Ep. 152: You’ve Hit a Plateau. Now What? Why the $500K–$2M range is the danger zone—and how to grow past it faster with next-gen strategy
EPISODE 152
You’ve Hit a Plateau. Now What? Why the $500K–$2M range is the danger zone—and how to grow past it faster with next-gen strategy
About the Episode:
Feeling stuck at $200K? Plateaued at $500K? Are you wondering why you can’t push past $1M even when your mission is solid and your team is working nonstop? In this episode, I explain why nonprofit revenue stalls — and more importantly, how to move beyond it. From outdated donor funnels to board bottlenecks, this episode offers a smarter system for sustained growth. I walk you through real revenue tiers, key mistakes organizations make at each level, and what to do instead. If you're ready to stop treading water and start building a pipeline that scales, this is for you.
Here’s what you’ll learn:
The three most common growth ceilings in nonprofit fundraising (and what causes them)
Why having “more donors” isn’t always the answer
The real difference between organizations that scale and the ones that stay stuck
A smarter way to upgrade your donor journey (without chasing every social media trend)
How to stop letting the board be the bottleneck
What to do when your lead funnel is cold, your campaign fell flat, or your big funder says no
It’s not your stories—it’s how you’re telling them. If your amazing work isn’t getting the attention (and donations) it deserves, it’s time for a messaging shift. The Brave Fundraiser’s Guide guide gives you 10 done-for-you donor prompts to make your message impossible to ignore. Get it for free here! https://christinaedwards.krtra.com/t/xKuLs6tOiPZa
Christina’s Favorite Takeaways:
“Half a million is a very common stall-out zone for organizations.”
“Only 10% of nonprofits have revenues over 500k.” Candid
“90% of nonprofits do not raise more than half a million dollars a year.” Candid
“You need to retain more donors while also acquiring more donors.”
“Upgrading donors is really important.”
“Relying on grants without a modern donor pipeline is a dead end.”
“Leads are foundational to organizational growth.”
“Consumers are donors and donors are consumers.”
“Stop outsourcing your leadership. It starts with you.”
“You don't need more people. You need a smarter system.”
Episode Resources:
Episode 151: NextGen Fundraising: What to Do When “What You’ve Always Done” Stops Working
Whitney Wolfe Herd - Rewriting the Rules of Business and Life - MasterClass
FREE Resources from Splendid Consulting:
How to Work with Christina and Splendid Consulting:
Connect with Christina and Splendid Consulting:
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*Links may be affiliate links which means I may earn a commission at no cost to you.
Christina Edwards 0:01If you're stuck at 200k half a million, a million, or maybe even hovering around 1.5 million in annual revenue, and you're wondering why? Suddenly it feels harder than ever to grow. You're not alone. You've hit a fundraising plateau, and no one talks about how brutal these plateaus can feel. They can feel like there's no way out, right? And it's just you're you're trying all these things, and no matter what, you're just kind of humming along at that same revenue level. So we're going to dig into that problem today, and I'm going to share with you how you can grow past it faster using the next generation strategy of fundraising.
so half a million is a very common stall out zone that I see for organizations, we kind of see it at half a million, we see it again at a million. And for my smaller orgs, keep listening today, even if you're at 100k very common stall out zone. There are these points, much like in a marathon. There are these points where you're like, hitting your stride and you're feeling good, and there are other points where you're like, it is a grind, it is a slog. And so there are these, these points throughout your organizational growth that are very, very common, where we see the stall out, the stall out means that you've done the heavy lifting of growing. You've got your donor base, you've got a couple signature events and campaigns, right? But now you're stuck between too big to be scrappy, but too under resourced to scale with ease. You're like, it's it? The symptoms I see very commonly are, we need to hire. I need more help, but we can't afford to hire. Or we have some amazing donors. We have major donors. We have recurring donors, but it's kind of like I'm tapping into them too much. Or I really need them to perform. I really need them to to give more. And Christina, I think that they're at capacity, right? So what I see is you're still operating like a startup in systems, outreach and campaign style, but the stakes are higher, and so you've got this startup culture which got you to where you are today, and worked beautifully. But you can't continue that system. You can't continue that strategy and expect to to raise 25% more, except expect to grow year after year after year.
