Picture your best donor's phone on Monday, November 2, 2026. The home screen is a wall of campaign texts, each one more urgent than the last, with breaking-news alerts sliding in between. Somewhere in that stack is your year-end appeal. That is the environment every nonprofit is walking into this season, and it is only one of three pressures arriving at the same time.
BetterUnite CEO & Co-founder Leya Simmons spent more than ten years as a frontline fundraiser before building BetterUnite and has watched a quarter century of election cycles and downturns hit the organizations she worked with. Her read on 2026 is that none of these pressures changes what a donor feels about a cause they love. What they change is when the donor gives and how. The organizations that will do well in December are not the ones with the biggest budgets or lists. They are the ones that adjust their timing and their message to meet donors where they are.
She frames the season as three things: attention, wallet, and rules.
The midterm election is Tuesday, November 3, and this one is not quiet. AdImpact projects $11.6 billion in political advertising for the 2025 to 2026 cycle, which would make it the most expensive cycle on record, presidential years included. Campaign fundraising does not ramp gently; it crescendos in the final two to three weeks, which is right now.
The obvious problem is fatigue. By election day your donor has been asked for money dozens of times a day for a month and is numb to it. The less obvious problem is deliverability. When Gmail, Yahoo, and Outlook see a system-wide surge of political and promotional mail, spam filters tighten. If your list carries a chunk of people who have not opened anything from you in a year and you mail all of them in early November, you tell the algorithm you are a low-quality sender at the worst possible moment. The appeal does not just underperform. It lands in spam and never reaches the loyal donors who would have opened it.
Simmons's answer is three moves, all in October:
Then there is the window after the vote. Whatever the result, roughly half your donors will be elated and half despondent, and almost all of them come out of an election wanting to do something real, local, and free of argument. The message in those days should not mention the election at all. Simmons's version: the people we serve still need us, and here is exactly how you can make a difference this week. That lands on both halves of the room.
The compliance rules are unchanged and the stakes are real. A 501(c)(3) cannot endorse or oppose candidates, contribute to campaigns, or rate them. It can offer nonpartisan voter education and registration information. Keep candidate names, party references, and any version of "the election proves why you need us" out of every appeal. Never rent or share your donor list to a campaign, and never accept one from a campaign, even free. Board members can hold and voice any political view as private citizens, but not at your events, on your letterhead, or to your list. When in doubt, run the language past counsel before it goes out.
The practical conclusion: cultivate in October, go quiet election week, and launch the real year-end campaign around November 9 or 10, when the inbox is finally quiet for the first time in weeks.
The headline numbers are contradictory. Consumer confidence sits at 81.9, down from 88.6 in August and the lowest reading in twelve and a half years. Inflation is 3.4% year over year, well above the Federal Reserve's 2% target. Unemployment is flat at 4.2%. And the S&P 500 is up 13.6% for the year.
Decades of research say total giving tracks the stock market and household income above all else. The nuance is that those two forces act on different parts of your file. Major donors feel the stock market. Their portfolios are up, they are holding appreciated securities, and their donor-advised funds are full, so they tend to be generous at year-end almost regardless of inflation. Everyday donors feel the grocery bill. The $50, $100, and $250 donors who form the backbone of the sector do not feel the S&P 500. They feel rent, insurance, gas, and whether their job is secure, and they can be squeezed in a year when the headlines say the economy is strong.
Underneath that split is the longer trend the Fundraising Effectiveness Project and Giving USA have tracked for years: the number of donors keeps falling while total dollars hold or grow. Fewer people are giving and larger donors carry more of the load. That makes two things true at once. Your existing donors are by a wide margin your most valuable asset, and a year-end appeal to someone who has already given is the highest-return thing you can send. And if two major donors pull back for reasons that have nothing to do with you, the hit is larger than it would have been a decade ago. Tend both sides of the file.
For donors feeling wealthy, put stock and DAF instructions in every major donor appeal so they never have to ask how. If the market turns shaky before December, those donors will wait until the last week of the year to decide; stay close without pressure and follow up personally the week of December 21. For donors feeling the pinch, offer the monthly option. Someone who gave $100 can give $10 a month, which is $120 without parting with $100 at once, and tie every dollar to what it makes possible. For donors who need to stop giving, thank them and offer volunteer roles or other ways to stay connected. Situations change, and the organization that kept them close is the one they come back to.
The tax law signed in July 2025 changed how charitable donations are treated, and those changes apply to the 2026 tax year. This December is the first year-end under them. Simmons is clear that she is not a CPA, and that no development officer should position themselves as a tax expert or give tax advice. The job is narrower and more powerful than that: be the one who tells the donor something has changed, then send them to their advisor for the details.
The changes that broadly affect nonprofits:
What did not change: appreciated securities still generally avoid capital gains tax and, when eligible, deduct at fair market value, subject to the applicable limits. Qualified charitable distributions from an IRA, for donors 70½ and older, are still excluded from income up to the annual limit, so the new floor does not touch them, and they still cannot go to a DAF. And because the 0.5% floor applies every year, some itemizers will bunch several years of giving into one larger gift, often through a DAF.
In plain English, there are two opportunities and they point at opposite ends of the file. For years, most small and mid-sized donors who took the standard deduction got no federal deduction for their cash gifts. Starting in 2026, many of them do. That is the first tax reason to give that this shrinking segment has had in a long time, and it is easy to share: new this year, even if you don't itemize, your donation may lower your taxes.
For major donors the rules got more complicated and, in places, less favorable. That complexity is the reason to call rather than email. The script is short: the donation rules changed this year, and I wanted to make sure you had a chance to review them with your advisor before you make your usual year-end gift. It is helpful, it builds trust, and it opens a year-end conversation without anyone having to force it. On that call, make sure the donor knows you accept appreciated securities, DAF grants, and IRA distributions, since those tend to be the largest gifts a donor makes and the ones that go unmade because nobody brought them up. Corporate sponsors who file as C corps now have a reason to bundle, so be first in line for the 2027 gala ask.
Every appeal, post, and call about any of this closes the same way: please consult your tax advisor about your own situation.
