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Designing & Scaling a Donor Retention Strategy In 2025 with Christine Robertson and John Mark Vanderpool

In this special episode of The Responsive Lab, co-hosts Carly Berna and Scott Holthaus bring you a featured session from the 2025 Responsive Nonprofit Summit. Join Christine Robertson from NPact and John Mark Vanderpool from Social Impact Solutions as they sit down with Virtuous DBA-in-residence, Kayla Schneider, to tackle one of the biggest challenges in nonprofit fundraising: donor retention.

This episode dives deep into practical strategies for increasing donor loyalty by using better data, smarter segmentation, and personalized multi-channel outreach. From reducing duplicates and calculating your churn rate to aligning your entire team around shared goals, Christine and John offer tactical advice grounded in real nonprofit experience.

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The Responsive Lab is brought to you by Virtuous.

Virtuous is a software company committed to helping nonprofits grow generosity. Virtuous believes that generosity has the power to create profound change in the world and in the heart of the giver. With that in mind, it’s their mission to move the needle on global generosity by helping nonprofits better connect with and inspire their givers. Learn more about Virtuous and download your free Nonprofit CRM Checklist at virtuous.org/crmchecklist

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Riley Young

What you should do now

Below are three ways we can help you begin your journey to building more personalized fundraising with responsive technology.

See the Virtuous platform in action.  Schedule a call with our team for personalized answers and expert advice on transforming your nonprofit with donor management software.

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Summarize with AI

Building Product-Centered Donor Experiences

Building Product-Centered Donor Experiences

TL;DR: Product-centered donor experiences treat donors with the same care a great company gives its best customers, built around two questions: is this relevant to them, and does it deliver…
What is a Good Donor Retention Rate for 2026?

What is a Good Donor Retention Rate for 2026?

TL;DR The donor retention rate measures how many donors from last year gave again this year, and the sector average sits at 54.73% in 2026. Top-performing nonprofits retain nearly 7…
How to Build a Brand That Drives Long-Term Fundraising Growth

How to Build a Brand That Drives Long-Term Fundraising Growth

TL;DR: Nonprofit brand strategy has to come before fundraising, not after it. Joni & Friends flipped their budget to 60% brand awareness and 40% fundraising to fuel long-term growth. Internal…

Grow generosity with Virtuous

Virtuous is the responsive fundraising software platform proven to help nonprofit organizations increase generosity by serving all donors personally, no matter their gift size.

“Virtuous truly understands nonprofits and the importance of our mission. And their open access to data and built-in custom reports gave us access to the data we need.”
Todd Shinabarger​
Chief Information Officer