New donors surged. Revenue spiked. Nothing about generosity changed — people just finally saw the work.
Andres Clavier StudioAttention × Fundraising4 min read
New donor acquisition & revenue across nonprofit files, 2019–2025. The COVID spike wasn't about wealth — it was about attention.
COVID-19 was the biggest attention economy trial charities have ever experienced.
Across most of the donor files I've analyzed, both new donors and revenue rose sharply during 2020 and 2021. And a lot of organizations are still riding that wave — treating those numbers as a baseline that just happened.
But here's the thing: that surge didn't happen because people had more wealth. It didn't happen because inequality shrank, or because economic conditions aligned in favor of generosity. None of the structural factors that typically drive giving actually improved during that period.
What changed was attention.
People were home. They were less distracted. They were actually seeing what showed up in their feeds. You could post something organic and get real results — because for a brief window, the noise dropped and the signal got through.
Whether we like it or not, the attention economy is real. And charities got a taste of what happens when people actually see their work.
The difference now is that attention isn't free anymore.
That organic window closed. The algorithms shifted. People went back to offices, back to full schedules, back to scrolling past everything. If you want people to see your cause in 2026, you have to pay for it — and you have to put real effort into what's working in the channels where attention actually lives.
This isn't a cynical take. It's the opposite.
Because here's what excites me — if charities figure this out, they bring something genuinely positive into a space that most people associate with noise and manipulation. More people discovering causes that matter. More strangers choosing to help. That's not polluting the feed. That's improving it.
The data from COVID proved something important: when people encounter the work charities do, they respond. The generosity was always there. The visibility wasn't.