Fundraise Up's year-end report, drawn from five years of data across more than 500 U.S. nonprofits, reshapes how the last twelve weeks should be planned. Across the giving season, defined as mid-November through December 31:
Three conclusions follow. The season is not one day, and a team that is checked out on December 26 without automations in place is leaving its biggest week on the table. Your December donors are already in your database, so the job is to make sure the people who already love you know you are there and can give easily, not to find strangers. And since most of them will arrive through search, the donation page has to be easy to find and easy to use, with a big button, an inline form, and options beyond a credit card: ACH, stock, and DAF. Simmons adds that "search" now includes the answer engines, and that nonprofits should start paying attention to how ChatGPT and Claude mention them alongside Google.
Put together, the calendar looks like this. From now until November 2, cultivate: clean the list, send stories and thank-yous, connect with major donors personally, and draft your tax-change messaging. Election week, go quiet. November 9 through 30, launch: the post-election message, the year-end appeal across mail, email, text, and phone, the non-itemizer deduction news for everyday donors, and the advisor call for major donors, with any printed mail in homes before the week of Thanksgiving on November 26. December 1 through 31 is the push: Giving Tuesday, early reminders for stock (transfers started by December 18 if the donor is working through an advisor) and IRA distributions (early December, because planners slow down over the holidays), then emails on December 26 and 28, one each on the 29th and 30th, and two on December 31. It feels like a lot. Each one works. And every donor gets thanked within 48 hours, because that is how this year's donors become next year's.
Simmons closed with a study she had been reminded of that morning by fundraising coach Mallory Erickson. Research by Francis Flynn and Vanessa Bohns found that people making a direct request for help underestimate how often others will say yes by as much as half. The asker fixates on the cost to the other person. What they miss is that saying no to a real human request is uncomfortable, often more uncomfortable than saying yes, and that discomfort tips people toward yes. The research was about everyday favors, not major gifts, but Simmons has seen the pattern hold for nearly every fundraiser she has known, herself included. We are far more pessimistic about the ask than the people we are asking.
You can get the timing right, the message right, and the tax language right, and none of it matters if you do not make the ask. So make it.
Transcript Recording:
Leya Simmons (00:05)
Hi everyone, welcome to today's 501c Drop. I'm Leya Simmons. I am the host of the 501c Drop. I'm also the CEO and co-founder of Better Unite. I'm so happy that you're here and you're taking a couple of minutes to join me today to talk about not a light subject and kind of technically three different subjects, but we're gonna try and tackle them all here in the next 45 minutes or so.
the year-in squeeze, we've got the election, we have the economy, and we also have some new tax laws that are coming into play. And how are we all as a sector and you all as distinct nonprofits going to manage this year-end giving season, given all of this noise? Let's just call it that. so when like when we're thinking about this, I thought about may maybe start by picturing in your mind your
Best donor, your your favorite donor, a major donor that that is a big champion of your cause, and picture the day before the election, so November 2nd, Monday, November 2nd, and picture their phone on that day and what it looks like. The flood of text messages, the just even the home screen, just message after message from candidates, political can political candidates with very desperate and exceedingly urgent.
Cries for donation requests, all of the noise coming at them, everything, breaking news going by every couple of minutes. That's what is going to happen on Monday, November 2nd. Frankly, if you're like me, I wish I could show it to you, but this is how mine looks right now. And a nice chunk of those are spam calls and election repeals.
So that's already happening. And in all of that noise, you as a nonprofit are trying to break through, trying to get through to, again, your favorite donor and capture just a small shl a sliver, a small share of that attention. It's almost impossible, right? So I that's the that's the kind of landscape that we just find ourselves right here and in. And I'm not saying any of this to scare you.
I'm I'm telling you b this because and I'm I'm kind of detailing it and bringing it into picture perfect clarity for you because it's happening, it's real, and because the nonprofits I I believe that take the broader environment that we are in right now into consideration as they move into this year 2026's year-end giving season, those are the ones that are going to do well in December. It is a hard season.
To ask for donations. It just is. But the truth of that statement is that hard doesn't mean bad. We're we're built to do hard things. We are the nonprofit sector. But it does mean that what you have considered as your usual approach or the old playbook or the old timeline, particularly, those things are going to need to be reconsidered if you're going to break through any of that noise.
and have an a have a have an even a chance at actually speaking to your donors in this time. It's just not gonna work the way that it always does. We have to be smarter in this season about timing, about message, and about the ask itself. And many of you that have listened before to me here on this webinar or podcast or web show or however you're seeing this, you've heard me talk about my experience. I was a frontline fundraiser.
professionally for more than 10 years prior to my you know creating the software that is now Better Unite. And I also have been a donor. I've been involved in philanthropies. I've served on boards all of that since for the last 20 years. Technically actually we're in 2026. So it's really since 2000. So more than a quarter of a decade of a of a century. I can't even believe that I'm saying out that that out loud. But the
The the fact is that I've seen a lot of election cycles happen. I've watched bad, very bad economies and how those have hit the nonprofits that I was working with at the time. I have, you know, moved through and weathered some of these things. Now, not to say that this 2026 year isn't a little bit different, and we do have these three, you know, we kind of have this triple whammy happening to us all at the same time, but there's definitely opportunity in all of this. So when I talk about this year's challenges.
I'm I'm really not, I swear, not talking just from theory or something that I've, you know, kind of worked up with my team. I've really actually lived through most of them. And what we're gonna cover today, I'm calling it the year-in squeeze. You saw that in the title. Because there's just like again, these kind of three things that are hitting us all at the same time. Everything, everything always all at once. so the first is the midterm election.
The second is an uncertain economy. It's inflation that your donors are feeling at the grocery store and the gas pump. However, you've got also donors that are seeing a stock market that has risen and continues to rise. And so there's contradiction and nuance in that. And then the third is the first year of a tax, it's the first fundraising season under a brand new set of tax rules for donations, rules that most of your donors have never heard a single word about. So if you're watching me, you're gonna watch me.
read a little bit more than I typically do in one of these webinars because I'm going talk about a lot of things that have a great deal of numbers, nuance, and precision to them. And I want to make sure that I get it all right. And on that note, I also want to mention if you are listening to me, maybe on Spotify or Apple Music or wherever you are catching this, all of this is going to be the transcript will be in the show notes, as well as if you're watching it on YouTube.