and if you don't believe me, you don't believe how common plateaus are, I want to share a very sobering stat with you. This is from candid. They have some amazing data in our sector, and I really appreciate their visualizations as well. And so they share that only 10% of nonprofits have revenues over 500k Said another way, that means 90% of nonprofits do not raise more than half a million dollars a year. The majority, the biggest piece of that pie, are under 500k okay. And so it's very, very common that we see these stall out points. We see it in what I would call the more emerging or beginner stage, that zero to 500k then if you're listening, you're like, All right, now we're on the other side of half a million. We're chugging along. Then I see the stall that takes you from 500k to about 1.2 million, there's a stall there, okay, citing maybe things like capacity constraints again, like, I can't do more. We can't do more. Or major donor pipeline, Christina, we've got some major donors, but we don't have enough. We don't have enough. Or, you know, sometimes we see that that churn of like, we thought somebody would was going to give that gift to 50k last year, and boy, that was a make it or break it, because they were our most important donor, right? And we also see this inconsistent strategy. Sometimes I'll look at y'all 990s and I'll see your four years, and your four years is giving me major frowns because your four years of revenue are flatlined. Meanwhile, I know and you know that it costs more than ever to put on your program or service right to operate your program or service. So if you're bringing in a million dollars a year, and you have been pretty consistently give or take for the last four years, you're actually impacting less people if you are experiencing the same inflation that many of us are right, unless there's some sort of unicorn inside and your program or service has decreased for some reason in cost, most likely it's actually hurt you that plateau.
The other issue is average donor retention rate. Now the stats are a little all over the place on this so I've seen that eight out of 10 donors only give one time, so that's about 20% of your donors stay on and give a second gift. I also have seen that the return the retention rate is somewhere around 42% so that's that's higher, but still not great. So staying still in in either of those scenarios is falling behind, right? It's really important to think about your growth from a lead generation standpoint, so that means, from from a donor acquisition standpoint, right? That you need two things to happen in order for your revenue to, say, grow by 20% year over year, you need to retain more donors while also acquiring more donors. And I'm gonna give you an I'm gonna give you a branch off the retaining more donors. Step one is we need to retain them. Step two, maybe one of my most favorite steps, and we support you inside my coaching programs. To do this is we need to upgrade the donors. So if you have a donor who's pretty, pretty consistently giving, say, $2,500 a year. You can count on it. It's dependable. They like what you do. The $2,500 is great. Many of you are like, I don't want to rock the boat, but, but, but, but the work that we do, the work that we coach you on, the work that we support you to do is actually to unlock that most likely there's a capacity for 5000, 10000 we had and so much more, so much, so much of a higher gift. So upgrading donors is really important. We've had so many clients that we've supported inside my coaching program, the club to do exactly this where they have a portfolio of mid and major donors, and sometimes I'll say to them, you, we've got to remember together that $100,000 donor. Did it typically go from giving a gift of $0 to 100k dollars? They didn't go from non donor to 200k donor? Right? They stair stepped. Right? You cultivated them. And so that upgrading of the donors is really important. So I wanted to just go on a tangent and make sure that when we're talking about lead gen, I mentioned that part really, really important.
Okay, now I'm going to pull from hundreds, if not 1000s at this point, of calls that I've had with so many organizations, whether I've had a discovery call with you, whether you've been on my webinars, whether you've asked a question live, whether you submitted an email, you've messaged me on LinkedIn or Instagram, I have been on the receiving end of the belief system. I just need more staff. If I had more staff, then I could raise more and I get it. It's like this chicken or the egg, right? But many times that is not an option for you. Many times there is simply not the the budget for a get a new staffer. So then you become in this position where you say to yourself, Okay, if I know I need to raise more, how am I going to do it? And that's the work that excites me. Is like, Okay, if we can't just plop 1000 person donor list on your on your desk, right? If we can't just give you a major gifts officer, right? If we can't do any of those things, if all items remain the same, how do we raise more? Because it's actually a solvable problem. You don't need 10 more staff members. You don't need a fundraising, major gifts unicorn. You don't need to overhaul your mission. And you definitely here please hear me, because I've seen this as a trend lately. You definitely don't need to throw another Gala. I recently had a call with somebody who was just knee deep. Doesn't even describe how deep she was in event logistics. She had two back to back events she was planning. She was a small shop Ed she was completely overwhelmed. And the amount of event planning it took to put these on, she has no time to do anything else, and it is no wonder She is very behind on her year to date revenue compared this year to last year, she's spending way too much time planning events, which she actually needs to be out there, acquiring new donors, cultivating the donor she has, asking and repeating right? So you don't need more stuff. You don't need another event. Or maybe you're thinking, I just need to work harder. I need