The Power of Storytelling in Nonprofits: Forging Lasting Connections

Storytelling has been an age-old tradition, serving as a powerful tool to captivate audiences and evoke emotions. In the realm of nonprofits, the significance of storytelling goes beyond mere engagement—it is the heartbeat of connection and the catalyst for change.

This blog explores the pivotal role of storytelling in nonprofit organizations, offering insights from a recent webinar featuring Donald Miller, the author of Building a StoryBrand: Clarify Your Message So Customers Will Listen in conversation with Floyd Jones at GiveButter.

Clarity: The Keystone of Nonprofit Storytelling

"Clarity is the keystone of any successful nonprofit storytelling endeavor. A message that's clear and concise allows potential donors to understand your mission, which is critical for engagement."

In the world of nonprofits, a clear and concise message is paramount. Potential donors need to understand your mission and the impact you aim to create. A muddled message will quickly lose your audience. Think of clarity as the lighthouse guiding ships to safety. In this context, clarity becomes the guiding star for your nonprofit's journey.

Example: Consider Charity Water's message. Their mission is clear: "We bring clean and safe drinking water to people in need around the world." It's straightforward, easy to remember, and purposeful.

The Power of the 'Why'

"It's important to convey not just what your organization does but why you do it."

Your nonprofit doesn't exist just to perform certain tasks. It's essential to delve into the 'why' behind your mission. Why are you committed to making a difference? This 'why' is what forges emotional connections and resonates with potential donors. It's the emotional core of your narrative.

Example: The "why" of TOMS Shoes isn't merely to sell shoes; it's to improve lives. Their One for One mission, where for every pair of shoes sold, they donate a pair to a child in need, is a powerful embodiment of their 'why.'

The Controlling Idea: Guiding Your Narrative

"Your nonprofit's 'controlling idea' is the central theme guiding your storytelling. It's not just a catchy slogan; it defines your purpose and directs your narrative."

Every nonprofit needs a 'controlling idea'—a central theme that guides the storytelling. This idea is more than a catchy slogan; it's the embodiment of your purpose and mission. A powerful controlling idea ensures that your narrative is consistently aligned with your mission.

Example: The American Red Cross's controlling idea revolves around humanitarian aid. Their narrative consistently revolves around helping those in need, especially in times of crisis. This central theme drives their storytelling.

The Impactful Role of Subplots

"Subplots are the individual stories within your larger nonprofit narrative. These stories are about the people your organization assists, the volunteers who contribute, and the positive changes your nonprofit brings to the world."

While your controlling idea gives your nonprofit a broader direction, subplots offer depth. These are the individual stories—the people your organization has helped, the dedicated volunteers, and the real, positive changes your nonprofit has brought about. Subplots humanize your mission, making it relatable.

Example: Save the Children uses subplots effectively. They share stories of individual children whose lives have been transformed through their programs. These poignant stories bring their mission to life.

Empowering Uniqueness, Rejecting Victimhood

"Donald stressed the importance of avoiding a victim mindset. Despite systemic challenges, nonprofits should highlight their uniqueness and strengths."

Nonprofits often face systemic challenges, but embracing a victim mindset isn't the solution. Rather, nonprofit organizations should focus on their uniqueness and strengths. By doing so, they can turn their distinctiveness into a strategic advantage.

Example: Black-led nonprofits have embraced their unique strengths to advocate for change. They focus on their unparalleled perspective and their ability to create impactful change within their communities.

The Personal Connection: Sharing Purpose Statements

"Sharing personal purpose statements, like the story of your journey in founding or joining the nonprofit, can inspire the audience and foster deeper connections."

Personal stories have the incredible power to inspire and connect. Sharing your personal purpose statement, whether it's about founding or joining a nonprofit, provides an authentic glimpse into the driving force behind your mission.

Example: Wendy Kopp's personal journey led to the creation of Teach for America. Her story of wanting to end educational inequity continues to inspire both supporters and volunteers.

Storytelling in General Operating Fundraising

"Storytelling plays a significant role in general operating fundraising. It's about clearly explaining how funds are allocated and what has been achieved while outlining future objectives."

When it comes to general operating fundraising, storytelling remains indispensable. It's not just about asking for funds—it's about clearly explaining how these funds will be used, what has been accomplished, and the roadmap for future endeavors. A well-told story ensures that donors understand the bigger picture.

Example: Doctors Without Borders excels in this aspect. They clearly articulate where the funds are allocated—medical aid, emergency response, and more. This transparent approach builds trust.

The Ultimate Goal: Deep Connections

"Ultimately, nonprofit storytelling is about making your message clear, memorable, and emotionally resonant, forging deep connections with those who support your mission."

The bottom line is that nonprofit storytelling is about forging deep connections. A successful nonprofit story is clear, memorable, and emotionally resonant. It speaks to the heart of the audience, compelling them to join the cause.

Example: The story of Malala Yousafzai, the young advocate for girls' education, resonates deeply with supporters. Her journey and message have formed profound connections with people worldwide.

Your Plot is Your Power

"Your plot is your power."

Ultimately, remember that your plot, your narrative, and the way you tell your story are your sources of strength and influence. Your narrative has the power to create real change and inspire support.

In conclusion, nonprofit storytelling is a force that transcends engagement; it creates a powerful connection between organizations and their supporters. It's a symphony of clarity, purpose, and authentic narratives that resonate with the heart. Your nonprofit's story is not just a tale; it's the beacon of hope, driving positive change and transforming lives.

Don't Plant Seeds in a Drought: A Nonprofit Fundraising Reset

I recently caught myself saying something I now regret. On more than one client call, when we were talking through funding uncertainty and the creeping anxiety of watching a budget that's always been mostly grants start to feel a lot less stable, I told people they were planting seeds. That the work would pay off. That they just needed to be patient.

I meant it. But I was being a little glib.

Planting seeds is good advice — when conditions are right. When there's water. When the season isn't about to turn hostile. The nonprofit funding landscape right now is not that season. A third of nonprofits reported government funding disruptions in early 2025. Federal cuts have cascaded into state and local shortfalls. Organizations that built their entire budget on grants — government contracts, foundation grants, the whole stack — are realizing that the floor they thought was permanent is actually a lease, and the landlord is making changes.

This isn't a post about staying calm or thinking positive. It's a post about what to do when the funding dries up and you're staring at a budget that no longer works.

The garden will come back. But right now, we're mulching. And that looks like…

• Reforecasting your budget before a crisis forces you to. Run three scenarios, not one.

• Stop pursuing every grant opportunity; get ruthlessly strategic about where your team's energy actually goes.

• Recognizing that your warmest donor prospects are already in your database — audit before you prospect outward.

• Trusting that monthly giving builds stable revenue faster than a major gifts program

• Remembering that the right support network (not just the right board) makes the difference between survival and sustainable pivoting

Face the Reality Before You Make a Plan

The most dangerous thing a nonprofit leader can do right now is keep running the budget they built in January as though the world hasn't shifted.

If you're grant-heavy — meaning grants make up 50% or more of your revenue — and any of those grants are government-funded, you need to reforecast. Not in a panic, not with catastrophizing, but honestly, on paper, in front of your finance committee, before a crisis makes the decision for you.

Reforecasting means running three versions of your budget: one where the funding holds, one where you lose 20%, and one where you lose 40%. It means looking at your operating reserves and asking how many months of runway you have. It means identifying which programs could pause, which staff positions are mission-critical, and what your actual break-even number is. Honestly, what is aquisition funding anyway, at this point?

This is also the moment to have the hard staffing and program conversations that leaders often put off until they're in full crisis mode. Not every organization will need to reduce staff. But some will. And if that's the reality, getting ahead of it — with intention and care — is almost always better than reacting to it when the money is already gone. A furlough managed with transparency and a clear timeline is a different thing than a layoff nobody saw coming.

None of this is comfortable. But you can't build a sustainable garden on a foundation you haven't examined. Don't plant seeds in a drought — fix the irrigation first.

Set a North Star and Stop Chasing Every Dollar

Here's something worth sitting with: individual giving programs take three to five years to build in a meaningful way. Year one, you might raise $20,000 from individuals. Year three, if you've done the work consistently, you might raise $150,000. That's real growth — but it does not replace a $500,000 federal grant in the short term.

Knowing that timeline matters for two reasons. First, your expectations need to match reality. Second, it means you get to be strategic about what you pursue right now rather than reactive.

The worst version of a funding pivot looks like this: your team is simultaneously managing the existing grant portfolio, writing applications for every open RFP in the state, launching an individual giving campaign, planning a gala because the board thinks it's a good idea, and cold-calling donors from a spreadsheet someone found from 2018. Nobody does any of it well. Everyone burns out. The yield is low and the cost — in staff time and organizational energy — is enormous.

📖 Read More: Why Good Grant Writers Won't Work for Commission — important context if you're thinking about adding grant capacity during a pivot.

The better version: you pick a north star. Maybe it's a focused monthly giving program. Maybe it's one or two highly strategic grant relationships worth the investment. Maybe it's a major gifts push targeting five to ten people you already have warm relationships with. And then you build toward that with intention, saying no to almost everything else.

The hardest part of this for most leaders is the saying-no piece. Boards will have ideas. Staff will surface opportunities. There will be an RFP that seems like a perfect fit that you know will take three weeks to write for a 15% shot at $10,000. Being ruthlessly pragmatic doesn't mean being closed-off. It means asking honestly: is the return on this worth what it costs us?

📖 Read More: 7 Reasons You Aren't Getting Grant Funding — the answer is often that the fit isn't really there.

Know What You're Already Working With

Before you start building an individual giving program from scratch, spend two weeks auditing what you already have.

Most organizations have more warm relationships in their database than they realize. They just haven't been cultivated. Look at your CRM and ask: who has given to us before, even once, and never heard from us again? Who has attended an event, volunteered, or signed up for the newsletter but never made a financial gift? What connections do your board members have that haven't been mapped to actual donor prospects?

These aren't cold calls. These are people who have already raised their hand for your mission. They're lapsed donors who maybe got busy, or volunteers who would give if someone asked them personally, or board connections who've never been introduced to the organization's fundraising work at all.