And I'm going to attach some slides to the show notes that will detail some of these numbers so that you make sure that I make sure that I'm getting all of this to everybody as clearly as possible. So, economy, election, actually let me start first, election, economy, and new tax rules. Any one of these would be worth an episode on its own, and maybe we will in the the next few episodes break down a few more of these things. But we this year get to handle them all at once. So in this first episode, we are going to tackle
all of them all at once. But the good news is, and I really do mean this, that there is a clear and practical response. And I hope by the time that we're finished today that you're actually going to be have a little bit more clarity on each one of them. And before we get into his specifics, I do want to frame what I want to carry us through the next hour. I'm going to use kind of three broad topics attention, wallet, and rules. Attention is the election.
From now until polls close on November 3rd, your donors are going to be flooded, if they are not already, by texts, emails, ads, campaigns, news alerts, fundraising appeals, and arguments at the dinner table. All of it is coming if it's again not already happening. And every bit of that is competing with your mission for the same set of eyes, the same, like that same truly scarce thing.
Which is your donors' focus, their attention. You're not just competing this year with other nonprofits at the beginning of our of our giving season. Frankly, you're not just competing with them throughout the giving season, even once the election is over. You're competing against like what we in America have as, and maybe probably in most countries, it's the loudest thing that happens on our calendar. And then wallet is the economy, obviously. How do your donors feel about their money?
And it's not just the headline numbers, although we are going to cover some of those, but it's how they feel when they are standing in the checkout line, when they are ordering their items on Amazon, when they are getting gas at the gas pump. All of that emotion, all of those feelings shape three things. It shapes how much they donate, when they donate, and in what form. Whether that's cash or it's appreciated securities or it's a donor's advised fund.
Or whatever it is. And as I'm about to explain to you, the economy does not, it's not a one size fits all thing. It's not going to hit the different parts of your donor file in the same way or your donor groups in the same way. Every segment is being impacted by this economy in a different way. And then rules is the tackle tax laws. So this December is the very first year, is the very first year end under tax changes that passed in July of 2025.
For some of your donors, and honestly, it's probably most of them if you're a nonprofit that falls in our typical categories within our nonprofit sector, there is a brand new reason to make a donation. For some of your larger donors, however, the tax benefit of giving got a little bit smaller and potentially a little bit more complicated. And what I really think I want you to pay attention to is that almost none of them know about this yet.
Really, very few people are talking about this. I hear about this in some rooms with some nonprofit consultants. And certainly if you're talking to a, you know, some of the experts in in tax laws and giving, then you're going to hear about this. But that is not making headline news, and it is really not being talked about by nonprofits, the nonprofits themselves to their donors. One of the most important things that I have watched.
In seeing these cycles over the past gosh, 25 years, 26 years. And I really want you to like, you can kind of hold on to this. Even if you like forget all of the numbers that I say today, don't remember any of the tax laws that I talk about, forget the election and you send things out on November 1st anyway. Remember this. None of these pressures, not any of them, is going to change what a donor does or how they feel.
About a mission that's very important to them. Some a cause that they love, they will continue to support regardless of any of this external noise. What they change, however, is when they give and how they give. Donors do not disappear in a hard year. They get more intentional, they get more deliberate, and they sometimes will wait longer.
But they and and then honestly it's also they sometimes just want more reason to give. So what we want to do here as we're moving into the final months of 2026, and frankly always, we want to pay attention to trust. We want to make sure that our donors know that we as the nonprofits are trusted institutions that they can rely on.
To do what they say that they're going to do, to do what we say we are going to do, and that we are good fiduciaries of their money. And that does also mean that they can trust us to know and understand some decently complicated things. I'm going to try and simplify some of it for you. Some of it is very difficult to simplify, but we are going to talk through some of this together and how you can talk about all of this to our donors.
I do believe that the organizations that are gonna do really well this year in 2026 are not the ones that have the largest budgets or even the ones that have the biggest donor lists. I think it's going to be the ones that do make adjustments for the situation that we find ourselves in that will adjust their timing and their messaging to meet donors where they are, which is what we're always, always trying to do in the first place. I do think that the ones that struggle are going to just run the usual.
you know, emails at the usual times, and I think that they're going to see a stagnant donor base in this giving season. So that's our job today. We're going to take each of these three these three pressures in turn and we're going to turn what could be perceived as a threat into a plan for each one of them. So let's jump into it. All right, if you look at the calendar, I've mentioned it a few times, our attention component is the election and election day is Tuesday, November 3rd. I'm sure that very few of us are unaware of that at this point.
But it is a midterm election. Typically, these those are quieter. This one is not. what matters for us right now as well is that campaign fundraising doesn't like ramp up gently. I, you know, if you some of us have been getting, you know, emails from candidates and from election-based groups or political organizations for quite a while, or even, you know, kind of always. But but but but peak fundraising for these camps.
Campaign cycles, they definitely crescendo. The text, the emails, the ads, they really will peak very hard in the final two to three weeks. So we're already kind of seeing that. We're about a month out from the election right now. Ad Impact projects this year that $11.6 billion, that's billion with a B, in political advertising will be spent in the 2025-2026 election cycle, which makes it the most expensive election cycle.
Ever. That's midterms and presidential election years combined. Not combined, but each one of those considered individually. The 2024 presidential election was beat because that one was at 11 well a lower 11. Like one or so, two billion dollars. So it's it's a truly staggering numbers. Billions of dollars all engineered to grab, hold attention, and also.
Claim donations, claim the exact same dollars that you are also fighting for. So a lot of times our first instinct is from a development team is gonna be like, we're just gonna power through, right? We're just gonna send out the year-end appeal. It is what it is, we're gonna do what we can do, and we'll see what happens. And I really, really wanna try to talk you out of that. because I because frankly, there's actually two problems with that. And the first one's it's really obvious, donors are fatigued, we're all tired.
I'm getting these messages right now. I've got my full home screen filled with them, and it's only going to become more by the end of this month and that first few days of November. Your donor has been asked for money by November 3rd. They have been asked for money urgently and with great emphasis dozens of times a day, and they're just numb. So your heartfelt, beautiful appeal.
