Time to hit reset on your nonprofit email program

5 minute read

Key takeaways:

• Poor email health is now a major factor in limited fundraising growth. Technical setup, sender reputation, list quality, and engagement all affect whether messages reach the inbox and raise money. 
• High-volume strategies can hide problems for a while. Across three email programs we took over this year, weak list hygiene and declining engagement had already caused major damage. 
• A smaller, more engaged audience can raise more fundraising dollars. After one of our partners improved its list health and segmentation, email revenue increased 52% YoY. 

Hit reset on your email program

Last month, my colleague and I presented “Time to Hit Reset on Your Email Program” at the 2026 Bridge Conference. We shared what we’ve learned about cultivating healthy email programs, after taking over and learning from three nonprofit programs throughout the past year. Each was dealing with deliverability and list health problems that were negatively impacting back fundraising results. 

We believe email health now needs to be a top priority for nonprofit fundraising programs. Simply sending more emails to more people is becoming harder to sustain and can cause lasting damage to a program. 

Why email health needs to come first

Email health includes your technical setup, sender reputation, list quality, and audience engagement. Together, these factors influence how much of your email reaches the inbox and how well your program can grow. 

• Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft have all tightened requirements for high-volume senders. Authentication, easy unsubscribe, and low spam complaint rates now play a larger role in delivery. Google recommends keeping spam complaints below 0.1% and never letting them reach 0.3%. 

• Inbox providers also pay close attention to engagement. Regularly emailing people who show no meaningful engagement can weaken your sender reputation and make it harder to reach the people who still want to hear from you. 

This makes high-volume fundraising riskier. Higher volume may lift short-term revenue while also accelerating unsubscribes, spam complaints, and long-term audience decline. 

Three clients showed us the same warning signs 

The organizations, though vastly different from one another, all had similar issues with their email programs: too much volume, too little suppression, and declining engagement. 

• Organization 1: A shrinking audience. About 70% of this organization sends were appeals. The unsubscribe rate reached 0.34%, roughly twice the industry benchmark, and the emailable audience fell 77% between 2022 and 2025. 
• Organization 2: A high-volume program with low engagement. Open rates for this organization stayed below 10% for almost three years. Co-op acquisition added hundreds of thousands of names, many of whom never became engaged. End-of-year email revenue fell 80% in two years. 
• Organization 3: A deliverability problem. This organization had emailed more than one million people with almost no suppressions, and a one-character error in its DKIM record had gone unnoticed. When enforcement increased, most messages landed in spam. The recovery plan required reducing send audiences by 80% to 85%. 

In each case, the program depended on scale. Large lists and frequent sends made the top-line numbers look stronger, while the underlying audience became less responsive and harder to reach. 

What a healthier email program can deliver 

Even our longtime partners are running into similar struggles. One had a list of 115,000 names, an average click-through-rate of 0.86%, and more than 300 sends a year as engagement declined. The program needed a reset. 

Our team made email health part of the day-to-day client strategy. We: 

• Cleaned the list before an eCRM migration. A third-party scrub identified spam traps, invalid addresses, and other risky records. 
• Established ongoing hygiene rules, with monthly health checks and a full scrub every six months. 
• Improved relevance with conditional content and one-click surveys based on supporter interests. 
• Used engagement to set cadence, with more automated journeys and fewer broad sends. 

The results: 

• Email revenue increased 52% YoY 
• Donations from email increased 25%YoY 
• Average click rates increased from 0.86% to 1.34%, with some highly segmented sends exceeding 30% 

The organization now raises more revenue than it did before from a smaller, more engaged email audience.  If you’re looking to enhance your email program, you can apply the same approach to your own in four steps. 

Four ways to reset your email program

1. Confirm your technical setup 

• Verify SPF, DKIM, and DMARC for every sending domain, plus BIMI where it makes sense. Audit them annually and whenever you change platforms or domains. 
• Use CAPTCHA and form validation across every acquisition source. 

2. Set clear list hygiene rules 

• Define your inactive audience using clicks and conversions, not open. 
• Run health checks monthly and a full scrub every six months. 
• Be willing to shrink your emailable audience. Removing people who no longer engage makes the list healthier. 

3. Reduce volume and improve relevance 

• Send fewer broad emails and segments by supporter interest and behavior. 
• Review your content mix. If appeals dominate, add impact stories, updates, and surveys. 
• Use cultivation and re-engagement journeys instead of messaging the full list. 

4. Measure acquisition quality over time 

• Judge acquisition sources on engagement, retention, and revenue after six months. 
• Review co-ops and list buys carefully. Low-cost names get expensive when they weaken deliverability and never convert. 
• Use an onboarding series to set expectations and build early engagement. 

Position your program to grow

One line from the Bridge Conference session captures the tradeoff:  

“When total revenue grows while revenue per 1,000 falls, you are buying today’s revenue at the expense of tomorrow’s list.”  

Total revenue alone can hide declining efficiency. Instead, track revenue per 1,000 emails delivered along with inbox placement, complaint rates, clicks, conversions, and the size of your active audience.

Email remains one of the most important fundraising channels for nonprofits, and protecting it requires stronger list hygiene, lower volume, better targeting, and consistent monitoring. Programs that make those changes now will be in a much stronger position to grow.