Why Do Donors Stop Giving? What the Research Says

Every executive director has a mental list of donors who just stopped. The couple who gave every December for five years. The board member's neighbor who gave twice and vanished. You didn't have a falling out. Nobody complained. They simply stopped.

So why do donors stop giving? The short answer from the research: most donors stop because they don't know whether their past gifts accomplished anything, or because they feel asked too often, not because they stopped caring about your cause. Both are communication problems, which is good news. Communication is something a small organization can fix.

How many donors stop giving each year?

More than half, in a typical year. The Fundraising Effectiveness Project, which tracks giving data from more than 15,000 US nonprofits, found for 2025:

Donor type	Gave again the following year
New donors (first gift in 2024)	18.9%
Repeat donors	59.3%
Lapsed donors recaptured	3.0%

Read that bottom row twice. Once a donor has lapsed, only about 3 in 100 come back. That's why understanding the reasons matters more than any win-back tactic: the time to act is before someone leaves.

The table also shows who stops. First-time donors leave at a far higher rate than anyone else. If you want the full picture of what's normal, see what a good donor retention rate looks like.

What does the research say about why donors stop?

The most useful primary source here is Penelope Burk's donor-centered fundraising research at Cygnus Applied Research, which has surveyed donors about their behavior for years. Her published summary lists the reasons donors give for stopping. Two stand out for small nonprofits.

Reason 1: They don't know what their gift accomplished

Burk lists "not knowing whether the gifts they already made have accomplished something worthwhile" among the main reasons donors stop giving.

This is the big one. Think about what a typical donor experiences: a gift, a receipt, months of quiet, then an appeal. From their side, nothing connects the money to an outcome. A general newsletter doesn't fix this either, because "we served 400 families this year" isn't about their gift.

Burk's work also describes what donors want instead: a prompt thank-you, their gift tied to something specific, and a report in measurable terms on what was accomplished with the last gift before they're asked for another.

Reason 2: They're asked too often

Burk also names over-solicitation. Donors who feel every message is an ask start to tune out, and eventually leave.

The key word is feel. Contact frequency itself isn't the problem; Burk's summary puts it as "content, not calendar, dictates communications frequency." A donor who hears three progress updates and one ask feels very differently from one who hears four asks. We go into this in how often a nonprofit should contact its donors.

The first-gift problem

These two reasons hit first-time donors hardest. A repeat donor has some history to fall back on. A first-time donor has exactly one data point: what happened after their first gift. If that was silence followed by an ask, there's not much reason to give again.

Which popular donor attrition statistics should you be careful with?

If you search this topic you'll see confident numbers everywhere: "18% of donors leave because of poor service," "13% were never thanked," "donors thanked within 48 hours are four times more likely to give again." Some of these are attributed to well-known researchers.

We tried to trace them. We couldn't find a primary source that states those figures, in the papers they're attributed to or anywhere else we could access. They may come from older studies that aren't online, or they may have drifted in the retelling. Either way, we don't cite them, and we'd suggest you don't put them in a board deck without finding the original.

What is well supported: donors who don't hear about impact and who feel over-asked are more likely to leave; new donors leave at much higher rates than repeat donors; and lapsed donors rarely return.

Why does losing donors cost so much?

Because replacing them is expensive. Adrian Sargeant's research, published in Nonprofit Quarterly, found it typically costs two to three times a donor's first gift to recruit them, and that it can take 12 to 18 months before a new donor relationship becomes profitable.

So a donor who gives once and leaves usually cost you more than they gave. The same research found that a 10% improvement in attrition can yield up to a 200% increase in the projected value of a donor base. Keeping people is where the money is.

What can you do about each reason?

Match the fix to the cause.

Why donors stop	What to do
They don't know what their gift did	Send a short, specific progress note tied to their gift, with no ask, within a few weeks
They feel asked too often	Make most messages progress, not asks. Ask with substance, after progress
They were never really thanked	A personal thank-you within about 48 hours, separate from the receipt
Life changed and they drifted	Notice when they miss their usual pattern and check in warmly
A card expired on a monthly gift	Reach out within a day or two with an easy way to update it

A few notes on putting this into practice:

• Start with first-time donors. They're the biggest leak. A thank-you, then a progress note, then a modest second ask is the sequence that works. Here's how to get a second gift.
• Keep a running impact list. You can't send specific progress if you don't write it down. One item a week is enough.
• Watch for drift. "Gave every March for three years. No gift this March." That donor hasn't left yet. A note now is worth far more than a win-back letter in a year.

For donors who have already lapsed, the same principle applies: lead with what their past giving made happen, not "we miss you." We cover that in how to win back lapsed donors.

Where Perennial fits

Most of the reasons donors stop come down to silence at the wrong moment. Perennial Giving is built to break that silence. It watches your donor data, notices first-time donors who haven't heard any progress, donors drifting from their usual pattern, and failed monthly cards, and drafts a note in your voice using your own recent impact updates. You approve it, or don't. A spreadsheet and a weekly calendar block can do the same job if you're consistent.

They didn't stop caring

When a donor stops giving, it's tempting to assume they lost interest in your mission. The research mostly says otherwise. They lost the thread: no one told them what their gift did, and the next message they got was another ask. That's fixable. Thank people quickly, show them specific progress, ask less and better, and notice when someone goes quiet. You'll keep more of the people who already chose you once.