Is falling into a void that no donor can focus on or pay attention to. But the second problem is actually one that kind of hides in plain sight, and it's a very technical problem: deliverability. When big inbox providers, so your Gmail, your Yahoo, your Outlook, see when those see a system-wide surge of mass political and promotional email, spam filters will tighten up. The same goes for texting apparatuses, although
For some reason, many of those texts still make it through, even though the spam laws are what they are, they typically make it through. But your emails are definitely not going to get anywhere. Also, your social media posts are also getting buried because you're likely, if you are like me, seeing so much social, so much money poured into our social platforms, including the TikToks of the world. Everyone's, all of the filters are gonna get tighter. And if your list has a chunk of people,
Who haven't opened an email from you in a year, and you send them all an email in early November, even just after November 3rd, you're telling the algorithm that you're a low-quality sender at the worst possible moment. So what's going to happen is that your appeal doesn't just underperform, it lands in spam, and it actually never even reaches your most loyal donors when they if they had received it, they really would have opened it. So you can actually just
like kind of like quietly lose the very people that you were counting on because not because they said no, but because they had no idea that you sent them an email in the first place. So what do we do? I've got three things that I want you to do and all of those things are going to happen in this month. So today is October 6th. So in this month, this last little bit of this month's not last little bit, you've still got like three and a half weeks, the last part of this month, this is what you need to do. First, clean your email lists.
So do that now. It's something that you should all, we should all be doing all the time, but it's more important now than ever before. Go into your email tool tool and find everyone that has not opened an email from you in the last 12 months, the last year. So that's usually a stat that's like right there on the dashboard of your email provider. Definitely is if you're using BetterUnites. Run a single, this is an optional one, but I think it's actually a good one. You can run one single re-engagement email to
it you know to all of those people that have not yet opened an email in this last 12 months, last trailing 12 months. And then anybody that doesn't respond to that email, you suppress them. So we're not gonna email them in November and December. I I I know that that feels a little bit backwards, right? That I've right right before my biggest time of the year to to inspire donations and donors from every level of my list, I'm gonna like shorten my list. I'm gonna actually send this email out to fewer people. But
I really want you to do this anyway. A smaller list of people that actually open your emails is worth 10 times a giant list, and that giant list can easily drag your, you know, kind of sender reputation down into the dirt. Number two, we're gonna shift October from asking to showing. So I do know, and I wanna, you know, kind of mention this, that many of you have some sort of fall fundraiser.
That's October's a very big month for those kinds of things. This does not apply to that. If you're already running your fundraiser, you've already sold the tickets, you're going to do the appeal there, that that's all great and you should continue with that mission and that purpose as planned. This applies to beginning to kind of like warm up our donors, like we typically will do in October for a November and December appeal. We really only want to, and sometimes I think those those those kind of warm-up emails will also include an option for giving.
This year don't do that. No, no asking at all. We're only going to send out maybe it's a survey to your to your donor list. You're gonna send out some impact stories. You can send a thank you video. If you have an event happening, you've got a really good excuse to send an email saying, Thank you so much for coming and for everything that you did at the event. We're so happy that you're here. so we're really wanting to build up this kind of reservoir of goodwill.
in this month, in this time, so that when you go forward and you make your ask in November and then again in December and then a whole lot that last week of December, those asks are going to land on someone who has just heard from you, but they've heard from you in the nicest possible way. You were giving them something and not asking for something. And number three, I want you in October to get your major donors out of your email send list entirely.
Your top donors, and let me say this with emphasis, should not be experiencing your email, your excuse your year-end campaign via email. Let me say that again more clearly. Your top donors should not be experiencing your year-end appeal via email. They should get a phone call. They should get a text message, would be fine if it's a personal text message from someone on your staff to them. A handwritten note, a coffee if they're local.
Take them out for coffee, find a way to meet in person in real life. There is no spam filter that can stop a phone call from you directly to a donor. There is no spam filter that doesn't allow you to meet in a coffee shop. That is, you know, the inbox is going to be like a an absolute war zone in the months of November and December. And you want your top donors to like you just don't even want to fight that war. Just get out of there entirely.
So three things in October you can do to get yourself ready. And then there's also going to be, you know, this thing that's the phenomenon that I've watched every single election cycle, and it's all about emotion. Whatever the result on election night, some of your donors, and typically if things go as they usually as they have in the last bit, almost half of your donors are going to be elated, they're going to be thrilled, they're gonna feel really good about what's coming.
And then you're gonna have the other almost half who are despondent and feel frustrated and angry or despair and like as though they shouldn't, as though they could give up, and frankly, as though they are not heard. This is an opportunity and an opening for you because almost all of them, across that whole emotional range, they all come out of an election inspired to do something, and typically.
inspired to do something local and for their own community. So they want something that's real and they want something that has no argument to it, that is that is good for good sakes. That's your window. It's not a window to be pot political and I'm gonna talk about that and give you a couple of ground rules there in a minute, but it's a window for you to show up, to be present. Your message in the days after the election should not at all be about who won or what lost.
Not at all. Something like, whatever happened on Tuesday, here's what hasn't changed. The people we serve still need us, and here's exactly how you can make a difference this week. And honestly, I might even take out that first half of that, like the take out the first sentence. Don't even mention the election at all. Just saying the people we serve still need us, and here's exactly how you can make a difference this week. That is such a compelling and important statement after.
You feel triumphant and excited about the future, or you feel despair and despondent. Either way, that message lands. So, one note on the compliance here, and I'm gonna read this too. The stakes are very real. As a 501 nonprofit, you absolutely cannot, absolutely cannot endorse or oppose candidates. You have to be a 501c4. There's actually it's their own tax bracket for that.
You cannot contribute to campaigns and you cannot rate candidates. So, no, like, here's our top choices. None of it. What you can do is nonpartisan voter education and registration information. You can provide registration information and you can talk about issues that are going to affect your mission and sort of your stance, but really trying not to
not to make them about issues at all, right? We want to stay away from a a bent or a a an opinion on anything political as a 501c3. So in your year in fundraising, there again are a few bright spots. No candidate names, no party references, no the election proves why you need us. Don't say any of that in your appeals.
That honestly, that kind of language can actually really land you in some trouble. You don't want to share. I mean, I think this should be exceedingly obvious, but I'm going to say it anyway. Don't share or rent your donor lists to a campaign, to anybody ever, honestly. But and then don't also don't take one from a campaign. Sometimes, you know, we have political consultants that post campaign, they're like, Well, I've got these things, you know, do you want it? Even offering it for free. Don't do that. Don't take it. Remember that your board members, however, as people out in the world,
Are free to have whatever political opinion that they want. They can say it loudly, they can say it from their social media, they can, you know, campaign on behalf of individuals, they can raise money for them and donate money, whatever. But they cannot, at any of your events or, and these are your board members, they cannot, at events or on your company letterhead or to your email list, they cannot endorse a candidate or take aside a political side at all.
