U.S. charitable giving reached $617.2 billion in 2025, up 5.7% from the previous year. Great news for nonprofits, right? Well, there’s a catch: more money coming in doesn’t necessarily mean more people are giving, or that first-time donors are sticking around.

A successful fundraising campaign can bring in new supporters, but keeping them engaged takes more than another donation request. What happens between appeals can make a big difference in whether someone decides to give again.

Here’s how to build stronger donor relationships:

• Make the first follow-up count. Send a timely thank-you message that acknowledges the contribution and explains what happens next.
• Show where the money goes. Share impact stories, progress updates, and tangible outcomes so donors understand what their support helped accomplish.
• Segment your communications. A first-time donor shouldn’t receive the same messages as someone who’s supported your organization for years. Tailor updates to their history and interests.
• Ask how donors want to hear from you. Don’t assume email is everyone’s preferred channel. Explore communication preferences and make it easy to update them.
• Offer more ways to participate. Volunteering, attending events, advocating for the cause, or sharing your mission can keep people connected between donations.
• Make recurring giving flexible. Let supporters easily pause, change, or cancel contributions. Creating unnecessary friction can damage the trust you’ve worked to build.

And don’t underestimate the value of a message that isn’t asking for anything. Sometimes an update about a project’s progress or a story from the community is exactly what keeps the relationship meaningful.

A first donation is an introduction. What your organization does afterward determines whether that introduction becomes a lasting relationship.

Head to Carney for more.

You know the moment you need is somewhere in your footage. Finding it shouldn’t be the whole afternoon.

Meet Jockey, TwelveLabs’ video intelligence agent that connects to Claude or ChatGPT. It brings video understanding, search, and reasoning together so you can find connections across your photos and videos, compare what’s happening, and get answers grounded in your footage.

Jockey sees what’s happening and hears what’s said. Ask a question in plain English, and it finds the clip and tells you exactly where to look.

A few places to start:

• Search your library. “Find every clip where someone mentions our product name.”
• Analyze your creative. “Compare these three videos and identify common themes, visual styles, and messaging.”
• Turn footage into a brief. “Use these videos to write a social campaign brief with a core message, suggested hooks, and key moments to feature.”
• Assemble a rough cut. “Build a 30-second highlight reel from the funniest moments in these videos and export it to MP4.”

Whether you’re searching customer interviews for a product mention, reviewing campaign footage, or pulling moments from an event, Jockey helps you get from a question to material you can use—with clips or timestamps to review yourself.

Less time hunting through footage. More time putting it to work.

Don’t miss the latest episode of The Daily Carnage Show, here’s what we’re covering:

🔒 Apple’s secret blocklist: How Safari’s restrictions work and which ad tech companies have been affected.

📉 The impact on advertisers and publishers: Why disruptions to ad delivery and audience signals could affect campaign performance, publisher revenue, and programmatic advertising.

📊 The measurement problem: Why winning an ad auction doesn’t always mean an ad actually appeared on a user’s screen.

⚖️ Privacy vs. platform power: What happens when the company controlling the browser also operates an advertising business?

🛠️ What marketers should do next: Audit your ad tech dependencies, verify campaign delivery, strengthen your first-party data strategy, and ask vendors about their contingency plans.

Apple’s approach raises a bigger question for the open web: How do we protect user privacy while maintaining the infrastructure that supports digital advertising?

🎙️ Plus, catch up on Season 2:

• AI Is Killing Entry-Level Marketing Jobs (12:55)
• Microdramas Are Taking Over Marketing (10:43)
• AI CEOs Want to Slow Down. The AI Race Won’t. (11:39)
• Reddit Is Changing SEO & AI Search (10:55)
• The Creator Economy Rules Gaming (43:53)
• Dark Patterns Are Becoming a Legal Problem for Meta (12:06)
• Dissecting the Brand Apology (11:35)
• Google Image Search is… Pinterest? (9:26)
• Sony & The Death of Physical Media (8:57)

🎙️ Now streaming on Youtube, Spotify, Amazon Music, and Apple Music.

Let’s take this party outside of the inbox, Carnies!

Connect and network with over 20,000 marketers to get (and give) advice, feedback, support, and LOLs.

• 💬 Join r/TheDailyCarnage on Reddit
• 👍 Join The Daily Carnage Facebook Group

😎 See ya there.

The Daily Carnage reaches decision-makers at brands, agencies, SaaS companies, and startups who are actively researching solutions, evaluating vendors, and making purchasing decisions every day.

Now, we’re opening up a limited number of Friends of The Daily Carnage partnerships for brands that want to build a consistent presence with our audience, not just run a one-off ad.

Friends get discounted sponsorship inventory, priority booking, first access to unsold placements, bonus opportunities, and performance reviews throughout the year.

Partnership levels include dedicated newsletter features, premium placements, podcast pre-rolls, classified ads, social promotion, and more.

Past sponsors include Canva, HubSpot, Salesforce, Mailchimp, Marketing Brew, and dozens of other leading brands.

Interested in reaching marketers who actually click? Reach out to get started!

Some brand partnerships get a press release. Others get a buddy movie.

Deliveroo and Tesco introduce their partnership with a film following a delivery rider and a Tesco employee who become best friends on an action-packed motorbike adventure. Set to Kenny Loggins’ “Playing with the Boys,” the spot borrows the energy of classic action-comedy duos and gives the two brands a shared story. It’s a lot more fun than watching two logos announce they’re working together.

Chiclets, 1909