy for every email, donation page, SMS , ad, and more—ready to deploy to each fundraising channel. ![3. Your AI-Powered Playbook](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/target-red-3.svg) ### 3. Your AI-Powered Playbook A complete year-end campaign guide complete with data-driven insights and segmentation ideas to boost results. ![4. Your Launch Plan](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Deploy.svg) ### 4. Your Launch Plan A clear, data-backed rollout plan showing exactly when to send each message and to maximize year-end donations. ##### The Output ## Everything You Need to Launch a Proven Year-End Campaign Walk away with a complete campaign package for your choice of **Giving Tuesday, December Cultivation**, or the **Last Week of the Year**—all built from data, not guesswork. Every touch point is designed with Avid Playbooks and built on proven strategies from 8,000+ fundraising tests. You’ll walk away with: - A year-end **campaign plan** - **Copy for every channel and touch point** - A PDF **strategy guide** for the year-end season [ Schedule Now ](#form) ![Avid Playbooks campaign builder showing year-end touchpoints and generated campaign copy (illustrative)](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Launch-Lab-Image-2.webp) # The Year-End Clock is ticking. The final stretch of the year can drive 30% or more of annual giving, but only for campaigns built on proven fundraising strategies. Schedule a **Launch Lab** session and we’ll design your next campaign—complete with copy for every channel and touchpoint—before the window closes. **🕒 *Giving Tuesday Countdown:*** Days Hours Minutes Seconds ## How Launch Lab works ![Schedule a Launch Lab session](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Aggregate.svg) ### Schedule a Launch Lab session Fill out a quick intake form and select which campaign you want to create—**Giving Tuesday, December Cultivation, or Last Week of the Year.** ![Meet with a Fundraising Expert](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Identify0A.svg) ### Meet with a Fundraising Expert In your Launch Lab session, our team will analyze your goals, then use Avid Playbooks to build your customized campaign in real time. ![Leave with Your Year-End Campaign](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Deploy.svg) ### Leave with Your Year-End Campaign You’ll walk away with a complete strategy including copy for every email, donation page, SMS, ad, and more—all **customized and personalized** for you. ## Built on Real Results. Too many nonprofits build campaigns on what they’ve seen work in the past. **Launch Lab** builds them on what’s *proven* to work. It uses insights from over 8,000 fundraising tests and Avid’s AI-powered Playbooks to design campaigns grounded in real data, not gut feeling. It’s not a brainstorm. It’s a blueprint for results. [ Schedule Now ](#form) ##### Customer Stories ## Used by Fundraisers Behind the World’s Leading Nonprofits Every campaign plan built in the Launch Lab is guided by Avid’s fundraising intelligence—backed by thousands of experiments and proven best practices. [ Schedule Now ](#form) ##### Frequently Asked Questions ## Still Have Questions About Launch Lab? Here’s everything you need to know before applying for your complimentary Year-End Campaign Launch Lab. [ Schedule Now ](#form) ##### What exactly is the Year-End Campaign Launch Lab? The Launch Lab is a one-to-one working session where an Avid fundraising expert will build your choice of a Giving Tuesday, December Cultivation, or Last Week of the Year campaign. Each campaign is built on data from over 8,000 fundraising experiments. You’ll leave with ready-to-launch copy for your emails, donation pages, SMS, ads, and more. ##### How much time will it take? The Launch Lab takes 30 minutes. You’ll spend a few minutes sharing information about your nonprofit, and our team will handle the rest — building your campaign plan in real time so you can leave with everything ready for launch. ##### What types of campaigns can I choose from? During the application, you’ll select one of three campaign types: - **Giving Tuesday** — activate new donors and build momentum at the start of the year-end season. - **December Cultivation** — strengthen donor relationships so they respond better to your final year-end push. - **Last Week of the Year** — maximize results during the busiest giving week of the year by increasing visibility and urgency. ##### What will I get after the session? You’ll walk away with: - A complete campaign built with Avid’s AI-powered Playbooks - Personalized copy for your emails, donation pages, SMS, advertising, and more - Customized copy for key segments including donors, non-donors, lapsed donors, and more. ## READY. SET. LAUNCH. Schedule a Year-End Launch Lab session and walk away with a complete, data-backed campaign built to raise more when it matters most. [ Schedule Now ](#form) --- ### [Scorecard](https://avidai.com/components/scorecard/) **Published:** March 29, 2026 **Author:** Stephen Boudreau **Content:** ![Scorecard](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/scorecard-logo.webp) # See what happens before you decide. The system forecasts how changes play out over time, so decisions move forward with clarity. [ Book a guided tour ](https://avidai.com/demo/) ![Scorecard collage of fundraising metrics including average gift amount and a retention rating (illustrative)](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/scorecard-cropped-sections-1-1024x706.webp) #### The Reality #### You can't see the impact until it's too late. Revenue shifts. Donor counts change. Acquisition slows. But what that means over time is unclear. If acquisition drops this year, what happens next year? If retention improves, how much does it actually compound? So decisions get made in isolation. And by the time the impact is visible, it’s already set. The problem isn’t judgment. It’s deciding without being able to show what happens next. #### What Avid does #### You can see the impact before you decide. The Scorecard forecasts how changes play out over time—using your own data, your own retention curves, your own giving patterns. It accounts for: - Retention - Acquisition - Reactivation - Upgrade behavior - Seasonality Then projects forward: - Total donors - Total revenue - Multi-year performance So instead of guessing, you can see how decisions compound—before anyone commits. #### How it works #### Move the slider. See what follows. As decisions change, the impact updates in real time. If acquisition shifts, you see what it does over three years. If retention improves, you see how it compounds. If upgrade behavior changes, you see what follows. The conversation in the room changes too. Instead of defending instinct, you’re showing consequences—built from your organization’s own numbers, adjustable by anyone in the room. ![Scorecard projections showing how an acquisition change today affects the next three years (illustrative)](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/scorecard-collage-projections-2a-1024x853.webp) #### The impact is visible before you commit. [ Book a guided tour ](https://avidai.com/demo/) --- ### [Playbooks](https://avidai.com/components/playbooks/) **Published:** March 20, 2026 **Author:** Stephen Boudreau **Content:** ![Playbooks](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Playbooks-1.webp) # Campaigns should build, not restart. The system turns signals into live campaigns, so what just happened shapes what happens next. [ Book a guided tour ](https://avidai.com/demo/) ![Screen from Avid Playbooks.](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/playbooks-home-crop-scaled.webp) #### The Reality #### The work keeps getting rebuilt. Strategy lives in documents. Segments live in spreadsheets. Copy lives in drafts. Audiences get rebuilt. Campaigns get reassembled. Even when you know what to do, acting on it means starting over. Not because the team is incapable. Because nothing carries the work forward. The problem isn’t knowing what to do. It’s how long it takes to do it—every single time. ![stack of papers](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/stack-of-papers-907x1024.webp) #### Built into every campaign #### The work carries forward. With Playbooks, what just happened stays connected to what happens next, so every campaign builds instead of starting over. #### Mission Your mission and message, carried into every campaign. #### Campaigns What’s already working, shaping what happens next. #### Brand Your voice and guidelines, applied automatically. #### Context What’s happening now, factored into every decision. #### Impact Your impact stories, woven into the campaign. #### How It Works #### Signals turn into campaigns without starting over. A signal appears: a segment is ready to upgrade a campaign outperforms retention starts to slip The system already knows: - what worked - who responded - what should happen next From there, the campaign takes shape. Strategy drafted. Audiences defined. Content built across every channel—shaped by your voice, your donors, and what the system has learned from every campaign that came before it. The team reviews. Refines. Launches. No rebuilding lists. No copying between tools. No waiting to launch. #### Where It Happens #### No new tools. No migration. Execution happens inside the tools you already use. Where deep integrations exist, the campaign goes directly into your email platform, your ad channels, your donation pages—placed, configured, and ready to review. Where they don’t, everything is packaged and ready to move with minimal lift. Nothing has to be rebuilt from scratch. The system connects to where the work already lives. ![Grid of integration logos including Salesforce, HubSpot, Google Analytics, Mailchimp, and Facebook](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/integrations-grid-1024x724.webp) #### Campaigns don't restart. They carry forward. [ Book a guided tour ](https://avidai.com/demo/) --- ### [Pathways](https://avidai.com/components/pathways/) **Published:** March 31, 2026 **Author:** Stephen Boudreau **Content:** ![Pathways](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/pathways-1-scaled.webp) # Keep every audience aligned to what is happening now. The system updates segments continuously, so campaigns reflect the current state of your donors, not a snapshot from the past. [ Book a guided tour ](https://avidai.com/demo/) ![Pathways screen for pushing a selected donor audience to marketing destinations (illustrative)](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/pathways-landing-crop-1024x831.webp) #### The Reality #### Your audiences don’t stay accurate. You build a list and launch a campaign. But things change. A donor upgrades. A lapsed donor gives. A recurring donor cancels. And the audience no longer reflects what’s happening. So the campaign keeps running based on what was true yesterday. And over time, it drifts further out of sync. The problem isn’t the campaign. It’s that the audience stopped being true the moment you exported it. #### What Avid does #### The audience stays aligned to what's happening. Pathways connect segments directly to your CRM and channels so they update as data changes. When something changes: a donor qualifies → they are added their status shifts → they are removed their behavior changes → messaging adjusts Automatically. No rebuilding lists. No re-uploading files. No manual cleanup. #### How it works #### The work adjusts as things change. If a donor upgrades, they move forward. If a lapsed donor gives, they shift out of reactivation. If behavior changes, messaging follows. Every channel pulls from the same unified record—so there’s no drift between what your email platform knows and what your ad channels know. They all see the same truth at the same time. You are not managing lists. The system keeps everything aligned as the work continues. ![Available audiences list of ready-made donor segments with contact counts (illustrative)](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/available-audiences-1024x643.webp) #### Audiences reflect what's happening now. The work stays connected to reality. [ Book a guided tour ](https://avidai.com/demo/) --- ### [Lockstep](https://avidai.com/components/lockstep/) **Published:** March 31, 2026 **Author:** Stephen Boudreau **Content:** ![LockStep](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/lockstep-logo-scaled.webp) # A system without confidence is just software. Avid coordinates the data. LockStep coordinates the people who run it. [ Book a guided tour ](https://avidai.com/demo/) ![Avid LockStep screen with your support specialist, guides, common questions, and system status (illustrative)](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/lockstep-landing-crop-1024x763.webp) #### The Reality #### Most software assumes the team will figure it out. Documentation explains features. Training covers navigation. Support tickets get answered when something breaks. None of that helps a team decide what a signal means, which campaign to prioritize, or whether the strategy they’re running is the right one. So the system gets implemented—and the team is left to interpret it alone. The tool gets adopted. The momentum doesn’t always follow. The hardest part of running fundraising on a system isn’t learning the system. It’s deciding, with confidence, what to do with what it shows you. #### What LockStep is #### Embedded fundraising expertise, inside the work. LockStep unifies onboarding, customer success, and technical support under one team—staffed by experienced fundraisers who know your program, your data, and your campaigns. Not a help desk that answers tickets in isolation, but a team that sits inside the work and helps you move with confidence. That’s why LockStep isn’t a service tier or an add-on. It’s part of the operating system. Every Avid customer has a named team, and every campaign and decision has someone close enough to help the team make it. ![LockStep tickets screen with completed and submitted requests and a LockStep expert contact card (illustrative)](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/lockstep-collage-1024x918.webp) #### Built in from day one #### How LockStep moves with you. Before your first campaign, your specialist is already connecting your data and configuring your workspace. As you grow, they stay close—reviewing strategy, answering questions with full context, and keeping the work moving. When something technical needs attention, it gets handled without starting from scratch. LockStep Learn adds a library of guided videos, walkthroughs, and how-to articles—available to your whole team, inside the same system where the work happens. ![LockStep Learn knowledge base with guided walkthroughs, search, and getting-started articles (illustrative)](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/lockstep-learn-1024x708.webp) #### LockStep doesn't replace your team. It strengthens it. [ Book a guided tour ](https://avidai.com/demo/) --- ### [DirectMail](https://avidai.com/components/directmail/) **Published:** March 31, 2026 **Author:** Stephen Boudreau **Content:** ![Avid Direct Mail logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/directmail-scaled.webp) # Bring direct mail into the same decisioning system. The system applies the same logic across channels, so offline campaigns follow the same rules as digital. [ Book a guided tour ](https://avidai.com/demo/) ![Avid Direct Mail setup screen with mailing information, budget, and audience steps (illustrative)](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/directmail-landing-crop-1024x831.webp) #### The Reality #### Direct mail runs on disconnected logic. Audience selection happens in one place. Costs live in another. Selections move through spreadsheets. Results come back later, if at all. The process works. But only because people hold it together. And even then, it is hard to see the full picture or apply what you learned to what comes next. Direct mail doesn’t need a better spreadsheet. It needs to be inside the same system. #### What Avid does #### Selection follows the same logic as every other channel. DirectMail uses the same unified donor record that powers the rest of the system. You can: - Define inclusion and exclusion audiences - Apply business rules - De-duplicate households - Control budget thresholds - Generate dynamic ask arrays - Assign package variations All in one place. Selection logic is visible, adjustable, and repeatable. Not hidden in a spreadsheet someone built two years ago. #### How it works #### See cost and impact before you send. As you build your mailing, the system updates in real time: - audiences adjust - rules apply - costs update - projections refine So decisions are made before execution, not after. You know what you’re spending and who you’re reaching before a single piece goes to print. When results come back, matchback reporting flows directly into the same system—so what direct mail taught you shapes the next campaign across every channel. ![Direct mail verification screen listing included audiences, packages, and total cost before export (illustrative)](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/directmail-verify-1024x765.webp) #### Direct mail finally runs on the same logic as everything else. [ Book a guided tour ](https://avidai.com/demo/) --- ### [Insights](https://avidai.com/components/insights/) **Published:** March 29, 2026 **Author:** Stephen Boudreau **Content:** ![Insights](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/insights-logo.webp) # Know what requires action, while it still matters. Stop hunting for the signal. Start acting on it. [ Book a guided tour ](https://avidai.com/demo/) ![Avid Insights screen listing today's top five insights with revenue figures and a donor overview chart (illustrative)](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/hero-insights-4a-1024x832.webp) #### The Reality #### There’s too much data. And no clear place to start. Revenue is up. Retention dipped. Acquisition slowed. But none of that tells you what requires attention. So you start digging. More reports. More filters. More segments. Not because the data is missing. Because nothing is telling you where to act. And somewhere in that same data, there are signals you’ll never find—patterns that only surface if someone already knows to check. The question isn’t whether the signal exists. It’s whether anyone sees it in time to act. #### What Avid does #### You don't go looking for the signal. The system surfaces it. Insights watches your entire program continuously—across channels, lifecycle stages, giving levels, and campaigns—and surfaces the few changes that actually require attention. Each one is prioritized by: - Scale of change - Importance to your program - Relevance to what your team is responsible for So instead of sorting through data, you start with what needs action. #### How it works #### From signal to action. Each insight shows: - What changed - Why it likely changed - Who it affects - Where to go next And each one is a doorway. From a single finding you can open the segment, compare sources, isolate the variable, and save the audience—without rebuilding context or leaving the screen. The work continues from the insight itself. No rebuilding context. No switching tools. #### See what it looks like when the signal is already waiting. [ Book a guided tour ](https://avidai.com/demo/) --- ### [Benchmarks](https://avidai.com/components/benchmarks/) **Published:** March 22, 2026 **Author:** Stephen Boudreau **Content:** ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/benchmarks-avid-wiland.webp) # See what your performance actually means, right now. Benchmarks uses live, aggregated data from 1,000+ nonprofits and $11B+ in annual giving. [ Book a guided tour ](https://avidai.com/demo/) ![Bar chart comparing your average gift amount against peer benchmarks year over year (illustrative)](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/benchmark-image-cropped-1012x1024.webp) #### The Reality #### The numbers are there. The meaning takes too long to surface. If acquisition slows, is it your program—or the market? If retention improves, is it real—or temporary? Most benchmarks arrive too late to help. Annual reports. Static averages. Last year’s data published after the moment to act has passed. You can see the numbers. But you can’t see what they mean. Or what to do next. The goal isn’t comparison. It’s clarity—while it still matters. #### The Data #### This isn’t survey data. It’s what’s actually happening. Benchmarks aggregates real transaction data from participating nonprofits—anonymized, current, and representing over $11B in annual giving activity. It updates monthly, reflecting how fundraising is shifting right now across the sector. Not last year’s averages. Not estimates. What’s actually happening—so the context you’re working from reflects the market as it is today. ![Benchmark categories such as donor lifecycle and major donors, each with a view option (illustrative)](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/benchmarks-cropped-graphic-2-1024x609.webp) #### Explore the data #### See what's shifting. Right now. Ten benchmark categories cover every dimension of your program. [ Explore Benchmarks ](https://app.avidai.com/register/wiland) ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/icon-overall-giving-trends-3.webp) Overall Giving Trends ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/icon-broadbase-donors.webp) Broadbase Donors ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/icon-donor-acquisition.webp) Donor Acquisition ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/icon-midlevel-donors.webp) Midlevel Donors ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/icon-retention-reactivation.webp) Retention & Reactivation ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/icon-donor-lifecycle.webp) Donor Lifecycle ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/icon-giving-channels.webp) Giving Channels ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/icon-major-donors.webp) Major Donors ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/icon-donor-reach.webp) Donor Reach ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/icon-giving-levels.webp) Giving Levels #### Put it in context #### Is it your program—or the market? When acquisition declines, you can see whether it’s happening across your sector—or just your program. When retention trends upward in your vertical, you can evaluate whether you’re aligned. When upgrade rates rise among peers, you can identify the opportunity in your own file before it passes. Context doesn’t sit in a report. It shapes what happens next. So decisions aren’t made in isolation—they’re made with the full picture of what’s actually happening in the market right now. ![Avid Benchmarks chart comparing your organization's average gift amount to the benchmark by year (illustrative)](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/benchmark-graphic2-cropped-1024x622.webp) #### See what your numbers actually mean. [ Book a guided tour ](https://avidai.com/demo/) --- ### [Components](https://avidai.com/components/) **Published:** April 5, 2026 **Author:** Stephen Boudreau **Content:** #### Components # The operating system for fundraising. Avid runs continuously so momentum compounds and generosity isn’t missed. Three layers make that possible. [ Book a guided tour ](https://avidai.com/demo/) ![Edna](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/edna-icon-wordmark-2.webp) #### The system does the work between the work. Fundraising doesn’t stop between campaigns. The signal keeps shifting. The donor keeps moving. The window keeps opening and closing. Avid runs continuously—surfacing what changed, recognizing what it means, and moving the work forward. So when the team is ready to act, they’re already ahead. That continuous operation has a name: Edna. The AI that connects the layers, carries context between them, and keeps the work moving across the system. What stays with the team is the work that only a fundraiser can do—the judgment, the relationships, the moments that lead to action. #### Intelligence Layer #### Determine what should happen next. Built on 8,000+ fundraising experiments and 650+ Million donor interactions, so the system isn't guessing—it's recognizing. ![Insights](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/insights-logo.webp) Surfaces the few changes that matter and directs attention to where action is needed. [ See what requires action ](https://avidai.com/components/insights/) ![Scorecard](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/scorecard-logo.webp) Forecasts how decisions play out over time, so you can see impact before you commit. [ See what happens before you act ](https://avidai.com/components/scorecard/) ![Retention scorecard showing a four-star rating and a 3.0% increase (illustrative)](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/retention-scorecard-crop.webp) ![Benchmarks](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Benchmarks-1.webp) Live performance context, so decisions reflect your sector. [ See what it means in context ](https://avidai.com/components/benchmarks/) ![Benchmarks chart comparing average gift amount to peers, 2021 to 2025 (illustrative)](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Benchmarks-Graph-Apng-1-1024x606.webp) #### Execution layer #### Turn decisions into action without rebuilding the work. ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/playbooks.webp) Turn signals into launched campaigns, using what already worked to shape what happens next. [ See how campaigns take shape ](https://avidai.com/components/playbooks/) ![Playbook card for an email reactivation campaign with a complexity rating (illustrative)](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/playbooks-crop-4-1024x846.webp) ![Pathways](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/pathways-1-scaled.webp) Keep audiences aligned to real-time data, so campaigns reflect what is true now. [ See how audiences stay aligned ](https://avidai.com/components/pathways/) ![Avid Direct Mail logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/directmail-scaled.webp) Bring offline campaigns into the system, so every channel follows the same logic. [ See how offline fits the system ](https://avidai.com/components/directmail/) #### Support layer #### Ensure the work actually moves. ![LockStep](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/lockstep-logo-scaled.webp) Embedded fundraising support inside the work, so interpretation, setup, and execution happen with guidance in real time. [ See how the work keeps moving ](https://avidai.com/components/lockstep/) ![LockStep ticket board with a dedicated support expert and a schedule-a-call option (illustrative)](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/lockstep-crop-4-1024x563.webp) #### Generosity is waiting. Avid makes sure it isn't missed. [ Book a guided tour ](https://avidai.com/demo/) --- ### [Campaign Creation Session](https://avidai.com/build-my-campaign/) **Published:** December 19, 2025 **Author:** Nathan Hill **Content:** ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Avid-1.svg) ##### Campaign Creation Session # Let Avid Build Your Next Campaign There are plenty of campaigns you know could raise more funds. But who’s going to launch them? There’s **not enough time, resources, or people** to get it all done. Avid Playbooks gives you the scale you need for growth without scaling your team—generating customized campaigns based on proven fundraising strategies. Every channel. Every touchpoint. Every audience segment. **Want to see how it works?** Apply for a campaign creation session using the form. If approved, we’ll build your next campaign for free. ## What You'll Get: - **Campaign Strategy:** Get a fully customized campaign strategy tailored to your mission, your donors, and your goals. - **Ready-to-Use Copy:** Get personalized, segmented copy for every email, donation page, SMS, ad, and more. - **Launch Document:** Walk away with a campaign launch document including copy and timing for each touchpoint. ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Year-End-Launch-Lab-Image-IA3.webp) ## Apply for a Campaign Creation Session 👉 We reserve a limited number of sessions each month to keep them focused and valuable. ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-ewtn-v2.webp) ![CURE International logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-cure.webp) ![Ronald McDonald House Charities logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-rmhc-2.webp) ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/logo-Lustgarten-pancreatic-Cancer-Research.svg) ![Polar Bears International logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-polar-bears-international-2.webp) ![Boys & Girls Clubs of Northeast Ohio logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-boys-girls-club.webp) ![Parkland Health Foundation logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-parkland.webp) ![ADRA logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-adra.webp) ![The Cure Starts Now logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-the-cure-starts-now.webp) ![IMB logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/imb-logo-dark-wide.webp) ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/bucker-logo-dark-2.webp) ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-bible-league-canada.webp) ![University of Central Missouri logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-university-of-central-missouri-stacked.webp) ![DTS logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/dts-logo-dark.webp) ##### The Benefits ## Your Next Campaign, Built For You Each campaign creation session delivers a personalized campaign plan built using Avid Playbooks and insights from 8,000+ fundraising experiments. **Here’s what you’ll walk away with:** ![1. Your Campaign Strategy](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Aggregate.svg) ### 1. Your Campaign Strategy Avid will draft your entire campaign strategy, customized to your mission, your donors, and your goals. ![2. Your Ready-to-Launch Copy](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Identify0A.svg) ### 2. Your Ready-to-Launch Copy Avid will generate tailored creative for every email, donation page, SMS, ad, and more—ready to launch to each channel. ![3. Segmented & Personalized Touchpoints](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/target-red-3.svg) ### 3. Segmented & Personalized Touchpoints Touchpoints and copy are tailored to key audience segments including customized messaging and personalization. ![4. Your Launch Plan](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Deploy.svg) ### 4. Your Launch Plan Walk away with a Launch Plan document including your strategy, copy, and timing for each campaign touchpoint. ##### The Output ## Everything You Need to Launch a Proven Campaign Walk away with a complete campaign—all built from data, not guesswork. Every touch point is designed with Avid Playbooks and built on proven strategies from 8,000+ fundraising tests. You’ll walk away with: - A customized **campaign strategy** - Segmented and **personalized** touchpoints - A **Launch Plan** with copy for you whole campaign [ Apply Now ](#form) ![Avid Playbooks campaign builder showing year-end touchpoints and generated campaign copy (illustrative)](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Launch-Lab-Image-2.webp) ## How It works ![Apply for a Campaign Creation session](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Aggregate.svg) ### Apply for a Campaign Creation session Fill out the quick intake form and **select which campaign you want to run** next based on your current goals and needs. ![Meet with an Avid Fundraising Expert](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Identify0A.svg) ### Meet with an Avid Fundraising Expert Our team will analyze your goals and use Avid Playbooks to **build your customized campaign in real time**. ![Leave with Your Ready-to-Launch Campaign](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Deploy.svg) ### Leave with Your Ready-to-Launch Campaign Walk away with a complete campaign strategy for every email, page, SMS, ad, and more—all **customized for you**. ##### Frequently Asked Questions ## Still Have Questions? Here’s everything you need to know before applying for your complimentary campaign creation session powered by Avid Playbooks. [ Apply Now ](#form) ##### What exactly is a campaign creation session? A campaign creation session is a one-to-one working session where an Avid fundraising expert will use Avid Playbooks to build a complete, customized fundraising campaign for you. Each campaign is built on data from over 8,000 fundraising experiments. You’ll leave with ready-to-launch copy for your emails, donation pages, SMS, ads, and more. ##### How much time will it take? Each session takes 30 minutes. You’ll spend a few minutes sharing information about your nonprofit, and our team will handle the rest—building your campaign strategy in real time so you can leave with everything ready for launch. ##### What types of campaigns can I choose from? During the application, you can select from a variety of different campaigns including: - **Recurring Giving Acquisition** — a campaign designed and proven to grow your base of monthly donors. - **Donor Anniversary Appeal** — a specific appeal for donors at their giving anniversary designed to inspire another year of giving. - **High Urgency Campaign** — a dedicated campaign designed to activate donors around a specific need, goal, or deadline. Or choose **“Help Me Decide”** and an Avid expert can help determine the right campaign for you based on your needs. ##### Do I need to be an Avid customer to participate? Nope! The Launch Lab is open to any nonprofit looking to improve its year-end campaign strategy. You don’t need to use Avid to participate — just come ready to share your goals, and we’ll handle the rest. ##### What will I get after the session? You’ll walk away with: - A complete campaign built with Avid’s AI-powered Playbooks - Personalized copy for your emails, donation pages, SMS, advertising, and more - Customized copy for key segments including donors, non-donors, lapsed donors, and more. ## READY. SET. LAUNCH. Apply for a campaign creation session and walk away with a complete, data-backed campaign built to raise more when it matters most. [ Apply Now ](#form) --- ### [Dashboard — open Avid, and your day is already in front of you](https://avidai.com/capabilities/dashboard/) **Published:** July 17, 2026 **Author:** Stephen Boudreau **Content:** ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/avidbridge-icon-dashboard-2026.png) ![Dashboard](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/avidbridge-logo-dashboard-2026.png) # Open Avid, and your day is already in front of you. A home screen built around you — the handful of things you actually watch, waiting the moment you land. It loads instantly, tiles saved, not rebuilt. No hunting, no assembling the picture by hand. Just your whole program, at a glance, first thing. Dashboard Log out My Dashboard+ Settings Share Catalog ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/avidbridge-icon-dashboard-2026.png) ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/avidbridge-icon-scorecard-2026.png) ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/avidbridge-icon-playbooks-2026.png) ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/avidbridge-icon-insights-2026.png) ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/avidbridge-icon-benchmarks-2026.png) ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/avidbridge-icon-pathways-2026.png) ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/avidbridge-icon-directmail-2026.png) ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/avidbridge-icon-edna.png) ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/avidbridge-icon-lockstep.png) ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/avidbridge-icon-settings-2026.png) Daily Top 3 Insights Midlevel ($1K–$5K) Donors 3.2K|8.6% decrease Recurring Donors 6.5K|3.2% increase Offline Gifts 12.4K|3.1% increase Midlevel Donor Overview: Midlevel ($1K–$5K) Donors 6K4K2K0 3.4K3.5K3.6K3.5K3.2K FYTD22FYTD23FYTD24FYTD25FYTD26 137 Days Until Giving Tuesday Donor Retention 75%50%25%0 20222023202420252026 BenchmarkYour Organization Audiences Suggested Audience Lapsing Mid-Level Donors **Contacts** 1,912**Source** Edna FYTD26 2nd-Year Donors, Not Yet RecurringNew **Contacts** 4,994**Date Created** 07/03/2026 Year-end letter locks Friday. Approve the mail-house proof and confirm the River Guardians ask amounts. Then the fun part — call the first ten matching-gift donors, just to say thank you. Connections (3) ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/avidbridge-intg-fundraiseup.webp) StatusConnected Last Sync7/17/2026 ![Virtuous logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/virtuous_logo_square.webp) StatusConnected Last Sync7/17/2026 ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/mailchimp_logo_square.svg) StatusConnected Last Sync7/17/2026 Your board, populated and waiting — the things you actually watch, first thing. ## Built around you, from the very first screen. Tell Avid the hats you wear, and it builds your starting board around them. You never open a blank page — day one already looks like your job. Customize your Dashboard Experience What are your main roles and responsibilities? Select up to 4 that apply. - Database AdministratorManage donor data, imports, and integrations - Development DirectorOversee the execution of the entire fundraising operation - Direct Mail ManagerPlan and execute direct mail campaigns - Donor AcquisitionCharged with finding and acquiring new donors - Email & DigitalWrite, design, and send email and digital campaigns - Events ManagerPlan and execute fundraising events - Executive DirectorLead the organization and report to the board - Major Gift OfficerCultivate and close transformational gifts - Mid-Level GivingManage donors in the $250-$2,500 range - OtherDescribe your role in your own words - Planned Giving OfficerWork with donors on legacy and estate gifts - Recurring Donor ProgramGrow recurring giving and sustainer programs - Retention & ReactivationWork with existing donors to cultivate and expand their giving. - Segment BuilderBuild donor segments and manage audiences - Social & Paid AdsManage social media and paid advertising Next The first screen in Avid. You never start from nothing. ## Pin what matters, and it becomes yours. Find something worth keeping an eye on anywhere in Avid — a chart, a report, an insight — and pin it. It lands on your board with its filtered context intact. Pin by pin, the dashboard turns into a personalized home for the information that matters most to you. Recurring Donor Analysis $3M$2M$1M$0 $1.6M $1.9M $2.1M $2.2M $2.3M FYTD22FYTD23FYTD24FYTD25FYTD26 **137**Days Until Recurring Donor Analysis Recurring Donor Analysis The pin lives in the corner of everything in Avid. One press, and it’s on your dashboard. ## Make the space your own. Resize what deserves room to breathe, drag modules into the order you think in, and browse the Catalog for more — audiences, a Connections widget showing each integration’s health and last sync, Pathways, notifications, quick notes, countdowns, and Edna’s suggestions on what to add. Build up to five boards — acquisition, major gifts, the year-end push — and switch between them as the work shifts. My DashboardAcquisitionYear-End Push+ Catalog **137**Days Until Recurring Donor Analysis Notifications ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/avidbridge-icon-playbooks-2026.png)**Playbook Export is Ready***View Google Doc* ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/avidbridge-icon-insights-2026.png)**Your Presentation is Created***Download your Presentation* Available Catalog× ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/avidbridge-icon-playbooks-2026.png)**Playbook Export is Ready***View Google Doc*4/21/2026 ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/avidbridge-icon-insights-2026.png)**Your Presentation is Created***Download your Presentation*3/24/2025 Notifications See recent alerts, system updates, and tasks that need attention. \+ **137**Days UntilGiving Tuesday **Giving Tuesday***December 1, 2026* Countdown Track important dates and deadlines with configurable countdown cards. \+ *Edna Audience***Lapsing Mid-Level Donors**Contacts 1,912 Source Edna Audiences Keep your most important audiences within reach. Monitor audience size and activity without leaving your Dashboard. \+ Browse the Catalog, add what you need, drag it into the order you think in, give it room to breathe. ## Then make it your team’s. The board you made yours can become the one your whole team starts from. Share it to view or edit, hand it off by link, or pass ownership when the work changes hands. Schedule it to land in an inbox, or export it to a slide deck for the board meeting. My DashboardAcquisitionYear-End Push+ Share Share Year-End Push× Share this dashboard with your team at Wild Rivers Conservancy. Search by name TVTom VanceEditor PRPriya RamanView Only DCDana ColeNo Access Save No Access View Only Editor Choose who can view, who can edit — and the board becomes the team’s. ## Most dashboards are built for everyone, so they end up built for no one. Yours is built around you — and gets more yours every time you open it. [Get a Demo →](/demo/) --- ### [Book a Demo (v2)](https://avidai.com/book-your-demo/) **Published:** July 30, 2026 **Author:** Nathan Hill **Content:** [ ![Avid logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Avid.svg) ](https://avidai.com) ## Schedule your Avid tour below. # See what it's like to have a fundraising agent on your team. Avid is the fundraising agent—in your program around the clock, finding what needs attention, building the response, ready the moment you say go. You stay on the mission. Avid handles the rest. - Your data, finally all in one place. Avid brings all your siloed data together under one roof—ready to take action. - Critical fundraising insights, already surfaced. Your most important metrics and insights, ready on your dashboard each morning. - Segments and key donors, identified automatically. Complex segmentation synced across your tools—all done with a prompt and a click. - Your next campaign, drafted and ready to launch. Multichannel campaigns ready for launch in minutes—with segmentation built in. This is the power of Avid as your fundraising agent—helping you finally get ahead of the work rather than buried under it. **Schedule 30 minutes using the form below** to see how Avid would work for your team and with your tools. ![Avid Product Icon Stack image](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/ProductStack-Avid-1024x237.png.webp) #### Schedule your tour of Avid below. ##### Fundraising Teams that Trust Avid ![ : ](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-ewtn-v2-1.webp) ![ : ](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-cure-1.webp) ![ : ](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/logo-Lustgarten-pancreatic-Cancer-Research.svg) ![ : ](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-polar-bears-international-2-1.webp) ![ : ](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-boys-girls-club.webp) ![ : ](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/parkland-logo-dark-wide.webp) ![ : ](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/dts-logo-dark.webp) ![ : ](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-university-of-central-missouri-stacked.webp) ![ : ](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-bible-league-canada.webp) ![ : ](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-adra.webp) ![ : ](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/site-the-cure-starts-now.webp) ##### Recent Success Stories Using Avid ***Tarrant Area Foodbank:** 200% increase in retention with Avid-powered segentation.* ***Bible League Canada:** 20% reduction in cost per donor using Avid Pathways.* ***Lifesavers Wild Horse Rescue:** 200% increase in appeal revenue using Avid Playbooks.* ***Luther Seminary:** 308% increase in reactivation using Avid Insights and Pathways.* © 2026 [Avid Software](https://avidai.com). All Rights Reserved. --- ### [Campaign Creation Session - Schedule](https://avidai.com/build-my-campaign-afp/) **Published:** January 21, 2026 **Author:** Avid Team **Content:** ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Avid-1.svg) ##### Campaign Creation Session # Let Avid Build Your Next AFP Campaign Looking to convert your AFP members into donors? Re-engage lapsed members? Or even just keep your marketing list engaged? No one ever feels like they have the time. But with Avid, creating and **deploying new campaigns takes minutes**—not days or weeks. Avid Playbooks generates customized campaigns based on proven fundraising strategies. Every channel. Every touchpoint. Every audience segment. **Want to see how it works?** Apply for a campaign creation session using the form. If approved, we’ll build your next campaign for free. ## What You'll Get: - **Campaign Strategy:** Get a fully customized campaign strategy tailored to your mission, your donors, and your goals. - **Ready-to-Use Copy:** Get personalized, segmented copy for every email, donation page, SMS, ad, and more. - **Launch Document:** Walk away with a campaign launch document including copy and timing for each touchpoint. ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Year-End-Launch-Lab-Image-IA3.webp) ![AFP logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/AFP-logo.webp) ## Exclusively for AFP Executive Committee Members ## Choose a Date Below to Schedule Your Campaign Creation Session 👉 We reserve a limited number of sessions each month to keep them focused and valuable. ##### The Benefits ## Your Next Campaign, Built For You Each campaign creation session delivers a personalized campaign plan built using Avid Playbooks and insights from 8,000+ fundraising experiments. **Here’s what you’ll walk away with:** ![1. Your Campaign Strategy](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Aggregate.svg) ### 1. Your Campaign Strategy Avid will draft your entire campaign strategy, customized to your mission, your donors, and your goals. ![2. Your Ready-to-Launch Copy](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Identify0A.svg) ### 2. Your Ready-to-Launch Copy Avid will generate tailored creative for every email, donation page, SMS, ad, and more—ready to launch to each channel. ![3. Segmented & Personalized Touchpoints](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/target-red-3.svg) ### 3. Segmented & Personalized Touchpoints Touchpoints and copy are tailored to key audience segments including customized messaging and personalization. ![4. Your Launch Plan](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Deploy.svg) ### 4. Your Launch Plan Walk away with a Launch Plan document including your strategy, copy, and timing for each campaign touchpoint. ##### The Output ## Everything You Need to Launch a Proven Campaign Walk away with a complete campaign—all built from data, not guesswork. Every touch point is designed with Avid Playbooks and built on proven strategies from 8,000+ fundraising tests. You’ll walk away with: - A customized **campaign strategy** - Segmented and **personalized** touchpoints - A **Launch Plan** with copy for you whole campaign [ Apply Now ](#form) ![Avid Playbooks campaign builder showing year-end touchpoints and generated campaign copy (illustrative)](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Launch-Lab-Image-2.webp) ## How It works ![Apply for a Campaign Creation session](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Aggregate.svg) ### Apply for a Campaign Creation session Fill out the quick intake form and **select which campaign you want to run** next based on your current goals and needs. ![Meet with an Avid Fundraising Expert](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Identify0A.svg) ### Meet with an Avid Fundraising Expert Our team will analyze your goals and use Avid Playbooks to **build your customized campaign in real time**. ![Leave with Your Ready-to-Launch Campaign](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Deploy.svg) ### Leave with Your Ready-to-Launch Campaign Walk away with a complete campaign strategy for every email, page, SMS, ad, and more—all **customized for you**. ## Built on Real Results. Too many nonprofits build campaigns on what they’ve seen work in the past. **Avid Playbooks** builds them on what’s *proven* to work. It uses insights from over 8,000 fundraising tests to design campaigns grounded in real data, not gut feeling. It’s not a brainstorm. It’s a blueprint for results. [ Apply Now ](#form) ##### Customer Stories ## Used by Fundraisers Behind the World’s Leading Nonprofits Every campaign built by Avid is customized to your mission, your donors, and your goals—with strategies backed by thousands of experiments and proven best practices. [ Apply Now ](#form) ##### Frequently Asked Questions ## Still Have Questions? Here’s everything you need to know before applying for your complimentary campaign creation session powered by Avid Playbooks. [ Apply Now ](#form) ##### What exactly is a campaign creation session? A campaign creation session is a one-to-one working session where an Avid fundraising expert will use Avid Playbooks to build a complete, customized fundraising campaign for you. Each campaign is built on data from over 8,000 fundraising experiments. You’ll leave with ready-to-launch copy for your emails, donation pages, SMS, ads, and more. ##### How much time will it take? Each session takes 30 minutes. You’ll spend a few minutes sharing information about your nonprofit, and our team will handle the rest—building your campaign strategy in real time so you can leave with everything ready for launch. ##### Do I need to be an Avid customer to participate? Nope! The Campaign Creation Session is open to any volunteer AFP leader looking to launch a fundraising campaign for their chapter. You don’t need to already use Avid to participate — just come ready to share your goals, and we’ll handle the rest. ##### What will I get after the session? You’ll walk away with: - A complete campaign built with Avid’s AI-powered Playbooks - Personalized copy for your emails, donation pages, SMS, advertising, and more - Customized copy for key segments including donors, non-donors, lapsed donors, and more. ## READY. SET. LAUNCH. Apply for a campaign creation session and walk away with a complete, data-backed campaign built to raise more when it matters most. [ Apply Now ](#form) --- ### [Benchmark Walkthrough Session - Schedule](https://avidai.com/benchmark-walkthrough/) **Published:** April 24, 2026 **Author:** Stephen Boudreau **Content:** ![Avid](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Avid-1.svg) ##### Benchmark Walkthrough # Get a personal walkthrough of the latest trends There are major **changes happening in donor behavior.