A Dataro + hjc service for finding, cultivating, and growing your most valuable annual donors
Mid-level giving can be the most profitable, overlooked part of your fundraising program.
These donors often represent only 1%–5% of annual giving donors, but can generate 20%–35% or more of annual giving revenue. Yet in many organizations, they are still treated like mass donors — receiving the same appeals, the same generic stewardship, and the same one-size-fits-all donor journey.
That is where Dataro + hjc come in.
Dataro helps you identify the donors most ready to give more.
hjc helps you build the journeys, creative, stewardship, and lifecycle strategy that turn that insight into deeper donor relationships and revenue growth.
Together, we help you move from:
“Who gave last year?”
to
“Who is ready to step up — and how should we cultivate them?”
Move to the Middle is a complete mid-level donor growth service that combines predictive donor intelligence, journey mapping, lifecycle planning, creative development, and practical implementation support.
It is designed for fundraising teams that know there is untapped value in their donor file, but need a clear system to identify, prioritize, cultivate, and retain mid-level donors.
With Dataro’s AI-powered fundraising intelligence platform and hjc’s fundraising strategy, creative, and donor journey expertise, we help you build a mid-level program that is not just a segment — it is a relationship system.
Why mid-level now?
Mid-level donors are not “small major donors.”
They are donors in motion.
They may become major donors.
They may become planned giving prospects.
They may become loyal annual investors.
They may become advocates, ambassadors, monthly donors, or campaign leaders.
But only if they are properly noticed, thanked, cultivated, and invited.
Most organizations define mid-level giving by a fixed threshold: $500+, $1,000+, $5,000+, or another internal cut-off.
That is a start, but it is not enough.
Dataro’s AI-powered fundraising intelligence platform helps identify which donors are most likely to upgrade, retain, or move into a deeper relationship. Instead of relying only on recency, frequency, and monetary value, Dataro helps you prioritize the right donors at the right time.
hjc then helps turn those donor insights into practical segments, cultivation groups, journey triggers, and campaign strategies.
This means you do not just contact more donors. You focus your effort where it matters most.
Mid-level donors need a journey that feels different from mass fundraising but does not require the full intensity of major gift management.
hjc maps the donor experience across onboarding, recognition, stewardship, renewal, upgrade, reactivation, and major/planned gift pathways.
A strong mid-level journey may include:
- Invitation into the program
- Immediate thank-you and recognition
- Welcome message explaining impact
- Donor choice or project direction
- Insider update or progress report
- Peer donor story
- Expert, program, researcher, or frontline update
- Impact report tied to giving level
- Renewal ask
- Upgrade ask
- Multi-year commitment ask
- Planned giving or major gift pathway
This structure mirrors the Dataro/hjc webinar framework, which emphasized welcome, retention, lifecycle planning, donor agency, insider updates, and planned/major gift pathways.
Mid-level donors need more than a bigger ask string.
They need a stronger reason to give.
hjc helps develop the brand, offer, message, storytelling, and multi-channel creative that makes mid-level giving feel meaningful, personal, and urgent.
That can include:
- Program naming and positioning
- Giving levels and donor identity
- Specific offers and funding opportunities
- Emotional storytelling
- Impact reporting
- Donor choice and agency
- Insider updates
- Direct mail, email, phone, SMS, video, and digital follow-up
- Social proof and peer donor storytelling
The webinar showed how stronger creative can give mid-level donors more “agency” through options such as commit, invest, and direct — helping donors feel they are making a meaningful choice, not simply responding to another appeal.
This is not just a strategy deck.
For ACN International, hjc developed a practical mid-level donor program that included discovery, data review, workshops, journey mapping, lifecycle planning, creative strategy, templates, segmentation strategies, and implementation checklists for country offices. The ACN proposal describes a phased approach covering discovery, donor file analysis, creative and stewardship review, shared workshops, journey mapping, lifecycle and moves management, pilot support, and KPIs.
For ACN, this became a 61-page step-by-step guidebook to help each office start or strengthen its mid-level giving program. The webinar materials describe it as a practical “rule book” with three stages: define and select mid-level donors, build the one-year donor journey, and create, launch, and review.
Your organization can receive the same kind of practical toolkit:
- Mid-level donor definition and segmentation model
- Dataro-informed priority audiences
- One-year donor journey map
- Lifecycle and moves management calendar
- Creative and message framework
- Channel plan
- Stewardship templates
- Upgrade and renewal pathways
- Major gift and planned gift handoff logic
- Pilot plan and measurement dashboard
We begin by understanding your current mid-level opportunity.
This may include stakeholder interviews, donor file review, Dataro insight review, current creative and stewardship audit, CRM and workflow review, and identification of barriers and opportunities.
The goal is to answer:
Where is the value? Who should we focus on? What is stopping growth? What should we test first?
We then build the core program elements with your team.
This can include workshops on:
- Creative and storytelling
- Journey mapping
- Lifecycle and moves management
- Segmentation and prioritization
- Stewardship and retention
- Upgrade and pipeline strategy
The ACN service model included three shared workshops: creative development, journey mapping, and lifecycle/moves management, producing templates for donor journeys, segmentation, cultivation calendars, and creative content.
Once the strategy and tools are built, we help you move into implementation.
That can include pilot planning, campaign review, donor journey refinement, quarterly check-ins, troubleshooting, creative review, and results interpretation.
The goal is not simply to launch a mid-level campaign.
The goal is to build a sustainable mid-level system that your team can continue to improve.
A strong mid-level program should help you grow:
- Number of mid-level donors
- Mid-level revenue
- Average gift value
- Donor retention
- Upgrade rates from annual giving
- Movement into major giving
- Planned giving conversations
- Donor satisfaction and loyalty
Together, Dataro and hjc helped ACN International drive success: including 15%–25% growth in mid-level donors over two years, a 10–15 point improvement in retention, 10%–20% growth in average gift value, and 5%–10% donor upgrades from the core base.
“The value of Dataro was not simply helping us find more donors. The value was helping us identify which donors deserved our attention first. Combined with hjc’s stewardship framework, predictive analytics allowed us to move from ‘Who should we contact?’ to ‘Who should we cultivate, and how?’”
Marisol Castaneda, ACN International
Download includes:
- Mid-Level Giving Checklist
- Dataro + hjc webinar recording
- Extra Resources!
Your best future donors may already be in your file.
They are giving.
They are engaged.
They are capable of more.
But they need to be seen, understood, and cultivated differently.
Dataro helps you find them.
hjc helps you build the program that moves them.