When in again, if you're in any doubt on any of this, talk to and if maybe you're like about to send out something, an email, you want to run your language, you want to ask your counsel, your lawyers, your legal team, or your your board member that is a lawyer, run any of it by them. Like be better to be safe than sorry in this situation for sure. So don't go dark in October.
It's it's a great time to stay visible. I'm not saying to hide because the noise is there. The noise is there, you'll break through sometimes, and that's worth it. But you should also you should use that time to lead with gratitude, lead with impact. just don't no asking. And and we don't want to make our big direct ask in the 10 days right before the election or right after the election. You just can't win the fight for attention and emotions are going to be running high. They just are. Cultivate in October.
And launch your real year-end campaign the week after the election. So sometime around the November 10th timeline. That way you get to an inbox that hopefully is primed, you win through the filters, and for the first time in weeks, it's actually gotten quiet, sending text messages, same thing in that time. It's really gonna be nice to see something that's not politically related. All right. So the election is attention, the wallet, that's the economy.
And specifically, we've got an economy that has experienced a few years of stubborn inflation. It spiked right after COVID, it came down a little bit, but it's made its way back up again. All of this impacts how your donors give. So let me tell you a couple of numbers. Consumer confidence right now is at 81.9, and that's a a a drop from August 88.6.
And it's also the lowest. So consumer confidence is the lowest that it's been in 12 and a half years. the CPI or inflation, and actually, if you line that up, 12 and a half years would be like 2013. And we were still like, that was the lowest that it's been, it's the lowest that it's been since then because 2013 was when we had kind of finally really pulled ourselves out of the Great Recession. So it's decently low.
The CPI or inflation stat that most reflects everyday Americans' experience is 3.4%. That's the one that also includes the consumer. I don't know exactly what CPI stands for, so I don't want to say it wrong, but it's consumer price index, I think. But anyway, it's the inflation stat that's also going to include food and gas into in it. It's 3.4% year over year. And that's just pretty far from what the Federal Reserves target.
Inflation rate is which is 2%. That's why we saw an interest rate hike last month. Unemployment, however, is actually relatively low and it's stayed decently low. It's where it's it's pretty much flat at 4.2%. And here, a definite bright spot, the SP 500 is up 13.6% year to date. So from the beginning of 2026 to now, it's up 13.6%. And that's absolutely a bright spot, and it highlights a distinction as well that I'd like to make.
So when we s look at the research, because it's clear and it's decades old, total donations in the United States track two things above all: the stock market and household income. When stock markets are up and paychecks are stretched, no, sorry, when stock markets are up and paychecks stretch, just stretch, donations will rise. That makes sense. Everybody's doing well. When they don't, donations will soften. But so you know, that none of that's controversial. The nuance, however,
Is that these two forces, the market and the household budget, they don't act on donors evenly. They act on different parts of or different segments in your donor management tool. Think about this in two groups. And they're very big groups, but that just means you can't look at the word economy as a whole or the numbers as a whole. We need to think about it relative to these two different groups. Major donors typically feel the stock market.
When their portfolios are up, which right now they broadly are, they're sitting on appreciated securities and stocks, and they've got fuller donor advice funds. And they, in this case, as in right now, tend to be more generous, particularly at the year-end, at the year-end giving time, almost like regardless of what inflation is doing, because for these major donors that are this type, the stock market, you know, DAF type, the day-to-day expenses aren't where their donations are coming from.
Then we have our everyday donors, the $50 and $100 and $250 donors that really provide a backbone for our entire sector. Those donors are, they don't feel the SP 500. They don't feel the stock market every single day. They feel the grocery bill. They feel rent. They feel insurance. They feel gas and whether their jobs feel secure.
And those folks can be genuinely squeezed even in a year when the stock market is booming. And the headlines say that the economy is strong. So inflation at 3.4% and consumer confidence, the lowest in 12 and a half years, those numbers are what impact our everyday donors. So I just want you to like not treat the economy or any one of these numbers as a solitary thing and as though they impact your entire
donor base in the same way. They don't. There's two very distinct, very big segments. One's larger than the other. And the larger one is feeling a pinch right now. And the smaller one, your major donors, is a smaller segment, but a probably, you know, bigger contributor to your overall dollars. Those folks are seeing a really nice and good time because the stock market is doing well.
And underneath all of that, there's this longer-term shift that I've talked about a lot on the 501c dropped. The fundraising effectiveness project has tracked the same trends for years now. The number of donors in the country, in the United States, keeps falling, while total dollars hold up or even grow. This is something that the Giving Institute and Giving USA also tracks. When you take those two factors together, the real story is there that fewer people are giving and the larger donors are carrying more and more of the load.
And that's a that's a disturbing statistic for our sector as a whole. And if this is what you see, and I know I've actually talked to a couple of you or some of you that not a couple, quite a few of you, that have seen this in your own nonprofits, in your own organizations, where you're seeing a larger and larger amount of your donations coming in from fewer and fewer people. That's a concerning statistic. first, your existing donors are.
By a wide margin, your most valuable asset. Keeping those donors that you have already is far less expensive, far easier, and much more reliable than trying to get donations out of strangers. And a year-end appeal to a warm lead or prospect or a retained donor, somebody that's already given to you, that is the highest return thing that you can honestly probably ever send.
And second, and the uncomfortable one, is that if bigger donors, if your largest donors are carrying more of the load, more of the weight than they were 10 years ago, then you are also more exposed than you were 10 years ago. If just two of your major donors kind of pulled back for whatever reasons, there could be a variety of them that have nothing to do with the external environment, just because their situation changed, then your nonprofit would really be profoundly impacted.
And it would be more profoundly impacted than it would have been a decade ago if that's true for you. So that's a reason that you want to tend to all of those relationships on both sides and to some extent with equal attention. All right, so here's some practical advice for you. If your donors are feeling wealthy and the market is up, they tend to donate appreciated stock or securities, they will recommend grants from a donor-advised fund. So you should.
