Hit a Fundraising Plateau? Congratulations. Here’s Why.
“If you’re not growing, you’re dying.”
You have probably heard this said in a board meeting, read it in a business book, or felt the implicit pressure in strategic planning sessions. It’s become gospel in the nonprofit sector: year-over-year growth or bust.
But what if a plateau isn’t the crisis we’ve been told it is?
What if your fundraising plateau isn’t a warning sign of organizational decline, but rather a firm foundation built on loyal donors who believe in your work? What if the real problem isn’t that you’ve plateaued, but that you don’t recognize the asset you’re standing on?
The $10 Million “Problem”
When I joined a recent organization, they had been steady for five years. Individual giving consistently hovered around $10 million annually, with no significant fluctuations exceeding 10%. Internally, our staff felt the weight of it. The board was getting restless. Everyone felt stuck.
As a staff, we saw something different.
Ten million dollars in consistent giving isn’t stagnation. It’s loyalty. It means you have donors who show up year after year, who weather economic uncertainty with you, who believe enough in your mission to keep investing.
Most organizations would celebrate having that kind of stability. Instead, we tend to panic about it.
Why Plateaus Deserve Celebration
Before we talk about growth (and we will), let’s acknowledge what a plateau actually represents:
Donor retention. Your plateau means donors aren’t leaving. In a sector where donor retention rates average around 45%, consistent giving year over year is an enormous achievement. You’ve built trust. You’ve delivered on your promises. You’ve stewarded well enough that people continue to believe in you.
Operational stability. You know what your revenue will be. You can plan programs with confidence. You can hire staff without wondering if you’ll be able to pay them in six months. Stability isn’t sexy, but it’s the difference between sustainable impact and constantly scrambling.
A testable foundation. When you’re on solid ground, you can experiment. You can try new approaches without risking organizational survival. Growth from stability is strategic. Growth from desperation is chaotic and stressful for your staff.
The organizations that never plateau are often the ones constantly churning through donors, replacing last year’s lapsed supporters with this year’s recruits. That’s not growth, it’s a treadmill.
So if you’ve hit a plateau: congratulations. You’ve built something real. Now let’s talk about what comes next.
Understanding Your Foundation First
In my first partial year at that $10 million organization, we maintained the baseline. We didn’t grow. And that was exactly right.
Maintaining that baseline was challenging work we’re proud of. We had a barebones staff, and multi-year commitments were way down because previous pledges had ended the year before. Simply holding steady required significant effort. Doing so, despite these challenges, built significant confidence among our most loyal donors.
You need to understand what your foundation is built on before you can start growing. We spent that first year asking questions:
Who are these donors who’ve stayed with us for five years? Ten years? Thirty years?
How and when are we soliciting them?
Are they deeply connected to our work?
Does our solicitation plan honor their loyalty?
What we discovered was a loyal donor base solicited far too often.
Donors were receiving multiple event invitations throughout the year, each treated as a separate fundraising opportunity. Then we’d ask for an annual fund gift on top of that. If we launched a special initiative, we’d ask again. Well-meaning, committed donors were being solicited three or four times a year for different purposes.
Due to our limited staff capacity, this approach proved to be inefficient. We were spending significant time and resources on multiple campaigns, each requiring separate materials, tracking, and follow-up. Meanwhile, donors were experiencing fatigue from the constant solicitation.
They continued to give because they believed in the mission. But we were leaving money on the table and, more importantly, treating relationships transactionally.
The plateau wasn’t the problem. Our approach to donors was.
The Shift: From Multiple Asks to One Partnership
In year two, we fundamentally restructured our approach to engaging donors. Instead of multiple solicitations for various purposes, we asked donors for a single annual commitment that covered a variety of stewardship opportunities.
Here’s what that looked like in practice:
One conversation, one pledge. We sat down with major donors and had a single, comprehensive conversation about their giving for the year. Instead of asking for $5,000 to the annual fund, then $2,500 for the gala, then another $1,000 for a special project, we asked for one $10,000 pledge that supported the whole organization.