** - Massive shifts in **acquisition sources**. - **Reactivation rates** that continue to slump. - **Multi-channel** communications becoming more critical. Any fundraiser that’s not adapting their organization’s strategy to keep up is going to be left with declining results and less impact. But the most impactful insights come from seeing how you **compare to nonprofits like yours.** Book a free, personalized walkthrough with an Avid team member to see how you compare to nonprofits like yours—and walk away with **greater clarity on how to shift your strategy** to grow giving. **What’s to expect:** - A 30-minute, customized benchmark walkthrough - Tailored insights and comparisons to organizations like yours - Practical, data-driven ideas for your fundraising strategy ## Book Your Personal Benchmark Walkthrough Using the Form Below 👉 Our team has a limited number of walkthrough sessions available. Be sure to book right away to get a spot! --- ### [Avid + DonorPerfect Integration](https://avidai.com/avid-donorperfect-integration/) **Published:** September 18, 2025 **Author:** Nathan Hill **Content:** # Integrations ![Avid and DonorPerfect logos](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/DonorPerfect-and-Avid-Logo-300x76.png) ## Fundraising without the friction. You trust DonorPerfect. Now make it do more: clearer reporting, smarter segmentation, and campaigns that actually launch faster. No CRM switch required. [ Book Intro Call ](#) ![Avid is for Fundraisers](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Avid-is-for-Fundraisers.webp) ## Smarter segmentation. Less spreadsheet time. **Too many fundraisers are still building lists in Excel. It’s slow, manual, and error-prone.** With Avid + DonorPerfect, your segments build and update themselves: - Pull data from all your fundraising tools to create powerful segments. - Automate audience creation so you’re not rebuilding lists every week. - Sync those audiences directly to your email and ad platforms. No more spreadsheets. Just cleaner, faster segmentation—powered by your DonorPerfect data. ## Turn your donor data into better ads. **Many fundraisers want to run smarter acquisition campaigns but get stuck: their donor data just won’t connect cleanly to ad platforms.** With Avid + DonorPerfect, you can finally put your data to work: - Retarget current donors during live campaigns. - Model your best supporters to find new ones. - Keep your cause top of mind across Facebook, Google, and more. Paid ads don’t have to feel out of reach. With Avid, your DonorPerfect data fuels them directly. ![Avid Pathways screens pushing a lapsed-donor audience to Mailchimp, beside a nonprofit social ad (illustrative)](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Precision-Donor-Outreach-1.webp) ![Data Sync](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Data-Sync.webp) ## Use the email tool you actually love. **DonorPerfect connects with Constant Contact, but many fundraisers want more advanced tools: personalization, automation, and flexibility.** Avid makes it easy to sync your DonorPerfect data with platforms like Mailchimp, HubSpot, and beyond: - Keep your favorite email tool fully synced with donor data. - Automate touchpoints that feel timely and relevant. - Personalize asks based on giving history and preferences. No more limits. Just the right message, to the right donors, at the right time—using the tools you already trust. ## Reports that make sense. **Fundraisers shouldn’t need a computer science degree (or a pile of spreadsheets) to see campaign results.** With Avid + DonorPerfect, you get: - Real-time, user-friendly reports. No exports required. - Instant board-ready presentations. - Filters that let you dig into performance across campaigns and channels. Stop crunching numbers manually. Start seeing your fundraising clearly, every day. ![Smiling fundraiser holding a laptop in front of an Avid insights dashboard with donor metrics (illustrative)](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Fundraising-Intelligence-3.webp) ## Supercharge DonorPerfect with Avid. See how Avid makes DonorPerfect faster, clearer, and more powerful with advanced reporting, smarter segmentation, and email fundraising that actually works the way you want it to. [ Book Intro Call ](#) ## All Your Tools. One Unified System. Avid doesn’t replace DonorPerfect. **Avid supercharges it.** Connect DonorPerfect to your fundraising stack and unlock: - Real-time insights without spreadsheets - Donor data synced across email and ads - Segments that update automatically - Faster fundraising growth without switching CRMs [ Book Intro Call ](https://avidai.com/demo/) ## Commonly Integrated Fundraising Tools ![DonorPerfect](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/donorperfect_logo_square.svg) ### DonorPerfect Avid enhances DonorPerfect by pulling in donor records and giving history to optimize segmentation and campaign execution. ![Mailchimp](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/mailchimp_logo_square.svg) ### Mailchimp Avid enhances Mailchimp’s email marketing capabilities by dynamically updating donor segments and automating engagement flows. ![Facebook](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/facebook_logo_square.svg) ### Facebook Avid automatically captures and syncs Facebook Lead Ads data, enabling real-time donor acquisition and engagement. ![Google Ads](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/google_ads_logo_square.svg) ### Google Ads Avid’s integration with Google Ads ensures targeted donor outreach by dynamically syncing audiences for optimized ad spend and engagement. ![FundraiseUp](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/fundraiseup_logo.webp) ### FundraiseUp Connect with Fundraise Up to unify your donation data with the rest of your stack. Track giving behavior, sync donor records, and fuel smarter, automated campaigns across channels. ![Kit](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Kit-Logo.svg) ### Kit Avid integrates with Kit, enhancing it’s ability to target robust segments built from donor data stored in your CRM. ![Constant Contact](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/constant-contact-logo-icon.webp) ### Constant Contact Integrate Constant Contact with Avid to bring your email marketing into your unified system. Keep lists synced, launch targeted campaigns, and track engagement without the manual lift. ![ActiveCampaign](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/ActiveCampaign.svg) ### ActiveCampaign Avid integrates with ActiveCampaign to seamlessly sync donor engagement data, enabling automated and personalized email campaigns. ## More Integrated Fundraising Tools ![Anedot](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/anedot-1.webp) ### Anedot Avid connects with Anedot to streamline donation tracking and ensure real-time donor data flows into your fundraising strategy. ![BigQuery](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/bigquery_logo_square.svg) ### BigQuery With Avid’s integration to BigQuery, fundraisers can unify and analyze large-scale donor data for deeper insights and smarter decision-making. ![Emfluence](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Emfluence-Icon.webp) ### Emfluence Avid enhances Emfluence’s targeting and segmentation abilities—allowing it to leverage data directly from your CRM. ![Google Analytics](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/ga3_logo_square.svg) ### Google Analytics Avid connects with Google Analytics to provide visibility into donor behaviors, campaign performance, and website conversions. ![Gravity Forms](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/gravityforms_logo_square.svg) ### Gravity Forms Avid integrates with Gravity Forms to automatically capture donor and supporter information and feed it into actionable fundraising strategies. ![Hubspot](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/hubspot_logo_square.svg) ### Hubspot Avid syncs donor and marketing data with HubSpot, ensuring automated and personalized engagement across the donor journey. ![iDonate](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/idonate-square.png) ### iDonate Avid integrates with iDonate to track giving behavior, optimize donation forms, and drive higher conversion rates. ![Marketo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/marketo_logo_square.svg) ### Marketo Avid’s Marketo integration enables fundraisers to automate personalized donor journeys and drive engagement at scale. ![QuickBooks](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/quickbooks_logo_square.svg) ### QuickBooks Avid integrates with QuickBooks to track and reconcile fundraising revenue, ensuring financial accuracy and transparency. ![RaiseDonors](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/rd-square.webp) ### RaiseDonors Avid enhances RaiseDonors by unifying donor data and providing insights to optimize online giving strategies. ![SendGrid](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/sendgrid-symbol.png) ### SendGrid Avid’s SendGrid integration enables automated, personalized donor communications with real-time data syncing. ![Many More!](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/icon-sync.webp) ### Many More! **Not seeing one of your fundraising tools?** Avid’s list of integrations is growing every single day. [Schedule a conversation with an Avid expert](https://avidai.com/demo/) to see what’s possible. # Strategy Guides # More ways to use Avid + DonorPerfect. ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/How-DonorPerfect-Fundraisers-Improve-Their-Email-Results.webp) #### [How DonorPerfect Fundraisers Improve Their Email Fundraising Using Avid](https://avidai.com/blog/how-donorperfect-fundraisers-improve-their-email-fundraising-using-avid/) You need to improve your donor emails, but your data is stuck in DonorPerfect. Avid connects your CRM to your email tool of choice—powering better fundraising. - AI & Automation ![How to Get Advanced User Friendly Reporting from DonorPerfect - Featured Image](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/How-to-Get-Advanced-User-Friendly-Reporting-from-DonorPerfect.webp) #### [How to Get Advanced, User-Friendly Reporting Out of DonorPerfect Using Avid](https://avidai.com/blog/how-to-get-advanced-user-friendly-reporting-out-of-donorperfect-using-avid/) Avid allows DonorPerfect users to get advanced reporting in a user-friendly layout—all without switching CRMs or paying expensive agency fees. - AI & Automation ![How DonorPerfect Fundraisers Can Reduce Their Donor Acquisition Costs - Featured Image](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/How-DonorPerfect-Fundraisers-Can-Reduce-Their-Donor-Acquisition-Costs.webp) #### [How DonorPerfect Fundraisers Can Reduce Donor Acquisition Costs Using Avid](https://avidai.com/blog/how-donorperfect-fundraisers-can-reduce-donor-acquisition-costs-using-avid/) DonorPerfect + Avid unlocks more effective advertising strategies that reduce donor acquisition costs and grow your fundraising results. - AI & Automation, Fundraising Strategy --- ### [Confirmation | Get the AI-Powered Year-End Fundraising Playbook](https://avidai.com/ai-powered-year-end-fundraising-playbook-confirmation/) **Published:** October 10, 2025 **Author:** Nathan Hill **Content:** ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Avid-1.svg) ### Thanks! Your playbook is on its way to your inbox. # Book your free year-end strategy session. Book 30 minutes with an Avid fundraising expert to help you plan your most effective year-end campaign — built around what’s actually working across the sector. ## Schedule your session 👉 We reserve a limited number of sessions each month to keep them focused and valuable. ## What you'll gain - **Clarity:** Identify your biggest year-end opportunities and gaps. - **Strategy:** Learn data-backed tactics proven to lift year-end results. - **Focus:** Walk away with a 60–90 day roadmap you can start using immediately. ## Why this is different Not a sales demo. Not a generic consultation. This is a focused strategy session built to help you plan, prioritize, and execute your year-end campaign with confidence — guided by insights from thousands of fundraising experiments. ## Who this is for Fundraising and development leaders preparing their year-end push who want clear priorities, practical next steps, and stronger results. ## How to prepare Bring your fundraising goals and a snapshot of your current campaigns or donor segments — we’ll help you identify the best next steps. ## What happens next - Share a little context about your organization and goals. - Book a time that works for you. - Spend 30 minutes with us → leave with a personalized plan and practical ideas to maximize year-end giving. ## Schedule your session 👉 We reserve a limited number of sessions each month to keep them focused and valuable. ## Schedule your session 👉 We reserve a limited number of sessions each month to keep them focused and valuable. --- ### [Get the AI-Powered Year-End Fundraising Playbook](https://avidai.com/ai-powered-year-end-fundraising-playbook-download/) **Published:** October 10, 2025 **Author:** Nathan Hill **Content:** ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Avid-1.svg) ## Free Download ## Get the AI-Powered Campaign Playbook for Year-End Year-end fundraising requires more than ever before. More channels. More touch points. More segmentation. This AI-powered playbook will help you keep up and grow your year-end giving. **What’s inside:** - Strategic year-end insights based on data from 130+ nonprofits - A comprehensive campaign playbook spanning Giving Tuesday through December 31st - Year-end segmentation ideas to help you reach donors on a more personal level ![Year-End Fundraising - AI-Powered Campaign Playbook ebook Cover](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Avid-AI-Powered-Campaign-Playbook-eBook-2_Page_01.webp) © 2025 [Avid Software](https://avidai.com). All Rights Reserved. --- ### [Get the AI-Powered Year-End Fundraising Playbook | Version B](https://avidai.com/ai-powered-year-end-fundraising-playbook-download-b/) **Published:** October 14, 2025 **Author:** Nathan Hill **Content:** ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Avid-1.svg) ## Free Download ## Get the AI-Powered Campaign Playbook for Year-End **Year-end fundraising results are on the decline.** Revenue is down. Less people are giving. Fewer donors are giving for the first time. The reality is that **donor expectations are changing**. To keep up, fundraisers are required to do more than ever before. More channels. More touch points. More segmentation. **The challenge?** Your budget hasn’t changed. Your staff hasn’t changed. Your resources haven’t changed. ### Effective Year-End Fundraising Requires an AI-Assist The only way for fundraisers to keep up with an increasingly challenging year-end season is with an AI-assist. Instant insights. Automated segmentation. An omni-channel campaign that builds itself. This AI-powered year-end playbook will show you what an effective year-end fundraising campaign looks like today. **Build an AI-powered year-end campaign with this free playbook.** ![Year-End Fundraising - AI-Powered Campaign Playbook ebook Cover](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Avid-AI-Powered-Campaign-Playbook-eBook-2_Page_01.webp) #### Tell us where to send your free year-end playbook using the form below. **What’s inside:** - Strategic year-end insights based on data from 130+ nonprofits - A comprehensive campaign playbook spanning Giving Tuesday through December 31st - Year-end segmentation ideas to help you reach donors on a more personal level © 2025 [Avid Software](https://avidai.com). All Rights Reserved. --- ### [Access your demo of Avid](https://avidai.com/access-demo/) **Published:** August 12, 2025 **Author:** Stephen Boudreau **Content:** ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Avid-1.svg) # Complete the form to watch instantly. A quick step and the demo begins right away. ![Avid platform demo video, hosted by Nathan Hill, VP of Training](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/On-Demand-Demo-Thumbnail-1024x576.webp) --- ### [About Avid](https://avidai.com/about/) **Published:** April 17, 2026 **Author:** Stephen Boudreau **Content:** About Avid # We built this from inside the work. ### Born from a fundraising agency. Built for the entire sector. ## 01. Care doesn't scale on its own. Fundraising runs on care. On relationships. On the kind of closeness that makes a donor feel seen, not solicited. But something happens when fundraising scales. The tools multiply. The channels expand. The data grows. And quietly, almost invisibly, the distance grows with it. Between the fundraiser and the work they were hired to do. Between the signal and the action. Between the moment and the ask. Donors become segments. Fundraisers become coordinators. And the care that made the whole thing work gets buried under the coordination required to keep it moving. That’s not inevitable. It’s structural. And it’s solvable. ## 02. We didn't study fundraising. We did it. Before Avid was an operating system, it was an agency. A fundraising agency. A research lab. A training institute. A team of people who spent their careers inside the work—running campaigns, selecting audiences, analyzing what moved donors, learning what separated programs that compounded from programs that reset. We weren’t observers. We were practitioners. And that distinction is the foundation of everything Avid is. ## 03. Every program. The same problem. And we felt every friction point that every fundraising team feels. The data that lived in three systems and agreed with none of them. The analyst queue that backed up every time someone needed something. The best people on the team dropping everything to pull a report that should have already existed. The campaign that launched two weeks late because the audiences had to be rebuilt from scratch—again. The insight that arrived after the window had already closed. We weren’t watching that from the outside. We were in it—as the fundraisers, doing the work, feeling the same weight every team feels when the work has to stop before it can move. And we kept asking the same question: what if it didn’t have to? What if the data stayed reconciled? What if the signal stayed watched? What if the learning from the last campaign was already shaping the next one—without anyone having to start over? That question became Avid. Not a technology company with its own ideas about how the nonprofit world works. Born from a team that spent decades inside it—so the expertise never stops running, the learning never gets left behind, and every organization we serve gets the benefit of everything we’ve ever learned. ## 04. The answer had to be a system. No tool was ever built to keep running between campaigns. Avid was. But a system that never stops needs a clear idea of what it’s doing. Fundraising work is messy—scattered across tools, reactive, overwhelming. Clarity doesn’t come from more data. It comes from a lens that cuts through the chaos. That lens is four operations. **A**ggregate. **V**isualize. **I**dentify. **D**eploy. Four continuous movements that turn fragmented activity into a coherent program. It’s what the name means—and what Edna, the AI at the core of the system, performs continuously. Running those four operations is what makes continuous operation possible. And it’s what makes Avid categorically different from every other tool in the stack. ## 05. Built on evidence, not assumptions. And continuous operation is only as good as what’s running underneath it. Avid isn’t drawing on guesses about how fundraising works. It’s drawing on decades of evidence from inside the work—8,000+ fundraising experiments, 650+ million donor interactions, patterns tested and proven across hundreds of organizations. When Avid surfaces a signal, it’s not predicting. It’s recognizing—a pattern that’s been seen before, in programs like yours, in moments like this one. That’s not something you can replicate with technology alone. It’s what you get when the people who built the system spent their careers doing the work before they ever wrote a line of code. ## 06. Why we built this. Care is where fundraising lives. Scale is where systems live. Without systems, scale erases care—donors become segments, fundraisers become coordinators, and the work that actually moves people gets buried under the work of keeping everything moving. The system exists so care can survive scale. So the fundraiser stays close to the donor. So the signal gets caught before the window closes. So the work of building relationships—the irreplaceable, human work of fundraising—gets the infrastructure it has always deserved. That’s what Avid is for. That’s why we built it. ## The humans behind the system. [ Contact Us ](https://avidai.com/contact/) ![Justin Beasley, VP of Data at Avid](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/justin-beasley-avid.webp) [ Linkedin ](https://www.linkedin.com/in/justin-m-beasley/) #### Justin Beasley Vice President of Data ![Headshot of Aaron Bettinger](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/aaron-b.webp) [ Linkedin ](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ambett/) #### Aaron Bettinger Senior Account Manager ![Headshot of Sami Biloff](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/sami-biloff.webp) [ Linkedin ](https://www.linkedin.com/in/sami-biloff/) #### Sami Biloff Brand Designer ![Deanna Blackwell - Avid](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Deanna-Blackwell-Avid.webp) [ Linkedin ](https://www.linkedin.com/in/deanna-blackwell-2408794/) #### Deanna Blackwell Customer Success Manager ![Smiling man with glasses in a dark suit and maroon shirt, posing indoors near a doorway.](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/christopher-blackwell-2a.png) #### Christopher Blackwell Data Analyst ![Headshot of Heidi Blecha](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/heidi-blecha.webp) [ Linkedin ](https://www.linkedin.com/in/heidiblecha/) #### Heidi Blecha Controller ![Stephen Boudreau, CMO at Avid](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Stephen-Boudreau-Avid.webp) [ Linkedin ](https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephen-boudreau/) #### Stephen Boudreau Chief Marketing Officer ![Portrait of a smiling woman with curly gray hair outdoors, wearing a pink top and a delicate necklace.](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/lesley-corely.webp) [ Linkedin ](https://www.linkedin.com/in/lstrovas/) #### Leslie Corley Executive Assistant ![Headshot of Grace Daniel](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/grace-daniel.webp) [ Linkedin ](https://www.linkedin.com/in/its-grace-daniel/) #### Grace Daniel Account Executive ![Ray Gary, CEO of Avid](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/ray-gary-avid.webp) [ Linkedin ](https://www.linkedin.com/in/raygary/) #### Ray Gary Chief Executive Officer ![Nathan Hill, Avid](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/nathan-hill-avid.webp) [ Linkedin ](https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathan-peter-hill/) #### Nathan Hill Vice President of Marketing ![Katherine Li, Avid](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/katherine-li.webp) [ Linkedin ](https://www.linkedin.com/in/katherine-l-571042235/) #### Katherine Li Frontend Developer ![Mike McKee, CFO at Avid](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Mike-McKee-Avid.webp) [ Linkedin ](https://www.linkedin.com/in/mike-mckee-48293810/) #### Mike McKee Chief Financial Officer ![Head-and-shoulders portrait of a smiling man in a blue suit jacket and light blue shirt in a professional setting.](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Chris-Mechsner.png) [ Linkedin ](https://www.linkedin.com/in/mechsner/) #### Chris Mechsner Chief Product Officer ![Headshot of Evan Million](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/evan-million.webp) [ Linkedin ](https://www.linkedin.com/in/evan-million-339921185/) #### Evan Million Senior Technical Support ![Frank Mumford - Avid](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Frank-Mumford-Avid.webp) [ Linkedin ](https://www.linkedin.com/in/frank-mumford/) #### Frank Mumford Senior Account Executive ![Profile portrait of a man in a cream hoodie looking to the right, with white circular ear gauges visible on his left ear.](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/adam-pavis-avid-director-of-brand-1.png) [ Linkedin ](https://www.linkedin.com/in/frank-mumford/) #### Adam Pavis Director of Brand ![Kevin Peters, CTO at Avid](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/kevin-peters-avid.webp) [ Linkedin ](https://www.linkedin.com/in/frank-mumford/) #### Kevin Peters Chief Technology Officer ![Karina Rodriguez, Avid](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Karina-Rodriguez.webp) [ Linkedin ](https://www.linkedin.com/in/karina-rodriguez-0ba358105/) #### Karina Rodriguez VP of Fundraising Strategy ![Head-and-shoulders portrait of a man with short brown hair and blue eyes, wearing a purple plaid shirt against a light gradient background.](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/parrish-snyder-2.png) [ Linkedin ](https://www.linkedin.com/in/parrishsnyder/) #### Parrish Snyder Chief Revenue Officer ![Erik Tomalis, CRO at Avid](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Erik-Tomalis-Avid.webp) [ Linkedin ](https://www.linkedin.com/in/eriktomalis/) #### Erik Tomalis Chief Community Officer ![Headshot of Dan VanMilligan](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/dan-v.webp) [ Linkedin ](https://www.linkedin.com/in/uxdan/) #### Dan VanMilligan Senior Full Stack Engineer ![Julie Watkins, Avid](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Julie-Watkins.webp) [ Linkedin ](https://www.linkedin.com/in/juliedwatkins/) #### Julie Watkins Vice President of Operations ![Riley Young smiling with two thumbs up](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/riley-young.webp) [ Linkedin ](https://www.linkedin.com/in/rileyyoung326/) #### Riley Young Director of Demand Generation #### Generosity is waiting. Avid makes sure it isn't missed. [ Book a guided tour ](https://avidai.com/demo/) --- ### [Activate Your Tour of Avid](https://avidai.com/activate-your-tour-of-avid/) **Published:** June 24, 2026 **Author:** Nathan Hill **Content:** ![Avid](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Avid-Logo-Dark-300x140.webp) ### Watch the 6-Minute Tour # See How Avid Can be Your Team's FundraisingAgent You have plenty of data. You have plenty of tools. **But opportunities keep slipping away.** Not because your team doesn’t know what to do—but because there aren’t enough hands for all the work. Insert **Edna—the fundraising agent** built inside of Avid. She’s not a chatbot. She’s not a search bar. She understands your program inside and out. Ask her what’s working. Ask her why donors are lapsing. Ask her where to focus next. Edna recommends gives **intelligence**, creates a **segment**, drafts the **next play**. Your team makes the call—Edna does the work. **Meet Edna in this 6-Minute tour of Avid.** See how Edna—built inside of Avid—can be the fundraising agent in your team. Activate your tour using the form below. [ Watch the Tour ](#rsvp) ![Lifesavers Wild Horse Rescue logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Lifesavers-Wild-Horse-Rescue-Logo.webp) Avid allowed Lifesavers Wild Horse Rescue to **increase monthly appeal revenue by 130%**—by giving them the capacity for personalized segmentation. ![Cook Children's logo: three connected blue mountain shapes above the bold blue 'Cook Children’s' text.](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Cook-Childrens.png) Avid allowed Cook Children’s Health Foundation to **save “hours, if not days of work”** creating a multichannel campaign—that also increased conversion rates. ### Activate Your Tour of Avid and Meet Edna See how teams use Avid—with Edna built in—to grow their capacity, improve their results, and finally stay ahead of the work. Activate your tour of Avid—and what’s new in Avid’s FOS4—using the form below. ![Video tour preview: Avid dashboard with an Ask Edna panel, donor charts, and insights (illustrative)](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Screenshot-2026-06-24-at-2.56.21-PM.png) Complete the form to get instant access to the 6-minute tour of Avid. © 2026 [Avid Software](https://avidai.com). All Rights Reserved. --- ### [10 Ways to Increase Giving Before Dec. 31 | Free Fundraising Guide](https://avidai.com/10-ways-to-increase-giving-before-dec-31-download/) **Published:** November 14, 2025 **Author:** Avid Team **Content:** ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Avid-1.svg) ## Free Download ## 10 Ways to Increase Giving Before Dec. 31st The last week of December is the biggest giving week of the year. But major results don’t happen by accident. This free guide will show you how to make the most of the final days of the year with practical, data-backed strategies that drive real results. **What’s inside:** - 10 proven tactics to increase giving during the final week of the year - Channel-specific ideas to engage donors across email, ads, SMS, and more - Personalization strategies that help you reach donors on a deeper, more human level ![10 Ways to Increase Giving Before Dec. 31 | Free Fundraising Guide](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Screenshot-2025-11-14-at-2.27.05-PM.webp) © 2025 [Avid Software](https://avidai.com). All Rights Reserved. --- ### [Webinar | 3 Fundraising Challenges for Faith-Based Nonprofits in 2026​](https://avidai.com/3-fundraising-challenges-for-faith-based-nonprofits/) **Published:** April 25, 2026 **Author:** Stephen Boudreau **Content:** ![Avid](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Avid-1.svg) ## Free Webinar ## 3 Fundraising Challenges for Faith-Based Nonprofits in 2026​ 🗓️ **Date:** February 25, 2026 🕛 **Time:** 12:00 PM CST Faith-based organizations face unique challenges in 2026. New donors are harder to come by. Current donors are harder to retain. And the demands on your team increase by the day. Yet your mission remains more critical than ever. In this free webinar, you’ll discover 3 of the biggest fundraising challenges facing faith-based nonprofits today. You’ll also learn: - Why each challenge matters to your long-term success. - What plays you can implement to make progress right away - Practical ways to create capacity for sustainable growth RSVP for the free webinar to see how you can face these challenges head on this year—growing your revenue and your impact. ![Webinar video thumbnail with the Avid logo and a red Live badge](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Wistia-Webinar-Thumbnail-scaled-1.webp) © 2026 [Avid Software](https://avidai.com). All Rights Reserved. --- ### [Events & Webinars](https://avidai.com/events/) **Published:** April 25, 2025 **Author:** Stephen Boudreau **Content:** # Events and Webinars ## Where fundraisers show up and level up. Join upcoming webinars, product demos, and live Q&As with the team behind the Fundraising Operating System. No fluff—just real insights, practical strategies, and smarter ways to fundraise. [ Get notified of upcoming events ](javascript:void(0)) ### Emails worth opening (for once) Get smart insights, upcoming events, and system-first strategies from the team behind the Fundraising Operating System—sent occasionally, always worth opening. ![Avid Live Thumbnail](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Avid-Live-Thumbnail.jpg) ### Your Year-End Fundraising Plan #### [**Featured Webinar** | August 20, 2026](https://www.linkedin.com/events/doneinminutes-automatingyourmos7369770615433543680/) The teams that win during year-end don’t start planning in October. **The best fundraising teams start now**, equipped with the right data. In this free webinar from Avid + Wiland, Nathan Hill & Karina Rodriguez will unpack how **fundraising has performed through the first half of 2026** — and what it means for your year-end strategy. [ RSVP for the Live Discussion ](https://avidai.com/your-year-end-fundraising-plan-webinar/) ![Hero banner showing Avid Live branding and the headline 'Your Year-End Fundraising Plan' with subheading text on the left; on the right, two speaker cards titled 'Featuring Karina Rodriguez' and 'Featuring Nathan Hill' with headshots.](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Your-Year-End-Fundraising-Plan-Webinar-Thumbnail-1024x576.png.webp) ### Avid Webinar Library --- ### [Integrations](https://avidai.com/integrations/) **Published:** February 28, 2025 **Author:** Stephen Boudreau **Content:** Integrations # Connect everything. Rip out nothing. Avid runs on top of the tools you already use — reads what’s there, and sends campaigns back out where the work happens. - [CRM **10**](#cat-crm) - [Email & marketing **12**](#cat-email-and-marketing) - [Advertising **6**](#cat-advertising) - [Donations, forms, & analytics **7**](#cat-donations-forms-and-analytics) - [Data partner **1**](#cat-data-partner) - [Everything else **4**](#paths) ### CRM - ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/avidbridge-intg-raiser-s-edge-nxt-beac15.svg)Raiser's Edge NXT Reporting One of Avid's deepest connections: gifts, constituents, and the full campaign/fund/appeal/package hierarchy — including appeal-level expenses that power automatic ROI. [Setup guide →](https://help.avidai.com/hc/en-us/articles/42928630368531-Raiser-s-Edge-NXT) - ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/avidbridge-intg-salesforce-97114f.svg)SalesforceNonprofit Cloud & NPSP Reporting Deep NPSP sync — opportunities, accounts, contacts, campaigns, soft credits, households, recurring-donation change logs — respecting your sharing rules and field-level security. [Setup guide →](https://help.avidai.com/hc/en-us/articles/52251329243667-Salesforce-Nonprofit-Cloud) - ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/avidbridge-intg-virtuous-crm.webp)Virtuous Reporting Contacts, gifts, campaigns, recurring gifts, and communication history, read-only. [Setup guide →](https://help.avidai.com/hc/en-us/articles/42928630387219-Virtuous-CRM) - ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/avidbridge-intg-bloomerang-bd449b.svg)Bloomerang Reporting Donor, gift, and constituent data via API key. [Setup guide →](https://help.avidai.com/hc/en-us/articles/52251335717779-Bloomerang) - ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/avidbridge-intg-donorperfect-d990dd.svg)DonorPerfect Reporting Donor records and giving history for segmentation and execution. [Setup guide →](https://help.avidai.com/hc/en-us/articles/42928630111635-DonorPerfect) - ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/avidbridge-intg-neon-one-89e323.svg)Neon One Reporting Donor data for segmentation and campaign execution. [Setup guide →](https://help.avidai.com/hc/en-us/articles/52251374928787-Neon-One) - ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/avidbridge-intg-nationbuilder-af4b2a.svg)NationBuilder Reporting Unifies donor and supporter data for outreach. [Setup guide →](https://help.avidai.com/hc/en-us/articles/52251347706899-NationBuilder) - ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/avidbridge-intg-donordock.png)DonorDock Reporting Constituent and gift data for the unified picture. [Setup guide →](https://help.avidai.com/hc/en-us/articles/50216913549971-DonorDock) - ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/avidbridge-intg-allegiance-crm.png)Allegiance CRM Reporting Complete constituent and gift history via secure read-only database connection. [Setup guide →](https://help.avidai.com/hc/en-us/articles/52251344826899-Allegiance-CRM) - ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/avidbridge-intg-donordirect.png)DonorDirect StudioEnterprise Reporting Full history via read-only database connection, for systems where API coverage is limited. [Setup guide →](https://help.avidai.com/hc/en-us/articles/43058687505555-Donor-Direct-Studio-Enterprise) ### Email & marketing - ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/avidbridge-intg-hubspot-b07967.svg)HubSpot ReportingAudiencesPlaybooks Engagement in, synced audiences out, campaign deployment. [Setup guide →](https://help.avidai.com/hc/en-us/articles/42928676727443-HubSpot) - ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/avidbridge-intg-mailchimp-fe9438.svg)Mailchimp ReportingAudiencesPlaybooks Engagement reporting, dynamic audiences, campaign deployment. [Setup guide →](https://help.avidai.com/hc/en-us/articles/42928661670035-Mailchimp) - ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/avidbridge-intg-marketo-5cc5b3.svg)Marketo AudiencesPlaybooks Receives synced audiences; supports campaign deployment. [Setup guide →](https://help.avidai.com/hc/en-us/articles/42928630485779-Marketo) - ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/avidbridge-intg-pardot-087169.svg)PardotMarketing Cloud Account Engagement ReportingAudiences Two-way: pulls lists, campaigns, prospects, engagement; pushes audiences as labeled Avid lists. [Setup guide →](https://help.avidai.com/hc/en-us/articles/42928687755155-Pardot) - ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/avidbridge-intg-constant-contact.webp)Constant Contact ReportingAudiences Lists synced, targeted campaigns, engagement tracked. [Setup guide →](https://help.avidai.com/hc/en-us/articles/52487511560851-Constant-Contact) - ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/avidbridge-intg-activecampaign-afb76d.svg)ActiveCampaign ReportingAudiences Engagement sync for automated, personalized email. [Setup guide →](https://help.avidai.com/hc/en-us/search?query=ActiveCampaign) - ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/blackbaud-raiser-s-edge-nxt.webp)Luminate Online ReportingAudiences Full two-way connection. [Setup guide →](https://help.avidai.com/hc/en-us/articles/50086694275603-Luminate-Online) - ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/avidbridge-intg-salesforce-97114f.svg)Salesforce Marketing Cloud Audiences Audiences into labeled Data Extensions. [Setup guide →](https://help.avidai.com/hc/en-us/articles/49419233490963-Salesforce-Marketing-Cloud) - ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/avidbridge-intg-icontact.jpg)iContact ReportingAudiences Lists and engagement over Avid's own pipeline. [Setup guide →](https://help.avidai.com/hc/en-us/articles/48812734761107-iContact) - ENEngaging Networks ReportingAudiences Supporter data and audience sync. [Setup guide →](https://help.avidai.com/hc/en-us/search?query=Engaging%20Networks) - ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/avidbridge-intg-kit.png)Kitformerly ConvertKit ReportingAudiences Engagement sync and audience delivery. [Setup guide →](https://help.avidai.com/hc/en-us/search?query=Kit) - emEmfluence ReportingAudiences Email engagement and audience sync. [Setup guide →](https://help.avidai.com/hc/en-us/search?query=emfluence) ### Advertising - ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/meta.png)MetaFacebook & Instagram AudiencesPlaybooks Custom audiences (identifiers hashed inside Avid first — Meta receives hashes, never raw records), lookalikes from your best donors, ad deployment, and the Conversions API for server-side donation matching. [Setup guide →](https://help.avidai.com/hc/en-us/articles/42928630311699-Meta-Facebook) - ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/avidbridge-intg-google-ads-ae2562.svg)Google Ads Audiences Customer Match from hashed identifiers; Avid never sends giving history or gift amounts, only aggregate performance flows back. [Setup guide →](https://help.avidai.com/hc/en-us/articles/42928646536211-Google-Ads) - ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/avidbridge-intg-microsoft-advertising.png)Microsoft Advertising Audiences Synced audiences for search and display. [Setup guide →](https://help.avidai.com/hc/en-us/articles/52483931152531-Microsoft-Ads) - ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/avidbridge-snapchat.png)Snapchat Audiences Donor segments synced and kept current for Snapchat targeting. [Setup guide →](https://help.avidai.com/hc/en-us/articles/53286910417683-Snapchat-Ads) - ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/avidbridge-intg-stackadapt.png)StackAdapt AudiencesReporting Full programmatic connector with campaign reporting. [Setup guide →](https://help.avidai.com/hc/en-us/articles/52487484901907-StackAdapt) ### Donations, forms, & analytics - ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/avidbridge-intg-fundraiseup.webp)Fundraise Up Reporting Unifies donation data; tracks giving behavior across channels. [Setup guide →](https://help.avidai.com/hc/en-us/articles/53021621708179-Fundraise-Up) - ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/gofundme-pro.png.webp)GoFundMe Proformerly Classy Reporting Syncs your GoFundMe Pro donation transactions into Avid Insights, once daily. [Setup guide →](https://help.avidai.com/hc/en-us/articles/52708820129043-GoFundMe-Pro) - ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/avidbridge-intg-idonate-1.png)iDonate Reporting Giving behavior and donation-form performance. [Setup guide →](https://help.avidai.com/hc/en-us/search?query=iDonate) - ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/avidbridge-intg-anedot.webp)Anedot Reporting Real-time donation tracking into the donor picture. [Setup guide →](https://help.avidai.com/hc/en-us/search?query=Anedot) - ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/avidbridge-intg-raisedonors.webp)RaiseDonors Reporting Unifies online giving data for optimization. [Setup guide →](https://help.avidai.com/hc/en-us/search?query=RaiseDonors) - ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/avidbridge-intg-gravity-forms-785b54.svg)Gravity Forms Reporting Captures donor and supporter submissions automatically. [Setup guide →](https://help.avidai.com/hc/en-us/search?query=Gravity%20Forms) - ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/avidbridge-intg-google-analytics-7948ae.svg)Google Analytics Reporting Donor behavior, campaign performance, and conversions. [Setup guide →](https://help.avidai.com/hc/en-us/search?query=Google%20Analytics) - ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/avidbridge-intg-bigquery-60fdb1.svg)BigQuery Reporting Unify and analyze large-scale donor data. [Setup guide →](https://help.avidai.com/hc/en-us/search?query=BigQuery) ### Data partner Wiland Audiences Avid’s strategic data partner. **Buy Wiland’s modeled prospect audiences right inside Avid** — no files, no import — and they land beside your own segments, ready to target in Pathways and Playbooks. It’s how Avid reaches net-new donors without ever becoming a cold-list vendor. Wiland’s data also backs the live Benchmarks pool, so your comparisons reflect the whole sector. [Learn more →](https://help.avidai.com/hc/en-us/search?query=Wiland) ![Wiland](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/avidbridge-intg-wiland.png) ### Don’t see your system? There’s still a path. Avid can almost always bring a source in anyway. What if you don’t integrate with my system? → - ### File upload CSV, Excel, and Zip files for constituents, transactions, email contacts, campaign costs, mail selections, form submissions. Append (with dedup) or replace; secure upload links let an outside vendor (a mail house, say) deliver files without an Avid account. [How file imports work ](https://help.avidai.com/hc/en-us/search?query=file%20upload) - ### SFTP An Avid-hosted secure inbox, or Avid pulling from your server daily; CSV, text, and Excel files, plus compressed archives, covered by Avid's SOC 2 audits. [SFTP setup ](https://help.avidai.com/hc/en-us/articles/45142940614291-How-to-connect-SFTP) - ### Webhooks Near-real-time event ingestion for systems that can push but have no connector. [Webhooks ](https://help.avidai.com/hc/en-us/articles/44751690526739-Setting-up-Webhooks) - ### Email-a-file Any system that can email a scheduled export feeds Avid at its own private forwarding address. [Email-a-file ](https://help.avidai.com/hc/en-us/articles/51855696085523-Send-a-file-to-Avid-by-email-for-an-integration) ## Connected — and safe by default. Avid connects **read-only** — it reads your data and acts on it, but never writes back. Your CRM stays your system of record. Will connecting Avid change anything in my CRM? → - **Your CRM doesn’t change.** Read-only connections; Avid never writes back. The only thing it sends *out* is audiences — to destinations you’ve connected, when your team syncs them. - **Encrypted, always** — in transit and at rest; database connections require SSL and read-only credentials; static IPs published for allowlisting. - **Identifiers hashed** inside Avid before anything reaches an ad platform. - **Owned audiences only** — defined from your own data, with a record-level preview and consent guardrails before any sync. - **SOC 2 Type II · Fundraising.AI signatory.** Benchmarks use anonymized aggregates; you can opt out of contributing. - **Current automatically** — most connections sync daily; the initial backfill typically completes within ~24 hours. Full security and compliance detail — subprocessors, data residency, certifications — lives at **[trust.avidai.com](https://trust.avidai.com).