You spend hours crafting the perfect fundraising appeal. You hit send. And then… silence. Open rates are dismal, donations are down, and you have no idea why.
Here’s what’s likely happening: your emails aren’t reaching your donors at all. They’re landing in spam folders—or worse, getting blocked before they even get there.
This is one of the most common problems I see nonprofits dealing with, and it comes up constantly in the online communities I’m part of. The frustrating part is that it’s almost always fixable—but only if you understand what’s causing it.
In this post, I’ll walk you through the most common reasons nonprofit emails end up in spam and what you can do about each one. I’ll also share a real-world situation where a client’s emails were completely broken and how we solved it—so you can recognize the signs if it’s happening to you.
In this post:
- How email deliverability actually works
- The three DNS records every nonprofit needs
- Why Mailchimp might be failing you (and what to check)
- When your domain reputation is the real problem
- A real-world fix: moving to Amazon SES
- Free Email Health Audit Worksheet
How Email Deliverability Actually Works
Before we talk about what’s going wrong, it helps to understand what’s happening when you send an email.
When you hit send, your email travels from your sending platform to your recipient’s mail server (Gmail, Outlook, etc.). That receiving mail server runs a series of checks before deciding whether to deliver your email to the inbox, drop it into spam, or reject it entirely.
Those checks look at things like:
- Are you who you say you are? (Authentication)
- Does your domain have a history of sending spam? (Reputation)
- Are people marking your emails as spam? (Engagement signals)
- Is your list full of bad addresses that bounce? (List hygiene)
Fail enough of these checks and your emails go to spam—or never arrive at all. The good news is that most of these are things you can control.
The Three DNS Records Every Nonprofit Needs
Authentication is the foundation of email deliverability. Without it, receiving mail servers have no way to verify that your email is actually coming from you—and they’ll treat it with suspicion accordingly.
There are three DNS records you need to have properly configured for every domain you send email from.
SPF (Sender Policy Framework)
SPF is a DNS record that tells the world which servers are authorized to send email on behalf of your domain. Without it, anyone can send email pretending to be you—and receiving servers know it.
If you’re sending from Mailchimp, Google Workspace, or any other platform, that platform needs to be listed in your SPF record. Most email platforms will give you the exact record to add—you just need to make sure it’s actually been done.
To check: search “SPF record checker” and run your domain through it. It will tell you instantly whether your SPF record exists and what it says.
DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail)
DKIM adds a digital signature to your outgoing emails. When a receiving server gets your email, it uses this signature to verify that the email actually came from your domain and hasn’t been tampered with in transit.
Most email platforms (Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign, etc.) will ask you to add a DKIM record when you set up your account. If you skipped that step or had someone else set it up and aren’t sure whether it was done, this is worth checking.
To check: search “DKIM record checker” and follow the instructions—you’ll need to know the selector your email platform uses, which they’ll provide in their documentation.
DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance)
DMARC builds on SPF and DKIM by telling receiving servers what to do when an email fails authentication checks. It also gives you a reporting mechanism so you can see when someone is trying to spoof your domain.
A basic DMARC policy looks like this:
v=DMARC1; p=none; rua=mailto:dmarc-reports@yourdomain.orgStarting with p=none means you’re just monitoring—emails that fail checks still get delivered, but you get reports. Once you’re confident everything is configured correctly, you can tighten the policy to p=quarantine or p=reject.
DMARC is the record most nonprofits are missing. It’s also the one that’s increasingly required—Gmail and Yahoo now require DMARC for bulk senders, and other providers are following suit.
To check: search “DMARC record checker” and run your domain through it.
The Mailchimp Problems Nonprofits Don’t Know About
Mailchimp is one of the most popular email platforms in the nonprofit sector, and for good reason—it’s affordable, has a free tier, and is relatively easy to use. But I regularly see nonprofits struggling with deliverability in Mailchimp due to a few specific issues.
Sending from a Gmail or Yahoo address
If your “from” address in Mailchimp is something like yourname@gmail.com or info@yahoo.com, you have a problem.
Gmail and Yahoo have strict policies that prevent other platforms from sending email as if it came from their servers. When Mailchimp tries to send an email from your Gmail address, it fails authentication checks almost automatically. This is one of the fastest ways to end up in spam.
The fix: use your organization’s custom domain for sending. If you’re using Google Workspace (like most nonprofits), your address should be yourname@yourorganization.org—not a personal Gmail account.
If you don’t have a custom domain email yet, getting one should be your first priority. Google Workspace is free for nonprofits through Goodstack.
Missing required compliance elements
Every bulk email you send must include two things by law: a physical mailing address and a working unsubscribe link. Most platforms enforce this automatically, but it’s worth knowing that missing either one doesn’t just create legal exposure—some spam filters actively look for their absence and will treat your email accordingly. Use your organization’s address or a P.O. Box, and always test your unsubscribe link before a major send.
DKIM not configured in Mailchimp
Even if you have DKIM set up for your general email, you also need to set it up specifically for Mailchimp. Mailchimp needs its own DKIM record added to your DNS so it can sign emails it sends on your behalf.