Multi-year commitments. We emphasized pledges that spanned three to seven years, allowing donors to make a larger commitment over time and giving us revenue predictability.
Event invitations became stewardship. Instead of treating our gala as another solicitation, we invited donors who’d already made their annual pledge to attend as our guests and partners. Events became opportunities for relationship building, not transactional requests.
Higher asks, fewer touches. Because we were only asking once, we could ask for more. A donor who’d been giving $3,000 spread across three solicitations could stretch to $5,000 for one comprehensive gift, especially when we removed the donor fatigue of repetitive outreach.
This wasn’t just a tactics shift. It was a mindset shift from viewing donors as funding sources to viewing them as partners in our work.
The Growth That Followed
By the end of year two, we raised over $17 million. That’s 70% growth in two years, built entirely on the foundation of that original $10 million plateau.
The growth came from two sources:
Existing donors gave more. When we stopped asking them for money at every interaction and started treating them as long-term partners, they responded. Donors who’d been giving $25,000 annually were willing to stretch to $50,000 or $100,000 when we approached them with a clear, comprehensive ask and a compelling vision for growth.
We had something worth growing for. We didn’t just ask donors to give more to maintain the status quo. We developed an organizational growth strategy that expanded our programs and deepened our impact. Donors could see that their increased investment would fund something meaningful, not just filling budget gaps.
Remember: donors don’t stretch for organizations that are standing still. But when you’re growing your impact alongside your revenue, donors understand the connection between their gift and the change they want to see.
When (And How) To Pursue Growth
Not every plateau needs to become a growth trajectory. Some organizations are the right size for their mission, their community, and their capacity. Staying at a plateau can be the right strategic choice.
But here’s the reality: uncertainty requires adaptability. Inflation alone means that flat revenue represents a decline in purchasing power. If your revenue stays flat while costs increase 3-4% annually, you’re actually shrinking. Add uncertain government funding into the mix, and revenue stability becomes even more critical. You may find yourself serving fewer people, paying staff less competitively, and cutting corners to maintain the illusion of stability.
So, how do you know if you’re ready to grow from your plateau?
Ask these questions:
Do you have organizational capacity for growth? Growth isn’t just about raising more money. It’s about having the infrastructure, staffing, and systems to deliver on increased expectations. We had to communicate a strategic growth plan before we could credibly ask donors to fund that expansion.
Do your donors understand your work? If donors don’t know what you do beyond a surface level, asking them to give more may be premature. Invest in relationship building and education first. Look for stewardship opportunities that bring them into your work, not just looking at it from the outside.
Are you treating donors transactionally? If you’re asking the same donors multiple times a year for different things, address that issue before attempting to grow. Doing this will generate increased capacity to build relationships with more donors while increasing revenue.
Can you articulate why growth matters? “We need to raise more money” isn’t a compelling statement. “We need to raise more money so we can serve 200 additional families next year” is far more persuasive. “We are allocating an additional $250,000 in our budget towards solving food insecurity for 200 families” is even better. Growth must align with the mission’s impact, not the organization’s survival.
Are you ready to ask differently? Growing from a plateau requires asking your most loyal donors to stretch. That means having conversations about their capacity, interests, and vision for the partnership. It means asking for more than you’re comfortable asking for. If you’re not ready to have those conversations, you’re not prepared to grow.
The Real Threat Isn’t the Plateau
The organizations in real trouble aren’t the ones that have plateaued. They’re the ones that have begun declining year over year, churning through donors, or experiencing wild revenue swings that make planning impossible.
The real threat is:
Treating your loyal donors like ATMs
Failing to account for inflation
Standing still programmatically while expecting donors to give more
Panicking about the plateau instead of leveraging it
Your fundraising plateau is good news. It means you have a foundation. It means you have donors who trust you. It means you’re ready to build something bigger, if that’s what your mission requires.
So stop apologizing for your plateau. Start celebrating the loyal donors who made it possible. And then, when you’re ready, show them what you can build together.
Has your organization experienced a fundraising plateau? How did you approach it? I’d love to hear your story.