just like head down. Work harder, work more, whatever that is. But the truth is, maybe hustle got you here, but systems will get you there. Okay, so maybe working hard and like that, sweat equity got you to where you are now, and we love that, but we cannot continue that and have you in this sector. And. Happy and thriving and growing. That's where we layer on stronger systems and we layer on stronger strategy, okay? Or maybe you're thinking we're too small for bigger gifts or Ambassador strategies or influencer strategies. We're just too small. No one knows about us. We're the smallest shop in town. Whatever your whatever your excuse is there, right? In fact, it's usually you're not actually too small, you're too quiet. You're not being big in the way that you're positioning yourself. You're not being big in your fundraising mentality. You're not being big in your asks. You're taking the $25 like a handout instead of bravely asking that same donor for 250 and doing it again and again and again. Or if you're thinking, listen, Christina, if we could just get one more grant, we'll be fine. And here's why that's a problem again, I think about the executive director that says to me, Oh, well, last year we did 770,000 I'm like, That's great. What did you do the year before? Well, the year before, we only did 500,000 amazing. Tell me about that. Well, we got this grant, and we're not going to be able to get it again, and it was restricted, and we were only able to, oh, it's like you got to peek behind the hood, right? And you learn that this one grant, this one windfall, is not something you could replicate. That was something that was restricted isn't actually helping guide you forward towards your strategic goals and plan, right? So relying on grants without a modern donor individual pipeline is a dead end. Hear me again, relying on grants without a modern donor pipeline is a dead end. So here's what's actually happening. Let's kind of go over this scale friction that you're hitting again. I want to normalize it for you. It has happened in my business. It has happened in so many for profit businesses. Let me actually take say this. No, sustainable, healthy organization, whether you're a for profit or a nonprofit, I don't care. Literally go straight up, right? We actually want to see growth and then a little tiny stability. I don't want to call it a plateau, but a stability moment, so you can think about like a hockey sticks, right? We actually want that. That's where you stabilize. That's where you would actually in that moment, bring on, sometimes some extra help or support, right? But no one it goes straight up into the right forever and ever. Right, that isn't the goal that we that isn't the thing that that we're looking towards, right?
But more often, I'm not seeing either of those scenarios. I'm seeing the scale friction scenario where you hit the goal, you're at 500k and you stay there the next year, you do 520 the next year, you do 495 the next year you do 515 you're just teetering. You're just staying there, right? And you're hitting that scale friction because old systems cannot support new revenue goals. Leadership is maybe too involved in daily fundraising. Donor messaging is generic and high converting and not high converting, meaning your donor messaging got you to where you can be now, but it is not going to attract a wider swath of of donors and donor leads. Okay? So you may be able to get away with a crappy donation tool, mediocre, generic messaging, up to a certain point, but you will hit that ceiling, and that's when your donors and your leads are just waiting. They're like, can we know the people behind the organization? Can you say something that is new and different? Can you tell me more in your voice, in your with honesty, about the people that you seek to help, about your communities, about the services or programs, right? The people you serve, like they're hungry for more and you're not giving them more, okay? And maybe your board and community don't know how to plug in anymore because you haven't updated your fundraising operating system. So let's talk about the next iteration of fundraising. This is the shift to this next gen fundraising model. It's not about age, so we talked about that in a recent podcast. It's not necessarily about I'm only saying this is how you acquire the next younger generation of donors. I'm actually saying this is how you acquire the next generation of your donors, of all generations, the next generation of 20 somethings, 30 somethings, 40,50, 60,70, 80, 90,100, somethings, right? I didn't even mention the teens and tweens are philanthro Kids, right? This is about that evolution. So what modern fundraising organizations do differently are one they're building frictionless donor journeys to acquire, retain and drive action to new and repeat donors. Seven. In layman's, they know that they constantly need to be generating new donors, new supporters, new ambassadors. They are aware that leads are foundational to their organizational growth. So they may have 50 mid and major donors, but they know their goal is to get 100 instead of sitting on that 50 going we got 50. It's amazing. They know having people in their pipeline is key. They also know we're not going to be heavily reliant on solely our executive director to solve this problem, or heavily reliant on our director of development. They know they need to get out of that solo shop fundraising mentality, that solo person fundraising, and instead flip it by fundraising with influencer and Ambassador partnerships. Key here. Okay, so they're priming and activating their community instead of just cultivating endlessly. They're not in that transactional or reactive state of fundraising that sometimes I see with organizations where it sounds really frantic, everything's an emergency, right? Because when you're behind on your goal, it ultimately does create a revenue emergency. They use bold storytelling, influencer marketing and speed. They do not waste time going upstream unnecessarily, for board buy in, for buy in from Joan