Legacy walk programs are trying to figure out the new world order. Their team captains, the foundation for previous success, no longer act the same way. They don’t want to show up in person, and they have trouble building teams. When they have a team, we can’t tell if team captains communicate with them. They don’t respond to email. How, we wonder, can we get them back?

Societal change drives nonprofit departments to try to evolve rapidly to keep up. Sometimes, different departments operating independently end up unexpectedly in the same place. A prime example is the convergence of livestream gaming and traditional peer-to-peer events. This "horseshoe dynamic" requires a restructuring of the revenue department. Not doing so means losing constituents and income.

The low-dollar donor is becoming an endangered beast. In and of itself, the loss of immediate revenue is a problem. But the larger problem will show up later. Most sustaining, major, and legacy donors “started with one small introductory gift years ago,” which means fewer major hitters will appear. In addition, many people won’t be there to support our legislative and program activities. They’ll be missing because they, too, came from the small donor ranks, the rapidly declining largest part of our pipeline. The worst pain is yet to come—but there is something we can do to change this future.