** ## Keep every tool. Lose the busywork. Avid runs on top of the stack you already have — read-only, nothing ripped out — and puts it to work as one. See how it’d come together for a team like yours. [Get a Demo](/demo/) --- ### [Christian Media 1 Sheet | Resource Download](https://avidai.com/christian-media-brief/) **Published:** July 15, 2026 **Author:** Riley Young **Content:** ![Avid](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Avid-Logo-Dark-300x140.webp) ### Get the free data brief # The Christian media fundraising gap is wider than revenue shows. ### The numbers look stable. But they aren't. This free brief on the state of Christian media fundraising will expose metrics from 2026 benchmarks and share what top performing ministries are doing different. You’ll unpack: - The donor base is **quietly shrinking** even as revenue climbs, and one reactivation metric has fallen four years straight. - New-donor acquisition has **fully flipped channels**. Teams still cultivating the old way are already behind. - Two Christian media ministries **reversed the trend**: one lifted digital acquisition **24.5%**, another grew recurring retention **19%**. See exactly how. ![Avid logo in the top-left with the headline 'The Christian Media Fundraising Gap' and subheading '2026 Benchmark Data and What It Reveals' on a white background; colorful app icons appear in the bottom-right corner.](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/TheChristianMediaFundraisingGap_OnePager-Cover-791x1024.png) ### Get your free data brief See what’s happening in Christian media fundraising right now and learn how your organization compares. Get the data brief by letting us know where to send it below. ![Avid logo in the top-left with the headline 'The Christian Media Fundraising Gap' and subheading '2026 Benchmark Data and What It Reveals' on a white background; colorful app icons appear in the bottom-right corner.](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/TheChristianMediaFundraisingGap_OnePager-Cover-791x1024.png) Complete the form to get a free copy of the Christian media data brief. © 2026 [Avid Software](https://avidai.com). All Rights Reserved. --- ### [Marketing & Communications](https://avidai.com/who-its-for/marketing-and-communications/) **Published:** March 22, 2026 **Author:** Stephen Boudreau **Content:** For Marketing & Communications # Written in your voice. Sent on your call. Avid drafts the whole campaign in your voice — the copy, the audiences, the production — and stages it for your review. You sharpen it, you send it, and your hours go back to the ideas only you have. [Get a Demo](/demo/) [ Watch the 6-min tour](https://avidai.com/activate-your-tour-of-avid/) ![A marketing manager at a sunlit worktable, laptop and notebook open, smiling toward the window of a warm, plant-filled office.](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/marketing-manager.jpg?v=1) Trusted by fundraising teams like yours ![Bible League Canada](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/avidbridge-bibleleague-canada-2026.png)![Buckner International](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/buckner-international-561fab.svg)![CURE International](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/cure-international.png)![Hope for the Heart](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/hope-for-the-heart-scaled.png)![Operation Smile Canada](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/operation-smile-canada-848172.svg)![HonorHealth Foundation](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/honorhealth-foundation-c33c8f.svg)![CBN](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/cbn-3e7e5a.svg)![EWTN](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/ewtn.png)![ADRA](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/adra.png)![Bethel University](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/bethel.png)![Dallas Theological Seminary](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/dts-logo-dark.webp)![Chicago Scholars](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/chicago-scholars.webp)![Polar Bears International](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/polar-bears-international.png)![Lustgarten Foundation](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/lustgarten-1a521b.svg)![Capital Area Food Bank](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/capital-area-food-bank.png)![Charity Navigator](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/charity-navigator-4ee0b2.svg)![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/avidbridge-bibleleague-canada-2026.png)![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/buckner-international-561fab.svg)![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/cure-international.png)![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/hope-for-the-heart-scaled.png)![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/operation-smile-canada-848172.svg)![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/honorhealth-foundation-c33c8f.svg)![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/cbn-3e7e5a.svg)![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/ewtn.png)![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/adra.png)![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/bethel.png)![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/dts-logo-dark.webp)![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/chicago-scholars.webp)![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/polar-bears-international.png)![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/lustgarten-1a521b.svg)![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/capital-area-food-bank.png)![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/charity-navigator-4ee0b2.svg) The segment performed — build on it → - Monexport the list · check suppression - Tuere-export — the list changed - Wedthe test worth running rebuild the audience - Thureformat · upload - Frithe sharper idea upload failed — reformat, again - Satday off finish the upload Next week. Again. ## You’re built for the ideas. Production eats the week. A segment performed well and you want to build on it — back to the data, export the list, check suppression, rebuild the audience. And it’s exacting work: a missed suppression annoys a donor, a stale list lands in spam. It’s not busywork — it matters. Which is exactly why keeping it right, every cycle, by hand, eats the time you’d spend on the thinking — the sharper idea, the test worth running, the campaign worth betting on. **The production always wins, and the thinking is always what loses.** ## One of these is quietly eating the other. The production keeps winning, and the thinking keeps waiting — not because you’re doing it wrong, but because there’s more of the first than any team has hours for. ### The work piling up Avid carries this - Pulling lists, checking suppression, deduping - Reformatting creative, exporting, uploading - Drafting the first version — copy, subject lines, sequence - Rebuilding last month’s segment from scratch ### The work only you can do your time goes here - Your voice — the standard it’s all written to - The judgment on what’s worth saying, and to whom - The call on what ships, and what doesn’t - The big idea worth betting the quarter on ## How Avid helps you get back to the ideas. ### One campaign, every channel — already assembled. Email, text, page, and ad staged together — reformatted, linked, and ready. No exporting, no uploading, no rebuilding by hand. How does a Play come together? → Your Suggested Play Mid-Level Re-Engagement Appeal Confidence: **91%** Audiences to Target Lapsing Mid-Level Donors Existing Contacts **1,912** ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/avidbridge-icon-edna.png)Reasoning A re-engagement play is the strongest fit because it is built for win-back timing and supports a matching-gift ask. I adapted it by making your lapsing mid-level donors the primary audience, adding a $25,000 match announcement across email and mail, and scheduling a last-chance push before the campaign end date. ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/avidbridge-icon-edna.png)RefineStart ### The list is right before you send it. Suppression, dedupe, and the segment refreshed as donors give and lapse — the right people, and only the right people, every time. Get it wrong and you annoy a donor or land in spam; Avid keeps it clean, so the list is never what costs you. How does Avid handle suppression and clean lists? → Mid-Level Re-Engagement Appeal Draft Touchpoints **12** · showing 4 Renewal Launch Email Lapsing Mid-Level Donors 9/8/2026 11:00 am Ready Match Ad for Lapsing Mid-Level Donors Lapsing Mid-Level Donors 9/8/2026 11:00 am Ready Last-Chance Email Lapsing Mid-Level Donors 9/26/2026 5:00 pm Ready Match Giving Page No audience attached 9/8/2026 11:00 am Ready ### Written in your voice, sent on your say. The copy starts from what worked last time, not a blank page. You sharpen it, you approve it — a human always hits send. Will the outreach actually sound like us? → You’re about to launch **12** touchpoints. Edna places them in your connected tools, ready to go. - Email · 7LinkedReady - Donation Page · 1LinkedReady - Ad · 4LinkedReady A human always hits send Launch Play ### And a team who knows the work — in your corner. Every plan includes LockStep — experienced people fluent in nonprofit fundraising, from strategy to data to the technical. They help you read what Avid surfaces and decide what to do. You’re never running it alone. What does LockStep actually do? → ![Your dedicated LockStep team, working together.](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/lockstep-team.jpg) ## The week, handed back. The segment performed — build on it **✓** - Mondone — **in minutes** - Tue - Wedthe test worth running **✓** - Thu - Frithe sharper idea **✓** - Satday off **✓** Same week — handed back. ## Get back to the ideas. See what Avid would carry for your team — and where your hours go once it does. [Get a Demo](/demo/) More seats [Fundraising Leaders](/who-its-for/fundraising-leaders/) [Executive Leadership](/who-its-for/executive-leaders/) [Operations & Data](/who-its-for/operations-and-data/) [Overview](/who-its-for/) --- ### [Operations & Data](https://avidai.com/who-its-for/operations-and-data/) **Published:** March 25, 2026 **Author:** Stephen Boudreau **Content:** For Operations & Data # Connected, current, off your plate. You keep everything running. Avid holds the stack in sync — reconciling, deduping, refreshing — so your hours go to the analysis and configuration the program actually needs. [Get a Demo](/demo/) [ Watch the 6-min tour](https://avidai.com/activate-your-tour-of-avid/) ![An operations lead at a tidy wooden desk with two monitors, typing calmly in a warm, plant-filled brick office, colleagues soft in the background.](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/operations-data.jpg?v=1) Trusted by fundraising teams like yours ![Bible League Canada](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/avidbridge-bibleleague-canada-2026.png)![Buckner International](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/buckner-international-561fab.svg)![CURE International](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/cure-international.png)![Hope for the Heart](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/hope-for-the-heart-scaled.png)![Operation Smile Canada](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/operation-smile-canada-848172.svg)![HonorHealth Foundation](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/honorhealth-foundation-c33c8f.svg)![CBN](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/cbn-3e7e5a.svg)![EWTN](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/ewtn.png)![ADRA](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/adra.png)![Bethel University](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/bethel.png)![Dallas Theological Seminary](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/dts-logo-dark.webp)![Chicago Scholars](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/chicago-scholars.webp)![Polar Bears International](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/polar-bears-international.png)![Lustgarten Foundation](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/lustgarten-1a521b.svg)![Capital Area Food Bank](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/capital-area-food-bank.png)![Charity Navigator](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/charity-navigator-4ee0b2.svg)![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/avidbridge-bibleleague-canada-2026.png)![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/buckner-international-561fab.svg)![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/cure-international.png)![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/hope-for-the-heart-scaled.png)![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/operation-smile-canada-848172.svg)![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/honorhealth-foundation-c33c8f.svg)![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/cbn-3e7e5a.svg)![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/ewtn.png)![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/adra.png)![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/bethel.png)![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/dts-logo-dark.webp)![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/chicago-scholars.webp)![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/polar-bears-international.png)![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/lustgarten-1a521b.svg)![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/capital-area-food-bank.png)![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/charity-navigator-4ee0b2.svg) CRM export YTD giving $6.1M Updated today Finance YTD giving $5.8M Closed last month Board deck YTD giving $5.9M Updated 3 weeks ago Spreadsheet YTD giving $6.4M Updated — unknown Make them agree — again. re-sync · fix mismatches · dedupe — by hand ## You keep it all running. You never get to the real work. The data syncs, then drifts, then gets corrected — by you, every cycle. Even when it’s right, it doesn’t stay right, and everything slows because of it. The real cost is what never gets done: **the deeper analysis, the configuration the program actually needs — always losing to the work of keeping things from breaking.** You know what you’re capable of; the maintenance just never lets you get there. ## One of these is quietly eating the other. The upkeep keeps winning, and the real work keeps waiting — not because you’re doing it wrong, but because there’s more of the first than any team has hours for. ### The work piling up Avid carries this - Correcting the drift, re-syncing, fixing mismatches - Rebuilding segments every cycle - Manual reconciliation across systems - Keeping things from breaking ### The work only you can do your time goes here - The deeper analysis the program actually needs - The configuration that shapes how fundraising runs - The judgment about what the data means — and what to do - The strategic contribution you were actually hired for ## How Avid helps you get back to the work you were hired for. ### Every source, reconciled into one record. CRM, email, giving, and ads merge into one current file — duplicates resolved, drift corrected, refreshed on schedule. It’s the one record every insight, audience, and report runs on: get it right and everything downstream is trustworthy; get it wrong and every number is a guess. How does Avid handle duplicates and drift? → Avid — Golden RecordSyncing CCRM export$6.1M · today FFinance$5.8M · last mo. BBoard deck$5.9M · 3 wks SSpreadsheet$6.4M · unknown Your donor file reconciled, end to end YTD giving**$6.0M** Active donors**32,047** Duplicates resolved**1,204** Refreshed**Daily** ● One picture, current ### Segments that rebuild themselves. Audiences stay aligned to the live data — built once, current always, no manual re-pulls. Do the audiences stay up to date on their own? → Suggested Audience ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/avidbridge-icon-edna.png)by Edna Lapsing Mid-Level Donors Contacts **1,912**Source Edna ● Current — updated dailyRefreshes as donors give, lapse, and upgrade — no manual re-pull. SaveCreate PathwayUse in PlayDismiss ### The stack’s health, visible at a glance. Every connection’s status and last sync, on the board — you see drift before anyone feels it. Does connecting Avid change anything in my CRM? → ConnectionsAll in sync CRM Email Ads Online Giving Events Finance ### And a team who knows the work — in your corner. Every plan includes LockStep — experienced people fluent in nonprofit fundraising, from strategy to data to the technical. They help you read what Avid surfaces and decide what to do. You’re never running it alone. What does LockStep actually do? → ![Your dedicated LockStep team, working together.](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/lockstep-team.jpg) ## Get back to the real work. See what Avid would carry for your team — and where your hours go once it does. [Get a Demo](/demo/) More seats [Fundraising Leaders](/who-its-for/fundraising-leaders/) [Marketing & Communications](/who-its-for/marketing-and-communications/) [Executive Leadership](/who-its-for/executive-leaders/) [Overview](/who-its-for/) --- ### [Executive Leaders](https://avidai.com/who-its-for/executive-leaders/) **Published:** March 25, 2026 **Author:** Stephen Boudreau **Content:** For Executive Leadership # Lead from one picture you can trust. You’re accountable for the result. Avid gives you one shared, current picture of the program — so the calls you can least afford to guess on stop being guesses. [Get a Demo](/demo/) [ Watch the 6-min tour](https://avidai.com/activate-your-tour-of-avid/) ![An executive director pauses outside the boardroom door, folio in hand, composed in warm morning light.](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/executive-leader.jpg?v=1) Trusted by fundraising teams like yours ![Bible League Canada](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/avidbridge-bibleleague-canada-2026.png)![Buckner International](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/buckner-international-561fab.svg)![CURE International](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/cure-international.png)![Hope for the Heart](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/hope-for-the-heart-scaled.png)![Operation Smile Canada](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/operation-smile-canada-848172.svg)![HonorHealth Foundation](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/honorhealth-foundation-c33c8f.svg)![CBN](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/cbn-3e7e5a.svg)![EWTN](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/ewtn.png)![ADRA](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/adra.png)![Bethel University](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/bethel.png)![Dallas Theological Seminary](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/dts-logo-dark.webp)![Chicago Scholars](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/chicago-scholars.webp)![Polar Bears International](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/polar-bears-international.png)![Lustgarten Foundation](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/lustgarten-1a521b.svg)![Capital Area Food Bank](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/capital-area-food-bank.png)![Charity Navigator](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/charity-navigator-4ee0b2.svg)![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/avidbridge-bibleleague-canada-2026.png)![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/buckner-international-561fab.svg)![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/cure-international.png)![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/hope-for-the-heart-scaled.png)![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/operation-smile-canada-848172.svg)![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/honorhealth-foundation-c33c8f.svg)![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/cbn-3e7e5a.svg)![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/ewtn.png)![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/adra.png)![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/bethel.png)![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/dts-logo-dark.webp)![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/chicago-scholars.webp)![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/polar-bears-international.png)![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/lustgarten-1a521b.svg)![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/capital-area-food-bank.png)![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/charity-navigator-4ee0b2.svg) CRM export YTD giving $6.1M Updated today Finance YTD giving $5.8M Closed last month Board deck YTD giving $5.9M Updated 3 weeks ago Spreadsheet YTD giving $6.4M Updated — unknown Which one is right? ## You own the number. You can’t see it clearly. You’re accountable for the result — to your board, your team, the mission — but you’re not the one running the campaigns. What reaches you is secondhand: reports, summaries, updates, and they don’t agree. So before you can even form a view, you’re reconciling other people’s numbers in your head — then you’re asked to make the call anyway. The gift that decides the quarter. The program to cut or double down on. The number you put in front of the board. **You’re making the calls you can least afford to guess on — on exactly the data you can’t verify.** ## One of these is quietly eating the other. The verifying keeps winning, and the leading keeps waiting — not because you’re doing it wrong, but because there’s more of the first than any leader has hours for. ### The work piling up Avid carries this - Reconciling conflicting reports in your head before you can decide - Second-guessing a number because you can’t see how it was built - Waiting on someone else’s version of the truth - Deciding on gut because the data won’t settle ### The work only you can do your time goes here - The consequential call — made with confidence, from one shared truth - The board and the biggest donors — the relationships only you hold - Setting the program’s direction — and what *not* to chase - Standing behind the number, to the board, without hedging ## How Avid helps you get back to leading. ### One picture, current, that everyone works from. Every source reconciled into the same live view — the number you see is the number your team sees. Nothing assembled by hand, nothing to reconcile in your head. How do I know the numbers I’m seeing are right? → CRM export Finance Board deck SpreadsheetYTD giving $6.0M Updated today CRM export Finance Board deck Spreadsheet ### Board-ready without the scramble. The report you’d spend a week assembling — pulled from every system, reconciled by hand, finished the night before — is already built: current, sourced, and ready to present. Every number traces back to where it came from, so when a board member pushes on a figure, you answer on the spot instead of promising to follow up. Can I share this with my board? → Built in 2 min · current as of today Export → PDF / Slides FY26 Board Update Revenue by month YTD giving $6.0M Source: CRM Export + Finance, reconciled Revenue to plan −5% Members 32,000 ### Your numbers, in context. Live benchmarks across 1,000+ nonprofits and $14B+ in giving show where you stand on the metrics that decide the year — retention, reactivation, growth. So a dip reads clearly as your program or the sector — and a win is one you can prove to the board against real peers, not just assert. How do benchmarks work? → Mid-level 2nd-year retention 54% 40% 55% 70% You · 54% Benchmark · 61% Benchmarks · 1,000+ nonprofits, $14B+ in giving ### And a team who knows the work — in your corner. Every plan includes LockStep — experienced people fluent in nonprofit fundraising, from strategy to data to the technical. They help you read what Avid surfaces and decide what to do. You’re never running it alone. What does LockStep actually do? → ![Your dedicated LockStep team, working together.](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/lockstep-team.jpg) ## Decide from one source of truth. See what Avid would carry for your team — and where your hours go once it does. [Get a Demo](/demo/) More seats [Fundraising Leaders](/who-its-for/fundraising-leaders/) [Marketing & Communications](/who-its-for/marketing-and-communications/) [Operations & Data](/who-its-for/operations-and-data/) [Overview](/who-its-for/) --- ### [Webinar | Preserving Humanity in AI-Powered Fundraising](https://avidai.com/preserving-humanity-in-ai-powered-fundraising-webinar/) **Published:** June 23, 2026 **Author:** Nathan Hill **Content:** ![Avid](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Avid-Logo-Dark-300x140.webp) ### RSVP for the Live Discussion # Preserving Humanity in AI-Powered Fundraising *A Live Discussion with Nathan Chappell and Kevin Peters* Fundraising is fundamentally human. And the humans running fundraising programs are worn out. Campaigns grow more complex. Expectations of personalization continue to rise. Growth comes from closing the gap between insight and action—requiring **more time, capacity, and complexity than ever before.** The only way to get ahead of the work is with an AI-enabled fundraising team. But there is **a right way and wrong way to use AI in fundraising.