and accounting, from buy in from, you know, Susie volunteer, so that everybody thinks this new campaign is a great idea. No, they lead with innovation. They lead with speed. They focus on fast action campaigns using donor and honestly consumer psychology, because consumers are donors and donors are consumers. Consumers who shop at Amazon, Nordstrom, Old Navy, their local flower shop, their favorite local cafe, those are consumers. Those consumers are donors. Okay, and so the two must be treated the same. They expect this, like this, demand generation, desubscription economy, they expect better donor experiences. Okay? What else are these forward thinking nonprofits that are scaling right now, even in this climate doing well, they run their fundraising like a campaign lab, not a calendar committee. They're getting shit done. You with me? They're getting it done. They're getting it done. They are not waiting for perfection. They are not waiting for the perfect little thing to tweak. They are not waiting for 10 committee members if the if their committee said they'd help and they don't help, they do not wait on their committee and nag their committee. They go. They go. So you might be thinking, okay, Christina, yes, I'm with you. I'm with you. I want to be nimble. I want to do this next gen fundraising, but our board isn't on board. Let's take a big old pause here. And I want to ask you, and really, really mean this, why are you asking your board in the first place? Why are you asking your board in the first place? Because you don't ask your board to approve every dollar spent on, maybe program, supplies, utilities, your website, those are things already built in your budget. Correct? You're not saying the electric bill was $45 higher. What do you think? What should we do? Right? Why are you handing over your authority and marketing and fundraising strategy? And this is so rampant, I find myself getting more and more fiery about this topic, because I think it's a systemic issue that is keeping nonprofits under 100k and especially under 500k is this, mom and dad, may I please run this campaign, and mom and dad, in this instance, are your board that's actually not your board's job, and I really want you to start doing research on actual rules and regulations in your state to see what your board's job is. Because your board's job is to approve the budget, your board's job is fiduciary, right? Your board's job is not to come come up with the marketing and fundraising strategy and not at all to roll it out, right? So let me break this down a little further for you. So if you're asking your board chair, your board president, who's an orthopedist, we've got a lawyer, orthopedist and a CPA by day, they attend quarterly meetings for a couple of hours, and you're asking them for input and approval on a strategy they've never executed. That's not leadership, that's crowdsourcing from people who aren't in the day to day, and it's unnecessary. Necessary. It is keeping you from making more money, from bringing in more donations. Like let that sink in. Why are we asking for their approval? They trust you as the executive director. Do they not? And you can go back and we'll link to Sabrina's Sabrina Walker Hernandez episode here on the podcast, she had a great episode about really board dynamics, what boards are, should and should not do. And this is a really good example of of why are we doing this? You know when a well meaning board member says on it, Tuesday in May, hey, I have a fun idea. Let's do a 5k in June, and you know, in June, you're rolling out that big campaign. You've layered on some forward thinking strategies. You've got your volunteers for your kind of pilot for your street team, and this will take you off that target 10x you need to be able to say, what a fun idea. Noted, no, here's what we've got going on in June, and here's how I'd love your help to get there right, to execute, referring back to them, keeping them accountable. That's going to be really, really important. Here
Because imagine if Sarah Blakely, billion dollar founder, creator of Spanx, she built a billion dollar company. Had asked her orthopedic surgeon whether she should spend $5,000 on Spanx branding or spend $4,000 on a marketing course, or hire a leadership and executive sales coach for $8,000 if she had had those investments on the line and said to her mentors, a group of in this case, we're going to call them board members, who are a surgeon, a CPA and a lawyer. What do you think they would have all said no, and they would have all been wrong. Okay, you with me? Or Whitney Wolf Heard she's the founder of Bumble if she had asked a real estate broker, a banker and a dentist if she should print 10,000 T shirts with a provocative slogan to build her user base. They would have all been like that. Makes no sense. Don't do it. I don't like the slogan. The T shirts aren't cute. Can you go back to a vendor and get it for cheaper? They would have all said no, and they would have all been wrong, because, by the way, that was one of the turning points to her getting a huge user base. She actually did this on college campuses. And next time you're on a Delta flight, go watch her master class. It's so good to hear about the ways that she created new users for her app. And ultimately, it was like skyrocket skyrocketed to success. If she had asked, Hey, should we spend this? Should we do this? What do you think of this strategy? Everybody wouldn't have gotten it, and that's okay, because everybody's not supposed to get it. And we're also not talking about, you know, billion dollar, uh, or 100 million dollar, or million dollar expenditures. Here my examples. I talked about 10k, 5k, 8k, still bold, still having a vision, but you, you are the one with the vision. You're the one responsible for sustainable growth. You don't need permission and to and I want you to really step into deciding, where do I want to get permission, and where do I want? Where do I not need permission, whether it's investing in support, whether it's creating a campaign that is new and different, helping to grow Predictable Revenue, it's really important. And if there's one theme I want you to get out of today's episode, it's stop outsourcing your leadership. It's you. It starts with you. Let your board start to see these results, right? It's going to change everything. So