Starting with warm relationships is almost always faster and more effective than prospecting outward. And if you're going to build toward major gifts eventually, these are where your first major donors are most likely to come from.

📖 Read More: 7 Ways to Build Your Donor Base and Jumpstart Your Nonprofit Fundraising — a practical place to start if you're building individual giving from the ground up.

Monthly Giving Is Your Fastest Path to Stable Ground

Major gifts fundraising is a long game. Cultivating a $10,000 donor typically takes 18 months of relationship-building before the ask. That's the right work to be doing — but it can't be the only thing you're doing if you need revenue in the next 12 months.

Monthly giving is different. You can ask for it now, from people who already give to you. Converting a one-time donor of $100 into a monthly donor of $15 is a meaningful increase in annual giving from that person — and it's unrestricted, predictable, and it compounds. If you convert 50 donors to $25 a month, that's $15,000 in stable annual revenue that shows up whether or not your grant renewal comes through.

Monthly donors also have significantly higher retention rates than one-time donors, which means you're not starting over every year trying to re-acquire people who already said yes.

The ask doesn't need to be complicated. A personal email to your existing donors explaining what you're building and why monthly giving matters right now — not a blast, an actual personal email — converts more often than you'd expect. This is mulching work. It's not glamorous. It absolutely compounds.

📖 Read More: Ready…Set…Slow: An End-of-Year Giving Manifesto — on building sustainable giving relationships rather than transactional ones.

Build the Right Support Around You

The last thing worth saying is about who you're doing this with.

Boards will have ideas in a crisis. Some of those ideas will be good. Some will be the nonprofit equivalent of "have you tried posting more on Instagram?" — well-intentioned, not particularly useful, and capable of consuming a lot of staff energy if you don't manage the conversation deliberately. Your job as a leader is to channel board energy toward what's actually helpful: opening doors, making introductions, participating in a board giving campaign, and staying focused on governance while you manage the operational reality.

Beyond your board, this is the moment to lean into your peer network. Other executive directors and development directors are navigating the same landscape right now. The organizations doing this well are talking to each other — sharing what's working, being honest about what isn't, co-hosting events to share costs, applying for coalition grants they couldn't access individually. Sector cohorts and coalitions aren't just feel-good community-building. In a drought, they're infrastructure.

There is also a real case for outside support when you're in the middle of a significant strategic pivot. Not because your team isn't capable, but because having a thought partner who has seen this before — who can help you think through the sequencing, the messaging, the board conversations, the donor strategy — can mean the difference between a well-managed pivot and a year of exhausting improvisation. Reach out to peers, assemble cohorts, and be deliberate with where you spend your time and energy. It is okay to say no 90% of the time. It is necessary, actually.

You can't control the drought. You can control how you prepare, what you build, and who you're standing next to when the season finally turns.

The Mulching Season Is Still a Season

The honest version of "fundraising is like planting seeds" is this: sometimes the conditions are bad. Sometimes the right move is to stop planting, do the foundation work, get ruthless about where your energy goes, and build for a season you can't quite see yet.

That's not giving up on the vision. That's being a good steward of your organization and the people it serves.

If you're in the middle of this right now — reforecasting, pivoting, trying to figure out how to build individual giving while keeping programs running — you don't have to figure it out alone. And whether or not you ever work with us, we're rooting for you.

Related Resources

• 📖 7 Reasons You Aren't Getting Grant Funding

• 📖 Why Good Grant Writers Won't Work for Commission

• 📖 7 Ways to Build Your Donor Base and Jumpstart Your Nonprofit Fundraising

The Small Tweaks That Changed Everything

A few weeks ago, I wrote about biddable versus unbiddable dogs—and how that same tension shows up in our fundraising. Are we in dialogue with our donors, our boards, our communities? Or are we standing on the kitchen table being fabulous but ultimately alone?

The response was immediate. So many of you wrote back saying some version of: "Yes, I know I should be more responsive, but I don't have time for a complete overhaul. I don't have the budget for new systems. I can barely keep up with what I'm already doing."

I get it. The pressure to do MORE is relentless in this sector. New CRM! Complete rebrand! Total strategy pivot! Hire a consultant! Implement a framework! Read this book! Take this course!

But here's what I want to offer you today: What if being responsive doesn't mean massive change? What if it just means... listening better?

I'm going to share three real examples of organizations that made tiny tweaks—not overhauls—that had outsized impact on their fundraising. None of these required big budgets. None required perfect data systems. And honestly? Most of them required less work than what they were doing before.

The Problem: We Think Change Has to Be Hard

We've convinced ourselves that being "responsive" means hiring expensive consultants, implementing perfect data systems, and investing massive amounts of time we don't have.

So we keep doing what we've always done. Not because it's working great, but because change feels too overwhelming. We send the same appeal letters year after year. We schedule the same board meetings with the same agendas. We email our donor list with everything, assuming someone somewhere will care.

And look—proven practices work! Annual appeals work. Gala events work. Grant proposals work. There's wisdom in approaches that have succeeded for years. I'm not here to tell you to throw everything out and start from scratch.

But I am here to suggest that sometimes, what's working could work better with a small adjustment. And the way you discover that adjustment isn't through data analysis paralysis or expensive strategy sessions.

It's through paying attention to what people are actually telling you.

What Listening Actually Looks Like

Let me show you what I mean.

Example 1: The Theater That Asked (And Actually Listened)

I subscribe to a local theater's email list. I love seeing shows there, but I'm not interested in their summer camps, their rentals, their educational programming for schools—none of that applies to me.

For years, I got emails about all of it. Every email was a mix of things I cared about deeply (upcoming shows! special events!) and things that were completely irrelevant to my life. I'd skim, looking for what mattered to me, and delete the rest.

Then one day, they sent a survey. Super simple. Just checkboxes: What do you want to hear about? Upcoming shows, auditions, summer camps, rentals, educational programming, networking events, volunteer opportunities.

I checked two boxes: upcoming shows and networking events. That's it.

And you know what? I felt seen. Not because they asked complicated questions or made me write paragraphs. Because they acknowledged that their audience isn't monolithic. That what excites one person might bore another. That relevance matters more than reach.

The takeaway: Find ways to actually ask your donors what they want to hear—don't just assume. You don't need fancy segmentation software. You need checkboxes and the willingness to honor what people tell you.

The work required: Setting up a simple survey tool (free options abound) and actually using the information to segment your communications. Minimal lift. Major impact on engagement.

What they noticed: They were sending everything to everyone, and probably losing people's attention.

What changed: People started opening emails more because the content was relevant. The theater could communicate all their important work—just to audiences who actually cared about each piece.

Example 2: The Board That Wanted More (And Got Wine & Cheese Instead of More Meetings)

I served on a board that met quarterly. Four times a year, we'd gather for 90 minutes of agenda items: financials, program updates, fundraising reports, strategic planning. Important stuff. Necessary stuff.

But we barely knew each other.

With only four meetings a year, we didn't have time for relationship-building. We'd show up, do the work, and leave. There was always more on the agenda than time allowed. And honestly? The board members wanted to be more involved, more connected to the mission and to each other, but formal meetings weren't creating that space.

The Executive Director and Board President noticed this. Instead of adding more formal meetings to our calendars (which no one had capacity for), they created something different: wine and cheese volunteering nights.

Casual. Low-stakes. Come help with a specific project—stuffing envelopes, organizing supplies, whatever needed doing. Bring a friend or two if you want. Hang out. Connect with the mission and each other.

It was brilliant.

Board members actually showed up—and brought friends who became donors. We got to know each other. The work got done. And for the ED? It was actually easier than planning another formal board meeting with an agenda and presentations.

The takeaway: Creating authentic connection might be easier than you think. And when you get your key champions—like your board—excited and genuinely engaged, they're more likely to bring more energy, more connections, and yes, more money into the organization.

The work required: Less work than planning formal meetings. Wine, cheese, and a project that needs doing. That's it.

What they noticed: Infrequent formal meetings meant board members wanted more connection, not more Robert's Rules.

What changed: Stronger relationships, new donors through board member networks, and a board that felt genuinely connected to the mission instead of just dutiful about attending quarterly meetings.

Example 3: The Choir That Made Fundraising Fun (Instead of Another Email Checklist)

I worked with a choir preparing for their annual day of giving. Every year, they'd send reminder emails to their singers: "Don't forget to fundraise! Here are the talking points! Here's the link! Remember to post on social media!"

And every year, the same handful of people would fundraise. The champions. The true believers. The ones who didn't need reminder emails because they were already all-in.

Everyone else? Radio silence. It wasn't that they didn't care—they just weren't motivated by checklist emails.

So we tried something different. Instead of more emails, we organized a pep rally.

At the start of day-of-giving planning, we brought everyone together. Shared the goals. Delivered a package of assets (graphics, talking points, links—all the stuff they'd need). But we also created a friendly competition: Who could raise from the most donors? Who could bring in the most funds? We had prizes. We had champions who shared why they fundraise. We made it collaborative and fun and a little competitive while maintaining that community spirit.

The takeaway: Notice the same people doing the heavy lifting year after year? Try one small experiment. Turn obligation into invitation. Make it fun. Mobilize your champions and create space for new people to join in.

The work required: One pep rally meeting instead of endless reminder emails. Actually less work, not more.

What they noticed: The same people were fundraising every single year. Checklist emails weren't mobilizing anyone new.

What changed: New singers got involved. The competitive element made it engaging instead of obligatory. Revenue went up significantly. And people actually enjoyed the process instead of dreading it.

Your Starting Points: 7 Ways to Listen Better

You don't need to overhaul everything tomorrow. You don't need perfect systems or unlimited capacity. Start with one of these and see what you learn:

1. Notice what made your donors light up this year. Which stories got responses? Which appeals sparked engagement? Where did people lean in? You already have this information—you just need to pay attention to it. For more on building meaningful donor relationships, check out our guide on moves management.

