How to Get New Donors in 2026 With Relationship-First Texting Sequences for Campaigns and Nonprofits

Donor counts fell five straight years while dollars rose. Get a six-touch texting sequence, with example messages, for Q3 close, Election Day and GivingTuesday.

Fundraisers that successfully attract new donors this year know that building relationships must come before asking them to fork over their hard-earned money. A request that lands a day or two before your deadline, from an organization the recipient has never heard from, produces your poorest results and teaches that person to ignore the next one.

Across political and nonprofit sectors, the numbers clearly show that total donations keep rising while donor counts have fallen, and converting a first gift into a second remains a major struggle.

This comprehensive breakdown covers:

• Where fundraising stands as of September 2026

• Why programs keep squeezing the same donors

• What makes a new donor care

• A six-touch texting sequence, with example messages to run before the third-quarter close, Election Day, and GivingTuesday.

Is fundraising up or down in 2026?

In a January op-ed for The Hill, Alexandra Kingston, president of Fundraising Inc., described campaigns on both sides of the aisle reporting a noticeable drop in small-dollar giving. Her read: small-dollar giving retreats when economic confidence stalls.

Nonprofit fundraising shows a similar trend. The Fundraising Effectiveness Project (FEP) reported that total giving to nonprofits grew 5.0% in 2025, the strongest revenue growth in five years, while the number of donors fell 3.6%, which marks the fifth straight year of losses. Micro-donors dropped 7.9% while larger donors supplied nearly all of the growth.

The first quarter of 2026 was a bit less brutal: donations rose 4.3%, but total donor counts unfortunately slipped by 0.8%. FEP also cautioned that part of the late-2025 surge may have been gifts pulled forward ahead of tax law changes, which would make the second half of 2026 harder than the first.

GivingTuesday 2025 shows what people do when a moment gives them a reason. It raised a record $4.0 billion, up 13% from 2024. So, the shortage is in new people who care about your cause.

Why are fundraisers raising more money from fewer donors?

Because the industry optimized for extraction. John Hall, who has helped raise more than $1.6 billion online over 15 years, laid out the diagnosis in a September 2026 interview with the Doomscroll newsletter: fundraising programs have perfected the craft of getting another gift from an existing donor while the skill of creating a brand-new donor has atrophied.

The pattern crosses party lines. Organizations have honed in on the hooks that raise the most money, leading them to optimize for the same shock-value content aimed at the same shrinking pool. Hundreds of individually rational decisions exhaust the market, and fundraising costs climb even as programs grow more efficient. Hall's summary of the limit: “You can't email and text your way out of nobody caring.”

The FEP data tells the nonprofit story, and its analysts point to the first-to-second-gift conversion as the pipeline's biggest unsolved problem.

What makes a new donor care enough to give?

You need to give a donor a reason to know you, trust you, and give them something to show for their attention before you ask. Hall argues that the funnel starts long before you acquire an email or phone number, and he criticizes the habit of jumping straight from a new phone number to a $25 request. He rightfully asks fundraisers to consider how their messaging addresses how this person knows who you are, why they care what you say, and what would keep them reading.

Asked whether he would rather have 500,000 email addresses or 100,000 engaged voters, he takes the 100,000, because you can later ask a person who wants to hear from you to donate, volunteer, attend, share, or vote. A planned sequence that starts weeks earlier, delivers something useful in each message, and earns the right to make the donation ask is “show me you know me” applied to donors.

Why does P2P texting fit a relationship-first fundraising sequence?

Texting is one of the only scalable mass communication channels that behaves most like a conversation… because you can actually have them! Texting puts a named sender on each message and turns each reply into data: tag the response, segment the list, and let the next message reflect what the person told you.

Delivery is the second reason. The Impressions to Ballots newsletter from Cross Screen Media put it plainly: “Very few media channels guarantee delivery to a voter.”

Frequency is the third. The same newsletter reported on a Battleground Impact test that sent video texts in one media market and nothing to a control market: ad recall rose 22 points, recall climbed with the number of texts a voter read, young voters (the group least likely to see a TV ad) showed the largest lift and ballot preference moved. The lesson holds for fundraising. Battleground Impact separately projects persuasion and mobilization texting as a $750 million market in 2026, roughly the size of direct mail.

Shared data is the fourth. Each reply becomes a record you can push to the rest of your program, which is where Impressions to Ballots ends up too: voter contact needs a holistic strategy with data that updates as new information comes in, so the event attendee, video viewer and eventual donor exist as one record.

How far ahead of a fundraising deadline should a texting sequence start?

