EMAIL MARKETING FOR NONPROFITS
Strategic email programs for mission-driven organizations
Your email needs to engage donors, mobilize advocates, and keep your team from burning out in the process. We can help.
We’ve been working in nonprofit email marketing for over two decades, and we understand that nonprofits run on relationships. The 36:1 ROI of email as a channel doesn’t matter if your program doesn’t sustain and nurture relationships at scale with donors, volunteers, advocates, board members, and the communities you serve.
When we work with nonprofits, we recognize that your message, your mission and your brand come first. We have two decades of experience in brand and content marketing, and we leverage that to help tell your story with email in a way that will resonate with your supporters.
Your world is not like B2B or retail. You’re always asking, and rarely have anything tangible to give. On top of that, you’re likely a lean team, balancing multiple audiences with competing priorities, board oversight, donor stewardship cycles, and budgets that don't leave room for 'let's try it and see.'
We get it. We've been working with nonprofit organizations for over two decades. We understand what's different about your world, and we build email programs designed for all of it. Not a version of it. All of it.
WHAT WE DO
Email programs designed for the full nonprofit communications picture
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![DONOR JOURNEYS & STEWARDSHIP]()
DONOR JOURNEYS & STEWARDSHIP
Automation is your friend. From the first gift acknowledgment to major gift cultivation, we build automated donor journeys that keep your supporters engaged and valued without requiring your team to personally follow up with every single person.
That means lapsed donor reactivation, mid-level donor nurture, and annual giving sequences that work year-round. Not just for Giving Tuesday or at the end of December.
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![FUNDRAISING CAMPAIGNS]()
FUNDRAISING CAMPAIGNS
Emergency appeals, capital campaigns as well as year end giving and major holidays are all great opportunities to reach out with an ask. When major donors need one message and recurring gifts need another, we can handle the strategy, copy, segmentation, and execution so your campaigns reach the right donors with the right message at the right moment.
You bring the mission. We bring the mechanics.
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![ADVOCACY AND MOBILIZATION]()
ADVOCACY & MOBILIZATION
Many organizations we work with have an active advocacy program, and for those we will build email sequences with impactful storytelling that move your supporters from awareness to action.
From petition support to legislative contact campaigns, and even event turnout and coalition building, we can help with the strategy as well as the tactical support that converts and doesn’t just fill an inbox.
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![VOLUNTEER AND COMMUNITY COMMUNICATIONS]()
VOLUNTEER & COMMUNITY COMMUNICATIONS
The most successful organizations have lists that are not just donors, they also include volunteers, event attendees, alumni, program participants, and community members. This can be a very diverse community, and each of those audiences needs something different from you.
We build segmented communication with personalized messaging tracks so everyone gets the right message at the right time.
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![LIST GROWTH AND HEALTH]()
LIST GROWTH & HEALTH
A stagnant list of deliverability problems can actively cost you opportunities and donors. We review these problems regularly and can audit what you have, build re-engagement sequences for inactive subscribers, and put list growth strategies in place. That solution is not just email alone, but lead magnets, embedded sign-up forms, event capture and other digital tools that will reinvigorate your audience.
Our goal is to bring in the right contacts, not just more contacts.
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![PLATFORM SETUP AND OPTIMIZATION]()
PLATFORM SETUP & OPTIMIZATION
As a certified Mailchimp Pro Partner, we set up and optimize Mailchimp accounts for nonprofits from scratch, or we rebuild existing accounts that have stopped performing. We can also help integrate your donor CRM into your Mailchimp account to build better audience segmentation, automation flows, branded templates, and personalization. We’ll handle compliance settings and all the nuances for your setup so your team isn't learning it on the fly. Use another platform? No problem, we work in most major ESPs, just ask.
Most of our nonprofit clients arrive with something that isn't working. Sometimes it's a deliverability problem. Sometimes it's engagement that has quietly flatlined. Sometimes the program is technically running but nobody can tell you why the numbers look the way they do. Whatever the starting point, they leave with a program that performs. Here's what that looks like in practice.
Real Clients. Real Results.
Lymphatic Education & Research Network
This national nonprofit research organization came to us with an email program that had been running inconsistently for years. Their problem was not a lack of effort or even missing skill sets. They faced what many do, the reality of a small team with too many priorities and a platform that had never been properly set up to run on its own.