2. Notice what made YOU light up. What felt energizing to talk about? Your authentic enthusiasm is contagious, and donors can tell when you're going through the motions versus when you genuinely care. Follow your own energy.

3. Look for simple patterns in what you already have. You don't need to be a data expert or have perfect systems. Just look at last year's campaign: Which email subject line got the most opens? Which letter brought in the most gifts? Did anyone upgrade their giving? Even messy data can show you something useful. Don't get lost analyzing trends that feel depressing or outside your control—just notice what got a response. Want to make better use of what you have? Read our post on using your nonprofit database better.

4. Pay attention to the questions donors ask. They're literally telling you what they care about. Are you listening? Or are you so focused on your agenda that you're missing what they're trying to tell you?

5. Pay attention to what your board actually follows through on. Not what they say they'll do in meetings, but what they actually do. If a topic gets lots of talk but then they drag their feet on action, it's probably not resonating. But if a board member is chomping at the bit to make introductions, host an event, or champion a specific program? That's them telling you where their authentic enthusiasm lives. Lean into that. Learn more about building your donor base through relationship mapping.

6. Try one small experiment. You don't have to overhaul everything. Test something new with one segment and see what happens. Send a survey to 100 people. Try a new event format with your board. Create a friendly competition among your volunteers. Small experiments give you information without requiring total transformation.

7. Have one real conversation. Pick 3-5 key donors and ask them what resonated this year. Not a survey. An actual conversation. "What did you enjoy hearing about? What would you like to see more of? What felt meaningful to you?" Then listen to what they tell you. For ideas on keeping new donors engaged, start here.

Small Changes, Big Shifts

Here's what I want you to know: The organizations that thrive in this sector aren't the ones doing everything "right." They're not the ones with perfect data systems or unlimited budgets or magical board members who never need reminding.

They're the ones paying attention and adjusting accordingly.

The theater didn't need a complete communications overhaul—they needed checkboxes. The board didn't need more formal meetings—they needed wine and cheese. The choir didn't need better email copy—they needed a pep rally.

Adaptation isn't about dramatic transformation. It's about being in conversation—with donors, with your board, with yourself. It's about noticing what's working, what's not, and being willing to try something different.

You don't have to fix everything at once. You don't have to become a data scientist or hire a consultant or implement a whole new system.

You just have to start listening. And then make one small tweak based on what you hear.

What small tweak could you try this month? What's one conversation you could have? Sometimes the best next step is the simplest one.

Every Entry Point Is a Door, Not a Destination

Think about your current board members for a moment. Not their bios, not their giving levels — just how they got there.

Chances are, the path wasn't a straight line. Maybe one of them came to an event, then another. Maybe someone showed up to volunteer one Saturday, quietly joined a committee six months later, and you looked up two years after that and thought — how did we get this lucky? Maybe someone answered a thank-you call you almost didn't make, and the conversation ran forty-five minutes, and something just clicked.

I've ended up on two different boards this way myself. Not because someone recruited me with a formal pitch or identified me as a high-capacity prospect. Because I showed up somewhere that mattered to me, and someone on the other end of that relationship paid attention.

That's not a recruitment strategy. That's what happens when organizations stop predicting where people are headed and start staying curious about who they're becoming.

Most of us aren't doing that. And it's costing us more than we realize.

The Framework We Inherited — And Why It's Limiting Us

Fundraising is hard. There are more relationships to manage than hours in the day, more cultivation moves to make than staff capacity to make them, more donors to steward than bandwidth allows. So we built systems to help us cope — and those systems, reasonably enough, were designed around what we could measure.

Giving ladders. Tiered acknowledgment programs. Segmentation by recency, frequency, and cumulative giving. These tools exist because they work, at least for the purpose they were designed for: managing high volumes of relationships with limited resources, and moving people from smaller gifts to larger ones over time.

The problem isn't the tools. It's what happens when the tools start doing our thinking for us.

When someone gives $25, the system files them under "small donor" and the automated receipt goes out. When someone runs a peer fundraising campaign, they get a form thank-you and cycle back into the general communications queue. When someone volunteers every other Saturday for two years — they may not be in the donor database at all. Nobody made a conscious decision to underinvest in these relationships. The infrastructure just wasn't built to see them as anything other than what they'd already done.

And that's the gap. Not a failure of values, but a failure of imagination — a tendency to let past behavior set the ceiling on future possibility. The $25 donor isn't less committed to your mission than the $2,500 donor. They may simply be at a different moment in their life. The peer fundraiser isn't less invested than a board member — they may, in fact, be more so. If we treat people as permanently whatever they were when they first showed up, we'll never find out what they might become.

The shift isn't about abandoning structure or pretending that segmentation doesn't serve a purpose. It's about holding your systems a little more loosely — using them to organize your work while staying curious about what they might be missing. Because the most important thing your database can tell you about any supporter is the first thing: they found you, they cared enough to act, and that means something worth paying attention to.

📖 Read More: Smarter Donor Segmentation with AI-Powered Analysis — How to use the data you already have to see your supporters more clearly.

Every Entry Point Is Telling You Something

Here's what a $25 gift actually tells you: this person found your organization, learned enough about your mission to feel moved, decided to act on that feeling, and trusted you with their money. That is not a small thing. That is the beginning of a relationship.

Here's what a peer fundraising page tells you: this person cares so much about your work that they were willing to ask their own community — their friends, their family, their colleagues — to care too. That is extraordinary social capital in action. It is also, almost certainly, underleveraged.

Here's what a volunteer shift tells you: this person gave you something no amount of money can buy, which is their time and their presence. They wanted to be physically in the work. That impulse — to be close to the mission, not just adjacent to it — is exactly what you want in a board member, a major donor, an ambassador.

Here's what an event attendee tells you: they said yes to showing up. In a world of infinite competing priorities, they chose to be in the room with you.

None of these entry points tell you where someone will end up. But all of them tell you the same thing: they care. And that is the only raw material a relationship actually needs.

What These Journeys Actually Look Like

The transformations we tend to think of as exceptional are more common than we give them credit for. They just require us to be paying attention.

The peer fundraiser who becomes a major donor. She ran a birthday fundraiser for your organization three years in a row. Raised a few hundred dollars each time — not transformative on its own, but she was showing you something. She wasn't just giving; she was recruiting. She believed in your mission enough to stake her social credibility on it. When a development director finally called to thank her personally and ask what drew her to the work, the conversation opened into something much larger. Her capacity had changed. Her connection to the mission hadn't. She just needed someone to ask the right question.

The small donor who becomes a board member. He gave $50 at a community event four years ago. Got the automated receipt, the year-end appeal, the Giving Tuesday email. Nobody called. Nobody connected the dots between his gift and his professional background in financial management — exactly what the board's finance committee needed. It wasn't until a board member happened to mention his name at a recruitment conversation that anyone thought to look him up. He'd been there the whole time.

The event attendee who becomes a recurring giver. She came to the annual gala twice as a guest of a board member. Lovely, engaged, clearly moved by the mission video — and then left both times without being meaningfully followed up with beyond a generic thank-you. On the third year, a development associate made a point of introducing herself, asking what brought her back, and sending a personal note afterward. She became a monthly donor within sixty days. She didn't need convincing. She needed to feel seen.

The volunteer who becomes a donor. He'd been showing up to sort donations at the warehouse every other Saturday for two years. Not in the database. Not on the mailing list. Invisible to the development team. When the ED finally crossed paths with him at an all-staff volunteer appreciation event and asked what kept him coming back, he said he'd been waiting for someone to tell him how else he could help. He wrote a check that afternoon.

None of these stories are about exceptional people or exceptional circumstances. They're about what happens when organizations create enough space — and enough genuine curiosity — to let relationships develop on their own terms.

What Gets in the Way

If these journeys are this available, why aren't we seeing them more often?

A few honest answers.

Our databases don't talk to each other. Volunteers live in one system, donors in another, event attendees in a third. The person who has touched your organization in four different ways over five years looks, from inside your CRM, like a $50 donor with low engagement. The full picture isn't visible because we haven't built the infrastructure to see it.

We're managing portfolios, not relationships. When development staff are carrying large caseloads with pressure to hit revenue targets, the cultivation moves that build toward something years from now are the first things to go. We make the calls that are most likely to produce a gift this quarter. The peer fundraiser who needs a personal check-in, the volunteer who deserves a real conversation — they get deprioritized, not because anyone made that choice consciously, but because the system rewards the short game.

We've internalized the giving ladder. Even fundraisers who intellectually reject tiered thinking often unconsciously replicate it — because it was how we were trained, because it's embedded in our software, because it's the water we swim in. Auditing your own assumptions about who is "worth" deeper cultivation is uncomfortable work. It's also necessary.

📖 Read More: Board Engagement: The Clean Before the Clean — What it actually takes to prepare your board for more expansive relationship-building before recruitment ever starts.

The good news: you don't need to overhaul your entire operation to start seeing differently. You need a few small, intentional moves. A call that wasn't in the plan. A question that goes slightly deeper than the script. A note that says "I noticed you've been here three times and I'd love to know what keeps bringing you back." These are not resource-intensive. They are attention-intensive. And attention, it turns out, is what most supporters have been waiting for.

From Donor Ladder to Supporter Ecosystem

What we're really talking about is a different mental model for how organizations relate to their communities.

The ladder — entry-level donor, mid-level donor, major donor, board member — implies a single path upward, with each rung requiring more resources to reach. It positions the organization as the arbiter of someone's value, and it places the burden of ascent on the supporter.

An ecosystem asks different questions. Not "how do we move this person up the ladder?" but "what does this person's engagement tell us about who they are and what they might want to offer?" Not "what is their capacity to give?" but "what is their capacity to contribute — and in what form?"

Ecosystems are messier than ladders. They don't produce clean pipeline reports. They require a tolerance for nonlinearity and a willingness to invest in relationships without knowing exactly what they'll yield or when. As we explored in Your Organization Evolved. Has Your Fundraising?, the strategies that built your organization to where it is today may be exactly what's limiting where it can go next.

