The Future of Fundraising
Welcome to the Future of Fundraising.
One year ago, my team set out with a simple but ambitious idea: could a Virtual Engagement Officer engage donors independently and deliver meaningful results? Today, with more than 70,000 donors managed, the answer is yes. The scale of Autonomous Fundraising is remarkable—and among the most compelling reasons is the quantifiable data.
With a wide spectrum of use cases and organizations across nonprofit verticals, sizes, geographies, and donor demographics, we can now confidently answer a common question: which donors respond best to Autonomous Fundraising?
What strikes me is how the data confirms certain assumptions and challenges others. When the goal is dollars in the door, recency matters more than giving capacity:
- Over 88% of the top-dollar donors engaged by a VEO had lapsed no more than one year.
- Only 9% had lapsed more than three years.
- A current $500 donor is often a better bet than a $1,000 donor last seen five years ago.
As a fundraiser, this isn’t surprising at all. While we all have stories of long-lapsed or first-time donors suddenly surfacing with major gifts, they’re far less statistically likely in both traditional and autonomous fundraising.
The best performing portfolios consider both today’s revenue and tomorrow’s prospects, balanced with:
- 75% current donors with upgrade potential.
- 25% recently lapsed donors with strong giving history.
That mix consistently surfaces donors ready to graduate into a gift officer’s portfolio.
Demographically, donors between ages 50–72 show the highest engagement and strongest giving.
Donors who reply, click, and open messages—even modestly—become some of the most loyal over time. Of those who readily engage with the VEO, nearly 50% have given at least once, and more than 25% have made multiple gifts since being assigned to a VEO portfolio. The VEO’s purpose is to strengthen connections that lead to giving, and this data shows it is delivering on that promise.
These patterns hold across very different contexts—from organizations with hundreds of thousands of active donors to smaller nonprofits with only a few thousand. More importantly, they provide a framework for designing portfolios aligned to specific goals: immediate revenue, building tomorrow’s pipeline, or re-engaging donors during the window when they’re statistically most likely to return.
One year in, the lesson is clear: many donors thrive in Autonomous Fundraising portfolios, and now we know who they are. The bigger opportunity is what comes next. With 97.5% of donors traditionally unmanaged, this framework gives us a way to reach them with the attention they deserve—and a foundation for exploring how strategies evolve, how donor perception shifts, and how growth carries forward into year two.
Autonomous Fundraising Progress Update
This week we celebrate one year of Autonomous Fundraising, and with it, a major milestone: Virtual Engagement Officers (VEOs) have now surpassed $3 million raised for our Innovation Partners.
In just twelve months, VEOs have proven their ability to deliver real dollars in the door by expanding capacity for fundraising teams—securing tens of thousands of gifts, re-engaging lapsed donors, surfacing planned and multi-year commitments, and creating seamless handoffs to frontline fundraisers.
This week’s VEO by the Numbers:
- $3,230,927 raised
- 22,425 gifts secured
- 355,000+ activities managed
- 70,663 donors managed
- 1,007 donors re-engaged
- 7 planned gifts and 3 multi-year commitments surfaced
- 227 seamless handoffs to frontline fundraisers
Year one has proven the model. Year two is about building what’s next.
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From Enablement to Autonomous: Evaluating AI Based on the ROI You Need
Fundraising leaders are being presented with more AI tools than ever before, but not all AI delivers the same outcomes. Some solutions create efficiency by helping staff work faster, while others generate direct revenue and pipeline growth.
With AI becoming central to advancement strategy, it is more important than ever for fundraisers to understand which solutions fit their ROI needs.
This session will provide a clear framework for evaluating AI, helping you distinguish between tools that improve efficiency and those that generate direct fundraising revenue.
The Data & Results Are In: One Year of Autonomous Fundraising
One year into Autonomous Fundraising, the results are undeniable: thousands of donors engaged, millions of dollars raised, and entire portfolios managed without human backup. But the bigger story is what these outcomes reveal about the future of fundraising—who responds, how portfolios should be built, and what digital labor means for team capacity.
This session will share the milestones, the surprises, and the stories from the first year of Virtual Engagement Officers in the field—offering fundraising leaders a clear view of where Autonomous Fundraising is headed and what it means for strategy in 2026 and beyond.
Meet Version2 at CCCA 2025
We’re excited to be attending CASE Conference for Community College Advancement 2025 in New Orleans!
If you're attending, make sure to join Daniel Freeman from Gaston College and Emily Groccia from Version2.ai on Friday, October 10 at 9:00 AM CT. They’ll share how Gaston College became the first community college to introduce a Virtual Engagement Officer, Oliver—driving new gifts, re-engaging donors, and strengthening long-term revenue through Autonomous Fundraising.
Don’t forget to stop by the booth to meet the Version2.ai team throughout the week to learn how community colleges are expanding capacity and transforming donor engagement with trusted digital labor.
And don’t miss our informal cocktail reception on night one of the conference— a chance to connect and dive deeper into these innovations.
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Fundraising Jobs
Our featured jobs come from our amazing subscribers. If you have jobs you would like posted in the Future of Fundraising newsletter, please email hello@givzey.com with your requests.
- Senior Director of Development, Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine $150,000 - 170,000 | Florida International University | Miami, Florida. | APPLY >>>
- Senior Director of Development $160,000 - 200,000 | Gloucester Marine Genomics Institute | Gloucester, MA | APPLY >>>
- VP, Development $185,000 - 220,000 | Ronald McDonald House Charities Bay Area | Palo Alto, CA | APPLY >>>
- Director of Gift Planning $107,500 - 137,000 | Monterey Bay Aquarium | Monterey, CA | APPLY >>>
These are really interesting results, thanks for sharing! I look forward to learning more VEOs.
The marriage between autonomous fundraising with fundraising principles has unlimited potential. The modern and the true, perfect together.
Almost every time we discuss the Virtual Engagement Officer (VEO) program, the question always arises: my donorbase skews older, will this tool be the right fit for my organization? The answer is yes!
“What donors should I put in VEO portfolio?” Thanks to the amazing Innovation Partners who saw the opportunity to pioneer Autonomous Fundraising in its first year, the entire nonprofit sector has a firm grasp on how to point VEOs in the directions that produce the ROI that drives missions forward.