** A way that empowers relationships. And a way that trades the human for short-term wins. In this live conversation, Nathan Chappell and Kevin Peters will discuss the current state of AI in fundraising, exploring how AI is **growing the capacity of fundraising teams** to raise more—and how these teams **keep humanity at the center** of their program. RSVP for the live discussion to see how you can equip your team to **finally get ahead of the work**—in a way that keeps humanity at the core. [ RSVP for the Live Discussion ](#rsvp) #### Additional Details 🗓️ **Date:** July 23, 2026 🕛 **Time:** Noon Central Time ##### Featured Speakers ![Smiling older man with glasses and gray beard in a plaid blazer speaks on stage, gesturing with a tablet in his hand.](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Nathan-Chappell.jpeg)### Nathan Chappell Chief AI Officer @ Virtuous ![Kevin Peters, CTO at Avid](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/kevin-peters-avid.webp)### Kevin Peters Founder & CTO @ Avid ![Erik Tomalis, CRO at Avid](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Erik-Tomalis-Avid.webp)### Erik Tomalis | Host Chief Community Officer @ Avid ### RSVP for the Live Discussion RSVP for the free webinar using the form below. Everyone who RSVPs will receive a recording after the discussion ends. ![Hero banner with gradient background and a large white left panel showing the Avid logo and Live badge; right side features speaker cards for Nathan Chappell and Kevin Peters on rounded white panels.](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Preserving-Humanity-in-AI-Powered-Fundraising-July-Webinar-Image-1024x576.png) © 2026 [Avid Software](https://avidai.com). All Rights Reserved. --- ### [Launch Lab | Get a Ready-to-Launch Campaign | Avid](https://avidai.com/reserve-a-launch-lab/) **Published:** July 13, 2026 **Author:** Nathan Hill **Content:** ![Avid](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Avid-Logo-Dark-300x140.webp) ![Avid LaunchLabs Logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/LaunchLabs-Full-1024x199.png) ## Get a ready-to-launch campaign. ### Built in 30 minutes with Avid. Fundraising teams are overworked. And yet you’re asked to raise more. Meanwhile, the work it takes to get campaigns out the door keeps growing: 1. More **lists** to pull 2. More **segments** to build 3. More **tools** to coordinate 4. More **channels** to manage 5. More **reporting** on performance 6. More **analysis** of the learnings ![Playbooks dashboard showing a Donor Anniversary Upgrade Appeal project with touchpoints and email templates, plus overlaid documents](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/LaunchLabs_Hero-1024x749.png) ### The *Real* Problem Holding Back Fundraising Growth The problem holding you back from fundraising growth is not your strategy. It’s not your team. It’s not your skills. It’s usually not even your fundraising tools. **The real problem?** Your data is stuck in silos. Insights take too long to surface. Lists go stale by the time you import them. Campaigns are overwhelmingly complex. *Growth opportunities slip away because there aren’t enough hands to take action in time.* ### Avid Gives Your Team Capacity for Growth When your reserve your **free Launch Lab session**, you’ll see how Avid gives your team the extra capacity it needs for growth. After 30 minutes with an Avid expert, you’ll have a **customized, ready-to-launch campaign**—backed by tactics proven to work from over 8,000 fundraising experiments. [ Reserve Your Launch Lab Session » ](#launch) ![benchmarks icon](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/benchmarks.webp) 1. Get a Personalized Benchmark Assessment Use Avid Benchmarks to get a **personalized assessment of where to focus**, comparing your performance to real-time performance of your peers. [ Reserve Your Launch Lab Session » ](#launch) ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Rectangle-1024x1024.webp) 2. Build a Ready-to-Launch Campaign Use Avid Playbooks to build a **custom campaign strategy**—along with copy for every touchpoint and key audience segment. [ Reserve Your Launch Lab Session » ](#launch) ![Avid LaunchLabs Logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/LaunchLabs-Full-1024x199.png) ## Reserve Your Launch Lab Session Today Get a personalized fundraising assessment. A custom campaign strategy. Ready-to-launch copy for a multi-channel campaign. All this in 30 minutes using Avid when you reserve your Launch Lab session using the form below. ### Reserve YourLaunch Lab Session ### What Fundraisers Are Saying About Their LaunchLab Session “Utilizing Avid Playbooks to generate a truly multi-channel campaign **saved our team hours, if not days, worth of work**. It gave us new ways of communicating our value proposition, but in a refreshed and more effective way. This resulted in **higher conversion rates** and a more engaged audience.” ![Professional head-and-shoulders portrait of a smiling woman with shoulder-length brown hair in a black blazer, neutral background.](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Mary-Butler-Headshot.jpeg) Mary Butler Director of Annual Giving **Cook Children’s Health Foundation** What are the minimum requirement to participate in a Launch Lab? To participate in a Launch Lab, you must: 1. Raise at least **$1M in individual donations** annually. 2. Have **a CRM** including (but not limited to) Virtuous, Raiser’s Edge, Salesforce, Hubspot, DonorPerfect, etc. If you don’t meet these requirements, a Launch Lab is not a good fit for you right now. What organizations benefit most from Launch Labs? The nonprofits that get the most out of a Launch Lab usually: - Raise at least $3M annually from individual donors. - Invest $10k+ per month on donor acquisition advertising. - Have a fundraising team—not just a solo fundraiser. - Use multiple tools and channels in their fundraising tech stack—CRM, email, donation platform, advertising, etc. What will I receive after my Launch Lab? After your 30 minute Launch Lab session, you’ll walk away with: 1. A **customized campaign strategy** to address a current opportunity or pain point in your fundraising. 2. **Ready-to-launch copy** for every channel & segment in your campaign. 3. Free, **lifetime access to Avid+Wiland benchmarks** to stay up-to-date on how your performance compares to your peers in real time. --- ### [Who it's for](https://avidai.com/who-its-for/) **Published:** March 25, 2026 **Author:** Stephen Boudreau **Content:** Who it’s for # For the people responsible for moving fundraising forward. You can see what needs to happen. Getting it out the door means piecing everything back together — every time. That’s not a you problem; it’s a structure problem. Avid takes the work that isn’t the relationship off your plate, so the work only you can do stops being the part that loses. ![A fundraiser leans in across a small table, listening to a donor mid-conversation in a bright, sunlit community hall.](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/fundraiser-donor.jpg) [ ## Fundraising Leaders You know the next move. Getting ready to make it eats the time you’d spend making it. See your role](/who-its-for/fundraising-leaders/) [ ## Marketing & Communications The ideas are ready. The mechanics eat the calendar before the work ships. See your role](/who-its-for/marketing-and-communications/) [ ## Executive Leadership You own the outcome — but you’re stuck verifying the picture instead of leading from it. See your role](/who-its-for/executive-leaders/) [ ## Operations & Data You keep it all running. The upkeep crowds out the work you were hired for. See your role](/who-its-for/operations-and-data/) ## Avid is built for the whole team. Not a different product for each role. The same system, seen from where you sit. [Get a guided tour →](/demo/) --- ### [Fundraising is Human Work | eBook Download](https://avidai.com/fundraising-is-human-work-ebook/) **Published:** July 2, 2026 **Author:** Nathan Hill **Content:** ![Avid](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Avid-Logo-Dark-300x140.webp) ### Get the free resource # Fundraising is Human Work ### How to Scale with AI While Keeping Humans at the Center Fundraising has always been human work. But the humans are out of hours. As fundraising has become increasingly complex—more data, tools, channels, more segmentation, analysis—less and less time is spent on relationships. **The result?** Missed opportunities. Burnt out teams. In this guide, you’ll discover: - Why fundraising teams are facing such a major capacity challenge today. - A framework for what to hand off to AI, and what to keep on your plate. - How to evaluate AI tools to fit a human-first fundraising approach. ![Avid logo in the top left with a large headline 'Fundraising is Human Work' and a subtitle about scaling with AI, on a white background.](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Fundraising-is-Human-Work-ebook-Image-791x1024.png) ### Get your free guide See how you can **scale AI within your fundraising program**, your team, and your organization—while keeping **humans at the center**. Get the guide by filling out the form below. ![Avid logo in the top left with a large headline 'Fundraising is Human Work' and a subtitle about scaling with AI, on a white background.](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Fundraising-is-Human-Work-ebook-Image-791x1024.png) © 2026 [Avid Software](https://avidai.com). All Rights Reserved. --- ### [Webinar | FOS4 First Look](https://avidai.com/fos4-first-look-webinar/) **Published:** June 19, 2026 **Author:** Nathan Hill **Content:** ![Avid](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Avid-Logo-Dark-300x140.webp) ![FOSS4 logo: rounded square icon with colorful circuit lines and the text 'FOSS4' to the right.](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/FOS4-Full-1024x323.png) ### RSVP for the Live Discussion # How to Finally Get Ahead of the Work **Get a first look at FOS4 to see how your team can finally get ahead of the fundraising work.** The biggest challenge that fundraising teams face has nothing to do with strategy. Or data. Or tools. Most fundraising teams have **more strategy ideas** than they could ever execute. **More data** than they know what do with. And **more tools** then they can manage. **The real challenge to growth?** *Capacity.* There’s more work to be done than you have hands for. As a result, growth opportunities slip away before you can take action. In this live discussion with Kevin Peters—founder of Avid—you’ll explore: - How capacity is holding teams back from growth. - What fundraising results can look like when you have capacity. - How Avid’s new FOS4 release finally help teams get ahead. [ RSVP for the Live Discussion ](#rsvp) #### Additional Details 🗓️ **Date:** June 24, 2026 🕛 **Time:** Noon Central Time ##### Featuring ![Kevin Peters, CTO at Avid](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/kevin-peters-avid.webp)### Kevin Peters Founder & CTO @ Avid ![Speaker with dark hair in a gray T-shirt on stage, wearing a lapel mic and gesturing with a small object in hand](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/NH-Speaker-Headshot.jpg)### Nathan Hill VP of Marketing @ Avid ### RSVP for the Live Discussion RSVP for the free webinar using the form below. Everyone who RSVPs will receive a recording after the discussion ends. ![Gradient background with three white rounded panels: top panel shows the Avid Live logo; bottom left panel reads 'Fundraising Operating System 4: Live Preview'; bottom right panel displays the FOS4 logo.](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/FOS4-First-Look-Image-1024x576.jpg) © 2026 [Avid Software](https://avidai.com). All Rights Reserved. --- ### [Avid + Virtuous - Get the Guide | Avid](https://avidai.com/avid-virtuous-guide/) **Published:** June 4, 2026 **Author:** Nathan Hill **Content:** ![Avid](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Avid-Logo-Dark-300x140.webp) ### Get the Guide # Avid + Virtuous Virtuous is one of the best nonprofit CRMs available—but **it won’t solve your biggest fundraising challenge.** Virtuous does what it does best—storing and organizing your critical donor data. But **your CRM has never been the main problem** holding back your growth. **The problem is capacity.** *You don’t have enough hands for all the work.* In this guide, you’ll see why fundraising teams using Avid alongside Virtuous to give them the infrastructure for growing generosity including: - **Advanced Segmentation** without complex queries - **Donor intelligence** without custom BI reports - **Continuous audience sync** without manual exports - **Custom, proven campaigns**—built in minutes. [ Get the Avid + Virtuous Guide ](#rsvp) ![Avid + Virtuous Guide image](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Screenshot-2026-06-04-at-8.16.36-AM-792x1024.png) ### Get the Avid + Virtuous Guide See why fundraising teams use Avid + Virtuous to give them the infrastructure for growth by getting the free guide using the form below. ![Avid + Virtuous Guide image](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Screenshot-2026-06-04-at-8.16.36-AM-792x1024.png) © 2026 [Avid Software](https://avidai.com). All Rights Reserved. --- ### [Webinar Feedback | Avid](https://avidai.com/webinar-feedback/) **Published:** May 28, 2026 **Author:** Nathan Hill **Content:** ![Avid](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Avid-Logo-Dark-300x140.webp) # Thanks for joining the webinar! I’m so grateful for your time today. And I’m hoping the webinar was helpful and valuable for you. If you could spare another 60-seconds, I’d really appreciate your feedback so we can make these webinars even better for you going forward. **Will you complete this 3 question survey before you go?** Thanks for the help. – Nathan ### Share Your Feedback on the Webinar Your feedback helps us make these webinars even better for you and for other fundraising teams in the future. Please share your thoughts with us below. [ ![Avid logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Avid.svg) ](https://avidai.com/?page_id=2664) The Fundraising Operating System - © 2026 Avid Group. All Rights Reserved. --- ### [Thank You - Reviewing Your Demo Request](https://avidai.com/reviewing-demo-request/) **Published:** November 24, 2025 **Author:** Nathan Hill **Content:** # Thanks! Here's what happens next. Avid works best for some teams and isn’t the right fit for others. Before we book a call, someone on our team will look at what you shared and figure out the best next step for your situation. We’ll be in touch within one business day. In the meantime, here’s a 12-minute walkthrough of how Avid actually runs. You’ll see what an operating system for fundraising looks like, how it connects to your existing tools, and what changes when the work stops resetting between campaigns. --- ### [Thank You - Schedule Nonprofit Demo](https://avidai.com/schedule-nonprofit-demo/) **Published:** June 24, 2025 **Author:** Avid Team **Content:** # Pick a time that works. Grab any 30-minute slot below. Once you book, you’ll get a calendar invite with a video link and a short note from the person you’ll be meeting with. **Need to talk to your team first?** Book the time anyway, you can reschedule from the invite. --- ### [Avid: The First Fundraising Operating System](https://avidai.com/home-2-2/) **Published:** July 3, 2024 **Author:** Stephen Boudreau **Content:** # The Fundraising Operating System ## Strategy and execution, ready when you are. Avid is the Fundraising Operating System that unites insights, audiences, and strategy—turning donor data into campaigns fundraisers can launch in minutes. Power your entire fundraising system. Turn data into ready-to-launch campaigns. Raise more, without adding more work. [ Build Your Next Campaign ](https://avidai.com/build-my-campaign/) [ Watch the Demo ](https://avidai.com/access-demo/) ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Startup-Hero-BG-2.webp) ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Startup-Hero-BG-2.webp) ## What is a Fundraising Operating System? **Avid isn’t just another fundraising tool or dashboard—it’s the first AI-powered Fundraising Operating System.** Avid doesn’t replace your CRM, email platform, or donation tools—it makes them work together. It turns scattered data and manual effort into clear priorities, automated campaigns, and measurable results. Fundraisers use Avid to: - Surface their highest-priority opportunities - Launch campaigns in minutes, not weeks - Personalize outreach without extra work - Track performance with clarity—not spreadsheets The result? Faster launches, clearer priorities, and fewer barriers between strategy and execution. [ Build Your Next Campaign ](https://avidai.com/build-my-campaign/) [ Watch the Demo ](https://avidai.com/access-demo/) ## From stack to system. ![Connect Your Tools](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Aggregate.svg) ### Connect Your Tools Avid integrates your CRM, email, ad platforms, and donation tools—turning disconnected tools into one unified fundraising system. ![See Your Opportunities](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Identify0A.svg) ### See Your Opportunities Avid surfaces your top fundraising priorities every day—so you know exactly where to focus, and why it matters. ![Automate Your Campaigns](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Deploy.svg) ### Automate Your Campaigns Avid builds segments, personalizes content, and launches campaigns—automatically, across every channel. ## Built on Impact Architecture. Most tools stop at data. Avid doesn’t—because it’s built on something deeper. Impact Architecture connects your tools, surfaces what matters, and turns strategy into action. It’s not a feature. It’s the engine behind it all. [ Build Your Next Campaign ](https://avidai.com/build-my-campaign/) [ Watch the Demo ](https://avidai.com/access-demo/) ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/iA-Glow@300-1024x1024.png) ## What you get with Avid. Everything you need to turn your donor data into action—automatically. #### Daily Priorities Know exactly where to focus, every single day. #### Automated Campaigns Playbooks that build, segment, and launch for you. #### Smart Segments Donor lists that update automatically based on behavior. #### Automatic Sync Avid keeps your data fresh—without extra work from your team. #### Performance Insights See what’s working and what needs work—no digging required. #### AI-Generated Messaging Email, ad, and landing page copy, tailored to your donors. ##### Customer Stories ## Fundraisers are already running on Avid. From small teams to national campaigns, fundraisers are using Avid to launch faster, focus better, and raise more—without burning out. [ More Customer Stories ](https://avidai.com/customer-stories/) ##### The Results ## Raise more, waste less. Teams using Avid raise more money, save hours of manual work, and reduce costs—without the guesswork. [ Build Your Next Campaign ](https://avidai.com/build-my-campaign/) ##### Frequently Asked Questions ## Still have questions? You’re not the only one rethinking how fundraising should work. Explore common questions—or reach out and we’ll walk you through it. [ Contact Us ](https://avidai.com/contact/) ##### What is Avid? **Avid is the first AI-powered Fundraising Operating System.** It connects your CRM, email, donation tools, and ads—then turns donor data into daily priorities, ready-to-launch campaigns, and real-time results. No more juggling tools. Just faster launches, clearer priorities, and fewer barriers between strategy and execution. ##### What problems does Avid solve? **Fundraisers don’t need more tools. They need results.** Avid is built to solve the five biggest blockers to effective fundraising today: - Scattered data with no clear next steps - Tools that don’t talk to each other - Campaigns that take too long to launch - Small teams with limited capacity - Outreach that feels generic and fails to connect Avid turns all of that into a system that helps fundraisers move faster, personalize smarter, and execute with less effort. ##### How is Avid different from a CRM, BI tool, or fundraising platform? **CRMs store donor data. BI tools show what happened. Avid tells you what to do next—and helps you launch it.** Unlike traditional tools, Avid connects your existing stack, identifies your best opportunities, and automates campaign setup and delivery. It’s not just insight. It’s execution. ##### Do I need to replace my current tools? **No. Avid isn’t a replacement—it’s the system that connects everything you already use.** Your CRM, email platform, donation tools, and ad channels stay in place. Avid brings them together so you can actually act on the data you’ve been collecting. Workflows stay familiar. Results get faster. ##### How does Avid stay in sync with my data and tools? **Avid keeps everything connected in real time—no exports, no delays.** It syncs your donor segments across your CRM, email tools, and ad platforms automatically. Whether you’re launching a campaign or reviewing results, you’re always working with the most up-to-date data. No more stale lists or spreadsheet exports. Just clean, connected fundraising. ##### What kinds of campaigns does Avid create? **Avid includes pre-built Playbooks for the campaigns you run every day—and the ones you haven’t had time to try.** From reactivation and recurring upgrades to new donor welcomes and acquisition, Avid builds multichannel campaigns across email, ads, landing pages, and donation forms. All from one place. All ready to launch. ##### What kinds of insights does Avid provide? **Avid delivers live performance dashboards, predictive insights, and clear direction on what to do next.** See campaign performance, donor engagement trends, and AI-backed recommendations—all in real time. You don’t just get reports. You get results. ##### Can I control how campaigns are launched? **Yes. Avid gives you full visibility and control—set it to run automatically, or review and approve every step.** Whether you want fully automated execution or hands-on review, Avid adapts to your team’s preferences. Automate what you want. Customize what you need. You stay in control. ##### Who is Avid for? **Avid is built for hands-on fundraisers.** Whether you’re leading development at a nonprofit, managing campaigns across clients, or juggling strategy and execution on a small team—Avid helps you do more, faster. If you’re responsible for launching campaigns, managing donor engagement, and driving revenue, Avid was built for you. If you’re the one doing the work, this is the system that works for you. ##### Is Avid a fit for small teams or orgs without a dedicated marketing staff? **Yes. Avid is built to multiply your capacity, not increase your workload.** Whether you’re a one-person development shop or a small team managing every channel, Avid helps you move faster, launch smarter, and stay focused on what matters. You don’t need a big team to launch great campaigns. You just need a better system. ##### Can Avid support consultants and agencies? **Yes—Avid helps agencies and consultants scale execution across multiple clients without adding overhead.** Automate reporting, launch campaigns faster, and keep every client’s donor data synced—without jumping between platforms or building everything manually. Less time managing tools. More time delivering results. --- ### [Careers](https://avidai.com/careers/) **Published:** March 19, 2025 **Author:** Stephen Boudreau **Content:** Careers # Join the team. ### We're building the Fundraising Operating System. We could use your help. ## 01. The team behind the system. We’re practitioners who spent years watching good work get rebuilt every cycle—so we built the system that doesn’t make you start over. Before Avid was an operating system, it was a fundraising agency, a research lab, and a training institute. The people who started this company spent their careers running campaigns, selecting audiences, and learning what separated programs that compounded from programs that reset. We weren’t watching the problem from the outside. We were inside it. And we kept asking the same question: what if the work didn’t have to keep starting over? That question became Avid—the Fundraising Operating System. The layer that runs across the tools fundraising teams already use, so the work carries forward instead of resetting every cycle. We’re not a tech company that picked nonprofits as a market. We’re practitioners building the system we always wished existed—for the teams we used to be. ## 02. How we work. We care more about outcomes than output, and we think good systems make good work possible—for our customers and for ourselves. The way we run the company is the way we’d want our customers to run their programs. **Hybrid by design.** Most of the team is in Dallas and in-office a few days a week. Some of us are fully remote. It works because we trust each other and we don’t confuse motion with progress. **Close to the work.** Small team, real ownership, no layers between you and what you’re building. You’ll have room to lead, space to build, and the chance to shape something that actually matters. **Clarity over cleverness.** We’d rather be obvious than impressive. Systems over chaos. Doing the work over talking about the work. **Built for what compounds.