Missions to Movements
This isn't just another nonprofit podcast - it's your weekly invitation to think bigger, take bold risks, and create lasting change in an ever-evolving social impact landscape. Meet Dana Snyder, your guide through the evolving landscape of nonprofit innovation. She's on a mission to help change-makers like you push the boundaries of what's possible in nonprofit marketing and fundraising. Each week, Missions to Movements serves as your personal mastermind session, delivering actionable insights and bold strategies that challenge traditional nonprofit thinking. Dive into revolutionary approaches to digital fundraising, discover how to build magnetic monthly giving programs that create lasting donor relationships, and learn to amplify your voice as a thought leader in the social good space. Whether you're reimagining your organization's impact or forging game-changing partnerships, you'll find the ideas, insights, and inspiration to take your mission further than you've ever imagined. Ready to turn your mission into a movement?
Missions to Movements
My 2025 Nonprofit Marketing & Fundraising Predictions: The Complete Guide for Nonprofit Leaders
Could embracing the latest nonprofit tech trends redefine your fundraising strategy for 2025?!
Today I’m sharing a comprehensive, data-driven look at my top FIVE key trends and predictions that will transform how you connect with supporters in the new year… starting with AI!
We’ll explore how AI innovations like Claude and Perplexity are transforming grant writing and donor communication, with fascinating examples from the American Red Cross (who use AI for real-time disaster relief), to Greenpeace Australia and UNICEF, who leverage AI chatbots to streamline more complex donor interactions.
There are many other emerging trends, like the impact creator economy, and why it’s important to empower employees to become content creators - not only because these stories foster a deeper connection to your mission, but it’s great for attracting new talent, too.
Social purchasing is also taking center stage in 2025, with platforms like TikTok Shop revolutionizing how we connect with causes.
I’ll also discuss the emerging trend of building devoted donor communities through recurring giving and the strategic hiring needed to sustain these initiatives. (Oxfam and the International Rescue Committee are setting the precedent with roles focused on community engagement!)
As we wrap up the year, I encourage you to reflect on these trends and adapt your strategies to stay ahead. Happy holidays!
Resources & Links
Check out my recommended AI tools: Claude and Perplexity and my AI-generated “Gratitude Garland” here.
Learn the basics of AI with Tim Lockie’s course, AI For Anyone and use code EQUATION for 5% off.
More Than Giving - Virtual Assistants for Nonprofits
charity: water created an immersive experience in Franklin, TN combining storytelling and sensory-rich exhibits. Check it out here.
This show is presented by LinkedIn for Nonprofits. We’re so grateful for their partnership. Explore their incredible suite of resources and discounts for nonprofit teams here.
Monthly Giving Awareness Week is May 12-16! Join me, RKD Group, and GivingTuesday for 5 days of FREE resources to help you launch and grow recurring gifts.
Are you still dreaming about building your monthly giving program or refreshing your current one? Applications are now open for my “done with you” Monthly Giving Mastermind. 4 spots are open and we start in July. Click here to apply.
My book, The Monthly Giving Mastermind, is here! Grab a copy here and learn my framework to build, grow, and sustain subscriptions for good.
Let's Connect!
I did some research after Giving Tuesday, reaching out to multiple nonprofit tech platforms to see if the overall 16% year-over-year increase in giving translated to recurring donations. Like how are we scoping out here? And, wow, did it ever? Neon One reported that 5% of new donors were recurring contributors. Gofundme and Classy saw over 6,000 new nonprofit recurring plans established. This is just for Giving Tuesday. By the way, fundraiseup recorded a 10.6% surge in first-time monthly donors year over year, plus a nearly 14% gift value increase, and Give Butter processed 3,600 recurring donation payments, up from 2,300 in 2023. All of that is just on Giving Tuesday. So it's not just about the numbers, though. I think we're seeing a fundamental shift in how organizations think about recurring giving.