But ecosystems are also more resilient. They distribute engagement across more people. They create more points of connection between your mission and your community. They produce the kind of loyalty that doesn't evaporate when a major donor moves away or a board member terms out — because the relationship isn't concentrated in a few high-value individuals. It's woven through an entire community of people who found their own way to care.

The Door Was Already Open

Go back to your board members for a moment. The ones who came to an event, then another. The one who volunteered before anyone thought to put her on a committee. The one you almost didn't call.

They found you. They showed up. They gave you something — time, money, energy, their social network — before you had any idea what they might become.

Your next board chair might be sorting donations in your warehouse right now. Your next major donor might be running her third peer fundraising campaign for you, waiting for someone to finally call and ask what she actually wants. Your most committed recurring giver might be the person who bought a gala ticket twice and never heard from you between events.

The entry point was never the destination. It was just the beginning of a conversation you haven't had yet.

The question isn't whether these people exist in your community. They do. The question is whether you're building an organization curious enough — and humble enough — to let their journey unfold on their terms instead of yours.

That's not a fundraising strategy. That's a relationship. And it starts with deciding not to predict the ending before the story's had a chance to begin.

Related Resources

📖 How to Create a Lean Nonprofit Fundraising Plan — A practical starting point for building a strategy that reflects your whole community.

📖 Your Organization Evolved. Has Your Fundraising? — On letting go of strategies that no longer serve where you're headed.

📖 Smarter Donor Segmentation with AI-Powered Analysis — How to use data to see your supporters more clearly.

When Did You Last See the Mission You're Fundraising For?

I remember the moment I realized I hadn't talked to anyone my organization actually served in over three months.

I was a development director at the time, deep in grant season. My days were a blur of deadlines, database entries, board meeting prep, and donor stewardship emails. I knew our mission by heart — I'd written it enough times. I could recite our impact numbers in my sleep. But the actual work? The people? The community we existed to serve? I was getting that secondhand, in program reports and staff updates, filtered through layers of organizational communication.

I was burning out. And for a long time, I thought it was the workload.

It wasn't the workload. It was the distance.

Here's what nobody talks about when we discuss the nonprofit sector's retention crisis: we have built development roles that systematically disconnect the people responsible for funding the mission from the mission itself. We've created jobs defined almost entirely by outputs — dollars raised, proposals submitted, reports filed, deadlines met — and then we wonder why fundraisers are leaving at alarming rates.

In 2022, the average turnover rate for nonprofit organizations was 19%, nearly double the all-industry average of 12%. And among the highest-risk roles, fundraising clocks in at 67% of staff considering leaving — a number that should stop every executive director cold. We keep treating this as a compensation problem or a workload problem. Those things matter. But there's another driver we're largely ignoring: abstraction.

The Abstraction Trap

Here's the quiet irony at the center of most development roles: the people whose job it is to tell the organization's story are often the furthest from it.

Program staff are in the field. They're in rooms with community members, in schools, in clinics, at community centers. They see the work every day. Development staff are in the office — or more likely, at their home desk — writing about work they haven't witnessed firsthand in months. They're translating impact into language that moves donors, while growing increasingly disconnected from the impact itself.

This isn't a personal failure. It's a structural one. We design development roles around deliverables, and deliverables don't require proximity. A grant proposal doesn't technically require you to have visited a program site. A donor stewardship email doesn't require you to have sat with a client. A major gifts meeting doesn't require you to have talked to a volunteer recently. So those things quietly fall away, crowded out by the urgent and the measurable.

What remains is a job that exists largely in the abstract — in data, in language, in relationship maintenance at a remove from the work itself. And over time, that abstraction erodes something essential.

Why This Is a Performance Problem, Not Just a Morale Problem

It's tempting to frame mission disconnection as a wellness issue — something that affects how fundraisers feel about their work. And it does. Among nonprofit employees who choose to stay, mission alignment is the second most cited reason at 74%, just behind workplace flexibility. When that alignment erodes, retention suffers.

But the consequences go beyond how fundraisers feel. They show up in the quality of the fundraising itself.

Authentic donor relationships require genuine enthusiasm for the work. Compelling storytelling requires proximity to real stories. The ability to answer a donor's question about impact with specificity and conviction — not canned talking points, but real belief — requires actually knowing what's happening in programs. When development staff are abstracted from the mission, their fundraising becomes abstracted too. Technically proficient, but missing the animating energy that turns a competent ask into a resonant one.

There's also a subtler cost. Fundraisers who feel disconnected from mission start to experience their work as purely transactional — moving money, meeting deadlines, managing relationships. The work that drew them to the sector in the first place — the belief that they were contributing to something meaningful — becomes harder to access. That's when the job starts to feel hollow. And the primary drivers of fundraiser departure aren't compensation — they're unrealistic expectations and toxic workplace cultures, both of which thrive in environments where people have lost the thread back to purpose.

What Reconnection Actually Looks Like

The solution isn't a team retreat with a ropes course. It isn't adding "self-care Fridays" or a meditation app to your benefits package. Reconnection, done well, is structural — built into how you design the role, not offered as an occasional antidote to a role that's designed to exhaust.

A few things that actually work:

Build mission contact into job descriptions. Not as an aspiration, but as an expectation. Quarterly site visits. Monthly program staff check-ins. Annual time embedded with the community the organization serves. If it's in the job description, it has a fighting chance of actually happening. If it's not, it will always be crowded out by the urgent.

Redesign all-staff meetings to include program updates that go beyond metrics. Not just "we served 200 people this quarter" — but stories, challenges, community voices where possible. Development staff need to hear what's actually happening, not just what's reportable.

Create cross-functional relationships between development and programs. Fundraisers who have genuine working relationships with program staff — not just transactional data requests — stay better connected to the work. This is also, not incidentally, how the best grant proposals get written.

Invest in peer community. Reconnection isn't only vertical — back to the mission and the community you serve. It's also horizontal: with peers who understand the specific weight of this work, who can laugh about the absurdity of the sector and grieve its losses in the same breath. Conferences, regional gatherings, professional communities like AFP chapters or Community Centric Fundraising's Family Reunion — these aren't perks or travel budget line items to cut when things get tight. They're professional infrastructure. They are, for many fundraisers, the thing that reminds them why they're still here.

And when organizations consistently decline to fund professional development and conference attendance, they're not just saving money. They're cutting the connective tissue that keeps development staff tethered to purpose and community. That's a false economy with a real cost.

A Note for Executive Directors and Managers

If your development staff are behind a desk — or a screen — one hundred percent of the time, that's a structural choice your organization has made. It may not have been a conscious one. It may have happened gradually, as workloads increased and "luxuries" like site visits got crowded out by deliverables. But it's a choice, and it has consequences.

The good news is that it's a solvable problem — and solving it doesn't require a bigger budget. It requires intention. It requires looking at how the development role is designed and asking: have we built in any actual connection to the mission we're asking this person to fund? It requires treating conference attendance and professional community as legitimate organizational investments rather than indulgences. It requires making the ask that doesn't show up in any grant report: when did you last feel the reason you do this work?

As we explore in The Tooth Fairy is Not a Viable Development Strategy, the gap between what we ask of development staff and what we structure their roles to support is often where the real crisis lives — not in their skills or their commitment, but in the impossible conditions we've built around them.

If you're thinking about this through a broader lens of organizational sustainability, From Scarcity to Frugality offers a framework for making strategic choices with limited resources — including how you invest in the people who keep your funding alive.

The Antidote Is Contact

There's a version of this conversation that ends with a toolkit: five steps to reconnect your development staff to mission. I'm not going to give you that, because the specific steps matter less than the underlying commitment.

The commitment is this: the people you're asking to fund your mission deserve to actually know it. Not from a distance, not through data, not through secondhand program reports — but up close, in relationship, with the texture and complexity of the real work.

That's not a wellness initiative. That's a fundraising strategy.

📖 Read More: You Have to Regulate (Even When the World is Burning) — on staying grounded and present when the sector — and the world — feels like it's coming apart.

📖 Read More: Your Organization Evolved. Has Your Fundraising? — on recognizing when the strategies that once served you are now working against you.

When development staff feel the mission, they fundraise differently. They tell stories with conviction instead of competence. They build donor relationships that feel like genuine partnership instead of managed transactions. They stay.

Not because the job got easier. But because the reason for doing it got closer.

You Have to Regulate (Even When the World is Burning)

I'm writing this on day four stuck inside. My kids are driving me crazy. And I can barely breathe.

How do you have a snow day when the world feels like it's burning around you?

We're in the midst of an ice storm. It's unsafe to drive so I've spent a lot of time with my kids building forts, watching Bluey, and seeing how big we could get the bubbles in our bathtub. At the same time, Minneapolis is below freezing, and fighting for the future of our democracy.

It feels impossible to hold both truths at once. I looked at my son with snot running down his nose as he played in the snow and tried not to cry as I thought of the two-year-olds detained by ICE. Who is wiping their noses? Does Renee Good's son get to enjoy snow days any more?

How do you check your email and plan your budget when your whole body is tense and you can barely breathe and you can't sleep because you wonder how to keep your children safe and are you doing enough for them and your neighbors and are you wallowing in self pity when you have so much and how do you plan for Valentine's day when you're thinking about the five-year-old boy detained in Texas where you can hear screams and cries inside. How do you make hot cocoa and meal prep when you wonder if your daughter will still have rights by the time she hits puberty, or if you can raise your son to be a good man in a country so full of hate.

There's a lot of advice on what we can do. Should do. A lot of anger. Fear. Protests. Some joy, some love.

But all I know right now is I can't function when I can't breathe. And that's not sustainable. Not for any of us.

I can't show up for anyone else's kids if I'm drowning in panic about my own.

We should have felt this rage a long time ago.

Before Alex Pretti and Renee Good were too many others. Silverio Villegas González. Keith Porter. Isaias Sanchez Barboza. I had to look their names up.

This violence isn't new. Black and brown people have lived with state violence since before this country's founding. The outrage we're feeling now? It should have been here all along.

So as we show up to this moment—and we should show up—let's make sure we're showing up for everyone targeted by state violence, not just the victims whose deaths white supremacy has decided are worthy of our attention.