** Outcomes over hours. Durable work over heroic effort. We measure ourselves by what’s still working a year from now—not by who’s online the longest. ## 03. Openings We’re always looking for people who recognize the problem we’re solving—either because they’ve lived it, or because they want to build for the people who do. If a role below fits, apply. If nothing fits but you’re curious anyway, [reach out](https://avidai.com/contact/ "Contact Avid"). The best people we’ve hired didn’t always come through the front door. --- ### [Contact Avid](https://avidai.com/contact/) **Published:** March 4, 2025 **Author:** Stephen Boudreau **Content:** ### Get in touch. For sales conversations, [schedule a guided tour](https://avidai.com/demo/). For everything else—questions, ideas, partnerships, press—drop a note using the form on this page. **Planning a Visit?** You can find the Avid office at 5830 Granite Pkwy STE 100, Plano, TX 75024. **Prefer to Talk?** Give us a call at (833) 977-2843, and we’ll get back to you as soon as possible. **Already an Avid customer?** Your LockStep team is the fastest path to answers. For general support, start with our [knowledge base](https://help.avidai.com/) or email . --- ### [Thank You - Campaign Creation Session Application](https://avidai.com/campaign-creation-session-application/) **Published:** April 24, 2026 **Author:** Stephen Boudreau **Content:** # Thank You for applying **We’ve received your Campaign Creation Session application and our team will review it shortly.** If your organization is a good fit, one of our fundraising experts will reach out soon to schedule your session and start building your custom campaign plan. In the meantime, you can explore a practical guide on turning year-end momentum into long-term support in our **How to Convert Year-End Supporters Into Monthly Donors** playbook—packed with proven strategies for converting one-time givers into sustainable monthly donors. [**\[Download the Guide\]**](https://avidai.com/how-to-convert-year-end-supporters-into-monthly-donors/) --- ### [Blog](https://avidai.com/blog/) **Published:** March 2, 2025 **Author:** Stephen Boudreau **Content:** # Avid Blog ## Inside the System. AI & Automation Customer Stories Fundraising Benchmarks Fundraising Strategy News Nonprofit Consulting Nonprofit Marketing Product Updates All ![A 103% Increase in Donations Using Avid's Propensity Models - Featured Image](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/A-103-Increasein-Donations-Using-Avids-Propensity-Models-.png) #### [Treasure Coast Food Bank Increases Donor Conversion by 103% Using Avid’s Propensity Model](https://avidai.com/blog/treasure-coast-food-bank-increases-donor-conversion-by-103-using-avids-propensity-model/) See how Treasure Coast Food Banks increased donations by 103% using Avid's propensity models. - Customer Stories ![Hero banner showing Avid Live branding and the headline 'Your Year-End Fundraising Plan' with subheading text on the left; on the right, two speaker cards titled 'Featuring Karina Rodriguez' and 'Featuring Nathan Hill' with headshots.](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Your-Year-End-Fundraising-Plan-Webinar-Thumbnail.png) #### [Your Year-End Fundraising Plan | Webinar Recap](https://avidai.com/blog/your-year-end-fundraising-plan-webinar-recap/) Revenue is up. Individual gifts are larger. But fewer people are giving every year. See how you can reverse the trend this year-end. - Fundraising Benchmarks, Fundraising Strategy ![Hero banner with gradient background and a large white left panel showing the Avid logo and Live badge; right side features speaker cards for Nathan Chappell and Kevin Peters on rounded white panels.](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Preserving-Humanity-in-AI-Powered-Fundraising-July-Webinar-Image.png) #### [Preserving Humanity in AI-Powered Fundraising: Key Insights from Nonprofit Tech Leaders](https://avidai.com/blog/preserving-humanity-in-ai-powered-fundraising-key-insights-from-nonprofit-tech-leaders/) - AI & Automation ![Avid logo in the upper left with a bold headline reading 'Nonprofit Fundraising Software: A Complete Guide to Every Category' and overlapping UI mockups on the right side showing software screens.](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Nonprofit-Fundraising-Software-featured-image.png) #### [Nonprofit Fundraising Software: A Complete Guide to Every Category (And the Agent That Makes Them Work Together)](https://avidai.com/blog/nonprofit-fundraising-software-a-complete-guide-to-every-category-and-the-agent-that-makes-them-work-together/) There are too many nonprofit fundraising software tools to count. This guide breaks down the most popular tools—and shows you how Avid brings them all together. - AI & Automation ![Left branding with Avid logo and 'FOS4 is Here — and it runs on your needs, not the calendar' on the right-side dashboard collage image](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/FOS4-Is-Here-Featured-Image.png) #### [FOS 4 is here — and it runs on need, not the calendar](https://avidai.com/blog/fos-4-is-here-and-it-runs-on-need-not-the-calendar/) FOS4 helps fundraising teams finally get ahead of the work—running off your needs, not a fixed calendar. See how FOS4 makes Avid your new fundraising agent. - Product Updates ![A marketing hero showing the Avid logo with the headline 'How Lifesavers Saw a 130% Revenue Increase Through Smarter Segmentation' and device mockups on the right.](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/How-Lifesavers-Saw-a-130-Revenue-Increase-Through-Smarter-Segmentation-Featured-Image.png) #### [How Lifesavers Saw a 130% Revenue Increase Through Smarter Segmentation](https://avidai.com/blog/how-lifesavers-saw-a-130-revenue-increase-through-smarter-segmentation/) Lifesavers sent one appeal per month—with no segmentation. When they used Avid to power personalized appeals—they saw a 130% increase in revenue. - AI & Automation, Customer Stories ![Higher Education Fundraising Benchmarks in 2026](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Untitled-May-20-2026-at-10.09.57-1-1.png) #### [Higher Education Fundraising Benchmarks 2026: What the Numbers are Really Saying](https://avidai.com/blog/higher-education-fundraising-benchmarks-2026-what-the-numbers-are-really-saying/) Higher education fundraising revenue has grown 22% over four years—but there are deeper challenges to long-term growth. See the latest from the Avid+Wiland benchmarks. - Fundraising Benchmarks ![Avid logo with the headline 'Executive Team Updates' and two portrait cards: Parrish Snyder, Chief Revenue Officer; Erik Tomalis, Chief Community Officer on a light background.](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/PressRelease_Parrish-Erik_BlogCover.png) #### [Parrish Snyder joins Avid as CRO. Erik Tomalis named Chief Community Officer.](https://avidai.com/blog/parrish-snyder-cro-erik-tomalis-chief-community-officer/) Parrish Snyder joins Avid as CRO and Erik Tomalis is named Chief Community Officer. Two leadership moves that signal where Avid is headed. - News ![Avid blog hero: Propensity modeling headline on the left, vertical app icons on the right, and a floating Pathways card.](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/PropensityModels-Blog.webp) #### [Propensity Modeling in Avid: See Which Donors are Likely to Give, Lapse, or Upgrade.](https://avidai.com/blog/april-product-updates-2026/) New in Avid: see which donors are likely to give, lapse, or upgrade — and act on it before the window closes with propensity modeling. - Product Updates ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/The-Latest-Fundraising-Benchmark-Insights-Featured-Image.webp) #### [The Latest Nonprofit Fundraising Benchmark Insights](https://avidai.com/blog/the-latest-nonprofit-fundraising-benchmark-insights-march-2026/) Avid + Wiland's nonprofit fundraising benchmark is built on real data from 1,000+ nonprofits. See the latest trends and opportunities. - Fundraising Benchmarks Load More --- ### [Avid Customer Stories](https://avidai.com/customer-stories/) **Published:** March 4, 2025 **Author:** Stephen Boudreau **Content:** # Customer Stories ## What momentum looks like. ![A 103% Increase in Donations Using Avid's Propensity Models - Featured Image](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/A-103-Increasein-Donations-Using-Avids-Propensity-Models-.png) #### [Treasure Coast Food Bank Increases Donor Conversion by 103% Using Avid’s Propensity Model](https://avidai.com/blog/treasure-coast-food-bank-increases-donor-conversion-by-103-using-avids-propensity-model/) See how Treasure Coast Food Banks increased donations by 103% using Avid's propensity models. - Customer Stories ![A marketing hero showing the Avid logo with the headline 'How Lifesavers Saw a 130% Revenue Increase Through Smarter Segmentation' and device mockups on the right.](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/How-Lifesavers-Saw-a-130-Revenue-Increase-Through-Smarter-Segmentation-Featured-Image.png) #### [How Lifesavers Saw a 130% Revenue Increase Through Smarter Segmentation](https://avidai.com/blog/how-lifesavers-saw-a-130-revenue-increase-through-smarter-segmentation/) Lifesavers sent one appeal per month—with no segmentation. When they used Avid to power personalized appeals—they saw a 130% increase in revenue. - AI & Automation, Customer Stories ![Featured Image for Fundraising Automation Increased Retention by 200%](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Avid-Blog-Graphics-5.webp) #### [Fundraising Automation Increased Retention by 200%](https://avidai.com/blog/fundraising-automation-increases-retention-by-200/) Fundraising automation is essential for growth. See how one nonprofit increased donor retention by 200% using a fundraising automation strategy. - AI & Automation, Customer Stories, Fundraising Strategy ![How KCBI Lifted Recurring Giving Retention by 19 Using Avid](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/How-KCBI-Lifted-Recurring-Giving-Retention-by-19-Using-Avid.webp) #### [How KCBI Lifted Recurring Donor Retention by 19% Using Avid](https://avidai.com/blog/how-kcbi-lifted-recurring-donor-retention-by-19-using-avid/) KCBI had a large base of recurring donors. Avid identified early warning signs of a retention issue—allowing them to develop a plan that increased retention by 19%. - Customer Stories ![Luther Seminary Increases Donor Reactivation by 308% Using Avid](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Avid-Blog-Graphics-1.webp) #### [Luther Seminary Increases Donor Reactivation by 308% Using Avid](https://avidai.com/blog/luther-seminary/) Discover how Luther Seminary used Avid to uncover hidden opportunities with their lapsed donors—and increase reactivation by 308%. - Customer Stories ![Bible League Canada Lowers Cost Per Donor by 20% with Avid](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Bible-League-Canada-Lowers-Cost-Per-Donor-by-20-with-Avid.webp) #### [Bible League Canada Lowers Cost Per Donor by 20% with Avid](https://avidai.com/blog/bible-league-canada/) Discover how Bible League Canada leveraged first-party data using Avid to optimize their Facebook ads, nurture new donors, and achieve growth. - Customer Stories ![Leading Nonprofit Achieves 12x Growth with Data-Driven Fundraising](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Leading-Nonprofit-Achieves-12x-Growth-with-Data-Driven-Fundraising.webp) #### [Leading Nonprofit Achieves 12x Growth with Data-Driven Fundraising](https://avidai.com/blog/leading-nonprofit-achieves-12x-growth-with-data-driven-fundraising/) Learn how a leading nonprofit used Avid to unify donor data, optimize ad targeting, and automate engagement—driving 12x growth in donor conversions. - Customer Stories --- ### [Benchmarks Sign Up Page](https://avidai.com/benchmarks-old/) **Published:** April 17, 2025 **Author:** Stephen Boudreau **Content:** # Live Benchmarks for Fundraisers ## Real-time insight, zero guesswork. See how your retention, acquisition, and reactivation rates stack up—based on live CRM data, not stale survey reports. Avid Benchmarks shows you where you stand, so you know exactly where to focus next. [ Get Instant Access ](https://app.avidai.com/register) Free forever. No credit card. Just clarity. ![Fundraising Intelligence](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Fundraising-Intelligence.webp) ## Live, real-time data Not last year’s report—this month’s actual performance. ## Benchmarks that adapt Continuously updated, reflecting latest sector performance. ## No surveys or self-reporting Clean CRM data, anonymized for privacy, accurate by design. ## Free forever No credit card. No time limits. No catch. ##### Start Comparing in Real Time. ## Out with the old, in with the instant. Most fundraising benchmark reports are outdated. They read like an internet safety video from 1998—maybe a few decent insights, but mostly out of touch. **Avid Benchmarks are different.** Think stock ticker, not yearbook. Live data. Real-time comparisons. Clear direction on what to do next. [ Get Instant Access ](https://app.avidai.com/register) Free forever. No credit card. Just clarity. ### Traditional Benchmarks - #### Based on data that’s 6–18 months old - #### Self-reported and often inconsistent - #### Focus on surface-level metrics - #### Lack context and real-time relevance ### Avid Benchmarks - #### Updated daily with anonymized CRM data - #### Pulled directly from trusted sources - #### Deeper insights into what’s working and why - #### Reflect current trends for smarter decisions [ Get Instant Access ](https://app.avidai.com/register) Free forever. No credit card. Just clarity. ## Live Data, Smart Filters, Instant Clarity. Avid Benchmarks are free—forever. Just create an account to access live, filterable data on the metrics that matter most. [ Get Instant Access ](https://app.avidai.com/register) Free forever. No credit card. Just clarity. ![Essential Metrics](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/icon-precision.webp) ### Essential Metrics Track real-time performance on fundraising revenue, donor acquisition, retention, and giving behavior. - #### Fundraising Revenue - #### Donor Acquisition & Retention - #### One-Time vs. Recurring Giving - #### Donor Lifecycles & Giving Levels ![Go Deeper by Segment](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/icon-sync.webp) ### Go Deeper by Segment Understand how key donor groups are performing. - #### Broad-Based, Mid-Level, and Major Donors - #### New, Second-Year, Multiyear, Lapsed, and Reactivated - #### Contactability by Email, Phone, and Direct Mail ![Smart Filters for Relevance](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/icon-benchmarks.webp) ### Smart Filters for Relevance Slice benchmarks to match your org’s profile. - #### Filter by Organization Type - #### Filter by Revenue Size ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Startup-Hero-BG-2.webp) ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Startup-Hero-BG-2.webp) ##### Avid Benchmarks. Free for Life. ## Access Your Live Benchmarks Instantly Stop wondering how you’re doing. Avid Benchmarks give you real-time answers—powered by live CRM data, not outdated surveys. It’s fast, free, and built to help. [ Get Instant Access ](https://app.avidai.com/register) Free forever. No credit card. Just clarity. ##### Avid is Trusted By Organizations Including: --- ### [Thank You - Campaign Creation Session Application](https://avidai.com/year-end-launch-lab-application/) **Published:** October 20, 2025 **Author:** Avid Team **Content:** # Thank You for applying **We’ve received your Campaign Creation Session application and our team will review it shortly.** If your organization is a good fit, one of our fundraising experts will reach out soon to schedule your session and start building your custom campaign plan. In the meantime, you can explore a practical guide on turning year-end momentum into long-term support in our **How to Convert Year-End Supporters Into Monthly Donors** playbook—packed with proven strategies for converting one-time givers into sustainable monthly donors. [**\[Download the Guide\]**](https://avidai.com/how-to-convert-year-end-supporters-into-monthly-donors/) --- ### [Thank You - Schedule Your Campaign Creation Session](https://avidai.com/schedule-year-end-launch-lab/) **Published:** October 17, 2025 **Author:** Avid Team **Content:** # Schedule Your Campaign Creation Session **Choose a time below to meet with an Avid fundraising expert:** In this 30-minute campaign creation session, we’ll use Avid’s Playbooks and fundraising data from 8,000+ experiments to build your ready to launch fundraising campaign. --- ### [Your Year-End Launch Lab Is Scheduled](https://avidai.com/launch-lab-confirmation/) **Published:** November 5, 2025 **Author:** Avid Team **Content:** # Your Year-End Launch Lab Is Booked! Thanks for scheduling! Watch this short video to see what we’ll cover in your Launch Lab—and how to make sure you walk away with your best year-end campaign yet. If you’d like to see how Avid works before your session, you can also click below to watch a quick demo. [ Watch the Demo ](https://avidai.com/access-demo/) --- ### [AI-Powered Playbooks](https://avidai.com/ai-powered-playbooks/) **Published:** February 27, 2025 **Author:** Stephen Boudreau **Content:** # AI-Powered Playbooks ## Campaigns that build themselves. Fundraising moves fast. Avid keeps you ahead. Playbooks turn proven strategies into ready-to-launch campaigns—customized to your donors and built for action. Built-in strategy. Done-for-you execution. [ Build Your Next Campaign ](https://avidai.com/build-my-campaign/) [ Watch the Demo ](https://avidai.com/access-demo/) ![AI-Powered Playbooks](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/AI-Powered-Playbooks-1.webp) ##### Benefits ## Fundraising, ready when you are. ![Proven Playbooks, Ready to Go](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Al.svg) ### Proven Playbooks, Ready to Go Reactivate lapsed donors, boost recurring gifts, and acquire new supporters—with strategies built from thousands of real-world fundraising experiments. ![The Right Words, The Right People](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/target-red-3.svg) ### The Right Words, The Right People Avid builds emails, ads, and landing pages based on what works—and delivers them to donors who are most likely to engage. ![Launch Smarter, No Waiting](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Deploy.svg) ### Launch Smarter, No Waiting No more approvals, briefs, or manual lists. Avid preps everything—so you can launch in minutes, not weeks. ##### Features ## How Avid builds your campaigns. ##### The Results ## Raise more, waste less. Teams using Avid raise more money, save hours of manual work, and reduce costs—without the guesswork. [ Build Your Next Campaign ](https://avidai.com/build-my-campaign/) ##### Frequently Asked Questions ## What makes Avid’s playbooks different? Want to see one in action? Let’s talk. [ Contact Us ](https://avidai.com/contact/) ##### What’s inside an Avid Playbook? Each Playbook includes donor segments, recommended messaging, timing strategies, and AI-generated assets—tested, optimized, and ready to go. ##### How does AI help? Avid’s AI generates subject lines, email copy, and ad content—based on real fundraising data—so every campaign starts strong and fast. ##### Do I still need to write my own messaging? Only if you want to. Avid gives you ready-to-use templates you can launch as-is or tweak to match your voice. ##### Does Avid really automate campaigns? Yes. Avid builds your segments, selects the right Playbook, and drafts your campaign—so you’re always ready to launch. ##### Who is Avid for? Avid is for fundraising teams and agencies ready to scale impact, reduce manual work, and spend more time building donor relationships. --- ### [Thank You - Schedule Strategy Session](https://avidai.com/schedule-strategy-session/) **Published:** September 24, 2025 **Author:** Avid Team **Content:** # Schedule Your Session **Choose a time below to meet with an Avid expert:** In this 30 minute session we’ll uncover where your tools slow you down and explore how Avid’s system helps you move faster. --- ### [The AI-Enabled Fundraising Team - Teams](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/teams/) **Published:** March 31, 2025 **Author:** Stephen Boudreau **Content:** [ The AI-Enabled Fundraising Team ](#elementor-action%3Aaction%3Doff_canvas%3Aopen%26settings%3DeyJpZCI6IjFiNzk0MzUiLCJkaXNwbGF5TW9kZSI6Im9wZW4ifQ%3D%3D) #### Contents Share Story Chapter 05 # Teams: AI-Powered Fundraising in Action ![Fundraising, Rebuilt: Team](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Teams-683x1024.webp) [ Download Guide as PDF ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/download/) ## The Role of the Fundraiser is Evolving For decades, fundraisers have been expected to be everything at once—strategists, relationship managers, data analysts, campaign managers, and operations experts. **But the reality? The system they work inside hasn’t evolved to support them.** Fundraisers are still spending hours manually pulling reports, segmenting lists, scheduling outreach, tweaking messaging for every campaign. Too much time managing tools. Not enough time building momentum. **AI doesn’t replace fundraisers. It finally gives them a system that amplifies their strengths—and clears out the noise.** ## What Changes with AI-Powered Teams With AI, fundraisers can stop playing whack-a-mole with their to-do list—and start leading with strategy. - Build deeper donor relationships - Craft stories that inspire action - Focus on growth, not just gaps - Operate at scale without sacrificing personalization In short: they stop reacting. And start driving outcomes. ### **The Shift to AI-Powered Fundraising Teams** AI isn’t about replacing people. It’s about replacing the grind. In other industries—sales, marketing, customer service—AI has already: - Predicted the right leads - Personalized experiences in real time - Automated low-value tasks so people can focus on what matters Now, fundraising teams are doing the same: - **AI scores donors automatically** so teams focus on the right relationships - **Outreach is personalized and sequenced** based on live engagement signals - **Insights are surfaced in real time**, not buried in dashboards **It’s not about working harder. It’s about finally working inside a system that does what it’s supposed to do.** ## What High-Performing AI-Powered Fundraising Teams Do Differently The most successful nonprofit fundraising teams aren’t working more hours—they’re working smarter with AI-powered insights. Here’s what **sets them apart**: ✅ **They know their donors better** - Data is unified. Profiles are dynamic. Insights are live. - Teams see who’s engaged, at risk, or ready to upgrade—instantly. ✅ **They move faster** - No more waiting on reports or scrambling to segment lists. - Campaigns launch in minutes, not weeks. ✅ **They personalize at scale** - Messaging adapts across every channel automatically. - Donors feel seen, heard, and valued—because they are. ✅ **They think long-term** - AI helps forecast lifetime value, not just this month’s revenue - Strategy shifts from survival mode to sustainable growth ✅ **They maximize ROI** - Budgets are optimized in real time - Every hour, every dollar, every campaign works harder ## The Future of Fundraising is AI-Powered Fundraising has always been about people, stories, and impact. That hasn’t changed. **What’s changing is the system fundraisers are working inside.