Speaker 1:I'm Dana Snyder, your host of the Missions to Movements podcast, and my path to philanthropy has been anything but traditional. This show is your weekly mastermind, designed to give you the ideas, insights and support you need to push the boundaries of what's been done before in nonprofit marketing and fundraising. Whether you're looking to build a magnetic monthly giving program, elevate your personal brand or create partnerships that amplify your impact, this space is for you. I'll bring you solo episodes and conversations with industry leaders, offering actionable strategies and fresh perspectives that will move you and your mission forward. Let's turn your mission into a movement you and your mission forward. Let's turn your mission into a movement.
Speaker 1:Merry Christmas, and if you don't celebrate Christmas, I hope you're having a wonderful holiday season. And as I sit here recording this special episode for Christmas Day, I love thinking about what makes this time of the year so special. It's when people come together with families, with friends, with extraordinary generosity and a desire to make the difference, and I know that's exactly what you and our nonprofit community does every single day of the year. You are the ones who keep the spirit of giving alive and well beyond this holiday season. You're the ones who turn compassion into action, who transform good intentions to real impact. So I hope you're taking some well-deserved downtime right now. Maybe you are listening to this while wrapping a few last-minute presents or getting a head start on your 2025 planning.
Speaker 1:As we wrap up 2024 and look ahead to 2025, I wanted to put together an episode that's a comprehensive look at the trends and opportunities that can really help you and your organization create even more impact in the coming year. So think about this as a little special Christmas treat, packed with some data, some examples and insights that can hopefully transform how you connect with supporters in the new year. So, without further ado, let's dive into my five key trends and predictions where nonprofits should invest in 2025. Number one is AI. Now, when I say AI, I know it's been getting a buzz for quite a while now, and AI, if you're not familiar, is artificial intelligence, and you may be thinking here we go again, but stick with me, because I really think that AI might be a helpful solution to two of our sector's biggest challenges limited bandwidth and funding constraints. So what's really exciting about AI coming into 2025 is, I think, we're more familiar with it, more open to testing it, and it's becoming more accessible than ever before. Tools like Cloud AI and Perplexity are really opening up access to more of what the AI capabilities could be like and how we can think about them in our more day-to-day tasks. So let's talk about a few of them. You can use it to help write grant proposals, creating personalized donor communications, analyzing your program data, streamlining admin tasks, and platforms like Cadenza and Cassidy really take it a step further by really specializing Cadenza, in particular, in nonprofit-specific needs like grant writing, and Cassidy can help you on workflow automation for your whole team. So how does this play out in the real world?
Speaker 1:I did some research, and first let's look at the American Red Cross. They've implemented AI in a fascinating way, using it to analyze social media data for disaster relief targeting. Think about how amazing this is. Instead of waiting for formal reports or relying on manual monitoring, they're using AI to identify areas that need immediate disaster relief in real time. This means faster response times and way more efficient resource allocation. So that's one way. Second, greenpeace, greenpeace Australia in particular. They partnered with a tool called Dataro. They utilize AI and their intelligence to tackle a common challenge donor retention. So they use AI to analyze patterns in donor data and they were able to identify in this one specific case study, identify and save 64 donors who would have otherwise lapsed. That translated into over $23,000 in retained annual revenue. Now you might think that doesn't sound huge for a large organization like Greenpeace, but really think about the implications when scaled across your entire donor database. And then, third, unicef has taken a different approach. They've implemented AI chatbots to handle initial donor interactions, share program details and answer some common questions. This really frees up their time to focus on complex donor relationships and providing those quick responses to some basic inquiries that are probably coming up all the time that their team just doesn't have bandwidth for. So these are three very different ways to think about how you could implement AI and there's many, many, many more in what you do. But you can think about it as being more than just a tool that you can use to format and change and update emails. So really think about in the new year how can you use AI creatively in your nonprofit and honestly, that could be a prompt. Ask ChatGPT, ask Claude, give it some information about your organization, about your mission, and ask it how could we create more creatively, utilize AI in our organization and see what it says.
Speaker 1:And for fun, during the holidays, something that I've recently done is I love sending out interactive holiday cards. So two years ago I had a card where people could write in their word of the year. Last year it was a card that had four ornaments on it where you could write in partners. You'd want to work with one partner for each of the ornaments. So I always wanted it to feel interactive and useful going into a new year, and this year has really been all about community. So I used Cloud AI.