Here's What I'm Telling Myself This Week

Maybe it will help you a little bit, too.

You have to regulate. Breathe. Take three deep breaths, and then four more. Go outside, even for two minutes. Drink some water. Seriously, coffee doesn't cut it.

Wallow, but not too much. Don't let anyone tell you that just because someone has it worse, you're not allowed to be mourning. Your grief is real. Your fear is valid. Your exhaustion is legitimate. Feel it. Name it. And then, when you're ready, stand back up.

And then keep showing up. Not perfectly. Not with all the answers. Just present. Just breathing. Just doing the next right thing you can do.

We're Watching Horrors Escalate

We can't look away, and we shouldn't. But we also need to make sure that we're not being sucked into paralysis or performative despair.

Because here's what I keep coming back to when the paralysis hits: Not everyone can be on the front lines. And that's okay. That's actually how ecosystems work.

Interrupting Criminalization has a framework for mapping community ecosystems of collective care—different roles, not a hierarchy. Everyone has a part to play.

Some people are grounded responders—the ones showing up to protests, doing jail support, providing direct services. Some are resource generators—fundraising, connecting people to what they need, moving money and supplies. Some are builders—creating the infrastructure, the organizations, the systems that sustain long-term work. Some are healers—holding space, providing therapy, tending to the wounded. Some are chroniclers—documenting, witnessing, making sure we don't forget.

And some people, right now in this moment, are simply surviving. Parenting. Working. Keeping themselves and their people alive. And that's a valid role too.

Your Role in the Ecosystem

The fact that you're here, breathing, drinking water like a beautiful sentient plant—that means you're part of this. Your survival matters. Your capacity matters. Your ability to show up tomorrow matters.

Maybe you can't protest or make phone calls because your anxiety is maxed out. That doesn't make you less committed—it makes you honest. And honesty about capacity is what allows movements to sustain.

Ways to Engage (According to Your Actual Capacity)

If you're a grounded responder with energy to be on the front lines:

• Join local protests and actions through Indivisible or your local organizing groups

• Provide jail support or become a legal observer

If you're a resource generator who can move money or supplies:

• Support RAICES Texas working with detained families

• Donate to National Bail Fund Network

• Support Black Visions Collective in Minneapolis

• Give to organizations led by and serving communities of color who've been doing this work long before this moment

If you're a builder creating infrastructure:

• Volunteer with local mutual aid networks (find yours here)

• Support democracy protection work at Common Cause

If you're a healer tending to community wellness:

• Offer your professional services on a sliding scale

• Check in on organizers and activists in your life—especially BIPOC organizers who've been carrying this weight

• Create space for people to process and grieve

If you're a chronicler bearing witness:

• Share accurate information and resources

• Document what's happening for the historical record

• Amplify voices from impacted communities—center those who've been sounding the alarm all along

And if right now, you're in survival mode:

• Rest so you can keep going

• Let others carry the weight for a bit

• Trust that your turn to contribute will come

What I Keep Coming Back To

The last time we had a winter storm like this in Austin was February 2021. Ted Cruz flew to Cancun. Children froze to death in their beds. This week I'm inside with my kids, watching democracy crumble in real time, wondering if any of this matters.

I'm not on the front lines. I'm parenting through a snowstorm while trying not to dissociate from the news.

And you know what? That's my role in the ecosystem right now.

I'm tending to my small humans so they don't inherit all of my terror. I'm regulating my nervous system so I don't burn out before we even get to March. I'm writing this newsletter so maybe one person feels less alone in the impossible both/and of this moment.

That's enough. For today, it's enough.

So Here's My Invitation

We're building muscle memory for the long haul. Because this isn't a sprint. This is the rest of our lives.

Find your place in the ecosystem. Not the place you think you should occupy. Not the place that looks most impressive on social media. The place where you actually are, with the actual capacity you actually have.

And then do what you can from there.

Show up for everyone targeted by state violence—not just when the victim looks like you or gets media attention. Listen to and follow the leadership of those who've been doing this work for generations. And be honest about what you can actually sustain.

So breathe.

Stand up straight and unkink your body from whatever weird shrimp position you've been sitting or lying in.

Go outside and feel the sun on your face, just for a moment.

Drink some water.

You're here. You're part of this. And that's enough for today.

Your Organization Evolved. Has Your Fundraising?

The year was 1999. The event: Dakota Rubin's Bar Mitzvah. The shoes: magenta hot pink platform strappy heels from the DSW sale rack.

Those shoes were perfect for seventh-grade me—exactly what I needed to figure out who I was. Fast forward to my early fundraising career, and I was still chasing the "perfect" professional shoe, convinced that looking the part meant suffering through galas in stilettos. It wasn't until my late thirties that I realized: I could wear sneakers to an event and no one would give a damn.

Here's what I've learned about growth, whether it's personal or organizational: what fit perfectly three years ago might not fit at all today. And recognizing that isn't failure—it's evolution.

I wrote about this recently in my newsletter about stepping into new shoes, exploring how individual roles and careers need to evolve as we grow. But here's what I want to dig into today: this same principle applies to your fundraising strategies.

Your organization isn't the same as it was three years ago. Your programs have matured. Your team has changed. Your community impact has deepened. So why are you using the same grant language, the same donor templates, the same systems you implemented back then?

When you're working so hard and so focused on mission, it's easy to lose sight of the fact that you might be working harder than you need to. If we can just pause to find our fit—to assess what's still serving us and what's holding us back—we might be able to work more impactfully.

Key Takeaways:

• Your organization isn't static—your fundraising shouldn't be either. What worked brilliantly three years ago may need refreshing today.

• Templates become generic without intentional evolution. Copy/paste convenience can cost you your organizational voice and donor connection.

• There's a difference between learning curve discomfort and true misfit. Not every struggling system needs replacement, but some genuinely don't serve your needs.

• Annual reassessment prevents autopilot fundraising. Building regular review into your rhythm keeps strategies fresh and aligned with current reality.

• You have permission to change what's not working. Even if you invested time, money, or ego into it—staying in uncomfortable shoes causes more pain than change.

From Individual Growth to Organizational Evolution

In my previous post about moving from scarcity to frugality, I explored how nonprofit sustainability doesn't require constant growth—it requires intentional stewardship of what we have. That same principle applies to how we approach our fundraising strategies over time.

We get comfortable with what works. A grant proposal that landed significant funding becomes our template. A donor appeal that performed well gets recycled year after year. A CRM we spent months implementing becomes "just how we do things," even when it's creating more work than it saves.

This comfort makes sense. You're busy. You're understaffed. You're focused on mission delivery, not constant fundraising innovation. Why fix what isn't broken?

But here's the thing: it might actually be broken, just slowly enough that you haven't noticed.

The danger of fundraising on autopilot isn't dramatic failure—it's diminishing returns. Your grant proposals still get funded, but at slightly lower amounts. Your donor communications still generate gifts, but maybe fewer than before. Your systems still function, but they require constant workarounds that eat up staff time.

The cost compounds over time: generic language that fails to capture what makes your work special, stale messaging that doesn't inspire action, and systems that create friction instead of flow.

Three Areas Where Fundraising Strategies Outgrow Themselves

Let's look at the most common places where organizations need to pause and reassess whether their fundraising strategies still fit.

Grant Writing and Program Positioning

Your programs evolve constantly. You refine your approach based on what works. You serve more people, or serve them differently. You gather data that proves impact in ways you couldn't have measured three years ago.

But your grant language? Often, it stays frozen in time.

Here's what happens: You write a compelling narrative for a major grant. It works beautifully—you get funded. So the next time you apply for something similar, you copy that language. And the next time. And the next. Before you know it, you're describing programs from three years ago using data from five years ago, completely missing the opportunity to tell the story of who you are now.

Signs your grant language needs refreshing:

• You're using program descriptions from your last strategic plan (which ended two years ago)

• Your case for support doesn't reflect current world context—you're not acknowledging how your community's needs have shifted

• You're citing data that's accurate but outdated, missing newer and more compelling evidence of impact

• You're using generic national statistics when you could use hyperlocal research that builds credibility and demonstrates deep community knowledge

• Your language hasn't evolved to reflect how you talk about your work internally—you still say "clients" in grants but "community members" everywhere else

What to reassess annually:

The most effective grant writers I know treat their core program narratives like living documents. Every year, they:

• Update program data and outcomes with the most recent information available

• Refresh how they position impact to reflect current organizational priorities

• Review their case for support to ensure it speaks to today's context, not last year's reality

• Add new examples, stories, and evidence that didn't exist when they first wrote the narrative

• Ensure their language reflects their organization's current values and voice

This isn't about rewriting everything from scratch every year. It's about intentional evolution—keeping what works while updating what's stale.

📖 Read More: The Tooth Fairy is Not a Viable Development Strategy - On the importance of realistic projections vs. aspirational budgeting in your fundraising planning.

Donor Communications and Storytelling

Templates are lifesavers. I'm not here to tell you to stop using them. But here's the hard truth: templates that worked brilliantly the first five times can become generic and lifeless through repeated use.

When you're in the thick of campaign season, it's so tempting to pull up last year's appeal letter, swap out the numbers, maybe update a story, and call it done. You're busy. The template worked before. Why reinvent the wheel?

But what gets lost in that efficiency is the very thing that makes your organization special—your voice, your specificity, your authentic connection to the work.

Signs your donor communications need evolution:

• You can't remember the last time you wrote a donor letter from scratch

• Your appeals could apply to any organization in your sector if you removed your name

• You're telling the same donor stories over and over—your audience might not realize it, but you do, and you've lost connection to the actual current work

• Your thank-you letters feel like they're on autopilot (because they are)

• You use the same opening line in every email: "We hope this finds you well" or "As you know..."

• Generic impact language dominates: "Your support makes a difference" instead of specific, tangible outcomes

Here's what I see happen: Organizations work incredibly hard on their mission, but their donor communications don't reflect the richness and evolution of that work. The passion that drives the team every day doesn't come through in the fundraising copy—because the copy hasn't been refreshed to match where the organization actually is.