if you're thinking, we don't have enough staff to do more, this sounds great, but this sounds like it's going to take a lot of time this next gen fundraising. I don't know where I'm going to get more donors in our pipeline. I don't even know where I'm going to get time to upgrade donors. Right? You actually don't need more people, more staffers. You need a smarter system. Many times it's the system that you're using that is a time suck. That's why we teach high scalable systems and strategies like influencer marketing, we have a 60 minute campaign blueprint. That's where the precision beats the people power every single time. And there is a huge time suck happening in our mind. There is a huge time suck in the rumination, the thinking about. It the maybe in our mind, that is one of the, if not the biggest time sucks of your week. Okay, so I'm going to give you a personal example, which is I needed to send an email that I didn't want to send, and it was on my to do list for about a week, the amount of time I spent just like, checking in, looking at it, thinking about it. What should the email say? Now? I'll send it later. If we were to, like, keep a stopwatch, I bet it was like, I don't know, an hour and a half, maybe longer. I'm embarrassed to admit right? And I've actually sent the email today, which is why it's top of mind the amount of time it took me to write the email and press send. I'm not kidding, 45 seconds. 45 seconds, the rumination, the thoughts about it, the drama, The should I the doubt, that's the time suck, and that's why I love coaching so much. That's why what I do is really a hybrid between consulting, where I'm really teaching you an in depth strategy that you cannot get anywhere else in coaching, where we're doing that inner work. So you get make progress faster. You get rid of that stress, that burnout cycle. Okay, if you're thinking, we just lost a big funder, we're scared to invest. We're thinking about it. Working with you, Christina, this is actually why I want you to really go, oh, or is this the reason I should invest? So if you lost a big funder if you lost out on a grant you thought you would get. If you had some sort of circumstantial change that is really stressing you out,
continuing to do what you're always doing, kind of hoping for the best that like, even though this campaign is not different, we hope it'll raise more or this in person event usually raises x, but I just hope it raises y. Is not a strategy, okay, you actually need a revenue engine that can include strategic growth layering on those systems and support so that you never get stuck in where in the place you're in now, which is depending on a single funder to make or break your quarter your year. Okay, so I've helped dozens of organizations break plateaus in 30 to 90 days, really hundreds at this point, across my programs, we're not guessing. We're actually trading creating systems in real time with real donors, acquiring new ones, upgrading them, we have recurring giving that is a huge priority for many of you, and they're designed for leaders like you.
At the time I'm recording this, I just finished up a launch for my email course, easy emails for impact. And when I'm launching a specific program, I can get really, really enveloped in some of the outcomes we've created, of course, in that program. And right now, I've been thinking about so much opportunity that you have simply with email, and that's a track we can put put you through when we work together, right? We have clients who have used email to secure major donor meetings that have translated to $25,000 gifts and up just through email, just through, like, I'm talking about, like a weekly newsletter. I'm not talking about like, dedicated cold pitch emails, right? So if you come to me and you're like, Christina, we lost a big funder. We're scared. What do we do? We can layer on, like, a specific, bespoke strategy for you, and for you that may be, ooh, Let's mobilize a street team. Let's, let's do a street team campaign. Or sometimes it might be an opportunity where I'm like, Oh, we've got a lapse donor email series we could do, or let's put your board through this engagement plan, and let's get your board fundraising right so it has this dynamic energy to it. We had a client come to the club call this past week, and I could tell they were just going to hang out and just listen, which you are always welcome to do. You don't have to get hot seat coaching if you don't want it. But she ended up raising her hand and getting some coaching. And she left with like, a three pronged marketing and fundraising strategy to take her through end of q3 and she started the call going, I don't really know how we're gonna get here. I know what our fundraising goal is we've got a couple of events we do. I know what our plan is, our vision, you know, for the next five years, and I'm not really sure the next layers to get there. And we backed into her whole complete plan, starting with, like, current donors, mid donors, individual donors, and then ultimately, we built out even a sponsorship arm. This is the type of work we can do together, but it's really hard to do it when you're thinking, I've got to ask Joe, who is my orthopedic surgeon board member, what he thinks you with me. Hopefully that resonated with you, and I just want. Offer wherever you're at. Step one, just love it for a second, whether it's 100k a million, whatever plateau, if you're experiencing a plateau, it's really important to appreciate what you've created. So go appreciate that. So if you're ready for that next evolution. This isn't about doing more, it's about doing different. You can go to splendid atl.com, forward slash, start to choose your coaching path or book a free strategy. Call with me. I'll see you in the next one.