Speaker 1:I shared what I wanted to create. I wanted to create this give-get experience that you might wish you had this at a conference. I just wish I knew exactly who to connect with based upon the challenges or the questions that I have. You might sit next to somebody at a table. If you don't happen to strike up a conversation, maybe they're exactly the person that you needed to ask your question to, but you just didn't know it. So I wanted to create something like this for a holiday card. So I explained that to Claude and I wanted it to be around gratitude and the holidays, and so it created a gratitude garland. So basically, you fill out a form with the expertise that you can share and then also put in what support you're seeking, and you can filter and match and then connect with that person on LinkedIn to have a conversation. So if you want to view my AI holiday card this year and get matched, you can head to positiveequationcom, slash Garland G-A-R-L-A-N-D or click below in the show notes. And Tim Lockie is one of my favorite experts on AI, so if you're just starting out or if you want to brainstorm with somebody, he has a great course that's called AI for Anyone. I will link to it down below. You also get a discount if you use the code equation, you get 5% off, and overall, he's just such a brilliant expert in this space.
Speaker 1:So number one is specifically AI really the game changer we've been waiting for. Number two the impact creator economy and employee advocacy revolution. So I want to talk about something that I think is really transforming how nonprofits tell their stories, that is, the rise of impact creators I will explain what this means and employee advocates. And it's particularly fascinating because it's happening at these two different levels external influencers that you partner with and your very own team members. And I want to start just with some eye-opening data from the Social State of Giving report by GoFundMe and Classy. They found that over half of Gen Z trusts impact creators to donate on their behalf. Think about that for a moment. Okay, over half trust impact creators to donate on their behalf, so they are giving them money PayPal, venmo.
Speaker 1:We are seeing a fundamental shift in how younger generations are engaging with causes and there's a few impact creators I just wanted to highlight who are doing this really well. If you go to like at mama Dr Jones, she's a doctor. She has really taken women's health education to platforms like YouTube and TikTok and Instagram, making complex medical information really accessible and engaging, and she combines her personal expertise with storytelling. It's Ms Pack Yeti and she drives conversations about social justice and race equity, and what makes her approach so unique is how she really provides these actionable steps for change and she amplifies marginalized voices. And then I don't want to forget, I talked about her on a LinkedIn post is little Ms Flint Mary, who, just at 16 years old, has become one of the most powerful voices for clean water access, and what I love is that it shows that, no matter the age, there's no barrier to creating really meaningful impact through social media. So there's the impact creator part we're working with people and we're partnering with people outside of our cause to raise awareness and support for what we do.
Speaker 1:But then here's where I think it also gets really interesting for nonprofits, and that's the rise of employee creators. This is a trend that's transforming how organizations engage with both internal and external audiences, and I strongly believe that your team members are becoming powerful content creators and advocates for your cause if we kind of give them the runway to do so, and here's why I think this works so well. One is authenticity. Audiences are increasingly skeptical of traditional marketing, but very highly receptive to genuine stories from real people, and your employees can provide that really authentic viewpoint of your organization's values and impact. Second, the platforms themselves are really evolving to support this. Let's look at LinkedIn, for example. They become a powerhouse for professional storytelling. I've seen this in my own channel and so if you look at the difference, on LinkedIn you might only need a few thousand followers to make a huge impact, whereas Instagram you might feel like you need millions. So the platforms are evolving here. Tiktok is perfect and we see this a lot day in the life.