In Mailchimp, go to Account > Domains and verify your sending domain. Mailchimp will walk you through what DNS records to add. If you set up your Mailchimp account a few years ago without going through this step, there’s a good chance it’s not configured.
No DMARC policy on your domain
As mentioned above, missing DMARC is increasingly a deliverability problem. Gmail in particular is paying close attention to DMARC compliance. If you don’t have a DMARC record, some of your Mailchimp emails will quietly fail to reach Gmail inboxes.
When Your Domain Reputation Is the Real Problem
Sometimes authentication is fine—all three records are in place, everything checks out—but your emails are still going to spam. When that happens, domain reputation is usually the culprit.
Domain reputation is essentially a trust score that mail servers assign to your sending domain over time. It’s built (or damaged) based on signals like:
- How often people mark your emails as spam
- How many emails bounce (indicating a dirty list)
- Whether your sending volume is consistent or suddenly spikes
- How engaged your recipients are with your emails
Once your domain reputation takes a hit, it’s difficult to recover—and the problem compounds. As more emails go to spam, fewer people open them, which signals to mail servers that people don’t want your emails, which sends more emails to spam.
This is exactly what happened with one of my clients.
A Real-World Fix: When Good Setup Isn’t Enough
I work with a nonprofit that does deeply important work supporting families facing a specific medical challenge. They had been sending their website’s transactional emails (contact form notifications, volunteer correspondence, general outreach) through their Google Workspace account using a plugin called Gravity SMTP.
On paper, this setup was reasonable. But over time, enough of their emails were getting flagged as spam—whether from recipients marking them, or from Gmail’s increasingly aggressive filtering—that their domain’s sending reputation had been damaged. By the time they came to me, virtually every email they sent was landing in spam. Their communication with volunteers and contacts had essentially broken down.
The solution was to move their website’s email sending to Amazon SES (Simple Email Service).
Why Amazon SES?
Amazon SES is a cloud-based email sending service built for reliability and deliverability. It’s used by companies sending billions of emails, which means Amazon has invested heavily in maintaining excellent sender reputation with mail providers like Gmail and Outlook.
When you send through Amazon SES, you’re sending from Amazon’s infrastructure—which has a strong, established reputation. You’re essentially borrowing that reputation while also building your own.
For transactional email (the emails your website sends automatically—contact forms, confirmations, notifications), Amazon SES is an excellent and very affordable solution. Costs are minimal for the volume most nonprofits send.
How we implemented it
We configured Gravity SMTP to route through Amazon SES instead of directly through Google Workspace. This required:
- Setting up an Amazon SES account and verifying their sending domain
- Configuring the proper DNS records that Amazon SES requires
- Updating Gravity SMTP to use Amazon SES as the sending provider
- Testing to confirm delivery
The result was immediate. Emails started reaching inboxes consistently. After months of communication breakdowns, the problem was resolved.
This approach works particularly well for transactional email. For bulk email campaigns (newsletters, appeals), you’d still use a dedicated platform like Mailchimp—but having your website email go through a reliable service like Amazon SES means your day-to-day communications won’t suffer the same fate.
A Quick Checklist: What to Check First
If you’re having deliverability issues, here’s where to start:
- Check your SPF record — use a free online SPF checker. Make sure every platform you send from is listed.
- Check your DKIM records — for each platform you use (Mailchimp, Google Workspace, etc.), verify DKIM is configured.
- Check your DMARC record — if it doesn’t exist, add a basic monitoring policy.
- Check your sending address in Mailchimp — make sure you’re sending from a custom domain, not Gmail or Yahoo.
- Check your list hygiene — remove contacts who haven’t opened an email in 12+ months. A smaller, engaged list outperforms a large, unengaged one every time.
- Check your domain reputation — search “Google Postmaster Tools” and set it up for your domain. It gives you a direct view into how Gmail sees your sending reputation.
If you work through this list and still can’t identify the problem, or if your domain reputation is already damaged and you need a path forward, that’s when it’s worth getting professional help.
The Bottom Line
Email is still one of the most effective communication and fundraising tools nonprofits have. But it only works if your emails actually reach people.
The good news is that most deliverability problems have straightforward technical solutions. SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records are not complicated to add once you know what you’re looking for. Mailchimp’s authentication settings take maybe 30 minutes to configure correctly. And for persistent reputation problems, options like Amazon SES can give you a reliable path forward.
Start with the checklist below. If you find gaps, fix them one by one. And if you’re looking at this thinking “I have no idea where to start”—that’s exactly what we’re here for.
Free Download: Email Health Audit Worksheet
Use this worksheet to systematically check every aspect of your nonprofit’s email deliverability—DNS records, platform settings, list hygiene, and domain reputation. Work through it yourself or share it with whoever manages your technology.
Download the Email Health Audit Worksheet (PDF)
Mission Tech Advisors helps nonprofits solve technology challenges so they can focus on their mission. Questions about email deliverability or anything else in this post? Get in touch.
