Nonprofit Lowdown

#412 - The Year-End Question Nobody’s Asking Donors

You know the fantasy. You get one meeting with a philanthropic advisor, she sees how good your work is, she walks you into her top five clients, and your year is made. Dr

#411- Plugging Donor Leaks Before Year-End

We’re in what I like to call the Super Bowl of fundraising, that mad sprint to December 31st. Before you pour all your time and energy into your year-end campaign, I want

#410 - Why Your Board goes Quiet after Yes

A board member once read me the riot act because I never told her that a friend of hers had given to our year-end campaign. She was right. I hadn’t closed the loop, and h

#409 - The 5 Financial Red Flags Fundraisers Miss

I came into this conversation thinking I knew how to raise money. Turns out, I've been fundraising with a broken financial house and didn't notice until Susan DeMarco wal

#408 - Email's Hidden Value: Why Donors Wait

I came into this thinking email was dead. Ben Smithee and Brad Duff-Hudkins from NextAfter walked me back from the ledge with 17 million email subscribers worth of actual

#407 - The Gen Z Donor Strategy Nobody's Building

I'll admit it. I came into this conversation ready to talk about "those damn kids." They give me the blank stare. They call me bro. My friend in staffing says they show u

#406 - Who Told You It Was Supposed To Be Easy?

Most nonprofit leaders think the problem is the workload. I had a week that told me otherwise, and it took a coaching call to see it. I was venting about year eight feel

#405 - Yes! Your Nonprofit Is Allowed To Do This

Most nonprofit leaders think their biggest problem is raising money. Ny Whitaker says the real problem is influence, and money follows influence. Ny is the founder and c

#404 - The DAF Money You're Probably Missing

Donor-advised funds are everywhere. But for a lot of nonprofit fundraisers, they’re still a little mysterious. So I invited Liza Carballeira onto the podcast to break th

#403 - DAF Donor Targeting Playbook

Your year-end plan is actively insulting a segment of your donor file. It's September and that plan is nearly locked, so let's fix it before it goes out. When I was a ba

#402 - Your board isn't lazy. They're uninstructed.

I had a board member, let's call her Lena, who told me she'd rather stick hot needles in her eye than ask her friends for money. So I asked if we could count on her for t

#401 - Why AI Cannot Replace Fundraising Strategy

Why AI Cannot Replace Fundraising Strategy I use Claude every day, he's literally my side piece. And I'm telling you to stop buying AI tools. Here's what I'm seeing acr

#400 - 8 Years, 400 Episodes, and the One Thing I Got Wrong About Marketing

When I started this podcast in 2018, I had no strategy. No content calendar. Just a cheap microphone and a genuine desire to connect with busy nonprofit friends who never

#399 -Stop Chasing Newly Liquid Founders

Here's what nobody tells you: when a founder gets $47M in liquidity, they don't call you. They call their advisor. And by the time you find out they exist, the giving dec

#398 - The Old Way Doesn't work

In this episode, I'm calling out the thing nobody says out loud: your major gift program isn't really a program. The gifts come in, but you can't predict them. Your board

#397 - Your Next Million-Dollar Donor Gives $10 a Year

The biggest gift your organization will ever receive might come from a donor who's been quietly giving you $10 a year for two decades. And most of you are ignoring them.

#396 - How a Teacher-Turned-CEO Landed Her First Six-Figure Gift

I love a good transformation story, and Lucy Madden's is one of my favorites. Lucy was a middle school science teacher who ran a snail mail pen pal program in her classr

#395 - Why Your Major Gift Program Can't Wait

This episode is a little different. It's a bit of a public service announcement. I recently read new nonprofit sector data, and honestly, I haven't been able to stop thi

#394- What Pricing Strategy Can Teach Us About Major Gifts with Claire Wang

One of my favorite takeaways from this conversation with Claire Wang is that fundraising and pricing have more in common than you might think. At their core, both are abo

#393- Burnout, Budget Cuts, and the Future of Fundraising with Glennda Testone

I sat down with my friend Glennda Testone, CEO of the Nonprofit Leadership Lab, to talk about what we're both seeing across the sector right now: burnout, funding uncerta