The most meaningful and sustainable giving starts with a genuine connection. When donors feel seen, heard, and valued, they don’t just give — they stay, they grow, and they become true partners in your mission.
Human-first fundraising is about more than strategy — it’s about sparking generosity through authentic relationships. It’s how you build trust, deepen commitment, and create a pipeline of generous donors.
Because when you lead with heart, generosity follows — and your mission has the support it needs to grow, now and into the future.
Donor retention has been declining for years—and your organization is feeling it.
Meanwhile, leadership is counting on you to build a pipeline of future major donors to sustain the mission.
But with donors leaving, you’re forced to focus on constantly acquiring new ones just to keep up.
This puts you in a costly cycle: paying a premium to replace donors who most likely won’t stick around or give significantly.
You’re spending more just to stay afloat, and your donor pipeline isn’t moving people toward meaningful support. As a result, your organization can’t serve everyone who needs help.
You may already know the symptoms well:
At the root of it all?
A lack of real, human connection.
Donors don’t stick around (and they certainly won’t grow) without it — and building those relationships at scale? That’s the real challenge.
At Amplify, we believe building relationships is the key to solving both retention and pipeline issues.
We help you reconnect with your donors at a deeper, more meaningful level — at scale.
Here’s how we do it:
Attract the right donors from the start: We build and refine your acquisition efforts to bring in higher-quality, longer-lasting donors, the kind who stay engaged and have the potential to upgrade their giving over time.
We believe that it’s not just about doing or spending more. We believe that you can get more from your existing investments by better directing them to create meaningful, authentic relationships with your donors — and do it at scale — so that your donors feel connected to you and inspired by your mission.
This is how you can truly fix your retention problem and build your pipeline of future major donors.
With our tested and proven model focused on building relationships and making connections, fundraisers like you can build a sustainable development program that finds new donors and intentionally works to keep them in a deep and committed partnership.
Understanding and connecting with the felt needs of potential supporters is essential for driving action. These needs are personal, deeply held issues and desires that truly matter. By actively listening, humanizing the cause, aligning shared values, and providing meaningful ways to get involved, you create emotional engagement. This inspires supporters, fosters deeper commitment, and motivates them to take impactful action that makes a real difference in the world.
To build a strong relationship with a new subscriber or donor, show genuine interest in them. Engage openly, be authentic, and use multiple channels to connect. Approach without expectations, focusing on building trust. By fostering real connections and demonstrating sincerity, you create a foundation for lasting engagement. This strengthens relationships and encourages deeper involvement, making supporters feel truly valued and appreciated over time.
To build strong and lasting relationships with your new donors, it requires honesty and respect. You must actively listen, create a two-way dialog, ask questions, listen to their responses, and validate their feelings. But that’s not all! When they give, you must acknowledge their gifts and show sincere gratitude. This will deepen your donor’s connection to your organization, and inspire generosity in both consistent and more meaningful ways over a longer lasting relationship.
To deepen relationships with donors and retain support, ongoing cultivation and stewardship are essential. Keep them informed about their impact and the work being done. Show care, engage authentically, and make them feel part of the mission. By fostering connection and presenting personalized giving opportunities, donors will feel valued, increasing generosity and strengthening their commitment to continued support over time. Genuine relationships lead to lasting donor engagement.
As trust grows and relationships strengthen, we use proven models to identify when your donors are ready to upgrade their support to recurring, mid-level, major, or legacy gifts. Our proven approach will qualify donors, ensuring they are prepared to be handed off to gift officers who secure contributions. This is how we can increase donor commitments, build confidence in your organization, and foster deeper, long-term engagement for sustained philanthropic impact.
Through our tested and proven model, we implement a strategic approach to acquire, retain, and upgrade donors while optimizing for greater results; all while educating your team for long-term fundraising success.
Acquiring new subscribers and donors is essential for growing and sustaining your fundraising program. We use targeted digital marketing across multiple channels, optimized landing pages, and compelling lead magnets that align with your organization’s mission to effectively acquire subscribers and donors that will stick around for a long time.
Almost 70% of donors only give once to an organization. This is a problem, especially because retained donors are your most valuable. To retain them, we implement personalized communications, provide impact updates, express gratitude, offer engagement opportunities, and seek feedback to make them feel valued and connected.
As donors become more engaged, they are often willing to contribute more, and more frequently, especially when they feel their impact is valued. But identifying the right time and right donors to upgrade is key. Using data-driven insights, we implement a scalable communication strategy to make the right ask to the right people at the right time.
We integrate testing and optimization into everything we do. From email content to donation forms and calls to action, we design and implement experiments, analyze the data, and refine strategies to increase donor engagement, improve conversion rates, and continuously enhance fundraising performance for better results.
Through training, workshops, and ongoing support, we help equip your team with the knowledge and strategies to better understand donor behavior, enhance your communications, and apply learnings from the industry. These sessions, virtual or on-site, optimize fundraising efforts and build and expand internal capabilities.
In our work with clients to acquire, retain, grow, and win-back donors to improve results for them — we aim to take what we are learning, and give it freely to others so they may take what is good and implement it for their own programs. Here are just a few of the latest articles our team has published.