The template audit exercise:

Set aside an hour. Pull up your most-used templates: year-end appeal, thank you letters, major donor outreach, event invitations.

Read them as if you're seeing them for the first time. Ask yourself:

• Does this sound like how we actually talk about our work today?

• Would a donor who received this three years ago notice any difference if they received it again today?

• What's missing? What new programs, insights, or impact aren't reflected here?

• Where have we used generic nonprofit language instead of our specific organizational voice?

Then give yourself permission to refresh. Not necessarily rewrite everything—but breathe new life into the pieces that have gone stale.

For more on making your donor communications more targeted and effective, check out How Segmenting Donor Data Can Make Your Fundraising Soar.

Systems and Tools (CRMs, Databases, Processes)

This one's tough because we invest real resources—time, money, training, emotional energy—into our systems. When a CRM isn't working well, the sunk cost fallacy kicks in hard: "We paid for this. We spent months implementing it. We trained everyone. We have to make it work."

But sometimes, a system genuinely doesn't fit your needs. And staying in those metaphorical uncomfortable shoes causes more pain than making a change.

The critical question: Is this a learning curve issue, or is this a true misfit?

Signs it's a learning curve issue (stick with it):

• You haven't been using the system long enough to build muscle memory (less than 6 months)

• Staff haven't completed available training or explored key features

• You're comparing it to your old system instead of assessing it on its own merits

• The problems are mostly about habit/preference, not actual functionality gaps

• Other organizations similar to yours use it successfully

Signs it's a true misfit (consider changing):

• You've been using it for over a year and still need constant workarounds

• It requires 10 manual steps to do something that should be simple

• Your donors or volunteers complain about the user experience

• It doesn't integrate with other essential tools, creating duplicate data entry

• You're only using 20% of its features and paying for functionality you'll never need

• Staff actively avoid using it because it's so cumbersome

• It was built for a different organization size/type and doesn't scale to your needs

Changing systems is hard. It feels like more work to change than to just bobble around in something that's not quite right. But here's the truth: staying in those hypothetical uncomfortable shoes compounds the pain over time. The friction adds up. The workarounds eat staff capacity. The frustration builds.

You have permission to make a change, even if you invested in the original decision.

📖 Read More: Before You Automate: Audit - A framework for assessing your systems and processes before making changes.

The Evolution Assessment Framework

So how do you know what needs attention? Here's a simple framework for assessing whether your fundraising strategies need a refresh, overhaul, or replacement.

Ask These Questions:

For Grant Language:

• When was the last time I read our standard program narratives with fresh eyes?

• Does our case for support reflect current world context and community needs?

• Are we using the most recent, most compelling data available?

• Would someone who funded us three years ago see clear evolution in our impact?

For Donor Communications:

• If I remove our organization's name, could this template apply to anyone else in our sector?

• When did we last tell a new story or share a fresh example?

• Do these communications reflect how we actually talk about our work today?

• Would our most engaged donors notice if we sent the same thing we sent last year?

For Systems:

• How much time do we spend on workarounds versus the system working as intended?

• Are we using this tool to make our work easier, or has it become another task to manage?

• What would we need to be true for this system to actually serve us?

• Is there a different tool that would better match our current needs and size?

Then Decide:

Minor Refresh Needed:

• Update data and examples

• Add current context

• Tighten language

• Remove outdated references

• Time investment: 2-4 hours

Major Overhaul Needed:

• Rewrite from scratch with fresh perspective

• Develop new templates or narratives

• Conduct stakeholder input process

• Time investment: 1-2 days

Complete Replacement Needed:

• Different system or tool required

• New strategic approach

• Significant change management

• Time investment: Varies significantly

Practical Steps: Refreshing Without Starting from Scratch

The goal isn't to blow everything up and start over. The goal is intentional evolution—keeping what works while updating what's stale.

For Grant Language:

• Schedule a quarterly "narrative refresh" where you update your core program descriptions with recent data and examples

• Keep a running "impact stories" document so you always have fresh material to pull from

• Review your case for support annually, asking: "What's changed in our community/world that we should acknowledge?"

For Donor Communications:

• Create a "template refresh calendar"—plan to update your most-used templates on a rotating basis (e.g., year-end appeal in August, thank you letters in January, event invites in March)

• Build a practice of writing one thing from scratch each quarter, even if you have a template—it keeps your muscles strong

• Ask a trusted colleague or board member to read your donor communications and tell you where they sound generic

For Systems:

• Conduct an annual "systems satisfaction survey" with your team—what's working? What's creating friction?

• Track the workarounds you're using—if you're consistently going around the system, that's valuable data

• Build in evaluation checkpoints when implementing new tools (30 days, 90 days, 6 months) to assess fit before you're too deep

Building a Culture of Continuous Evolution

The organizations that do this well don't treat it as a one-time project. They build reassessment into their annual rhythm.

What this looks like in practice:

• End-of-year debrief: After your biggest fundraising push, gather the team and ask: "What worked? What felt stale? What do we need to update for next year?"

• Quarterly check-ins: Brief conversations about whether your tools and templates are still serving you

• Annual narrative refresh: Dedicated time to update core program descriptions and case for support

• Permission to experiment: Create space for trying new approaches alongside proven ones

This isn't about constant change for change's sake. It's about being intentional instead of being on autopilot.

The most sustainable organizations I know are the ones that can hold two truths at once: consistency builds donor trust AND evolution keeps your work fresh. You can honor what's working while also giving yourself permission to let go of what's not.

Remember those magenta platform heels? They had their purpose—they were exactly what seventh-grade Cat needed to figure out who she was. The black stilettos I threw in the dumpster after that painful gala? They reminded me I could stop doing something that hurt. And the sparkly sneakers I wear now? They're perfect for where I am and what I'm building.

Your fundraising strategies deserve that same grace.

Your organization is growing and changing. Your community needs are evolving. Your impact is deepening. Your fundraising gets to grow too.

You're not failing if the grant language that worked three years ago feels stale now. You're not doing it wrong if your donor templates need refreshing. You're not being wasteful if the system you invested in doesn't fit anymore.

You're evolving. And your fundraising strategies can evolve with you.

The alternative—stale templates, outdated narratives, systems that create more work than they solve—that's actually harder than the discomfort of change. Staying in uncomfortable shoes compounds the pain. Making the shift to what actually fits? That's where the relief comes.

So pause. Assess. Ask yourself: Has my organization evolved faster than my fundraising strategies?

If the answer is yes, you know what to do. It's time to find shoes that fit where you are now, not where you were three years ago.

The Tooth Fairy is Not a Viable Development Strategy. Or, the Budget Meeting That Changed it All.

I'll never forget the budget meeting where everything clicked into place—though not in the way anyone intended.

We were reviewing next year's projections, and the numbers looked impressive on paper. A 25% increase in revenue. Three new staff positions. Program expansion into two additional counties. The board was energized. "This is what growth looks like," someone said, beaming.

Then our Development Director spoke up, her voice careful. "Can I ask where these new grant projections are coming from? Because I don't see any in the pipeline that would get us there."

The silence that followed was excruciating.

"Well," the board treasurer said eventually, "we're budgeting aspirationally. You'll figure it out. You always do."

I watched her face change. Not anger exactly—something quieter and more devastating. The look of someone who'd just been handed an impossible task and told it was reasonable. I'd seen that look before. I'd worn that look before. And in that moment, I realized we were about to lose another talented development professional to burnout, not because she wasn't good at her job, but because we'd built a budget on wishes instead of reality.

This is Part Two of my exploration of frugality versus scarcity in nonprofit leadership. If the first piece was about shifting our mindset around resources, this one is about the brutal practicality of what that actually means: we have to budget from reality, not aspiration. And that requires us to do something our sector is terrible at—saying no to growth for growth's sake.

Read More: From Scarcity to Frugality: Reimagining Nonprofit Sustainability

The Tyranny of Perpetual Growth

Here's what nobody wants to say out loud: the pressure to grow year over year is killing nonprofit organizations and the people who run them.

We've imported this metric directly from corporate capitalism, where the only measure of success is increasing shareholder value. But nonprofits don't have shareholders. We have missions. We have communities. We have human beings whose lives we're trying to improve. And yet, we've somehow accepted that unless our budget grows by X percent annually, we're failing.

I've sat in too many budget meetings where the conversation starts with "What's our growth target?" instead of "What can we sustainably accomplish with our actual resources?" The cart isn't just before the horse—we've forgotten the horse exists entirely.

This manifests in three particularly destructive ways that I see over and over again.

Budgeting for Deficits (Or: The Rainy Season We're Forecasting)

Let me be blunt: if you wouldn't budget a deficit in your personal household finances, why would you do it for your organization?

I know the counterargument. Big companies leverage debt all the time! They take strategic losses to position for future growth! But here's the thing—big companies have credit lines, investors, and bankruptcy protections that nonprofits don't. When a small nonprofit runs a deficit, there's no safety net except the one we're supposed to be providing for our communities.

Budgeting a deficit means we're planning to spend money we don't have. We're hoping that somehow, magically, resources will materialize to cover the gap. And when they don't—because hope isn't a fundraising strategy—we're left with brutal choices: deplete reserves that were meant for actual emergencies, cut staff mid-year, or simply don't pay ourselves what we're owed.

I've watched organizations rationalize deficit budgets with phrases like "we'll make it up in individual giving" or "we're applying for several large grants." But without those grants actually secured, without individual giving trends that support that projection, we're not budgeting. We're wishcasting.

And the real cost? Staff burnout. Depleted reserves that take years to rebuild. Executive Directors lying awake at 3 AM wondering how to make payroll. Development teams working themselves into the ground trying to manifest money that may never come.

We're not planning for a rainy day anymore. We're forecasting an entire rainy season and acting like we'll figure out shelter when the storms hit.

Read More: 7 Reasons You Aren’t Getting Grant Funding

The Toll of Unrealistic Goals

There's a particular kind of violence in setting fundraising goals without any plan to achieve them.

