by Lesa Seibert, CEO, Mightily
In my last piece, I wrote about the new cookie consent laws and what it takes to make a website truly compliant. The response from business owners and nonprofit leaders has been thoughtful, and one follow-up question keeps coming up. Once the banner is working the way it should and a visitor declines tracking, how do you ever reach that person again?
It is a fair question. For years, digital marketing ran on the idea that every visitor could be followed. Someone looked at your services page, and your ad showed up on their social feed that evening. Someone read about your volunteer program, and a reminder appeared a week later. When a visitor opts out, that thread is cut.
Here is what I want every business owner and nonprofit leader to hear. A visitor who declines tracking has not declined you. They came to your site. They were interested enough to look. What they said no to is being followed around the internet, and they are far from alone in feeling that way.
Your Visitors Are Telling You Something
Pew Research Center’s 2023 survey of more than 5,000 U.S. adults found that 67% say they understand little to nothing about what companies do with their personal data, and 73% feel they have little or no control over it. Only about one in five are confident that those holding their information will treat it responsibly.
That is not a marketing problem to work around. It is a trust gap, and organizations that respect the choice have a real opportunity to close it. So the strategy shifts from following people to giving them a reason to come back on their own.
Make The Visit Count
If you cannot follow someone after they leave, the visit itself has to do more work. Every page should answer the questions your visitors actually have and give them a clear next step that fits where they are. That might be a quote request, a newsletter signup, a volunteer interest form, an event registration or a simple way to ask a question.
When someone fills out that form, they are choosing to share their information with you directly. That relationship belongs to you, not to an ad platform, and it is built on permission from day one.
Own Your Channels
Email remains one of the strongest tools available, and the data backs that up. The 2026 M+R Benchmarks study, which tracks digital fundraising across nonprofits, found that email revenue grew 16% on average in 2025 and that nonprofits raised an average of $2.40 per email subscriber, up from $1.87 the year before. The same study found that for every dollar raised online, nonprofits raised another 66 cents through direct mail.
The lesson applies well beyond the nonprofit world. A business that builds a list of people who asked to hear from it has an audience no browser setting can take away. Text messaging, printed mail and in-person events work the same way. They reach people who raised their hands.
Reach People By What They Need, Not Who They Are
Not every form of advertising depends on tracking individuals. Search advertising responds to what someone is looking for in the moment. If a person searches for a family law attorney in their city or for food pantry volunteer opportunities, your ad can appear because of that search, not because of their browsing history.
Nonprofits should know that Google Ad Grants provides qualifying organizations up to $10,000 a month in in-kind search advertising. It is one of the most underused resources in the sector.
Contextual advertising follows the same logic. The Center for Democracy and Technology describes it as advertising displayed based on the content of the page or app someone is viewing, rather than on personal data collected about them. A running shoe ad next to an article on marathon training is the classic example. Sponsorships of local events, podcasts and newsletters your audience already trusts work the same way.
If you do want to advertise to people who have already given you their contact information, platforms like Google allow you to upload your own customer lists. Google’s Customer Match policy requires that your privacy policy disclose this kind of sharing and that you obtain consent where the law requires it. Your attorney should weigh in before you go down that road.
Be Easy To Find
When you cannot pull people back, you need to be where they look first. This is where the other legs of what I call the three-legged stool come in. Search engine optimization and generative engine optimization put your organization in front of people at the moment they are searching, whether that is on Google or in tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity and Claude.
It is worth noting that M+R also reported the share of organic search traffic to nonprofit websites declining as AI summaries and chat-based search replace traditional results for many users. That makes showing up in AI answers more important, not less. And an accessible website makes sure the people who find you can actually use it.
Measure What Matters
Fewer cookies mean less granular reporting, and I will not pretend otherwise. But you can still learn a great deal. Google Consent Mode in its basic setup keeps Google tags from loading until a visitor responds to the banner, and Google then uses a general model to estimate conversions from visitors who declined. There is also an advanced setup that loads tags when the page opens, which is a choice to review carefully with your attorney given the litigation risk I described last time.
Beyond the dashboards, go back to the basics. Add a “how did you hear about us” question to your forms. Track inquiries, sales, donations and volunteer signups in your own CRM. Those are the outcomes that pay the bills, and they do not depend on whether a visitor accepted cookies.
Trust Is The Strategy
Privacy compliance does change how we market. It also rewards the organizations that were already doing the fundamentals well, with useful content, clear calls to action, strong email programs and a reputation people want to return to.
The visitor who clicks Reject All is still a potential customer, donor or volunteer. Treat that choice with respect, give them a reason to raise their hand, and you may find they become some of your most loyal supporters.
The information provided here is not legal advice and does not purport to be a substitute for advice of counsel on any specific matter. For legal advice, you should consult with an attorney concerning your specific situation.
