How a Midlevel Program Can Boost Giving in a Time of Uncertainty

It’s been a tough year for many nonprofits — government cuts, rising prices, tariffs, and economic uncertainty. Not surprisingly, organizations are looking to shore up their fundraising dollars. While many immediately think of major gifts as a way to fill funding gaps, fundraisers say midlevel giving is a significant share of giving that is often overlooked. Oftentimes, a midlevel gift program can start bringing in additional money faster than a push for major gifts — and midlevel donors are great candidates for planned gifts.

“There’s a lot of attention, of course, put on major donors, major gifts,” says Paul Yeghiayan, a senior consultant at the Benefactor Group, a fundraising consulting firm. “Midlevel giving is actually the load-bearing walls of your giving program.”

Midlevel donors, which for many nonprofits are people who give $1,000 to $10,000 annually, tend to make up less than 10 percent of total donors, but can contribute “between 30 to 50 percent of your annual revenue,” Yeghiayan says.

These donors are extremely important in uncertain economies, says Alia McKee, a principal at Sea Change Strategies, a consulting firm that has released research reports studying midlevel donors.

“Midlevel donors are a foundational part of a healthy fundraising ecosystem,” McKee says. “I would make it a strategic priority.”

For nonprofits that don’t have a midlevel donor program, the benefits of setting one up will reach throughout your fundraising program, McKee and other fundraising experts say. Getting the program up and running takes just a few basic steps, and with a thoughtful launch, it can be boosting your organization’s fundraising in a matter of months.

Benefits of a Midlevel Program

The idea of getting 30 to 50 percent of revenue from a sliver of the donor file that doesn’t even include your major donors sounds amazing. But the benefits of a midlevel program go beyond straight revenue, McKee explains. One of midlevel donors’ best attributes is their consistency. Major donors may give a gift once or twice, but midlevel donors tend to be steady, reliable, long-term supporters who keep giving.

“They’re extremely loyal,” McKee says. “Many of these donors have been giving for 10 or more years. They have very high multi-year retention rates. They’re also strong prospects for planned giving and DAF giving.”

The Missing Middle Report, which McKee’s firm released, interviewed 5,900 midlevel donors to learn about their habits and inclinations. Among the findings: These donors were often willing to leave a gift to their favorite charity in their will, which might count as a major gift, depending on the size of the estate gift. “Thirty-three percent of the sample had already made a bequest gift,” McKee says, “and then another 20 percent were thinking about it.”

The International Rescue Committee has focused in recent years on beefing up its midlevel giving program, says Ishmam Rahman, the organization’s director of audience and donor strategy.

“They are organically giving a lot, and so usually if you give them a little bit more of a personalized treatment or cultivation, you can increase the revenue per donor quite easily,” Rahman says. “So the ROI is really high.”

The IRC’s 20,000 midlevel donors are now giving around $45 million each year, Rahman says. They add that the donors, who get special stewardship that includes branded reports and handwritten thank-you notes, are incredibly reliable.

“They make up a very sustainable core of your revenue, and these donors also tend to be more recession-proof,” they say.

The Chronicle talked to veteran fundraisers and consultants about the steps organizations should take to build a strong midlevel giving program. Here’s their hard-won advice.

Define What Your Nonprofit Considers a Midlevel Gift

To create a strong midlevel program, there are a few basics to focus on. The first is defining what your organization considers a midlevel gift.

McKee says that while $1,000 is often the bottom of the range, some organizations will start at $500, if they don’t receive a ton of large gifts. However, some will go higher if their major-gifts starting point is very high. Yeghiayan, the consultant at the Benefactor Group, suggests looking at three years of giving data and finding the midpoint between the average gift and the major-gift floor, and using that to set your midlevel giving floor.

Once you know what your midlevel giving range is, it’s a good idea to go through the database to find donors who contribute at that level. McKee recommends also looking at donors who fall slightly below that. So, if your program starts at $1,000, find anyone who has given $750 a year in recent years, as well. That way, when you start the program, you can nudge them up, Yeghiayan says. We’ll get to how shortly.

Figure Out a Name for the Program

It’s a good idea to name the midlevel program.

“Most have a name because it’s very hard to invite someone to be part of something that is amorphous,” McKee says. “Most donors cannot unprompted tell you what the name of the giving circle they belong to is. So, it’s less about the donor being able to identify it. It’s a name so folks understand that they’re joining something.”

Yeghiayan has a naming tip: “I would definitely focus on the word circle,” he says. “The reason for that is you want to signal exclusivity without it being elitist.”

If you’re having trouble picking a name for your midlevel donor group, Yeghiayan says, “reach out to some of the donors who give at that level and say, ‘Hey, we’re looking to create a midlevel circle. Here’s a couple names that we’re thinking about. What do you think?’”

Determine the Benefits you Want to Offer

After picking the name, think about the benefits you want to offer. This is where things can get tricky. Midlevel gift officers have many more donors in their portfolio than major-gift officers do. While the donors should feel like it’s a one-to-one relationship, the person overseeing the program could be responsible for up to 400 people. That means the program benefits have to be scalable and doable by a small number of staff, possibly just one person.

“A lot of organizations can struggle with this, especially if they don’t have a lot of galas or a lot tangible benefits available,” says Rahman, whose midlevel donors are called the Rescue Collective. “We wanted to take what was already happening and brand it as a tangible benefit — the annual report, the impact report, now they’re branded as Rescue Collective leader impact report.”

