The Bridge Donor

The donor pyramid has long served as the model used to describe how charities should manage their donor pipelines.

Illustrating how donors move from small, annual gifts, to making one or more major gifts and finally culminating in a planned gift, the donor pyramid is an important metaphor for understanding fundraising methodology as well as illustrating how donors grow their giving over time. And yet, as we have worked with countless organizations over the years, we have come to discover that there is a small problem with the concept of the donor pyramid…

It doesn’t exist in the vast majority of organizations.

While valid and something to strive towards, the donor pyramid for most charities really looks more like an hourglass. With a large number of donors at the bottom of the pyramid who give through the annual fund and a cadre of donors at the top who make major gifts, most organizations often have few, if any, donors in between. As a result, smart organizations are turning their attention to this overlooked group, realizing that the next period of time should be the era of the mid-level donor. As a result, many are creating formalized mid-level or bridge donor programs that focus on growing the number of donors in the gift space between annual and major gifts