Are your emails helping or hurting?

Last week, I wrote about a promising stat from M+R’s upcoming Benchmarks report: online giving grew by double digits from 2024 to 2025, with some issue sectors up more than 30%. 

That’s worth celebrating. 

But before we pop any corks, there’s a number I can’t stop thinking about. 

Because it turns out that, while online revenue is up, this “11 Trends in Philanthropy” report reveals that something underneath might be cracking.

Are we losing trust?
One big finding from the Johnson Center’s report is keeping me up at night: public trust in nonprofits dropped from 42% to 35% between March and September 2025. 

Seven points in six months.

This finding doesn’t exist in a vacuum: A separate study from last year found that only 57% of Americans report “high trust” in nonprofits.

These stats matter because supporters need to trust you with their email address.

Is email part of the problem?
We have to be honest here; some of these practices are making it worse.

Emailing people who never opted in. Renting lists or scraping sign-in sheets from events without explicit opt-in language. Those recipients didn’t ask to hear from you. 

When they hit “mark as spam,” it harms your inbox reputation and your brand.

Fake or misleading match offers. CharityWatch has been calling this out for years: many “your gift will be doubled!” campaigns are purely marketing spin. 

Political campaigns have made it worse with blatantly fake “500X” match appeals, leaving donors skeptical of all match offers.

Can matches be effective? Sure. Should they be genuine? Absolutely.

Alarmist subject lines or email copy that doesn’t deliver. “URGENT: Everything is at stake!!!” followed by a vague fundraising ask. 

When every email is an emergency without substance, nothing is. Donor fatigue research keeps telling us that false urgency drives disengagement.

The fix is boring (but that’s the point)
The Edelman Trust Barometer measures trust on two dimensions: ethics and competence. 

Nonprofits score fine on ethics. Where trust breaks down is whether we can actually deliver. And email is one of the few places where you can prove competence in real time. 

Forget the glossy annual report. The small, specific stuff does the heavy lifting: “Your $50 covered three nights of emergency shelter for a family in Tucson.” 

The best programs I’ve seen all do the same boring thing. They follow up.

They show supporters what happened because they showed up, instead of undermining that work by crying wolf in the subject line or dressing up an internal fund transfer as a “match.”

Here’s a place to start: pull up your last five fundraising appeals and ask whether a supporter could tell you how you’ll put their donation to work.

If the answer is unclear, that’s your next problem to tackle.

The bottom line
Online giving is growing. That’s worth celebrating. 

But revenue growth on a foundation of eroding trust is not a long-term strategy.

Every send either builds trust or chips away at it. 

The organizations that earn trust right now are the ones that remember there’s a real person on the other side of every send.

Check our events list for more or reply to this email to submit one for consideration.

‘Til next time!
Sara