Rebranding a report you already do with a different cover and special note from your executive director is a tangible benefit that doesn’t require a lot of extra work. Other benefits could include a special monthly or quarterly newsletter, or two “insider” webinars a year, where members get to hear from leadership or program officers about what the organization is doing, and how members of the program can have more impact.

Any benefits you offer should be something you can follow through on and something that can be done with all your donors in that group, McKee says.

“Make sure that you are delivering on the value promise,” she says. “If you said you’re going to invite them to three town halls, make sure that they’re getting invited to three town halls. If you said you’re going to be invited to a listening session with our executive director, make sure that you’re delivering on that.”

At IRC, the goal is personal, but scalable. “We don’t meet with donors in person because that would take up so much time,” Rahman says. “We ask donors for Zoom meetings, and we just do video calls. There are ways to make your relationship-building more efficient because it’s just not the same as major gifts.”

For organizations that have a place they can bring donors, offering to have a special backstage or behind-the scenes look once a year, is also something groups can consider, says Yeghiagan.

Make Sure Leadership Is on Board

Before rolling the program out to donors, it’s key that staff who are proposing a midlevel program get full buy-in from leadership and any teams who will need to support midlevel giving.

“Where I see organizations start and go off the rails is when development gets really excited about it or membership gets really excited about it and doesn’t necessarily have buy-in from all the stakeholders,” McKee says.

It’s sometimes hard to get buy-in in the early stages. Getting the plan to the point where there are enough details that you can ensure the program will be doable by all of the players in your organization will be crucial to the success of it.

McKee recalls working with an organization where the fundraisers were excited to start a midlevel program, but the group’s leadership tended to get distracted. “I really cautioned them,” she says. “If you’re going to start a midlevel program and make a commitment to these donors, the worst thing you could do is in a year get bored of your midlevel program and then just put them back in the grassroots pool. It’s not something that you should do for a year and then abandon.”

Consider Staff Capacity and Metrics

It helps to have a staff person dedicated to the midlevel program, McKee says.

“We’ve found that organizations that try to do this without assigning it to at least a half-time person, it tends to be under-resourced,” she says. “I understand if you’re not able to just, voila, hire a full-time midlevel gifts officer. But making sure that whoever is in charge of nourishing and feeding this program has at least 50 percent of their time dedicated to it is important.”

On the internal side, organizations need to think about the key metrics to measure. It can be easy to just look at money raised, but a truer picture of the success of the program, Yeghiayan says, will include numbers like year-to-year retention, upgrades in gifts, and planned gift intentions.

Kick Off the Program With Donors

When you’re ready to launch your program with donors, you can go all in or start with a soft launch, Yeghiayan says. For a soft launch, he recommends starting with 25 of the people you’ve identified in your database.

“Call them, thank them, let them know about what you’re doing, and then host some kind of inaugural impact webinar,” Yeghiayan says. “Get some feedback from them about what they would like to hear in webinars for the group, and based on that feedback, broadly reach out to the larger group.”

Remember that McKee suggested identifying donors who fall just short of the threshold for the midlevel giving program. Now is the time to reach out to these donors and let them know if they give a little bit more, they’ll be eligible to participate in the named midlevel giving program. Sometimes asking donors who give an annual gift to switch to monthly will nudge them to give more, Yeghiayan says. For example, contacting an $850 annual donor and asking if they could give $85 a month instead could lead to an annual gift of $1,020.

McKee encourages nonprofits to really think about how they introduce the program to donors. It should feel like “a big, warm hug,” she says, and should include an online welcome series. It can also include an offline welcome packet, such as a postcard or a handwritten thank-you note for past giving.

It’s also helpful for donors to see each other, either online or in person, Yeghiayan says.

“For a lot of donors, they’re like, ‘Oh, this is a pretty wide circle, and I’m excited to be part of that,’” he says. “In some ways, this democratizes giving. When people look at these big donors, they just can’t relate — or they feel like their gift is too small. But when they see others like themselves, they see it as something they can do.”

Keep Talking to Your Midlevel Donors

Donors want communication, Rahman says, so don’t pull them from your other campaigns.

“I know several organizations that when they first started a midlevel program, they decided, ‘Oh, we ask midlevel donors too much, so let’s actually lower the frequency a lot,’ and then their revenue tanked,” Rahman says. “If you don’t ask your midlevel donors for money, you’re simply not going to get money.”

Midlevel donors need lots of touches, they say. Organizations should be doing more, not less. “Add more cultivation and stewardship touch points, because donors don’t mind getting thanked or being told about their impact,” Rahman says. “As long as it doesn’t have an ask, an extra touch point isn’t bad.”

Pay special attention to the way you thank donors. Rahman says the number one thing that should be different about a midlevel program is the thank-you journey. “Adding a phone call to thank a donor after a gift is really important. That really increases their retention rate and also increases their chance to upgrade their next gift.”

Be patient

A midlevel giving program can see significant revenue growth in a short time, or it may not, McKee says. But the biggest mistake she has seen organizations make is not giving their programs enough time to grow.

“A lot of direct-response folks want to see a return on investment in a 12-month period, and sometimes midlevel is going to take a little time,” she says. “If you’re investing in a staffer, give them a runway 18 or 24 months instead of a 12-month time period.”

When looking at midlevel donor metrics, organizations should look at the long-term impact of the midlevel program as well as money that is coming in the door right now.

“A lot of organizations, for instance, will have a midlevel donor make a bequest, and they won’t attribute that to the midlevel program,” McKee says, calling that a siloed approach. “You don’t really see the value that that midlevel donor is presenting to the organization. So make sure that you can take a cradle-to-grave approach at looking at lifetime value.”