After a full audit and rebuild, including new segmentation, automated sequences, and a cleaned list, they saw a 12% increase in click rate and a 26% decrease in unsubscribe rate. From there, we continued to improve their program through a donor CRM integration with their ESP to ensure data integrity between the systems.
Their list is healthier, their donors are more engaged, and their team is no longer manually managing every data sync. That's what a real rebuild looks like.
National Association of Chronic Disease Directors
NACDD serves a national network of public health professionals, and they were running member communications, advocacy alerts, and conference promotions all through the same account with a clunky, manual structure separating those audiences.
We worked with them to restructure their Mailchimp account, built segmentation that separated members from general subscribers, and assisted with automation that handles onboarding and re-engagement for their staff.
We continued to work with them as they migrated CRMs twice, ensuring that the integrity of data from their ESP carried to every contact record in their CRMs to improve targeted communication, personalization and engagement.
Documented NY
Documented NY is an independent nonprofit newsroom covering immigration policy and communities in New York. Our work for them began as their Mailchimp Pro Partner when they first migrated to the platform, and quickly evolved into more than list management.
Their first major need was a donor CRM integration, helping to ensure list integrity while also providing important information for personalization and segmentation for their audience. Once data was syncing between systems, it was vital for the organization to assess their audiences and understand their different subscriber types and engagement level, from event attendees to local politicians supporting their efforts.
From that analysis, we helped them to understand where they found success with fundraising, engagement, and where more work was needed. Their team now has a clear, trackable framework for every contact entering their audience. They can now clearly understand source, engagement type and donor status. No more guessing.
Small Teams Welcome
You don't need to hire someone. You need a smarter infrastructure.
It’s not uncommon for our clients to be part of a lean team. Budgets today are tight, and most nonprofits need marketers with a breadth of talents, rather than a niche email marketing specialist. But that can come with a cost when engagement suffers and deliverability is a problem. We hear that regularly. And our answer is always the same: you don't have to have a specialist, that’s what we’re here for.
We work hand-in-hand with the marketing or fundraising team to build a strategy and automation infrastructure that allows a sophisticated email program to run largely on its own. Your team brings the institutional knowledge and makes high-level decisions and approvals. They're not manually executing every send.
We build for the efficiency you want and the sustainability you need. Clear documentation, simple approval workflows, and automation that does the heavy lifting is where we shine, so your team stays focused on what they're actually there to do.
We also understand the limitations and challenges of the nonprofit budget cycles, so we keep engagement structures flexible. Some nonprofit clients bring us in for a defined project, an audit, a fundraising campaign, a platform migration. Others move into an ongoing strategic partnership. We'll recommend what actually makes sense for your situation, and we won't push you into a structure that doesn't fit.
Frequently Asked Questions
Here are some of the common questions we hear from nonprofits.
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Cost depends on scope, and we'll always give you a straight answer when we talk. A focused project like an audit, a single campaign, or a platform setup is a defined investment. Ongoing partnerships vary based on list size, volume, and how much execution we're handling versus your team. We work within real nonprofit budget constraints, and we’re happy to have a conversation to see what we can do to help.
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Yes, and earlier is almost always better. The segmentation structure, welcome sequences, and automation you build now is what makes your program scalable as your list grows. Waiting until you're bigger means you've been leaving engagement and dollars on the table in the meantime.
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Yes. List growth is part of the work. What that means can vary, but lead capture forms, content upgrades, event sign-up flows, and list health practices that bring in the right subscribers and keep them engaged are some of the tactics on the table. A large list full of the wrong people is worse than a smaller, well-maintained one. We'll help you build the right list, not just a bigger one.
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Yes. We work with organizations ranging from small community-based nonprofits to large national associations. The size of your team and list are not as important as a mission fit and a commitment to doing the work. Reach out. We'd rather find a way to work together than turn away a good fit.
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Yes. CAN-SPAM, CCPA, GDPR, donor privacy expectations, board communications standards. We've been working in the nonprofit sector for over 20 years and we understand the compliance and governance context your emails operate in, as well as industry best practices. It's not an afterthought here.