Sometimes, we get frustrated with our board of directors because the won’t fundraise. But often, I see that we haven’t actually made that an explicit requirement of joining the board. Instead it’s more of a “shouldn’t they have known that?!” implied thing. Let’s make the implicit explicit this week, shall we?

We all want board members who are willing and eager to help with fundraising, but that’s rarely the reality. This March, let’s cut down on the madness and come up with practical ways to get your board engaged in fundraising.

Glossy, printed annual reports are on their way out. (Good riddance IMHO!) Here’s what you can do instead to report your impact back to your donors in ways that are more engaged, interesting, and—most importantly—interactive!

How do you build a donor stewardship program that doesn’t leave you feeling worn down and burnt out? You align it with your mission.

We need to be creating better dialogue with our donors. Here’s an easy-to-implement trick that will have outsize results in making that happen for your organization.

It’s February. The month of #DonorLove do’s and don’t’s. But it’s really not about #DonorLove, it’s about donor retention. Let’s kick off this month talking about what your donor retention rate is and what it means.

When you’re wearing a lot of hats, it’s hard to make time for everything. This Friday 4 Fundraising, we teach you how to stay on top of all. the. things.

I believe that HOW you raise more money depends on WHY you want to raise more money. That’s because I’ve watched “more for the sake of more” destroy nonprofits. I always imagine myself like the Cheshire Cat when Alice hits that fork in the road. Alice asks, “Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?” The Cheshire Cat replies, “That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.” I ask why because when your WHY is crystal clear, the HOW just appears.

So let me give you permission today. Stop chasing the trends. It’s okay if you don’t use AI. It’s perfectly fine to not accept crypto donations. You don’t have to be in all the places all the time.

I hosted a Fundraising Focus Session on Monday to help nonprofit fundraisers set aside some time, well ahead of November, to start thinking about and preparing for year-end. What was interesting was how much time we spent talking about social media and fundraising…and how much everyone hated having to spend time on social media.

Whether you call it donor fatigue or poor donor retention, the instability in fundraising right now isn’t new…but donor enthusiasm does seem like it’s at a new low. Could it be because we’re increasingly removing the humanity from this deeply human thing we call philanthropy?

I hear a lot of critiques these days about donor-centered fundraising. At first, I raised an eyebrow because donor-centered fundraising, I thought, had long served me well in growing individual giving. Then I realized, what I was doing wasn’t donor-centered at all. It was something entirely different, and it was magical.

“Why are donors so needy?” This was something a program staffer asked me once as the director of development. Before I arrived, the fundraising program had asked a lot from program staff to support their efforts to court donors…and they were getting okay results. But I started working with them to incorporate donors into the work they were already doing…and the fundraising program exploded, and the program staff didn’t actually mind working with me anymore.

When you feel like there's too much to keep up with in your nonprofit or your initial fundraising plan is stalling out, working harder is rarely the solution. Take a pause so you don't burn out.

I’m working on a little theory, and I want to know what you think…

I mean, beyond the obvious that they are both major productions that happen in December…?

Nonprofits tend to default to investing in program when extra unrestricted cash comes their way. But I want to make a pitch for investing extra un-restricted funding into growing your fundraising capacity. Having a robust, diverse, sustainable individual giving program can unlock incredible opportunities for your nonprofit.

According to Nonprofit HR, 45% of nonprofit employees they surveyed in January 2020 said that they planned to leave their current employer, and of those, 23% said they intended to leave the field entirely. The number one reason I hear from nonprofit professionals that they plan to leave their jobs is BURNOUT.

Who am I to be telling you “all my best tips”? How did I learn all this anyways? Today, I’m sharing a little more about me and how I got to know all this stuff about fundraising…and how I built my Framework for Sustainable Fundraising. (AKA the system to raise more while banishing burnout.)

From the top down, our missions are important because they are urgent. We must solve a homelessness crisis. We must get kids into good afterschool programs. We start with urgent from our founding, and then we just live in the urgency. But there are major downsides to living with urgency indefinitely.