| What do I do when my donors and volunteers disappear? | You may need to fight the loneliness epidemic in your own community. Collect and analyze data so you know what's really happening. Then invest in community-building, networking, and engagement. |
An ever-shrinking number of people with a whole lot of wealth are shaping our world. Foundations and philanthropists haven’t quite reached oligarch levels, but the charitable world is seeing the same concentration of influence as business, tech, entertainment, and media.
Big money isn’t necessarily bad for good causes; large gifts can help organizations who happen to share lofty goals with wealthy donors. But the increase in money flowing to a handful of groups masks the reality most organizations face: Fewer people overall are supporting charitable causes.
If you run an organization that depends on members, volunteers, and individual donations, you’ve seen it yourself. In both Canada and the USA, the number of people donating to charitable causes has been declining for years, dropping more than 20% in the last decade.
The increase in dollars is hiding a decrease in public engagement. And when it comes to sustainability and impact, that decrease in public participation is a big deal.
Most organizations are seeing a drop in donations, fewer donors, and declining numbers of volunteers. That’s been the main trend for several years. Meanwhile, demand for charitable services has been going up thanks to the pandemic, inflation, and now massive government cuts.
Trying to do more with less can lead to a downward spiral: the fewer resources you have to do your work, the harder it is to find time to network and build support; the fewer relationships you build, the harder it is to find the money and volunteers you need to do the work.
The spiral is difficult to escape. (But it’s not impossible!)
One of the reasons for declining participation is what some call the loneliness epidemic. “Over the past decade, the number of Canadians with six or more close friends has declined by 40 percent, and just under half of Canadians feel lonely,” says The Giving Report 2024.
As people become more isolated, they also become less like to give to charity. “For individuals with no friends or just one friend, only 53 percent donate to charity … Increasing the number of friends to 2 or 4 comes with a donation rate of 61 percent. Of those with seven to ten friends, 84 percent donated to charity,” says the Report.
In other words: the more friends people make, the more likely they are to support charitable programs. The fewer friends they have, the less engaged they will be.
You could look at this data and decide that your job is to find people with friends, then ask them for money. That’s not the right lesson.
Your job is to build relationships, not just exploit the ones that are there. The real lesson here is that charities (and any volunteer-driven group) should be trying to strengthen social ties in their communities.
The problem (lack of community) and the solution (build more community) seem to be two sides of the same coin, and that’s super interesting. The more you help others, the more they can help you.
You may not be able to change global trends, but you do have a lot of influence over what happens in your own backyard.
If your organization is seeing individual volunteers and donors drift away, there are things you can do to buck the trend.
The first step is to confirm what’s happening. Make sure you know how many donors and volunteers you have and whether those numbers have been changing. Don’t just look at your revenue or donation tallies; count the number of people who enable your work, and compare that number to the past. Good strategy is always rooted in what’s true for your organization, so start with the facts.
Armed with this knowledge, look at the ways you engage with your community. (And when we say “community”, we mean donors, volunteers, constituents, clients, partners, and the people around them — all of the people who provide you with resources that help you do good work.)
Make sure you have a good understanding of the ways people interact and how often you engage them. This will include events, email updates, and meetings. Pay special attention to the ways your community members interact with each other, not just the ways they interact with you. A strong community will have a web of relationships and not be dependent on one person to hold everyone together.
Ask yourself how well your organization’s engagement is building community:
Look specifically at the things you do (or could be doing) to counter the loneliness trend:
These aren’t rhetorical questions — you’ll find factual answers to each of them, and that’s the basis for what you do next.
Building community isn’t a trick for finding donors or recruiting volunteers faster — it’s part of your organization’s core mission.
When you connect people who share a common goal and empower them to work together, you get good work done. You build trust. You create hope. You enhance society’s capacity for change.
It’s a bit of a paradox. To find donors, you need to create the conditions that inspire people to give: foster social connections; build trust in leaders and institutions like yours; give people hope; show them their efforts make a difference. Yet you need donors to help pay for all that work and volunteers to help do it.
It’s doable, but it takes leadership. You have to go first. You have to be the one who creates spaces and opportunities for others.
You can’t wait for other people, because they are waiting for you.
If you are seeing donor and volunteer contributions declining, you need to know that this is a global trend.
It’s probably not just you or your group, and you may not be doing anything “wrong”. The solutions will need to come from you, though. You will need to invest more in community-building, networking, and engagement.
And it’s going to be great.
I think that’s the real message here. Building up your community isn’t just a way to raise money. Individual donations are an indicator of engagement and impact, not the cause of it.
When you focus on building relationships, you nurture a smarter, more compassionate, more empowered community. You create friendships and hope, even in an age of loneliness and mistrust.
Community is impact in and of itself. It’s the foundation for democracy and all of the social, cultural, and community programs that flow from there. So yeah, it’s a pretty powerful thing.
The Organizer is a newsletter for people working to create equitable and sustainable communities. Whether you are part of a nonprofit, a charity, or a social enterprise, this newsletter is for you.
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