If you spend enough time around fundraisers, you’ll hear the same thing whispered in different ways: “We need younger supporters. We need people giving regularly. We need the next generation of major donors… and we’re not building that pipeline well enough.”
They’re right.
The latest Benchmarking Project data shows a 21.6% decline in individual giving. At the same time, the average age of a donor continues to creep upward, leaving most organisations asking the same uncomfortable question:
If younger individuals aren’t engaging now… how will the gap left by todays philanthropist be filled?
And here’s the surprising truth: this cannot be solved by just having their details.
Because the challenge nonprofits are facing is not a larger, cleaner contact list. It’s a lack of behavioural understanding behind each person on the list. Younger supporters decide based on signals, relevance, timing and personal meaning. They’re shaped by digital products that adapt around them. Everything in their world feels tailored, immediate, and personalised to them.
Your fundraising needs to do the same.
But you can only do that if you actually understand how people behave.
The real problem: nonprofits are struggling to see the full supporter.
Most charities today run on a CRM alone. It stores names, emails, donation history, contact notes. It’s a necessary tool… but it’s like seeing with one eye closed.
It can’t:
Track what pages someone visited before they gave
Show which emails they opened and what they clicked
Tell you if they engaged with an ad
Show that they started a donation and abandoned it
Capture event attendance, website behaviour, or product usage
Pull in fundraising activity from the event they did
Combine all of this into one unified profile that makes sense
And without that visibility, your depth of personalisation is too shallow to meet their expectations.
So you’re stuck sending:
One-size-fits-all emails
Broad newsletters
Generic asks
Follow-ups written for “donors” rather than actual people
Complicated journeys that feel risky
The next generation doesn’t respond to generic. They respond to relevance.
They expect you to know them. They expect you to see what they do. And they expect you to speak to them like a human, not a segment.
That’s the gap. And a CRM alone simply can’t bridge it.
This is where a CDP changes everything (without overwhelming you).
A Customer Data Platform (CDP) isn’t another heavy piece of tech to learn. Think of it as the layer that quietly sits on top of what you already have and pulls everything together.
It collects all of your supporter data and all of your behavioural data from:
Your CRM (Salesforce, Raiser’s Edge, Microsoft Dynamics, HubSpot)
Fundraising platforms like Raisely
Website activity and forms
Google Analytics
Facebook and Google ads
Shopify
Email campaigns and journeys
Custom data sources or APIs
All of that is cleaned, combined, and organised into a single supporter profile.
One page. One person. Every behaviour. Every interaction. A unified view of who they are and what they’re doing.
Once you have that, personalisation becomes simple, not scary.
You can finally send messages that say:
“Saw you checked out our Christmas Appeal but didn’t finish your donation. Here’s the impact you can make today.”
“Thank you for engaging with our latest story — here’s a project you might love.”
“Welcome! You’ve attended two events; here’s a community we’d love you to be part of.”
“You gave once during Tax time, here’s an impact update and a pathway into long-term giving.”
It feels human. It feels thoughtful. It feels personal. And it builds the deep connection younger supporters are craving.
That is the magic of a CDP.
Alerts and announcements.
So why Ortto? Because the CDP is the heart of the platform
Many tools try to be “all-in-one.” They promise CRM, fundraising, marketing, events, social, ads, reporting - everything under the sun.
But when a platform tries to be everything, it rarely excels at the thing nonprofits actually need most:
Understanding supporters and engaging them personally at scale.
Ortto takes a different approach.
Everything is built around the CDP: a single, unified profile that brings every supporter action into one place.
From there, fundraisers can finally:
• Build journeys that respond to behaviour
• Trigger emails and SMS based on real-time actions
• Create custom segments and lookalike audiences
• Personalise content in minutes with AI
• See which stories, ads, and messages actually move people
• Capture leads and nurture them automatically
• Build long-term stewardship programs that run quietly in the background
• Scale from simple email sends to full automation as confidence grows
And unlike most enterprise tools, Ortto sits at a price point that nonprofits can realistically afford. You can start small. Grow as you need. Integrate what you already use. Connect Salesforce natively. Pull in your fundraising in real time. Add custom sources later.
It’s modern marketing for charities - without the heavy lift.
Why this matters right now…
Younger generations are craving two things:
To be known as individuals
To feel part of something bigger than themselves
You cannot invite them into community if they don’t feel seen. And you cannot make them feel seen without behaviour-driven personalisation.
A CRM will not give you this. They are great to manage a supporter. But a CDP will help you engage your supporter.
And a CDP built into your marketing automation platform - like Ortto - is how you start rebuilding your individual giving pipeline, nurturing younger supporters into long-term stewards, and laying the foundations for the next wave of major donors.
Because the future of fundraising won’t be won by organisations with the cleanest CRM. It will be won by the ones who understand their supporters best and speak to them personally.
And that starts with a unified view. It starts with smarter engagement. It starts with a CDP.
It starts with Ortto.