Put stock and DAF information and instructions in every major donor appeal so that they don't have to come to you to ask how. BetterUnite has integrations to Easy DAF and donate stock. And all of that is through giving IQ. And you can actually have it on your checkout screen as you're doing that. But you can also put that information into the appeal and then they see that at the checkout screen as well.
So then you also will have your wealthy donors, but what if like between now and December the market becomes less sturdy than it is, right? It becomes a little bit shaky. Frankly, in the middle of the year this year, there was some, there was a time that the market was not doing quite as well. So then in that case, your donors, the wealthy donors who are seeing an unstable market, they're going to delay their decisions a lot of times. They'll wait until late December so that they can kind of see where they land, see where the entire year, the scope comes into clarity.
So in that case, you should stay close and patient, don't pressure them. But you do want to follow up very warmly, as closely as you can. And as, you know, I'm trying to say the word intimate, but what I mean is like sending text messages and making phone calls as personally as you can. You want to follow up the week of December 21st, because that's when hopefully they're there they they really have a picture and a broader view of what their year end is going to look like. Now for those middle income donors.
those you know ones that are really feeling the pinch, they're feeling the prices, they're feeling inflation, they are going to, their, their, their kind of tendencies are broadly over time to trim one-time donations and they'll only give to those causes that they hold most dear. So in that case, you can offer a monthly option. So where they might have given $100, you can offer $10 a month, you're actually getting $120, but they don't have to part with $100 all at the same time.
So you want to show at the same time, you also want to show impact for each one of those dollars, right? So we're always drawing the circle back to what you're actually accomplishing, what you're actually making possible with the nonprofit with each of those dollars. And for anybody that's worried about their job, as you can imagine, their likelihood is to pull back, stop giving entirely. they'll, you know, maybe downgrade their membership with you or their their more recurring donation. And that is that is that is.
Probably, I'm gonna guess, happened maybe to all of us, certainly has happened to me in my lifetime. So, in that case, the gracious and wonderful thing to do is thank them as a supporter and offer volunteer opportunities or offer other ways that they can support your cause and your mission that doesn't require money. Because in all likelihood, as again, many of us have in all likelihood experienced, these situations are very rarely stagnant.
they do typically change over time. So the best thing you can do is keep people connected, keep them connected in a way that doesn't cost them anything, so that they're, you know, any any one of these folks, so that they, when they come to you, you are again a trusted resource that they can lean on and know that what they're what they have with you, what what you're doing and what you're taking their money to do is exactly what you have said it's going to do. All right.
So now we move into what is actually quite truly complicated and try not to glaze over, but listen because there's some key nuggets in here, our new tax rules. There is a key change that, as I mentioned, almost nobody is talking to donors about yet. The tax law that was signed in the summer of 2025, as the part of the one big beautiful bill, has changed how donations are treated. And these changes did not take place last year, they're taking place this year in the 2026 tax year.
So this coming December is the very first year end that these rules will apply to. Nobody has any experience with them. We're all starting out new. So, and what I can promise you is that your donors definitely don't. And before I say anything else, let me also be clear I am not a CPA. I am not a nonprofit based CPA. I am betting many of you out there aren't either. So I am not here to give you tax advice at all.
And if you're a development officer at a nonprofit, you should never position yourself as an expert in tax law and you should never provide tax advice. You can, however, our job is pretty narrow here. What we can do is inform our donors that something has changed. So it's actually honestly very powerful. Like the person that told you that there is a very big change afoot, something has happened that will impact them.
You're the one that tells them that, but I can't give you all of the details on it. So go talk to your expert. That's a really powerful stance and a trust building one. So a donor that learns from you that the rules changed and those new rules might actually help them, definitely will impact them. That's somebody that feels like they're that like you're looking out for them. So you get to become a trusted partner. So what changed? Okay, first change.
New there is a new deduction for non-itomizers. This is when you're filing your taxes. Non-itomizers, now it is up to $1,000 for a single person and up to $2,000 for a married couple filing jointly. That impacts most individual taxpayers take the standard deduction. And that historically means, and has historically meant, that they really couldn't claim a federal charitable deduction for any of their gifts.
So what that now means is that cash donors to most 501c3 nonprofits can now reduce their taxes. Donations, big caveat, donations to donor-advised funds do not qualify. They don't at all. This is different. Cash cash-only donors. We also have a change.5% AGI floor for itemizers.
So that is for the donors that do itemize. Our previous one was for non-itemizers. The first 0.5% of income donated is not deductible. At $200,000 AGI, the first adjusted gross income, that's what that stands for. The first $1,000 doesn't count. Next, we have a reduced tax benefit from itemized deductions for some high-income taxpayers.
Taxpayers in the 37% bracket generally is who this is going to impact. And what it means is that the tax benefit of itemized deductions is effectively limited to 35% rather than 37% for affected taxpayers. So that could technically mean that some of our larger donors are getting less of a tax incentive or break than they were previously.
And then a final one that I'll point to, and there are actually quite a few other tax law changes within the charitable space. So if you want to kind of like go down a rabbit hole, please feel free. I'm just highlighting these ones that I think broadly impact our organizations. the change is that 1% of taxable, there is a one, there is now a 1% of taxable income floor for corporations. And a corporation is a C corp. So if it's an LLC,
not a corporation. It has to file the business entity itself has to file as a C Corp. Why am I telling you this? I'm telling you this because many of your sponsors are likely going to be C Corps. Corporate sponsors and partners who are C Corp business entities, it means that some companies may consolidate donations into fewer but larger commitments. So you can imagine the implications for us there.
Did I lose you yet? All right, I'm gonna translate some of those numbers here and tax language into plain English because there's actually genuinely some good news in here. For the past several years, most donors who took the standard deduction generally did not, generally received no federal charitable deduction for their gifts. Beginning in 2026, however, that has changed. Starting this year, many of them can deduct their cash donations without itemizing, up to $1,000 for a single person and up to $2,000 for a married couple that files jointly.
That is the first time in like, you know, for a really long time, for years, that small and mid-sized donors have a, they've got a tax reason to give. So that group that we find shrinking, they now have a tax incentive to make cash-based donations to nonprofits. That's very good news that you can easily share with them. And the picture is a little bit more nuanced and more mixed at the top end of your donors. Some of your very biggest donors are itemizing, they're filing itemized taxes.