Beyond the Direct Ask: Offers That Build Relationships By Brittany Thomas My closest friends are the ones I talk to regularly. But here’s the thing…we usually have multiple conversations happening all at the same time. We’re texting in a group chat, sending memes on Instagram, and leaving Marco Polo video
Case Study: How One Faith-Based Organization Increased Engaged Donors by 54% with a More Human Email Strategy By Brittany Thomas When it comes to email strategy, few topics stir up as much tension as frequency. “Aren’t we sending too many?” “Will donors tune us out?” “Isn’t it better to play
Case Study: How One Faith-Based Organization Increased Donor Engagement by 54% with a More Human Email Strategy By Brittany Thomas Technology should make your donor relationships more human, not less. In this practical, strategy-packed workshop, Courtney Krus joins Scott Holthaus and Ben Harney from Virtuous to explore how nonprofits
Developed under our proven model and guided by strategy, here is how we can serve your nonprofit organization looking to build a sustainable fundraising program.
Identify, strategize and develop pipeline upgrade plans for potential mid, major and planned giving donors.
A 3-year fundraising plan, rooted in your data, with projected investments and results focused on acquisition, retention and upgrade.
Our fundraising counsel is focused on optimizing and growing your sustainable program.
Enhance the organization's performance through optimizing your operations, management, process and technology.
Planning & execution of catalytic fund-raising campaigns to activate and upgrade your donors.
We develop experiment hypothesis to innovate, learn and grow your program.
Writing, versioning, staging and deploying—our team can do it all.
We can create, advise or manage any of your ad campaigns as well custom performance reporting.
We provide multi-year & channel fundraising program performance reports and reviews.
Nonprofit organizations that we serve well with typically fall into one of these categories. That said, if you are looking to get serious about building and growing your fundraising program, let's connect!
If you're stuck in a fundraising plateau and struggling to build a pipeline for mid, major, and planned giving donors, you've come to the right place.
We identify overlooked donors with upgrade potential, reignite your upgrade pipeline, and create a sustainable digital human-first program to nurture and activate donors increased commitments.
If you have grown through direct mail but want to diversify to include digital, you’re a fit!
We'll help analyze mail prospects, explore digital opportunities, and create a plan that includes budget for growth.
We make sure both channels work together to grow your program and improve the donor experience.
If you're a media or broadcast organization, you likely have what you need to go digital-first already!
We help package, distribute, and monetize your treasure trove, while optimizing and creating complementary experiences and campaigns to build a robust, human-first online program, reaching your full potential.
If a small percentage of donors drive most of your annual funds, it’s time to find balance.
We’ll help you create the business plan to share with your major donors and grant-writing organizations to be fully funded — bringing thousand of donor in per year to the organization.
Courtney Krus has spent the majority of her 20+ year career serving the nonprofit sector leading digital-first development programs across diverse causes. Her background in broadcast media enriches her approach to communications and audience engagement. Known for her empathy and strategic insight, Courtney builds lasting client partnerships while guiding organizations to build the same kind of connection with their donors at scale through online channels.
Courtney pairs her competitive drive and curiosity with a deep commitment to helping nonprofits grow. She champions a donor-centric, data-driven approach—guiding organizations in building sustainable fundraising programs through testing and ongoing optimization. Her passion lies in cultivating donor relationships and creating a culture of learning that fuels more good in our world.
A proud North Dakota farm girl at heart, she now calls Texas home with her husband and their four children.
Shoot Courtney a message at courtney@amplifyfr.com.
Greg has worked both in the for-profit and nonprofit industries over the last 25+ years, the last 15+ in leadership positions focused on rapid scale and sustainable growth.
Whether it’s his own organization or a client program, he excels at taking things apart, figuring out how they work, and how to put them back together in an optimized way.
He has built and managed digital programs, direct mail programs and mid-level programs throughout his career and has developed proven donor prospecting models to identify donors with capacity to give substantially more for nonprofit organizations of all sizes.
He is a certified EOS Integrator and recently led the leadership team at NextAfter as its Integrator and Chief Operating Officer. Through it all he is passionate about inspiring generosity.
He loves Star Wars almost as much as he loves his wife Annie and their boys.
Shoot Greg a message at greg@amplifyfr.com.
Emily brings over eight years of experience partnering with nonprofits and agency teams to elevate and optimize digital fundraising strategies.
She specializes in building acquisition programs from the ground up, often by uncovering content organizations forget they have. Her work has delivered measurable results for mission organizations, broadcast and media ministries, and pro-life groups.
Known by her former colleagues as “the bulldog,” Emily earned a reputation for her tenacity, accountability, and unwavering commitment to both her team and the goals of the organizations she serves. She’s passionate about crafting meaningful donor journeys and seamless customer experiences—always focused on delivering high-quality solutions with meticulous attention to detail.
Originally from Hershey, Pennsylvania, Emily is a proud Penn State fan and dog mom to a chocolate cocker spaniel named Truffle.
Shoot Emily a message at emily@amplifyfr.com.
Brittany has spent the last decade helping mission-driven organizations bring clarity to their strategy, confidence to their execution, and meaningful growth to their fundraising. She’s led teams of digital marketing specialists and served as an Operations Director, building systems that turn complexity into momentum.
She’s a certified Project Management Professional (PMP) with a passion for solving problems, optimizing processes, and sharing knowledge. Whether she’s training a team or coaching a client, Brittany focuses on equipping people to work smarter and solve challenges independently.
Known for asking the right questions and digging deep to find what actually works, she’s driven by a desire to build, improve, and help others inspire generosity at scale.
Originally from Sulphur Springs, Texas, Brittany has 10 nieces and nephews, loves solo road trips—especially to Colorado—and rarely turns down a cold Dr Pepper.
Shoot Brittany a message at brittany@amplifyfr.com.
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Call or text us at 775-557-7851