I see it constantly: boards decide the organization needs to raise $500K next year because that's what the programs will cost. Never mind that they raised $350K this year. Never mind that there's no major gifts pipeline, no grant calendar, no donor cultivation strategy. Just a number on a spreadsheet and a development team wondering where their board got these figures.

Spoiler alert: there is no money tree. The tooth fairy is not a viable development strategy.

What there is: a development director who will spend the year feeling like a failure despite working 60-hour weeks. An executive director who will apologize to the board quarterly for "falling short" of goals that were never realistic to begin with. Program staff who will watch colleagues laid off mid-year because the imaginary money didn't materialize.

I remember a conversation with a development director who told me, eyes welling up, "They keep asking me what I'm doing wrong. But I hit 105% of last year's numbers! The problem isn't my performance—it's that they added $200K to the budget without asking if I could raise it."

She left six months later. Not because she wasn't good at fundraising. Because she was exhausted from being blamed for not achieving the impossible.

This is happening everywhere. Executive Directors are leaving the sector in droves. Development Directors are burning out faster than we can train new ones. And we're acting mystified, like we can't see the direct line between unrealistic budgets and unsustainable working conditions.

No Room for Error (Or: Why This Year Should Terrify Us)

Let's talk about 2025 for a moment.

Government shutdowns. Slashed federal grants. Foundation priorities shifting. Corporate giving freezing. Individual donor hesitancy. If your budget didn't have padding built in—if you were already stretched to capacity—this year probably broke you.

And here's what haunts me: we knew this could happen. We've been through recessions before. We've watched funding cycles shift. We know political winds change. And yet, how many nonprofits budgeted like everything would stay stable?

When we don't build cushion into our budgets, we're not being optimistic. We're being reckless.

I think about emergency funds in personal finance—that advice to have 3-6 months of expenses saved. Why? Because life happens. Cars break down. Jobs get lost. Appliances die. We don't budget personal finances assuming everything will go perfectly, so why do we budget nonprofits that way?

If we're not padding our budgets with reserves, contingency lines, and realistic worst-case scenarios, we're not being strategic. We're crossing our fingers and hoping nothing goes wrong. And when everything goes wrong—as it inevitably does—we act surprised.

What Success Actually Looks Like

I want to offer a different framework. One that might feel uncomfortable at first, but I promise, is far more sustainable than what we're currently doing.

Growth does not equal success. Full stop.

Quality over quantity. Impact over scale. Sustainability over expansion. These aren't consolation prizes for organizations that "failed" to grow—they're legitimate measures of success that our sector has devalued in service of capitalist metrics that were never designed for mission-driven work.

I'd rather lead a small, mighty organization that pays staff well, serves its community deeply, and will still be here in ten years than a rapidly growing one that burns through people and money before collapsing under its own weight. I've seen both. I know which one actually serves the mission.

There are so many ways to measure success that have nothing to do with budget size:

• The depth of relationships with people we serve

• The quality and innovation of programs we implement

• The staff we retain year after year because they're not burning out

• The community trust we build through consistency and reliability

• The sector knowledge we share because we're not constantly in survival mode

Some of my favorite nonprofits are "small." They've been the same size for years. And they're doing extraordinary work because they're not constantly destabilizing themselves chasing growth.

The Real Cost of This Cycle

We need to name what's happening: we are losing incredible talent because of unrealistic budgets.

Executive Directors are leaving. Development Directors are leaving. Program staff are leaving. Not because they don't believe in the missions. Not because they're not good at their jobs. But because they're exhausted from being set up to fail.

When we budget aspirationally instead of realistically, we're essentially telling our teams: "We need you to do impossible things, and when you can't, we'll question your competence." That's not leadership. That's institutional gaslighting.

I think about all the talented fundraisers who've left the sector entirely. All the visionary program designers now working in corporate jobs. All the strategic thinkers who gave up because they couldn't keep performing miracles.

What would be possible if we retained that talent? If people stayed in the sector for decades because the working conditions were sustainable? If institutional knowledge accumulated instead of constantly walking out the door?

Retaining talent starts with reasonable goals. It starts with budgets that reflect reality. It starts with leadership that says, "We'll do what we can sustainably accomplish" instead of "We'll promise anything and figure it out later."

So What Can We Actually Do?

If you're reading this and feeling called out—good. I've been on both sides of this. I've built aspirational budgets. I've pushed teams too hard. I've learned these lessons the painful way. Here's what I wish someone had told me earlier:

Budget from Actual, Not Aspiration

Start with what you actually raised this year. Not what you hoped to raise. Not what you "should" have raised. What actually came in the door.

Then be honest about trends. If individual giving has declined 10% annually for three years, don't budget it flat. Budget the decline and have a real plan to reverse it. If that foundation grant is ending and you haven't heard about renewal, don't include it in revenue.

This is zero-based budgeting at its core: every dollar has to be justified, not assumed. It feels restrictive at first, but it's actually liberating. You're finally working with reality instead of fantasy.

Really Think About Deficit Budgets

I'm not saying deficit budgets are never appropriate. Sometimes you're in a genuine bridge year—you're between grants, you're making a strategic investment in development capacity, you know exactly where the money will come from next year.

But if you're budgeting a deficit because "we'll figure it out" or "development will close the gap somehow," stop. That's not strategic—that's magical thinking.

Ask yourself:

• If we don't raise that projected revenue, what gets cut?

• Can we afford to deplete reserves? How long will it take to rebuild them?

• Are we being honest with staff about job security, or setting them up for mid-year layoffs?

• Is this deficit serving the mission, or just letting us avoid hard conversations about sustainability?

Prioritize Reserves and Investments

This might be the most controversial suggestion: sometimes we need to slow programmatic growth or delay hiring to build financial stability.

I know how that sounds. "You want us to serve fewer people so we can save money?" But here's the thing—if we expand programs without the financial foundation to sustain them, we're not serving those people long-term anyway. We're just setting them up for disruption when the money runs out.

Building reserves isn't selfish or conservative—it's responsible. Three to six months of operating expenses in the bank means when 2025 happens, you can absorb the shock instead of cutting staff and programs. It means you can take strategic risks because you have a cushion. It means you can actually plan beyond the current fiscal year.

The same goes for investing in infrastructure—technology, systems, staff development, fundraising capacity. These aren't "overhead" to minimize. They're investments in sustainability that pay dividends for years.

The Uncomfortable Decisions Nobody Wants to Make

Here's where it gets really hard. Sometimes budgeting realistically means making decisions that feel like moving backward:

Pausing growth. Telling funders and stakeholders "we're not expanding this year—we're strengthening what we have." This feels vulnerable. It feels like admitting failure. But it's actually strategic restraint, which is a different thing entirely.

Sunsetting programs. If something isn't sustainable without constant scrambling, maybe it shouldn't exist in its current form. I've watched organizations keep programs on life support for years out of guilt, burning resources that could strengthen their core work. Ending something with dignity and intentionality is sometimes the most mission-aligned choice.

Using contractors instead of FTEs. A lean staff supplemented by skilled contractors can be more sustainable than hiring full-time employees you can't afford long-term. Yes, there are trade-offs. But those trade-offs might be better than hiring someone, building their life around your organization, then laying them off when money gets tight.

These decisions are painful. They require us to have hard conversations with boards, funders, and communities. But they're often better than the alternative: promising things we can't deliver and burning out everyone in the process.

The Liberation in Limits

I started this piece with a budget meeting that ended badly. Let me tell you about one that ended differently.

A few months ago, I was working with an organization going through their annual budgeting. The executive director came in with projections showing 15% growth. But as we walked through the numbers, she got quieter and quieter.

Finally, she said, "I don't think we can do this. I think we need to budget flat."

The room tensed. But then she continued: "If we budget growth, we're going to push our development director to burnout. We're going to make promises to the board we can't keep. We're going to spend the year stressed and reactive. What if instead, we budget what we know we can raise, strengthen our infrastructure, build reserves, and see what's actually possible?"

The board pushed back. Of course they did. But she held firm. "I'd rather under-promise and over-deliver than the reverse. And I'd rather keep our team intact than achieve growth that costs us our people."

They approved the flat budget. You know what happened that year? They exceeded it by 12% because the development director wasn't burned out and could actually do her job. Because the team wasn't in constant crisis mode. Because they could take advantage of unexpected opportunities instead of just trying to survive.

That's what budgeting from reality can look like. Not limitation—liberation.

The Revolution We Actually Need

This is Part Two of challenging how we think about resources in the nonprofit sector. Part One was about shifting from scarcity mindset to frugal leadership. This is about the practical application: budgeting like we actually believe in sustainability over growth.

It requires us to opt out of capitalism's definition of success. To say that being small and mighty is better than being big and broken. To acknowledge that the relentless pressure to grow is making our sector weaker, not stronger.

It requires uncomfortable conversations with boards who've been taught that growth equals success. With funders who want to invest in "scaling impact." With communities who deserve to know we're not overpromising what we can deliver.

But here's what I believe: the nonprofits that will still be here in ten years, doing deep and transformative work, are the ones making these choices now. The ones budgeting from reality. The ones prioritizing sustainability over expansion. The ones retaining their talented teams by setting reasonable goals.

The ones who understand that sometimes the most revolutionary thing you can do is simply survive—with your mission, your values, and your people intact.

That budget meeting I opened with? The development director left three months later. The organization had to cut two of those three new positions mid-year. They depleted their reserves entirely and spent two years rebuilding.

It didn't have to go that way.

And for your organization, it doesn't have to go that way either.

We can choose differently. We can budget differently. We can lead differently.

We just have to be willing to say that growth for growth's sake is not the goal. Sustainability is. Impact is. Taking care of our people is.

And maybe, just maybe, that's what nonprofit success has always supposed to look like.

From Scarcity to Frugality: Reimagining Nonprofit Sustainability

A few weeks ago, I found myself reaching for a cookbook I've had for 20 years. More with Less—a Mennonite cookbook that extols the virtues of simple ingredients and stretching your dollar. As I flipped through its worn pages, I was transported back to my college days, when my partner and I lived on a few hundred dollars a month and were absolutely insufferable about it.

