Fundraising teams today aren’t failing because they lack insight. They’re struggling because even when they know what to do, they don’t have the time or systems to do it.
You’re constantly exporting lists, building segments from scratch, and trying to remember which campaign is still waiting on creative. And in that grind, critical moments slip away.
What separates high-performing fundraising teams from the rest isn’t better strategies. It’s execution at scale. That starts with automating the entire workflows that fuel engagement, giving, and retention.
If your team is already automating basic tasks like donation receipts or newsletters, great. But the real opportunity in 2025 is deeper. These 20 workflows unlock serious time savings, donor insights, and momentum, and most nonprofits haven’t automated them yet.
1. New Donor Welcome Series Automation
First-time donors are more likely to give again within 60 days, but not if they’re greeted with silence.
An automated welcome series turns first-time donors into long-term supporters by guiding them through the story they just stepped into, without adding another to-do for your team.
Connect your donation form to your automation system (or Avid) to kick off a 3-email sequence post-gift. Focus on gratitude, mission alignment, and next steps.
You can also set up alerts for failed payments, automate retry attempts, and schedule thank-you emails at meaningful intervals.
2. New Email Subscriber Welcome Series
The purpose of acquiring new email subscribers—whether from newsletter signups, ebook offers, surveys, or other offers—is to cultivate them to become a donor.
Plus, if you don’t have a New Emails Subscriber Welcome series, you’re nearly guaranteed to have poor deliverability and engagement.
An automated email welcome series will welcome new subscribers, introduce them to your organization, and begin to set expectations for ongoing communication.
A well designed new email subscriber welcome series can lead to more new donors within a short amount of time.
3. Automated Lapsed Donor Re-Engagement Campaigns
Most nonprofits wait too long to reach out to lapsed donors or miss the window altogether.
Most teams notice this too late. But what if your system noticed giving slowdowns and launched the right message before the donor drifted?
Build dynamic segments of donors who haven’t given in 3, 6, or 12 months, and trigger an automated journey with messaging tailored to their past engagement.
4. Recurring Gift Acquisition Automation
Fundraisers are always looking for ways to grow their recurring giving. But recurring giving acquisition often gets over complicated.
The simplest thing you can do to grow your recurring donors is to automate your recurring giving ask.
Build an automated email series complete with cultivation, personal emails, and a strong value proposition that asks existing one-time donors to upgrade their gift.
You can make this part of your new donor welcome series. And you can also run an automated campaign 6 months after someone makes their first gift.
Test different frequencies and messaging to dial in your tactics. But make sure you automate the ask!
5. Recurring Gift Recovery Workflows
Churn on recurring gifts is often hidden and silent.
A failed card, an expired date, and that once-loyal donor vanishes from your radar. But when reminders, updates, and retries run automatically, you recover revenue before it disappears without chasing anyone down.
Don’t let avoidable churn sneak up on you. Set up alerts for failed payments, automate retry attempts, and schedule thank-you emails at meaningful intervals.
6. Automated Donor Anniversary Recognition
Fundraising is personal. Every donor has a day worth celebrating.
Celebrating the anniversary of a donor’s first gift is one of the simplest, most overlooked ways to reinforce connection. But unless it’s automated, it won’t happen. And that moment, that “you remembered me” moment, might be what keeps them giving.
Use CRM data to track gift anniversaries, and automate a celebration email or personal outreach cue.
Don’t know how? Steal our First Anniversary Appeal Blueprint here.
7. Real-Time Donor Suppression Across Channels
Nothing damages trust faster than asking a donor to give again the day after they already did. When suppression is manual, mistakes happen. But with synced systems and smart automation, donors exit active campaigns the moment they give, no spreadsheet required.
Ensure your donation platform, CRM, and email tool sync in real time. Suppression should happen the moment a gift is received, across all channels.
8. Volunteer Onboarding Email Sequences
Most nonprofits treat volunteer onboarding as an afterthought. But your volunteers are often your future donors, advocates, or ambassadors. Automated onboarding workflows ensure every volunteer is welcomed, trained, and engaged, consistently.
Automate confirmation, training, and onboarding touchpoints from your signup form. Trigger flows with embedded content and clear next actions.
9. Instant Donation Thank-You + Receipt Workflows
Speed matters.
A heartfelt thank-you delivered within seconds of a gift reinforces generosity and builds trust. But the real value comes from consistency. Automation means no donor is ever forgotten.
Connect your donation processor directly to your email or automation platform. Make sure you’re generating branded thank-you emails and tax receipts instantly.