** And the teams already moving forward? They’re not waiting for AI to show up. They’re using it—at scale, with clarity, and with systems that finally support the work. The only question left is: Are you ready to join them? Next [ 06 / Platform: How Avid Creates AI-Powered Fundraising Teams ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/platform/) Are your fundraising tools leaving gaps in your data? [ Take the Free Assessment » ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-tools-or-system-assessment/) ## Interactive Ebook ## [The AI-Enabled Fundraising Team](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/) [ Download Guide as PDF ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/download/) - [#### 01 / Introduction ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/introduction/) - [#### 02 / Data ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/data/) - [#### 03 / Strategy ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/strategy/) - [#### 04 / Execution ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/execution/) - [#### 05 / Teams ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/teams/) - [#### 06 / Platform ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/platform/) - [#### 07 / The Future ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/the-future/) - [#### 08 / The Fundraising Agency in the Cloud ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/solution/) --- ### [The AI-Enabled Fundraising Team - Strategy](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/strategy/) **Published:** March 30, 2025 **Author:** Stephen Boudreau **Content:** [ The AI-Enabled Fundraising Team ](#elementor-action%3Aaction%3Doff_canvas%3Aopen%26settings%3DeyJpZCI6IjFiNzk0MzUiLCJkaXNwbGF5TW9kZSI6Im9wZW4ifQ%3D%3D) #### Contents Share Story Chapter 03 # Strategy: Moving from Short-Term Thinking to Long-Term Growth ![Fundraising Rebuilt, Strategy](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Page-14-683x1024.webp) [ Download Guide as PDF ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/download/) ## The Fundraising Treadmill: Why Nonprofits Get Stuck in Reactive Cycles Imagine running on a treadmill. No matter how fast you move, you’re stuck in place. You hit the same milestones, push yourself harder each time, and yet—you’re never really ahead. That’s how fundraising feels when strategy is disconnected from execution. The plans are there. The effort is there. **But the system isn’t built to sustain momentum.** Fundraising isn’t broken, but it’s stuck. Instead of building a foundation for sustainable growth, organizations get trapped in a cycle of short-term wins: - **Big end-of-year pushes**—but months of silence afterward - **One-time donations**—but no follow-up to build long-term loyalty - **Acquisition-driven strategy**—but retention stays flat The result? A revolving door of donors. A team always catching up. A strategy that *knows where it wants to go*—**but has no system to get it there.** ## AI: The Key to Smarter, More Predictable Fundraising Now, imagine stepping off the treadmill—onto a mapped-out path. Every step is intentional. Every move leads forward. **That’s what AI brings to fundraising.** But AI alone isn’t the point. **The real shift is what happens when AI lives inside a system that connects insight with action—automatically.** With AI-powered fundraising: - You don’t just *forecast* revenue—you see the patterns that shape it - You don’t just *react* to churn—you prevent it - You don’t just *plan* engagement—you automate and optimize it in real time This isn’t about adding automation. **It’s about removing friction. Building momentum. Turning strategy into execution at scale.** ## Case Study: Bible League Canada’s Shift from Guesswork to Growth For years, Bible League Canada (BLC) faced the same challenges as many nonprofits: - **Donor data was fragmented** across platforms like Salesforce, MailChimp, and Facebook. - **Manual processes slowed teams down**—every campaign required time-consuming segmentation. - **Engagement was broad and generic** because their data wasn’t synced in real-time. They were stuck in reactive mode, constantly: - Pulling reports weeks after donor interactions had happened. - Guessing which donors to focus on. - Making gut decisions in the absence of live data. **Then they started using Avid’s AI-powered fundraising system.** ### **And everything changed.** - **Smarter Ad Targeting:** AI refined their Facebook ad audiences, lowering cost per donor by 20% and cost per name by 11.4%. - **Automated Segmentation:** AI-integrated donor data across platforms, enabling real-time, hyper-personalized outreach. - **Retention-Boosting Engagement:** AI triggered automated touchpoints to keep donors engaged beyond their first gift. **They didn’t just get better campaigns. They got a better system.** And the results proved it: more donors, better retention, more sustainable growth. ## Fundraising is Changing. Will Your Organization Keep Up? **The teams that succeed won’t be the ones working harder. They’ll be the ones working *within a system* that does the hard work for them.** AI helps organizations: - Focus on lifetime value, not just the next gift - Engage the right donors before they disappear - Invest in long-term sustainability—not last-minute campaigns **You don’t need a better plan. You need a better system to carry it forward.** Next [ 04 / Execution: Shifting from Under-Resourced to Focused & Efficient ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/execution/) Are your fundraising tools leaving gaps in your data? [ Take the Free Assessment » ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-tools-or-system-assessment/) ## Interactive Ebook ## [The AI-Enabled Fundraising Team](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/) [ Download Guide as PDF ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/download/) - [#### 01 / Introduction ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/introduction/) - [#### 02 / Data ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/data/) - [#### 03 / Strategy ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/strategy/) - [#### 04 / Execution ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/execution/) - [#### 05 / Teams ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/teams/) - [#### 06 / Platform ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/platform/) - [#### 07 / The Future ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/the-future/) - [#### 08 / The Fundraising Agency in the Cloud ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/solution/) --- ### [The AI-Enabled Fundraising Team - Solution](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/solution/) **Published:** March 31, 2025 **Author:** Stephen Boudreau **Content:** [ The AI-Enabled Fundraising Team ](#elementor-action%3Aaction%3Doff_canvas%3Aopen%26settings%3DeyJpZCI6IjFiNzk0MzUiLCJkaXNwbGF5TW9kZSI6Im9wZW4ifQ%3D%3D) #### Contents Share Story Chapter 08 # Solution: The First Fundraising Agency in the Cloud ![](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Solution-768x1024.webp) [ Download Guide as PDF ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/download/) ## The Future of Fundraising Won’t Wait—Will You? The future of fundraising isn’t coming. It’s already here. Donor expectations are rising. Budgets are tightening. Teams are being asked to do more—with less—and do it faster. And the response from most platforms? More dashboards. More exports. More disconnected tools. That’s not a system. That’s a trap. **Avid was built for a different future.** ## The Fundraising Agency in the Cloud What if, instead of hiring a strategist…a data analyst…a campaign team… You could log into one? That’s what Avid delivers: clarity of reporting, intelligence of strategy, power of execution. All in one system—built for fundraisers, not sales teams. Not another tool. Not another dashboard. A single, connected system that thinks, adapts, and acts—just like your best team would. **We call it the Fundraising Agency in the Cloud.** It performs like a top-tier agency. But it runs like software. ## Powered by Impact Architecture Everything Avid delivers—every insight, every automation, every outcome—is powered by the system beneath it: **Impact Architecture.** It connects your data, strategy, and execution into one intelligent flow. - It learns as it goes - It adapts in real time - It scales your strategy without adding headcount **It’s the foundation fundraising has always needed—and never had.** ## Welcome to the New Model This isn’t just smarter software. It’s a smarter system. - Built from the system up - Designed around how fundraisers *actually* work - Built to help teams scale performance without burning out Because fundraising isn’t broken. **It’s just been running on the wrong infrastructure.** Until now. ## Avid Is the System. The old way was tools. The new way is systems. Avid isn’t just a product. It’s a new operating model for fundraisers ready to stop guessing, start growing, and scale what works. **This is fundraising, rebuilt. Built for action. Powered by insight. Delivered in the cloud. Are you ready to run on it? Are your fundraising tools leaving gaps in your data? [ Take the Free Assessment » ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-tools-or-system-assessment/) ## Interactive Ebook ## [The AI-Enabled Fundraising Team](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/) [ Download Guide as PDF ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/download/) - [#### 01 / Introduction ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/introduction/) - [#### 02 / Data ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/data/) - [#### 03 / Strategy ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/strategy/) - [#### 04 / Execution ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/execution/) - [#### 05 / Teams ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/teams/) - [#### 06 / Platform ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/platform/) - [#### 07 / The Future ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/the-future/) - [#### 08 / The Fundraising Agency in the Cloud ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/solution/) --- ### [The AI-Enabled Fundraising Team - Execution](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/execution/) **Published:** March 31, 2025 **Author:** Stephen Boudreau **Content:** [ The AI-Enabled Fundraising Team ](#elementor-action%3Aaction%3Doff_canvas%3Aopen%26settings%3DeyJpZCI6IjFiNzk0MzUiLCJkaXNwbGF5TW9kZSI6Im9wZW4ifQ%3D%3D) #### Contents Share Story Chapter 04 # Execution: Shifting from Under-Resourced to Focused & Efficient ![Fundraising, Rebuilt: Execution](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Page-20-683x1024.webp) [ Download Guide as PDF ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/download/) ## The Cost of Manual Execution: The Fundraiser’s Balancing Act Fundraisers aren’t just fundraisers anymore. They’re data analysts. Campaign strategists. Copywriters. Project managers. And they’re doing it all inside a system that expects them to be everywhere at once—and still raise more. Every day, they’re juggling: - Manually pulling lists from disconnected systems - Segmenting donors using outdated criteria - A/B testing through trial and error - Launching campaigns with guesswork and grit The result? Teams that are **smart and skilled—but trapped inside broken workflows.** Instead of building relationships or scaling strategy, they’re bogged down in admin tasks and reactive pivots. **And here’s the painful truth:** Even with all that effort, money still gets left on the table. - High-value donors lapse unnoticed - Re-engagement campaigns go out too late - Acquisition dollars go to the wrong audience **This isn’t a people problem. It’s a systems problem.** ## AI: From Guesswork to Precision-Driven Execution Now, imagine a world where every action is optimized, automated, and perfectly timed. That’s not just what AI brings—**it’s what AI inside a unified system makes possible.** With AI-powered execution: - Segmentation happens automatically, in real time. No more lists. No more lag. Just instant clarity on who matters most. - Multi-channel campaigns run on autopilot—with AI personalizing outreach across email, ads, and more. - Donor fatigue disappears. AI ensures the right message goes to the right person at the right time—*and only when it matters.* **AI removes the busywork. The system handles the complexity. Your team gets to focus on what actually moves the mission forward.** ## Real-World AI Use Cases: How AI Supercharges Fundraising Execution ### 1. Major Donor Retention: Keeping High-Value Donors Engaged ***The Problem:*** A nonprofit was losing major donors at an alarming rate. Despite investing in personalized outreach, fundraisers struggled to identify which donors were at risk—until it was too late. ***The AI Solution:*** AI-powered engagement scoring monitored donor interactions in real-time, identifying major donors who were becoming less engaged. The system then: - **Triggered personalized outreach** from leadership at the right moment. - **Recommended tailored engagement activities** (events, calls, impact reports) based on donor history. - **Optimized follow-ups** to ensure consistent touchpoints. ***The Result:*** A 15% increase in major donor retention, saving the organization thousands in donor acquisition costs. ### 2. Lapsed Donor Reactivation: Turning One-Time Givers into Lifelong Supporters ***The Problem:*** Most nonprofits have a long list of lapsed donors—people who gave once and never returned. Traditional re-engagement campaigns used generic messaging, resulting in low response rates. ***The AI Solution:*** AI analyzed past giving patterns to determine why donors lapsed and identified those most likely to return. The system then: - **Created personalized re-engagement sequences** based on donor motivations. - **Tested different messaging approaches** (impact-driven, urgency-based, gratitude-focused) and optimized in real-time. - **Automated outreach across email, ads, and direct mail**, ensuring consistent touchpoints. ***The Result:*** A 20% increase in reactivated donors—with minimal manual effort from the fundraising team. ### 3. Acquisition Optimization: Spending Smarter, Not Harder ***The Problem:*** A nonprofit was spending heavily on digital acquisition, but their cost per donor was rising. They were targeting broad audiences, hoping the right people would convert. ***The AI Solution:*** AI-powered lookalike modeling used existing donor data to build hyper-targeted ad audiences, ensuring marketing dollars went only to the most likely supporters. The system then: - **Identified high-quality donor prospects** based on behavioral and demographic similarities to existing top donors. - **Continuously optimized ad campaigns**, reallocating budget in real-time for maximum efficiency. - **Eliminated wasteful spending** by suppressing ads to people unlikely to convert. ***The Result:*** A 32% decrease in donor acquisition costs—while maintaining or exceeding past donor conversion rates. ## From Reactive to Proactive: The AI-Powered Fundraising Team With AI handling the execution, fundraisers can: - Spend less time managing tools and more time engaging donors. - Stop chasing after lost donors and start retaining them proactively. - Move beyond one-size-fits-all outreach to hyper-personalized campaigns at scale. Execution is where strategy either breaks… or breaks through. And the teams getting it right aren’t working harder. **They’re finally working inside a system that works with them.** Next [ 05 / Teams: AI-Powered Fundraising in Action ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/teams/) Are your fundraising tools leaving gaps in your data? [ Take the Free Assessment » ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-tools-or-system-assessment/) ## Interactive Ebook ## [The AI-Enabled Fundraising Team](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/) [ Download Guide as PDF ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/download/) - [#### 01 / Introduction ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/introduction/) - [#### 02 / Data ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/data/) - [#### 03 / Strategy ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/strategy/) - [#### 04 / Execution ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/execution/) - [#### 05 / Teams ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/teams/) - [#### 06 / Platform ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/platform/) - [#### 07 / The Future ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/the-future/) - [#### 08 / The Fundraising Agency in the Cloud ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/solution/) --- ### [The AI-Enabled Fundraising Team - Data](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/data/) **Published:** March 31, 2025 **Author:** Stephen Boudreau **Content:** [ The AI-Enabled Fundraising Team ](#elementor-action%3Aaction%3Doff_canvas%3Aopen%26settings%3DeyJpZCI6IjFiNzk0MzUiLCJkaXNwbGF5TW9kZSI6Im9wZW4ifQ%3D%3D) #### Contents Share Story Chapter 02 # Data: Taking Your Systems from Chaos to Clarity ![Fundraising, Rebuilt: Data](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Data-683x1024.webp) [ Download Guide as PDF ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/download/) ## Fundraising Without Data Clarity Is Like Driving Blindfolded Imagine driving at night on a winding road. No headlights. No street signs. No GPS. You know you have a destination, but you have no clear path to get there. You’re forced to rely on instinct, trial and error, and sheer luck to avoid roadblocks. **That’s what fundraising looks like without unified, real-time data.** For many fundraising teams, donor data is scattered across disconnected systems—CRMs, email platforms, donation processors, and event management tools all hold critical insights, but they don’t talk to each other. Even when this patchwork of tools claims to integrate, the data that flows between them is often incomplete, delayed, or unreliable. The result? A constant stream of manual work, missed signals, and slow decisions. ## The Hidden Costs of Data Fragmentation Data inefficiencies don’t just slow teams down—they cost real money. When insight, strategy, and execution live in different systems, nothing moves at the speed donors expect. And it shows up everywhere: - **Missed donor opportunities:** High-value donors slip through the cracks because teams can’t see who’s engaged, who’s drifting, and who’s ready to give. - **Inefficient spending:** Marketing dollars are wasted on broad, unfocused campaigns instead of targeted, high-ROI segments. - **Slow decision-making:** By the time teams build reports and spot trends, donor behavior has already shifted. - **Inconsistent donor experiences:** Personalization falls apart when engagement data is siloed and lagging. For leadership, the downstream effects are hard to ignore: - **Higher donor acquisition costs.** - **Lower retention rates.** - **Declining fundraising ROI.** And as fundraising becomes more digital and more data-driven, **the gap between organizations with real-time visibility and those still waiting on exports is only getting wider.** ## The AI-Powered Fundraising Team: A Data-Driven Future Now, imagine a completely different scenario—one where fundraisers don’t waste hours pulling reports, struggling with outdated lists, or reacting too late. With an AI-Powered fundraising team: - All donor data—across every system and channel—is unified in real time. - Every engagement touchpoint (email clicks, donations, event attendance, volunteer hours) feeds into a dynamic donor profile. - Teams instantly see which campaigns are driving results and where adjustments are needed—without waiting weeks for reports. Instead of working around their systems, fundraisers operate inside a connected engine that turns insight into action—automatically. ### **Here’s what fundraisers can see—instantly:** - **Who is most likely to donate next,** based on past engagement patterns. - **Which donors are at risk of lapsing**—and exactly how to re-engage them before it’s too late. - **How today’s campaign will impact next quarter’s revenue**—not just tomorrow’s email open rates. Unified data is just the beginning. The real advantage comes from what your system can do with it. With AI, data clarity isn’t a luxury. **It’s the difference between keeping up and falling behind.** ## AI: The Missing Link to Smarter Fundraising For executive leaders, fundraising success isn’t just about one campaign or one report—it’s about building a smarter, more sustainable engine for growth. AI acts as the central nervous system of that engine—connecting every donor interaction, surfacing the insights that matter, and enabling faster, more confident decisions. With AI-powered data unification, organizations can: - **Eliminate guesswork**—by replacing reactive decisions with real-time intelligence - **Optimize budgets**—by focusing spend where it creates the most value - **Improve forecasting**—by seeing what’s coming, not just what’s already happened **But here’s the truth no tool will tell you: AI doesn’t solve your problems in isolation.** **It only works when it’s part of a system designed to act on it.** The future of fundraising isn’t about collecting more data—it’s about designing a system that turns that data into momentum. Next [ 03 / Strategy: Moving from Short-Term Thinking to Long-Term Growth ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/strategy/) Are your fundraising tools leaving gaps in your data? [ Take the Free Assessment » ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-tools-or-system-assessment/) ## Interactive Ebook ## [The AI-Enabled Fundraising Team](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/) [ Download Guide as PDF ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/download/) - [#### 01 / Introduction ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/introduction/) - [#### 02 / Data ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/data/) - [#### 03 / Strategy ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/strategy/) - [#### 04 / Execution ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/execution/) - [#### 05 / Teams ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/teams/) - [#### 06 / Platform ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/platform/) - [#### 07 / The Future ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/the-future/) - [#### 08 / The Fundraising Agency in the Cloud ](https://avidai.com/fundraising-rebuilt/solution/) --- ### [Thank You [Demo Submission]](https://avidai.com/thanks/) **Published:** March 29, 2025 **Author:** Stephen Boudreau **Content:** # Thank You ## Smarter Starts Here **Choose a time below to schedule your Avid demo.** We’ll walk through how the system works, answer your questions, and show exactly what Avid would look like in your stack. --- ## Custom Dashboard ### [Custom WP Dashboard](https://avidai.com/blog/uicore-cd/ui-cd-wp/) **Published:** January 29, 2026 **Author:** Stephen Boudreau --- ### [Custom TO Dashboard](https://avidai.com/blog/uicore-cd/ui-cd-to/) **Published:** January 29, 2026 **Author:** Stephen Boudreau --- ## Theme Builder ### [Avid Footer](https://avidai.com/?uicore-tb=mayo-footer) **Published:** June 28, 2023 **Author:** Stephen Boudreau **Content:** [ ![Avid logo](https://avidai.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Avid.svg) ](https://avidai.com/?page_id=2664) The Fundraising Operating System [ Linkedin ](https://www.linkedin.com/company/avidsoftware/) [ Youtube ](https://www.youtube.com/@Avid-Fundraising) [ Instagram ](https://www.instagram.com/avidsoftware/) ###### Product - [ How It Works ](https://avidai.com/how-it-works/) - [ Capabilities ](https://avidai.com/components/) - [ Who It's For ](https://avidai.com/who-its-for/) - [ Integrations ](https://avidai.com/integrations/) ###### Resources - [ Customer Stories ](https://avidai.com/customer-stories/) - [ Articles ](https://avidai.com/blog/) - [ Benchmarks ](https://app.avidai.com/register/wiland) - [ Webinars ](https://avidai.com/events/) - [ Knowledge Base ](https://help.avidai.com/) ###### Trust - [ Trust Center ](https://trust.avidai.com/) - [ System Status ](https://status.avidai.com/) - [ Privacy Policy ](https://app.avidai.com/privacy_policy) - [ Terms & Conditions ](https://app.avidai.com/terms_and_conditions) ###### Company - [ About Avid ](https://avidai.com/about/) - [ Pricing ](https://avidai.com/pricing/) - [ Contact Us ](https://avidai.com/contact/) - [ Careers ](https://avidai.com/careers/) - [ Book a Demo ](https://avidai.com/demo/) - © 2026 Avid Group. All Rights Reserved. --- ## Categories ### [Fundraising Strategy](https://avidai.com/blog/category/fundraising-strategy/) --- ### [Product Updates](https://avidai.com/blog/category/product-updates/) --- ### [AI & Automation](https://avidai.com/blog/category/ai-automation/) --- ### [Customer Stories](https://avidai.com/blog/category/customer-stories/) --- ### [Nonprofit Marketing](https://avidai.com/blog/category/nonprofit-marketing/) --- ### [Nonprofit Consulting](https://avidai.com/blog/category/nonprofit-consulting/) --- ### [News](https://avidai.com/blog/category/news/) --- ### [Fundraising Benchmarks](https://avidai.com/blog/category/fundraising-benchmarks/) --- ## Tags ### [Year End Giving](https://avidai.com/blog/tag/year-end-giving/) --- ### [DonorPerfect](https://avidai.com/blog/tag/donorperfect/) ---