Nonprofit Answers: Nonprofit Fundraising, Marketing, Monthly Giving

[First 90 Days] Episode 4: Major Gifts Is a Team Sport

Somewhere around week seven or eight, your boss asks, "So, any big gifts yet?" In episode four of Your First 90 Days in Major Donor Fundraising, we make sure you have a g

[First 90 Days] Episode 3: The Discovery Visit

You got the meeting. It's Thursday at ten at a coffee shop, and now a new kind of nervousness sets in: what do you actually say? In episode three of Your First 90 Days in

[First 90 Days] Episode 2: Getting the First Meeting

You've done your homework and written down what you want to say, and your finger is hovering over a donor's number. Almost everyone feels that moment. In episode two of Y

[First 90 Days] Episode 1: What You Inherited

You got the job. Maybe a stack of donor files landed on your desk on day two, or someone on the board just said, "You'll handle major gifts now." However you got here, yo

[A Plan You Can Defend] Episode 3: Make It Balance, Then Make It Official

A fundraising plan has to balance on three things: dollars, hours, and dates. In the final episode of A Plan You Can Defend, we put one name on every line, build a budget

[A Plan You Can Defend] Episode 2: The Plan Has to Fit the People

Riverbend's first draft plan looked great on paper. Then Dana counted the hours and put every ask on one calendar. The plan needed a hundred and fifty more hours than she

[A Plan You Can Defend] Episode 1: Start With What Actually Happened

Most fundraising plans are last year's calendar plus hope. In the first episode of A Plan You Can Defend, a three-part series on building next year's fundraising plan, we

[Year-end] Episode 7: Keep the Donors You Just Found

It's the first Monday in January. The pantry is quiet, and Dana is looking at a printout of about two hundred new donors with two feelings at once: gratitude that they sh

[Year-end] Episode 6: The Last 72 Hours

It's December 15, a little after four in the afternoon. Dana clicks schedule on the last of her final-week emails and heads out for the holidays. The biggest week of Rive

[Year-end] Episode 5: Giving Tuesday Without the Noise

It's the Monday before Thanksgiving, and Dana has eleven emails in her inbox with Giving Tuesday in the subject line. None of them are from donors. In episode five of Fin

[Year-end] Episode 4: Your Year-End Email Calendar

Last year, Dana was at her kitchen table at 9:30 on the night of December 18, writing an email that had to go out at eight the next morning. This year she's writing that

[Year-end] Episode 3: One Person, One Problem, One Gift

Dana's first draft of the year-end letter opened with "Riverbend Community Food Pantry is pleased to share" and a number about pounds of food. It was accurate, and it was

[Year-end] Episode 2: Build an Offer Donors Can Finish

Dana laid last year's year-end letter on Marcus's desk. Across the top it said, "Help us fight hunger in our community." She asked him one question: "If you got this in t

[Year-end] Episode 1: Start with the Math

It's the first week of October, and Dana at Riverbend Community Food Pantry has last year's $210,000 total on one side of her screen and a blank year-end calendar on the

[AI for Nonprofits] Episode 12: Moving Forward Faithfully

This is the last episode of the series, and I didn’t want to end it with another list of tools or twenty predictions about where AI is headed. Half of those predictions w

[AI for Nonprofits] Episode 11: Creating Your Nonprofit AI Policy

The title of this episode says “policy,” because that’s what most people call it. But I don’t think most nonprofits should start with a policy. AI changes too fast. A lis

[AI for Nonprofits] Episode 10: Transparency and Disclosure ... What Do You Actually Owe Your Donors?

At some point, a donor is going to ask. Maybe a major donor who has been giving for a decade and noticed something feels different. Maybe a board member who read an artic

[AI for Nonprofits] Episode 9: Whose Values Are You Amplifying?

Every AI tool you use was built by someone. That someone had values, assumptions, and a particular understanding of what makes work good and outcomes worth measuring. Tho

[AI for Nonprofits] Episode 8: What AI Cannot Replace

A lot of the conversation about AI focuses on what it can do, and the list keeps getting longer. This episode is about something different — not what AI does poorly today

[AI for Nonprofits] Episode 7: The Efficiency Trap ... When Automation Creates Absence

Here's a scenario that plays out more often than anyone talks about. You automate several things, gain back real time, produce more content, hit your deadlines, and by ev