10. High-Intent Donor Behavior Alerts
Someone just clicked your planned giving page. Wouldn’t you want to know?
You shouldn’t need to stalk your dashboard to catch a donor clicking on a major gift page. Set automated alerts for high-value behaviors so your gift officers can follow up while intent is still fresh.
You can set rules to bubble these signals up in real time and notify your team when a donor clicks key links.
11. Automated Donor Segmentation Refresh
Segments go stale fast.
That “mid-level donor” list from last quarter? Half of them have moved on. Automated segmentation keeps your targeting relevant in real time so your outreach never lags behind your data.
Use live syncing and dynamic logic to update segments continually and automatically. Keep segments current based on behavior, giving, and engagement.
12. Matching Gift Follow-Up Automation
Most nonprofits are leaving matching gifts on the table simply because the workflow is too manual. With automation, you can identify eligible donors and trigger the follow-up sequence without anyone having to Google a policy or file a form.
Add a prompt on your donation form, and automate follow-up messages for eligible donors. Avid, for example, tracks match potential and triggers the right outreach without manual oversight.
13. Post-Donation Nurture Email Journeys
Donors want to see the ripple effect of their gift. But sending those updates and next steps manually doesn’t scale. Automating the post-donation journey ensures every supporter gets thanked, informed, and re-engaged without fail.
Create a 3- to 5-email sequence that thanks, shares impact stories, sets expectations, and invites future action. Ensure you’re generating content based on the gift type.
14. Event Registration and Follow-Up Workflows
From the RSVP confirmation to the post-event survey, every interaction shapes a donor’s impression. Automating this workflow means you never miss a reminder or a “thank you for coming,” and your events feel as coordinated as your mission.
Automate registration confirmations, attendee reminders, and surveys through your event platform and build sequences tied to donor profiles.
15. Automated Fundraising Dashboards for Board Reporting
You don’t need another Friday lost to building slides. Fundraisers spend too many hours building decks that say too little.
Automate your board dashboards to pull live campaign metrics, donor trends, and pipeline insights.
Use a system like Avid to automatically generate dashboards with live performance data. Export or share a board-ready link monthly.
16. Behavior-Based Ask Amount Personalization
Asking a $25 donor for $500 makes everyone uncomfortable. But when ask amounts adapt to a donor’s behavior and history, your appeals feel smarter, more respectful, and more effective.
Automate personalized gift suggestions based on giving history and engagement. You can build conditional logic in your CRM to customize ask ladders.
17. Gift Anniversary Appeal Workflows
Donor retention hinges on timing.
And the best time to re-ask a donor? One year after their last gift, when the reason they gave still resonates.
Trigger appeals 1 year post-gift using CRM data and email automation.
18. New Donor Thank-You Call Task Creation
Calling first-time donors adds a human touch that drives loyalty. But tracking who to call, when, and why shouldn’t be manual.
Have your CRM or automation tool assign a task or notify a gift officer after a donor’s first gift. Auto assign tasks based on gift type and value.
19. Email Deliverability Monitoring and Alerts
When open rates crash or bounce rates spike, it’s often too late to fix it. But when anomalies trigger alerts automatically, you catch issues early and keep your reputation intact.
Use your ESP’s alerts or Avid’s monitoring to track bounce rates and flag deliverability issues. Automate alerts for performance dips.
20. Automated Major Donor Qualification Workflows
Most major donors don’t announce themselves. They start small, engage steadily, and only raise their hand when they feel seen. Automation helps you spot those patterns and surface prospects before the moment passes.
Automate donor scoring based on behavior and historical trends.
Turn Reactive Fundraising Into a Smart, Always-On System with Automation
You’ve probably automated donation receipts and maybe a few email blasts. But as you’ve seen here, those are just the surface-level tasks.
The real shift happens when you move from chasing deadlines to triggering results. When your workflows respond to donor behavior, not reporting gaps. When your team can finally stop plugging holes and start building momentum.
That’s the power of strategic workflow automation. Not just doing more faster, but finally doing the right things at the right time.
Avid was built to make that shift possible. We call it the first Fundraising Agency in the Cloud.
Avid is your nonprofit’s fundraising intelligence and automation system. It’s the infrastructure that connects your existing tech stack, surfaces actionable insights, and automates execution across the entire donor lifecycle.
From pulling real-time segments and generating multi-channel campaigns, to surfacing major donor signals, Avid eliminates busywork, closes execution gaps, and empowers your team to act on strategy
If you’re ready to move from reactive tasks to a proactive, always-on fundraising system, book a walkthrough here.