Speaker 1:Content, again humanizing the organization. Instagram really helped highlighting the behind the scenes moments through stories. So I think by empowering your employees to become content creators, having a plan, you can reach broader audiences and really foster this deeper connection between your mission and the public. So there's expanded reach right, this organic exposure that can be really effective more than traditional marketing. Another pro is, I think, improved recruitment. So employee creators are also really helping for talent attraction. When potential candidates see real employees sharing these positive experiences and insights into the culture of working for the organization, they're going to be more interested in joining and platforms like TikTok and LinkedIn have become essential recruitment tools, increased brand loyalty. Employees who become brand advocates, I think, also foster a sense of pride and belonging. This not only enhances the internal culture, but it builds external brand loyalty as well. And then, of course, there's the cost effectiveness that comes into this. It's way more cost effective for employee generated content than traditional advertising. So if your employees are interested in doing this, I strongly recommend coming with a strategy, asking them, coming up with a plan of what this could look like for your organization, what channels you want to work with, how often do you do this? Let the creativity brainstorm begin, because you can have your own unique solution to this.
Speaker 1:Number three social selling and social giving 2.0. I'm calling this the new frontier, and I know some of you might be thinking well, isn't this just another fancy term for social media fundraising? No, so Facebook launched its fundraising feature around two years after introducing the donate button in 2013. But the data that I'm seeing suggests we're entering a whole new era of what this social selling, social giving, looks like. Check out these numbers. According to HubSpot, 87% of sellers confirm that social selling has been effective for their business. And here's what's pretty crazy, too. Social commerce is projected to make up 6.6% of total e-com in the United States in 2024, this year growing to $8.5 trillion US dollars by 2030.
Speaker 1:So you may be thinking okay, great, how does this translate into us and nonprofits? And there's a recent development that I think signals where we're heading with this. Gofundme and Meta just launched what they're calling a first-of-its-kind integration, and it's not just another donate button. It's really completely reimagining how nonprofits can raise funds through Instagram and Facebook. And here's what makes it special you get dynamic metrics that update in real time, seamless donation processing, integrated data insights that help you understand and engage your donors better, and the ability to share campaigns across platforms effortlessly.
Speaker 1:And, of course, the timing of this couldn't be better for when they released it, because look at what happened on Black Friday of this year TikTok shop. If you've ever shopped there, tiktok has a shop. It tripled its sales from the previous year, bringing in more than $100 million in just one day. If this doesn't show you how comfortable people are with social purchasing, I don't know what it is. And this is kind of like speaking to my own habits. I did some Instagram shopping on my own, and here's the additional part that kind of ties into what I was just saying about the impact creator space. 25% of social media users have bought something based on an influencer's recommendation. So think about this. If you combine this with what we just discussed earlier, you can see the potential for a completely new approach to fundraising on social, with impact creators how the new generation is working and donating the employee advocacy. New generation is working and donating the employee advocacy Hope you see how this is all kind of flowing together, which leads me to four the evolution of recurring giving.
Speaker 1:Now, in my monthly giving Slack group, the Sustainers, there are more than a hundred nonprofits that share tips and tools to scale their recurring giving programs. And, as you might believe, the CRM and fundraising tool conversation comes up a lot, and one that always comes up in conversation is Bloomerang. So if you're in the market to be looking at a complete donor, volunteer and fundraising management solution, head to bloomerangco. They have a very intuitive platform that tracks engagement, provides powerful insights so that you can really focus on driving your mission forward. So join thousands of small and medium-sized nonprofits that are already thriving with Bloomerang and again, you can visit bloomerangco to elevate your fundraising today. Drum roll, please. In case you missed the announcement no FOMO allowed here.
Speaker 1:The Virtual Monthly Giving Summit is back February 26th and 27th, bringing together nonprofit leaders, experts and change makers from around the world to help you create subscriptions for good. This past September, every speaker was compensated and that was made possible by our partners at the growth level Neon One, idonate, givebutter and DonorPerfect, and our sustainers, community Boost and Letter Labs. If you are in year-end research mode of some new tools, from CRMs to donation platforms, direct mail tools please do me a favor. Click the links in the show notes below to learn more about these amazing partners and if you are interested in presenting a case study at the next Monthly Giving Summit, please apply. So you can see all of these links down below in the show notes or head to monthlygivingsummitcom to learn more and apply to speak Now.
