Don't Transactionalize Your Donors
- Brandon Farr
- May 6
- 2 min read
After 18 years owning a construction company that funded my charitable giving — including to food banks in my community — I noticed something most charities never see from the inside.
Most of the food banks I gave to sent me a tax receipt and a year-end appeal. That was it. Months of silence between gifts. A form letter. Another ask. Even from organizations doing the most critical work in their community.
This is the transactional trap. The donor's relationship with the food bank gets reduced to a financial event — money in, receipt out — instead of an ongoing relationship.
Donors don't usually leave dramatically. They drift. Next year, they don't quite remember why they picked your food bank over the four others they support. They give somewhere else. Or they give less. Or they stop entirely.
What "transactional" looks like in practice
Auto-generated tax receipt is the only mid-year touch
Year-end appeal arrives identical to last year's
"Dear Donor" salutations
Same impact statement to every donor regardless of gift size
No update on what specific programs their gift funded
No acknowledgment that they made a choice — among many — to support you
What it does to retention
Donor retention rates in Canadian charities average around 45% year-over-year. That means more than half of last year's donors don't give again. The transactional trap is the silent driver: the donor never felt seen, so they don't return.
The fix is not "send more"
The fix is send differently. Treat each donor like a person who made a choice — because they did. Acknowledge the specific gift they made, the program it funded, and the outcome it produced. Don't just say "thank you." Show what changed because of them.
That's what the next three pieces in this series are about.
Brandon Farr · Founder, Goodfinity
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