They now face a floor before they're giving counts, and the value of their deduction is capped, and that cap is lower than it was before. So it's not really dramatic, but it is a real and it's a consideration and it's a real change. So it's a reason for you to talk to your donors individually rather than assuming that every donor falls into the same bucket. Again, segment, speak to everybody.
Meet them where they are. That's what I'm gonna continue to say. Now some stuff didn't change. Appreciated securities, the donors may generally avoid tap capital gains tax on the appreciation and when eligible deduct the fair market value of the donated securities subject to applicable rules and limits. IRA qualified charitable distributions, QCDs, you've heard that. Donors th that are seventy and a half years old and older.
They can donate directly from their IRA up to the annual limit of $108,000. It's excluded from income, so the new floor doesn't touch it. QCDs cannot go to donor advice funds either. And then bunching, because that 0.5 floor, 0.5% floor applies every single year, some itemizers will combine several years of donations into one much larger donation, often through a donor advice fund. I think that's what we will, that's what.
We are anticipating the knock-on effects will be and look like. And then for DAFs, this new deduction applies to qualifying cash gifts made directly to eligible charities. Gifts of stock, property, and contributions to donor advice funds do not qualify for this particular deduction. So, how do we talk about this with our donors? Like it's I even just reading that, my eyes are blurry and it's really difficult to consume. You do have two big opportunities as I see it here, and they actually point at two different parts of your donor file.
The first and the biggest opportunity is that new deduction for non-itemizers, obviously. So for years, we've got our small and mid-sized donors that really did not see much of a tax break for their donations that were cash-based. Now, new for 2026, you may be able to deduct qualifying charitable cash gifts even if you don't itemize. That's a wonderful thing. That's something we can actually talk about to our donors. The second opportunity is with your major donors, and it runs in the exact opposite direction.
For them, the rules have gotten more complicated and you know, and potentially have some negative negativity in them. And so for that, because there is complication and nuance in it, that is a reason for you to call your donors. This is not an email, it's a phone call that says the donation rules change this year. And I wanted to make sure that you'd had a chance to review it before you make your usual year in gifts. So please consider a conversation with your advisor.
Before you make your usual donation. That is a huge trust-building opportunity for you with your donors. And it does two things at once. It's like honestly helpful, and it opens a conversation about a year in donation without you even needing to bring it up, right? On that call, you can make sure that they know the three things that a lot of donors forget that you also accept, which are, and if you're
Not in the pro in the practice of this, and I highly encourage you to look at it, accepting finding a way to accept appreciated securities that is fluid and that does not require your donor to be in contact with their advisor. Make sure that you they know that you can accept grants from their donor advice fund or DAF. And for donors who are 70 and a half, I don't know why that, but 70 and a half and older, their donations can also come straight from their IRAs. And all of those gifts tend to be.
larger gifts. And the last one, the ones that come straight from the IRA, those tend to be the largest gifts that a donor can make. So they're, you know, they're also often the ones that just don't get made because it never gets brought up. So for everyday donors who don't itemize, your messaging could be new this year. Even if you don't itemize, your donation may lower your taxes. That's great news. For those mid-level and major donors, the rules have changed this year. Talk with your advisor
And know that we can accept stock, DAF, and IRA donations, even QCDs. You could throw that in there too. For donors that are 70 and a half and older, you can donate directly from your IRA. Did you know? And it might count toward your required minimum distribution. And then when you're talking to, so I mentioned the sponsors, the C corps that might have that floor now that they did not before, you're going to want to be the first one that asks them for their gift.
Or for their donation to your gala in 2027. Be the first in line. Because as I s as I mentioned, they have more incentive now. These C Corps have more incentive to bundle their gift into one much larger gift and make one as opposed to multiple throughout the year. So whatever you say, always, always, always close with please consult your tax advisor about your own situation. Put that in the appeal, put it in any social post that you may make about that, any phone call that you make, just
Just like the caveat that I did at the very beginning of this segment, it protects you, it protects the donor, and it's frankly just like the honest thing to do. We're the ones that are gonna tell our donors that something has changed. Their advisors are going to give them the details and tell them exactly how it impacts them. All right, those are our three buckets. We have attention, wallet, and rules. We're dealing with a lot. So
I wanna break it into just a quick calendar because there's not a lot of time left in 2026. We're gonna take October, we're gonna refine our lists, and we're gonna build warmth. Let's just call it warmth. The four weeks after the election, we're gonna launch, we're gonna begin our year-in giving appeals. And December, in December, we're gonna close it up.
So Fundraise Up just released its pulse check report, and it looked at five years of year-in donation data across more than 500 US nonprofits. And a couple of the findings that they've got here are gonna really impact the way that we look at our calendar. And so I I found some of this fascinating and some of it, frankly, a little bit surprising. So the amount of giving season, and we're gonna call giving season the last six months, six, not six months, the last six weeks of the year. So mid-November to the
December 31st, right? Giving season revenue from the final six days of the year is 38% of all giving throughout the year. 38% happens on the finals in the final six days of the year. In the share of giving season revenue, so actually I'm sorry, that number of 38% comes from this giving season. So everything that's gonna get raised in those final six weeks of the year, 38% of it is going to happen in the final six days.
On December 31st alone, 16% of all giving season revenue is going to be raised. On December 30th, it's 8%. So that's already half, all happening in the final six days of the year. On Giving Tuesday, 10% of all giving season donations are going to be made. This year Giving Tuesday actually falls in December, so it's on December 1st this year.
donations from returning donors are at 59%. That was in 2025. Actually, sorry, in this five year look back, but that's good because it's up 46 up from 46% five years ago. And here's the one that I found surprising. 78% of those gifts are going to come from revenue driven by search and organic traffic. That means that your donor is not clicking through an email.
