1. We Define what “lapsed” means to your organization.  Some say 2 years without donating, others say 6 months, or even 5 years.  It depends on your fundraising cycle and organizational needs. 

2. Let’s Figure out who has lapsed.  This is only possible if you’re keeping good records. This means that you’re going to let some folks “slide” if they haven’t hit that threshold you defined in step 1 yet and you’re going to write off the ones who donated too long ago.

3. We need prioritize among those in this group.  You may wish to prioritize the more recent lapsed donors, or the ones who were (or are likely to be) more generous.  You may figure out some other strategic approach. You can’t approach them all the same way, so you need to work on reactivating some more than others.

4. Group the prioritized lapsed donors according to why they have lapsed. This is no time to be shy–find out, if you don’t already know why, the donor has moved on.  The decision could be for many different reasons, only some of which are your organization’s fault.  But you can’t try to win them back all the same way. Former donors who have already died, for example, will be impossible to bring back. Let's remove them for your list.