Despite all the changes and the rapid rise of social media over the years, nonprofit newsletters remain one of the best ways to stay in touch with your donors. While the purpose of nonprofit newsletters hasn’t really changed over the years, delivery methods and best practices have evolved. Most nonprofits now rely primarily on e-newsletters to interact with their donors regularly.

Email still dominates as a reliable form of communication across all age categories, and it’s actually a tremendous complementary strategy to your social media presence. In short, even if you still send a print newsletter, it’s essential to have a solid nonprofit email newsletter.

Email remains one of the best-proven methods for reaching a broad audience and cultivating long-term relationships with partners and donors. Conveniently, email also has one of the highest returns on investment of all the online marketing options!

In our last blog, we discussed how to go about choosing an email service provider that best fits your nonprofit. Now that you’ve got everything set up, it’s time to fill that email list with some fantastic current and potential donors!

Email is a popular marketing and communication form for businesses and charitable organizations alike—and for a good reason! With email updates, you can do everything from sharing about accomplishments, needs, and events to attracting and engaging new audiences for very little money.

But how is an organization to choose the right email marketing tool or software to maximize its marketing potential! There are so many options to choose from and factors to consider. Have no fear! We put together a quick guide to help you find the best email marketing tool for your nonprofit.

Did you know that more than 293 billion consumer and business emails were sent per day? Some analysts say that number will surpass 347 billion by 2023 (and some of us probably feel like we delete about that many every week).

About 3.8 billion people use email regularly, making it one of the best (and most cost-effective) ways to fundraise online. In 2017, emails drove about 28% of all online revenue, but the response rate to fundraising emails is under 1%.

Of course, those statistics are skewed by national and global organizations that send millions of emails regularly. Still, it's more important than ever to make your email stand out in the crowded inboxes.

One of the easiest ways to improve your open rate is to write an excellent subject line! There are plenty of ways to go about this, and the options are only limited by your own creativity.

We rounded up some tips, tricks, and best practices for writing fantastic email subject lines that will surely spice up your response rates.

Originally published 2019. Updated February 2026.

You've done the hard work: built a compelling mission, cultivated relationships with supporters, and set up your online donation forms. But if your donation asks aren't converting the way you'd like, the problem is often the words on the page, not the cause behind them.

In 2026, donors are more discerning and more distracted than ever. Inboxes are crowded, attention is short, and generic appeals get ignored. The good news: small, research-backed changes to your language can meaningfully shift donor behavior. This guide covers five proven ways to strengthen your donation wording, with before-and-after examples and practical tips you can put to work today.