The 3 Donor Types Only the ED Can Help An Org Reach

Somewhere in America tonight, a board member is raising their hand and saying the organization needs to diversify its revenue.

It sounds responsible. And in our sector, it's nearly universal advice. But research from the Stanford Social Innovation Review suggests it might also be the advice quietly limiting our growth.

This post is about three donor types most development teams aren't built to reach — and why building for them isn't a fundraising problem. It's a leadership one.

It's also a big part of what the new Proimpact ED System course is built around. More on that below.

The Proimpact ED System — a free course built for nonprofit EDs who want the belief shifts, strategies, and tactics that actually move organizations forward. Join the waitlist →

The Stanford Data That Quietly Reframes the Whole Conversation

Since 1970, more than 200,000 nonprofits have been founded in the United States.

Only 144 of them have ever broken $50 million in annual revenue.

Stanford studied that group. They redid the study in 2024 just to make sure the pattern still held. It did. And the finding was the opposite of what most of us have been told for decades.

About 90% of the high-growth nonprofits in the Stanford study got the bulk of their funding from one dominant source. Not three. Not four. One.

Here's the contrast in plain terms:

• The advice everyone hears: Build a three-legged stool of grants, major gifts, and monthly giving. Spread the risk.

• What the data shows: High-growth orgs concentrate. They pick the channel they're best at and get genuinely good at it.

The McDonald's analogy is useful here. McDonald's didn't grow by selling Lexus cars alongside burgers. They grew by adding breakfast. By adding healthier options. By going after new audiences for the same fundamental thing they already did well.

Different revenue streams aren't different products. They're different business models — different staff, different timelines, different systems, different everything.

So the reframe is small but consequential.

Not diversify funding. Diversify funders.

That distinction is the hinge for everything that follows.

Why This Is the ED's Job (Not Your Development Team's)

Most fundraising content treats donor diversification as a development team problem.

It isn't. At least not entirely. And the reason is structural.

Development teams can do brilliant work. Most of them already are. They:

• Tell strong stories

• Build emotional appeals that convert

• Run direct mail, events, and donor cultivation

This is the donor type the sector has spent decades getting good at — what we'd call the emotional donor. And most development shops are genuinely great at reaching them.

But here's what dev teams can't create on their own:

• An efficient program model — that's a programs and operations decision

• An ambitious organizational vision — that's set at the top

• A technology roadmap — that's a leadership-level investment call

Each of those is the substance behind a different donor type's interest. The development team can carry that messaging beautifully once it exists. They just can't conjure it from nothing.

Which means three of the most overlooked donor types in our sector aren't a fundraising problem. They're a leadership one.

It's also the part of the equation the Proimpact ED System course was built to address — building the org-wide substance that lets your development team invite more donors into the work.