Strong texting sequences start three to six weeks out for the full six-touch sequence, and two weeks out for the compressed five-touch version. Our team recommends keeping roughly four value-giving messages for each individual fundraising ask.

Why does the third-quarter close matter so much to campaigns?

When third-quarter reports are posted, party committees, reporters, outside groups, and donors compare what each campaign has in the bank, and the comparison doubles as a forecast (a campaign’s “reading the tea leaves”). A campaign holding $200,000 against an opponent's $50,000 looks like it has the edge in the final month, so money and attention follow it.

A strong end-of-quarter in September sets up for October, and every dollar raised goes into closing TV, digital, and get-out-the-vote operations. In that flood, people respond to the donation request that has an actual relationship behind it.

What does a relationship-first fundraising text sequence look like?

To build trust and “brand” recognition naturally, each message should do one job, and each reply should shape the next message.

Segment step #6 is one that most fundraisers still never implement to their detriment. Telling donors what their gift did and allowing non-donors to get the result with no ask attached keeps both groups reading in January.

For our specific message ideas outlined below, swap the bracketed placeholders for your own details and add the opt-out language and disclaimers your compliance counsel requires.

Political campaign before the third-quarter close (September 30)

Fourteen days is enough for the compressed five-touch version. The compressed version folds touches 1 and 2 into one message.

Touch 1 (September 16), introduce and inform

Touch 2 (September 21), voter ID question

Touch 3 (September 26), candidate video for the yeses and undecideds

Touch 4 (September 30), ask tied to the quarter close

Touch 5 (October 1), thank you and report

Undecideds get the video with no ask, and non-donors get the report with no ask. If you run this sequence and also want to try the Election Day sequence below, start at touch 2.

Political campaign before Election Day (November 3)

Seven weeks out gives you enough time to implement the full six-touch version sequence outlined below. Time the ask to your last spend deadline, since a dollar that arrives on November 3 buys nothing. For most campaigns, that deadline is the final ad buy or text blast, placed roughly ten days out.

Touch 1 (September 22), introduce

Touch 2 (October 6), inform with early voting dates

Touch 3 (October 13), one-question issue poll

Touch 4 (October 20), candidate video matched to their answer

Touch 5 (October 23), ask tied to the final ad buy

Touch 6 (October 24), thank, report and collect a voting plan

From October 25 through November 3, the list receives turnout texts matched to that reply.

Nonprofit before GivingTuesday (December 1)

Eleven weeks out, you have the full sequence and a tax fact new this year. Starting with the 2026 tax year, donors who take the standard deduction can deduct up to $1,000 (single) or $2,000 (joint) in cash gifts to qualifying 501(c)(3) charities. It excludes donor-advised funds; confirm specifics with your tax advisor.

GivingTuesday donors also stick: the Blackbaud Institute and GivingTuesday found 65% of 2024 GivingTuesday donors gave again in 2025 versus 52% of donors acquired earlier in the year, and recurring plans surged on GivingTuesday 2025 (up 25% on GoFundMe Pro and 66% on Bloomerang), so touch 6 offers the monthly option.

Touch 1 (October 20), introduce

Touch 2 (November 3), inform with the new deduction

Touch 3 (November 10), program vote

Touch 4 (November 24), program lead video during Thanksgiving week

Touch 5 (December 1), ask with the match

Touch 6 (December 2), thank, report and offer monthly

How do you turn a first gift into a second?

The key IS the conversation - replying back to every person who writes back (hopefully the same day) lets them know their voice matters and that their money may actually be going to a real place. Hall's rule for new donors is to stop treating them like a cash machine. Say thank you, share what their money did, let them behind the curtain, and keep track of their history with you.

In practice, that means three habits inside your texting program.

1. Tag every reply that is not STOP, which is a courtesy your texting vendor’s software should honor instantly. This allows conversations to turn into targeted segments for hyper-personalized future outreach.

2. Answer quickly, in the sender's voice. Pre-written Tap-then-Send replies let volunteers respond to common questions in seconds without going off-message.

3. Report back to non-donors too. The supporter who read six messages and gave nothing is your best prospect for the next giving day.

Bottom Line

Start your outreach before you need the money, and show the prospective donor why they should give to your cause or campaign instead of demanding it. You have 14 days until the quarter closes, seven weeks until Election Day and 11 weeks until GivingTuesday.

Would you like a one on one strategy session to turn these plans into action? Book a 30-minute planning call with our team and leave with a send calendar, six drafted touches in your voice and 10DLC registration underway (if you have not already registered).