They are not donating in the moment of your phone call. They're not moving from the text. They are looking you up and donating on your site. So we want to make sure that those pages are optimized for donations and conversions. And I would argue that search traffic has typically meant Google search, but today it also means agentic or AEO. So we've also got Chat GPT and Claude that's going to suggest, you know, if somebody's just looking for a cause. So
You know, the way to increase there's a whole that's a whole nother topic. I'm not gonna dive down that hole, but you do want to make sure that you're starting to pay attention to both search engines as well as AEO or agentic engine optimization, and how you can have Chad and Claude begin to mention you among others. so 61% of nonprofits, 61 don 61% of all donations also came from nonprofits that offer ACH in their online donation form. So
People also don't want to only give via credit card. They want to have other opportunities. And again, I would add in DAF donations and appreciated securities donations to that as well. So all of these figures are median values per organization across Fundraise Ups 500 plus nonprofit cohort. So first one that I'll really harp on, and I've already kind of harped on it. The season is not one day. Giving Tuesday is a great kickoff to the season. And honestly, it really does start before that.
that that definitely marks like a ramp up December 1st. And about 10% of season revenue is going to happen on that single day. But the final six days, we get 38%, and December 31st alone brings in 16%. So if your team is totally exhausted and checked out and on vacation on December 26th and you don't have a bunch of automations in place, then you are leaving your potentially biggest week on the table. Second, your div your December donors.
Are already in your database. 59% of donations come from returning donors, which is up from 46% five years ago. And the report finds that donors make just one donation during the season. Most donors make just one donation during the season. So you're not trying to get net new donors in December. You want to make sure that the people that already love you know that you are there, they remember about you, and they're and that you are available and it's easy to make a gift to you.
And then third, make it easy. 78% of season revenue, as I mentioned, comes from search and organic traffic in an election year. That's actually good news. Our inbox are flooded, we have too many text messages. Donors look you up directly. 78% of them. So make sure that page is easy to find, it's easy to navigate, your donation button is big, the inline form is right there. Whatever it is that you do, make it optimized and work for your organization. So
Calendar right here, super fast. October 1st to November 2nd. We're gonna call it October 6th. October 6th to November 2nd, we cultivate. Clean your list, send nice stories, connect with your major donors, draft your tax change messaging if you're going to do that. Get everything ready to go. For the election week, you kind of go quiet. Honestly, and especially this year, I think we just.
No sense on just especially on November 3rd. Honestly, I would hold off until the end of that week and start fresh on November what is that, 9th or 10th. And so then November 9th to November 30th, this is our launch, right? Now we get to go, post election messaging goes out, whatever that looks like, not mentioning the election at all, but talking about how you're here and you're trusted resource and you're a local and you're in the community. and then your year and appeal.
goes into the mail and it goes into your emails and it goes into the text messages and you start making the phone calls. This is, this is in November where you do begin to introduce the concept and the understanding that you know about this new deduction for non-itemizers and you want to start sharing that. And you also want to alert your major gift donors, your major donors that there is a new tax bill
in place and there are new tax laws and that they need to connect with their advisors to know more about it. So Thanksgiving is November 26th, so we also do want to get mail in homes the week before. So if you're sending out actual snail mail, do that prior to the week of Thanksgiving. Then December 1st to the 31st, it's a huge push. Giving Tuesday, that first of December, then stock and
DAF and IRA reminders send those early because transfers can take time. I used to actually tell donors, this was something I did, they should stock start stock transfers by December 18th. And this was actually before we have made it a little bit more fluid. So now that's less important if you are encouraging your donors to go through a form on your site. But if they're still moving through the kind of old-fashioned way and working with their advisors on those transfers, they should start by December 18th. And then IRA distributions, they need to start those in early December.
Because bankers and financial planners can really get slow at that time of year. It's the holidays. So those last six days bringing in 38% of season revenue, you gotta plan for all of them. Emails go out on December 26th and 28th. There's one on the 29th and the 30th, and two on December 31st. It feels like a lot. I remember this. I remember being like, I can't believe I'm doing this. But each one of them works. That is the thing that I can tell you. And through it all,
You're gonna thank every donor within 48 hours. Just don't forget that. That's how this year's donor become next year's donors. So it's the year-in squeeze. It is happening. Our donors are distracted, their wallets are either pinched or split, and the rules have changed. But every one of those is an opening for nonprofits if you just make a plan for them. Cultivate in October, launch right after the election, and final push throughout December. You've got this.
And I did want to end, it's I know I'm running close to time, but I did want to end with an email that I actually got this morning. Some of you likely got it too from Mallory Erickson. She's a wonderful thinker in our sector, and she's a fundraising coach. because I it it really was a wonderful reminder on a on a study that I had actually also seen as well. She's pointing to research by Francis Flynn and Vanessa Bonds, who found that when people make a direct request for help, they underestimate.
How often others will say yes, by as much as half. When we're the one that's doing the asking, we kind of fixate on what it's gonna cost the other person or how difficult it's going to be, or whatever the barriers might be there to them saying yes. But what we're not paying attention to is that saying no to a real human request is also a very uncomfortable thing. It's honestly.
For most people, more uncomfortable than saying yes. Saying no is more uncomfortable than saying yes. And that discomfort tips a lot of people towards yes. So that research was actually based on everyday favors, like asking your neighbor for a cup of sugar, you know, for a ride to something or whatever that is. It's not really applicable. It's not the research was not based on major gift convert conversations. But I'm not gonna like extrapolate that too too much.
But I do believe that the pattern holds for almost every fundraiser that I've ever known, and certainly for me when I was in it, we are far more pessimistic about the ask than the people that we are asking are. Because the truth underneath everything that we've covered today is that you can get the timing right, the message right, and the tax language, you can get all of that exactly right. And none of it matters if you don't make the ask. So make it. All right.
That was a doozy of an episode. I'm so grateful that you joined me. And for those that have stayed and listened and you want more, please click into those show notes. You can get the transcript. You can also get which I'm gonna give you the clean transcript, not what I actually said. You're gonna see it without the ums and the stumbles. So you'll see what the script is here that I've got. And I will also delineate some of those things into some just quick and easy charts that you can reference so you're seeing all of the numbers that I threw at you.
But the most important thing is you've got this. We are all here to do some good. So let's go do some good. I again am so grateful to you for joining me. We are going to take the next two weeks off and come back roaring and ready to go with an interview that I will do with Gabe Cooper of Virtuous on his In of One fundraising, In of One Philanthropy book that is now out.
so there's just so much good stuff coming here in the last few weeks of this year, and I cannot wait to bring all of it to you. But until I see you again, I hope that you have an incredible day. I hope that you take some time in October to get ready for the year in sprint, and you take care, exceptional care of yourself along the way. Let's all go do some good. Thank you. Have a great day. Goodbye.