Speaker 1:If you have listened to any of my episodes, you know that I produced the Monthly Giving Summit. It's coming up in February. Registration is open, so recurring giving is nothing new. However, I did some research after Giving Tuesday, reaching out to multiple nonprofit tech platforms to see if the overall 16% year-over-year increase in giving translated to recurring donations. Like how are we scoping out here and, wow, did it ever so. Let me share some very fresh numbers that are telling a really great story for 2025. Neon One reported that 5% of new donors were recurring contributors. Gofundme and Classy saw over 6,000 new nonprofit recurring plans established. This is just for Giving Tuesday. By the way, fundraiseup recorded a 10.6% surge in first-time monthly donors year over year, plus a nearly 14% gift value increase, and GiveButter processed 3,600 recurring donation payments, up from 2,300 in 2023. All of that is just on GivingTuesday. So it's not just about the numbers, though.
Speaker 1:I think we're seeing a fundamental shift in how organizations think about recurring giving. It's not just this monthly button that's there. It's about community building. It's about understanding that we need a sustainable recurring base of support to have more predictable revenue. Right, and organizations are really thinking about how do we cultivate this super fan base. So this is looking like exclusive spaces where monthly donors can meet up, and how can they meet each other associated with the cause. Are there private Slack channels that are going to come up? Are there quarterly meetups Outside of just the perks that people get individually? How are they going to be brought together as a community of monthly donors to meet each other?
Speaker 1:Second, I really think monthly donors are turning into peer-to-peer fundraising powerhouses. So people who say I'm in for the long haul as a monthly donor are going to do likely more. This is proven. They're going to do more than just give a monthly gift. So if these sustainers are provided with special tools and resources and the ask, they will definitely amplify their impact beyond monthly gifts. And third and I think this is really exciting is I'm seeing more ambassador programs. So monthly donors are becoming your advocates, who, again, not only give but actively participate in spreading your message and mission.
Speaker 1:The other side of recurring giving that I'm seeing happen is when you have all of this emphasis on building these programs and these communities. I think what we're going to start to see a lot of in 2025 is organizations hiring sustainer roles, and I'm already seeing it. Oxfam has an associate director sustainer acquisition and marketing strategy. International Rescue Committee has an associate Director Sustainer Retention. So if you start to look on LinkedIn and you search Sustainer and Monthly Giving, you're going to see these titles pop up. And if you're going to make it a priority recurring giving, there should be a dedicated team member or consultant or virtual assistant or somebody whose really sole role is helping manage that growing community. One of my favorite resources I talked about this on my favorite things is More Than Giving. If you go to their website, they have nonprofit, specific virtual assistant VA support. The link is in the show notes for that one. So that's kind of my.
Speaker 1:What I'm seeing for recurring giving in the new year is going to be this like bigger focus on connecting internal communities of monthly giving programs yes, growing them, of course and then secondly, growing the internal teams to support these programs, which I will talk about. The monthly giving summit leading up to my next prediction, which is number five, which is this renaissance of niche live and in-person experiences. So my final prediction half of it might seem counterintuitive to this increasingly digital world, but I think we saw it this year and I think we're definitely going to see it even more so next year is a significant return to in-person community experiences and if you're going to do digital, niche down is the way to go. I think people are looking for very specific answers to their challenges, to their questions. They don't want a broad thing like dive in and dive in hard and get into the nitty gritty. And one thing about the niche virtual events is I literally lived this this year with the Monthly Giving Summit, and I think it's only getting stronger.
Speaker 1:There was nothing like this that ever existed. Most nonprofit events talk about lots of different things, right, lots of different fundraising angles. They might talk about grants, they're going to talk about marketing, they're going to talk about mindset. I mean literally every topic under the sun. Right is usually what you get when you attend a conference. There was nothing. This dialed into one singular topic and I had no idea how it was going to go and it blew my mind. Topic, and I had no idea how it was going to go and it blew my mind.
