Automation tends to raise eyebrows in fundraising circles, especially when donor relationships are on the line. And honestly? Fair enough. Stewardship is personal by design. The whole point is to make people feel seen and valued.

So when someone suggests automating part of that, it can sound like a shortcut in all the wrong ways. The hesitation makes sense. No one wants stewardship to feel robotic.

The right automation doesn’t replace the human touch; it makes space for it, clearing out the manual noise so teams can focus on the deeper, more meaningful work of building relationships, following up thoughtfully, and staying responsive in moments that matter.

Let’s break down how nonprofits use HubSpot to automate stewardship in ways that are strategic, scalable, and still deeply personal.

Why Automate Stewardship at All?

In 2025, donor retention is still trending in the wrong direction. According to the Fundraising Effectiveness Project, the retention rate for new donors declined to about 18.1 % in Q1 2025, down from 18.3 % a year prior, showing how fragile early donor relationships can be. Meanwhile, the number of donors in the same period dropped about 1.3 % year-over-year. 

This illustrates that supporters expect to feel seen and connected after they give, but when teams are stretched, those key moments can slip through - quiet signals (but oftentimes just a complete misinterpretation) that the relationship isn’t being nurtured. Organizations can’t afford that. Donor engagement is far too important to fall behind and too valuable in the big picture, both in the long and short term.

This is where automation offers strategic leverage and creates systems to ensure stewardship moments land on schedule and with purpose.

So what’s getting missed, and what can automation actually fix? 

Let’s look at where gaps happen most often in stewardship, and how well-designed automation can close them without sacrificing the donor experience:

There’s a cost to inconsistency

Even with the best intentions, donor touchpoints slip through the cracks. A thank-you that goes out days late. A pledge reminder that never gets sent. A milestone that passes without acknowledgment.

And it’s not even about lack of care. Teams are working hard for sure, but without the right support, it’s tough to keep up with every detail that makes stewardship feel personal.

Automation steps in to help your team follow through consistently, on time, and at scale.  When you build intentional, well-timed workflows, your team can deliver consistent, timely engagement without relying on memory, spreadsheets, or late-night catch-up emails.

Automate for the long game, not shortcuts

When you automate key stewardship flows, you free up your team to concentrate on the moments that require thought, care, and creativity. The manual steps get handled in the background so staff can spend less time chasing reminders and more time building real connections.

Done right, automation helps:

• Get thank-yous out in real time
• Re-engage lapsed donors with relevance
• Make recurring donors feel valued, not forgotten
• Tailor updates to what supporters actually care about

Consistent stewardship builds confidence. It shows donors that your team is paying attention, and that their support is being taken seriously.

Retention starts with how you treat donors after the first gift

Most donors don’t churn because they’re uninterested. They leave because they don’t feel connected. That first gift goes unacknowledged. That monthly gift becomes routine. That engagement trail goes cold.

Retention improves when stewardship is consistent. Automation helps make that consistency sustainable.

Need to see what that looks like in practice?

▶️ Watch our HubSpot walkthrough, where Dan, a Nonprofit Tech Shop HubSpot Solutions Consultant, shows how to build out a simple automated stewardship workflow, complete with personalized thank-you emails, branching logic, and internal staff reminders.

You'll learn how to:

• Send thank-yous that pull in real donor data
• Trigger follow-ups based on actual engagement
• Assign tasks automatically so nothing slips through
• Scale your strategy without making it feel automated

📽️ Bonus: It's built entirely in HubSpot, no code or plug-ins required.

What to Automate in Your Stewardship Flows

Once the strategy is in place, the next step is execution. 

What exactly should you automate, and how do you do it without losing the nuance your donors expect?

The answer isn’t “everything.” It’s the high-volume, time-sensitive touchpoints that often fall through the cracks: the messages that build trust when they show up consistently, and erode it when they don’t.

Here are some of the practical ways we’ve actually put into action, helping fundraising teams use HubSpot to handle the moments that matter, automatically, reliably, and in a way that still feels personal.

When to Keep It Manual

While automation is great, it’s also true that not every touchpoint has to be automated. Some moments carry too much emotional weight (or strategic value) to be handed off to a workflow.

These are the kinds of interactions where a real, manual response builds trust, deepens connection, and reflects the relationship you’ve built over time.

Keep outreach human when:

• A donor makes a major or unexpected gift
• Someone replies to a message with a story, concern, or personal update
• The campaign involves sensitive issues, crisis response, or tightly held values
• You’re engaging longtime supporters or major giving prospects
• The moment calls for empathy, memory, or nuance that a template can’t replicate

What you can do, however, is use automation to flag these scenarios by assigning a task, sending a Slack notification, or  tagging the donor for personal follow-up. But let your team own the response. That’s where relationships are strengthened and where thoughtful stewardship really pays off.

Helping Your Team Trust the Process

Another thing to address here is the elephant in the room - not everyone loves the word “automation.”  For teams who care deeply about relationships, it can sound clinical or distant. For others, it feels like an empty buzzword, one that’s just never lived up to the promise, especially if they haven’t seen it used in a way that actually saves time or strengthens relationships.

Here are some ways to start shifting that mindset:

• Start with one flow. A simple thank-you automation builds trust fast
• Share performance. Open rates, response rates, saved hours; bring data to the conversation
• Keep your voice. Let fundraisers craft the actual messages. Nothing gets “too automated” if it still sounds like your team
• Make it a collaboration. Invite feedback, keep refining, show results
• Show the human benefit. Highlight the time reclaimed for donor calls, stewardship planning, or impact storytelling.
• Train for ownership. When staff understand how the workflows run, they feel empowered, and not replaced.
• Celebrate wins. Share when a donor replies to an automated message with gratitude—that’s proof it’s working.

It takes some upfront effort, but when you intentionally build around the core premise of freeing your team from manual tasks, then they can focus on the conversations and moments that actually build lasting donor relationships.