{"id":58765,"date":"2026-06-22T16:54:56","date_gmt":"2026-06-22T20:54:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.canadahelps.org\/?p=58765"},"modified":"2026-06-23T13:04:18","modified_gmt":"2026-06-23T17:04:18","slug":"donor-base-narrowing-mid-donors-hiding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.canadahelps.org\/en\/charity-life\/canadahelps-ensemble\/donor-base-narrowing-mid-donors-hiding\/","title":{"rendered":"The Donor Base is Narrowing: Your Mid-Value Donors are Hiding in Plain Sight"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you only read one paragraph from The Giving Report 2026, read this one: in 2025, less than 0.5% of donors on CanadaHelps \u2013 roughly 3,894 people \u2013 drove over 16% of all the money raised on the platform.<\/strong> Donations under $100 declined 17%. The $1,000-to-$9,999 segment grew by 40%. The $10,000+ segment doubled.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Duke Chang, CanadaHelps’ President and CEO, put it plainly: “While the growth in online donations is a milestone, it masks a concerning trend: our charitable ecosystem is becoming increasingly top-heavy.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He is right. And every Canadian charity needs to understand what this means for their own database.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The story is not just that giving is concentrating among the wealthy.<\/strong> It is that there is a quiet boom happening in the middle \u2013 and most charities cannot see it because their data is not set up to surface it. <\/span><\/p>\n

Donors who used to give $250 are giving $1,800.<\/strong> Donors who gave $1,200 last year are giving $5,000 this year. These people are already on your list. They have already said yes. They are not waiting to be acquired. They are waiting to be noticed.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This article is about how to notice them.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Part 1: What The Giving Report 2026 Actually Says<\/h2>\n

The Giving Report 2026 contains a handful of findings that should reshape how a Canadian charity thinks about its database for the next 12 to 18 months.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Finding 1 \u2013 Online giving grew 10% to $529 million, but the broad base is shrinking.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

The total number of dollars went up. The number of small donors went down. This is the textbook definition of a top-heavy revenue base — the kind of trend that looks fine on a single year’s revenue report but creates fragility over time. Lose one major donor and the gap is enormous.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Finding 2 \u2013 The $1K to $10K segment grew 40%. The $10K+ segment doubled.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is the most actionable finding in the report. Mid-value donors are the most-overlooked segment in Canadian fundraising. Too “big” for the general appeal stream, too “small” for the major gifts officer. They live in the gap. And the gap just got 40% larger.<\/span><\/p>\n

Finding 3 \u2013 Securities donations drive 16% of all giving on CanadaHelps.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Securities donors are up 200% since 2020. Value is up 361%. The common interpretation is “high-net-worth people are giving more.” That is true, but underneath it is something more useful: middle-class Canadians who own appreciated stocks, ETFs, or RRSP-adjacent holdings are increasingly willing to donate securities — because someone told them it was tax-efficient. The barrier is awareness, not affluence.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Finding 4 \u2013 Atlantic Canada is leading online growth. Toronto and Montreal are lagging.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Nova Scotia’s online giving has run 58 percentage points faster than the national average since 2019. Newfoundland and PEI are not far behind. Local and regional organizations are the largest cause area on CanadaHelps, and giving to local causes hit $121.8 million in 2025, up 11% year-over-year. Local is winning. National is plateauing.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Finding 5 \u2013 More than two-thirds of charities report rising demand for services.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Only 88% met their mission goals. The gap between what charities are being asked to do and what they have capacity to do is widening. There is no money to hire a major gifts officer to chase mid-value donors. The work has to come from better use of the data charities already have.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Part 2: Why Mid-Value Donors Hide<\/h2>\n

If the mid-value segment grew 40%, why does it not feel like it inside most charities? Three reasons. None of them are unfixable.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Reason 1: Cumulative giving is invisible.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

A donor who gave $250 in March, $400 in June, and $1,200 at year-end gave $1,850 in total. In most databases, that donor shows up as three separate gifts — not as a $1,850 donor. The acknowledgement letter for the third gift might say “thank you for your gift of $1,200.” Nobody is looking at the year-to-date total. The donor is treated as a $1,200 donor, or a $250 donor, depending on which gift the executive director happens to remember.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Reason 2: Duplicate records split donors into pieces.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

The same person appears as “Mary Tremblay” with one email, “M. Tremblay” with another, and “Mary T.” with no email at all. Each record holds part of the giving history. No single record shows the full picture. The donor is mid-value in reality and small-value on every screen.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Reason 3: Segmentation is built around recency, not value.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Most charities segment by “lapsed,” “current,” or “new.” Almost none segment by lifetime giving value or year-over-year upgrade. So even when the data is clean, the segments do not pull mid-value donors into view.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The result: charities raise more money from the same people without ever knowing it. And those same people churn out, because they were never thanked at the level they actually gave.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Part 3: A 5-Step Plan to Find and Keep Your Mid-Value Donors<\/h2>\n

This is the operational work. None of it requires new fundraising. It requires looking at the data you already have, with a sharper lens.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Step 1 \u2013 Deduplicate, then deduplicate again.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Pull your donor list and sort by last name. Look for any donor who appears more than once with different email addresses or addresses. Run a merge on the obvious duplicates first (same name, same postal code, same phone). Then look at the harder cases. Every duplicate is a donor whose true giving is hidden.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Target: every donor in your database has exactly one record. Their giving history is one timeline.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Step 2 \u2013 Calculate annual giving for the last 24 months.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

For every donor record, calculate total gifts in 2024 and total gifts in 2025. This is a two-column calculation. It does not require fancy reporting — a list, a date range, and a sum.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

What you are looking for:<\/p>\n