Speaker 1:With 2,100 registrants from 47 different countries, this was a global conversation that people cared about, and it wasn't only with the registration For a virtual event. We had a 60% show up rate, which is incredible. It was also the week of Labor Day week here in the United States, so that was tough, with Monday being a holiday and we had the event on a Thursday, friday it's 1 to 4 pm Eastern Standard Time. It's going to be the same this year. So the event in total was six hours over two days and the average person stayed for four hours and 30 minutes. Not only do people show up, but they stayed, and so I think there's something to this concept of doing a digital event but really niching down and being very specific.
Speaker 1:If you're interested in attending the Monthly Giving Summit in 2025, which I hope you will it's completely free online February 26th and 27th. I will put the link in the show notes or you can just go to monthlygivingsummitcom to check it out. On the second side of this final prediction is the in-person experiences, and I think there will be these small events where your monthly donors I'm actually doing this in January at my house, where monthly donors if you ask your monthly donors to do an event for you, like within their community, with their friend group, to raise awareness about the cause, like those types of events I think they will be bringing together supporters. I think there's going to be these dinner events in local cities, these smaller, intimate experiences, and I think there's something I mentioned this in my book there's going to be something around experiential things, especially for nonprofits, that it's very hard to grasp the impact if the work is being done, if the impact's being done outside of our country or something that we're just not seeing, and so something that perfectly illustrates this is Charity Water's Experience Lab. It's absolutely brilliant. It's called the Experience Lab and I think it's going to revolutionize how people connect and find out about their cause.
Speaker 1:So what they say on their website is in just 60 minutes. They help visitors understand the reality that 703 million people face every day with the global water crisis. If you want to learn more, I'm going to put the link in the show notes, but if you go to charitywaterorg experience, you can learn more, and they have a ton of different exhibits and things that you can touch and feel and virtual reality and all these cool things in the exhibit that's based in Franklin, tennessee, just outside of Nashville. Think about the last time you visited a museum exhibit that truly moved you, when you didn't just learn about something, but you felt it, and I think that's what Charity Water is trying to create here. They're combining immersive storytelling, cutting edge technology and these sensory rich exhibits to create an unforgettable experience. And what's cool is that, now that they have this physical space think about school field trips and corporate events and just when people can touch and feel and associate things the sensory that just leaves such a stronger mark.
Speaker 1:So why this matters? That just leaves such a stronger mark. So why this matters, I think, for all nonprofits is it creates an emotional connection that sometimes digital content alone just can't match. Two, the point I just mentioned the field trips, corporate events, donor experiences is huge. Three, I think it can turn your supporters into true advocates because now they've experienced your mission firsthand and it can really bridge that gap between digital engagement and real world impact.
Speaker 1:So those are my top five predictions. Number one is really about AI and how you can utilize AI to really help with limited bandwidth and funding constraints and even reducing silos amongst your team. Two, the impact creator economy and employee advocacy retention. Three, social selling and social giving 2.0. Four, the evolution of recurring giving. And then, lastly, number five, is this renaissance of niche live and in-person events.
Speaker 1:So, as we look ahead to the new year, I hope how I stated all of these is that all of these predictions, these trends, are interconnected. Ai gives you the bandwidth to create more meaningful human connections. Social selling and recurring giving programs really help build community. Your impact creators and employee advocates help tell your stories authentically, and in-person experiences or niche digital ones bring it all full circle. So I think the organizations that will really thrive in 2025 won't be the ones that chase every trend. 2025 won't be the ones that chase every trend, but they will be the ones that really thoughtfully combine these elements in a way that amplifies their unique missions that resonates with your specific community.
Speaker 1:So I would love to hear your thoughts on these predictions. What trends are you seeing in your organization? How are you planning to adapt to make these changes? So please leave a review below or reach out to me on LinkedIn, dana Snyder, to continue the conversation and with that, merry Merry, merry Christmas and I will see you in the new year. Thank you so much for tuning into today's episode of Missions to Movements. If you enjoyed our conversation and found it helpful, I would love for you to take a moment to leave a review wherever you're listening. Your feedback helps us reach more changemakers like you and continue bringing impactful stories and strategies to the show. Don't forget to hit that subscribe button, too, so you'll never miss an episode, and until next time, keep turning your mission into a movement.