We made everything from scratch. Bread rose on our tiny counter. We hauled vegetables from the farmers market in the baskets of our fixed-gear bikes and brewed beer in our closet. It was like a sketch from Portlandia. But those memories? They're filled with abundance.

Here's what I need to name clearly before I go any further: that abundance was only possible because of privilege. We were two college-educated people with jobs and family safety nets. With whiteness and citizenship and able bodies and a thousand other advantages that meant our frugality was a choice. We - individually and collectively - cannot budget out of systemic poverty. You cannot frugal yourself free from oppression, from racism, from ableism, from the structural violence of capitalism that ensures some people will always have less so that others can have more. When I talk about frugality in this piece, I'm talking about it as a strategic choice available to those of us with enough privilege and resources to make choices at all.

That's what struck me as I held that cookbook again, pinching pennies in 2025 just like I did in college. Even with so little money, we felt rich because we could. We were creative. We were intentional. We opted out of a consumer-driven lifestyle not because we had to, but because we chose to. And in that choice—that privilege of choice—there was liberation.

This reflection got me thinking about the nonprofit world I've spent my career in, and how desperately we need to reclaim that same sense of intentional abundance. Not as a way to excuse inadequate funding or to romanticize scarcity, but as a framework for the organizations that do have resources to steward them differently.

The Language We've Inherited

"Scarcity mindset" has become nonprofit consulting shorthand for everything that's wrong with how organizations approach their work. Financial educators and thought leaders throw the term around freely: You just need to shift from scarcity to abundance! Think bigger! Believe in growth!

But here's what bothers me about that framing: it places the burden of transformation on individual mindset while ignoring the very real systemic constraints nonprofits face. We can't positive-think our way out of inadequate overhead funding. We can't manifest better donor retention rates. And we certainly can't "abundance mindset" our way through a recession that's hitting the social sector particularly hard.

The definition is technically correct—a scarcity mindset is a belief system where you consistently feel there's never enough of a key resource, leading to fear and focus on what could go wrong. But when we tell nonprofit leaders they just need to "shift their mindset," we're essentially gaslighting them about very legitimate resource constraints.

To be absolutely clear: we cannot frugal our way out of systemic poverty or the failures of capitalism. I'm not here to suggest budget cuts as a solution to underfunding, or to romanticize organizational deprivation.

But I am suggesting something different. Something I think could actually help.

Frugality as Strategic Choice

Frugality isn't scarcity. They're fundamentally different orientations.

Scarcity is fear-based, reactive, constrictive. It's the feeling that there will never be enough, that one wrong move will collapse everything, that survival depends on hoarding whatever resources you can grab.

Frugality, on the other hand, is intentional, value-driven, and surprisingly creative. It's about making strategic choices with the resources you have—not out of deprivation, but out of clarity about what matters most. It's the difference between clutching your budget in fear and stewarding your resources with purpose.

When my partner and I were living on almost nothing in college, we weren't in scarcity mode. We were privileged enough to choose that lifestyle, to see it as temporary, to find joy in the creativity it required. We were being frugal—making do with what we had in ways that felt empowering rather than limiting.

That's the energy I think nonprofits desperately need right now.

We're told constantly that we need to grow year over year. That success looks like increased budgets, expanded programs, higher headcounts. We've imported corporate America's primary objective—generating wealth for stakeholders—into mission-driven work. And that imported framework is killing us.

Because here's the truth capitalism doesn't want us to examine: sustainability doesn't need to mean growth. And growth for growth's sake is an incredibly erosive tenet of white supremacy culture that has no place in our work.

What Frugal Nonprofit Leadership Looks Like

If we know our budgets can't grow—and in fact might contract—what becomes possible when we shift from scarcity panic to frugal pragmatism?

Being Creative with What You Have

Frugality demands creativity. It asks: given these actual resources, what's the most interesting thing we can do?This might mean exploring fractional staffing models where expertise is shared across organizations. It might mean rethinking the role of your board from fundraising engines to strategic partners who contribute skills rather than just dollars. It could mean leveraging better tools that automate what doesn't need human touch, freeing staff for relationship-driven work that actually matters.

I've seen organizations get incredibly inventive with paid internship programs that build the next generation of nonprofit leaders while meeting immediate capacity needs. I've watched coalitions form where three organizations share a development director instead of each trying to fund that role independently.

These aren't compromise solutions. They're often better than what fully-resourced organizations are doing, precisely because constraint forced creativity.

Reusing and Streamlining What Already Exists

Too often, we're duplicating efforts across our organizations because we've never taken the time to map what we're actually doing. Different departments create their own impact measurement systems. Multiple staff members maintain separate donor databases. Programs operate in silos, each reinventing wheels the organization has already invented.

Frugal thinking asks: where can we reuse, replicate, and streamline?

This isn't about forcing collaboration for collaboration's sake. It's about being pragmatic. If your education program has a fantastic curriculum framework, can your advocacy program adapt it rather than starting from scratch? If your events team has donor stewardship systems that work, can that become organizational infrastructure rather than tribal knowledge?

Breaking down silos isn't just good for culture—it's good stewardship of limited capacity.

Being Mercilessly Pragmatic About Money

Here's where frugality gets uncomfortable: it requires us to stop performing for our boards and funders.Far too often, we're projecting revenue to make people happy. We set ambitious fundraising goals because it feels more impressive than realistic ones. We craft budgets that stretch every dollar to its breaking point, then wonder why our staff are burned out and our programs are underwater.

Frugal leadership means getting really honest about financial projections. It means planning for the worst-case scenario while hoping for the best, rather than the reverse. It means saying "we can sustain this program with current funding, but expansion would require X additional dollars we don't have" instead of promising expansion and scrambling to make it work.

This pragmatism feels risky. What if donors don't want to fund "sustainability"? What if boards push back against "lack of growth"?

But here's what I've learned: the alternative—constant stretching without materials to fall back on—doesn't actually work. It burns out staff, degrades program quality, and ultimately serves no one. The illusion of growth isn't worth the reality of collapse.

Being Okay with What You Have (Knowing It's Not Forever)

This is perhaps the hardest shift, and the most important one.

Frugality invites us to find peace with our current reality while still working toward something different. It's not resignation—it's the opposite. It's choosing to stop measuring our worth against an impossible standard and instead asking what excellence looks like right now, with these resources, for these people.

I think about those college years often. We knew that lifestyle was temporary. We weren't going to brew beer in our closet forever. But we also didn't spend those years in anguish about what we couldn't afford. We found richness in what we had.

What would it mean for nonprofit leaders to do the same? To run a $500K organization with excellence rather than constantly apologizing that it's not $5 million? To serve 100 people deeply rather than performing metrics about reach and scale?

This doesn't mean giving up on sustainability or accepting inadequate funding as inevitable. It means refusing to let the gap between current reality and desired future steal our ability to do good work today.

The Freedom in Opting Out

When I reached for that cookbook,  I reconnected with a time that felt a whole lot simpler.  The background of my kids yelling about dinner, my dogs barking at the back door, the conference call in my headphones, the alerts from the Ring doorbell…they faded away just for a moment.  As I made my favorite bean dish for the first time in decades, cleaning out the fridge of a few old carrots and last nights’ leftovers, I felt a simple freedom. 

Freedom from the constant pressure to do more, be more, raise more. Freedom from metrics that measure everything except what actually matters. Freedom from the exhausting performance of perpetual growth.

The nonprofit sector is facing incredible challenges right now. Funding is contracting. Needs are expanding. Staff are exhausted. The work feels nearly impossible some days.

And into that reality, I want to offer this gentle provocation: what if the answer isn't figuring out how to grow despite these constraints, but rather learning to lead differently within them?

What if we stopped importing corporate capitalism's playbook and instead drew wisdom from communities who've always known how to make abundance from limited resources? What if we recognized that the constant push for "more" isn't neutral strategy, but rather the water we're swimming in—and we have permission to get out of the pool?

The Invitation

I'm not suggesting we accept inadequate funding or abandon advocacy for better nonprofit infrastructure. We absolutely need to keep pushing for overhead funding, multi-year grants, trust-based philanthropy, and all the systemic changes our sector desperately needs.

But while we're doing that advocacy work, we also need to lead the organizations we have right now. And I believe we can lead them with more creativity, more pragmatism, and more peace than we currently are.

We can examine where we're performing growth instead of practicing sustainability. We can get honest about what our budgets can actually support. We can break down the silos that waste our limited capacity. We can find new models that serve our missions better than tired assumptions about how things "should" work.

We can choose frugality over scarcity.

Not because we have to make do with less, but because intentional stewardship of what we have might actually be more liberating—and more effective—than the constant, exhausting reach for more.

Those homemade hamburger buns and bison burgers we ate in college? They were better than anything we could have bought. Not because poverty is noble or constraint is virtuous, but because when we got creative with what we had, we made something remarkable.

I think our sector can do the same.

And maybe, just maybe, in choosing frugality over the endless pursuit of growth, we'll rediscover what drew us to this work in the first place: not the bigness of our budgets, but the richness of our impact. Not the metrics we hit, but the lives we touch. Not the appearance of abundance, but the real thing.

That cookbook is back on my shelf now, dog-eared and stained. A reminder that sometimes the wisest path forward is also the simplest one. That creativity flourishes under constraint. That enough can actually be enough.

And that the revolution the nonprofit sector needs might not be about thinking bigger—it might be about thinking better.

We are Huntr/x, Voices Strong

By now, you probably know that the Internet belongs to Huntr/x, and Huntr/x don’t miss. That's how it's done, done, done. 

If you don’t know, KPop Demon Hunters is the Netflix animated musical triumph that none of us knew we needed. The premise is as old as the concept of demons: a group of protectors must use their power to keep evil at bay and preserve humanity. The twists are contemporary AF: the magic requires fans to love the music, the lead protector is part demon, and evil rises in the form of a boy band. Okay, that last one may be more 2002, but it also might be timeless; hard to say. 

The first big song, referenced above, is so 2025 for fundraisers that it hurts:

Ugh, you came at a bad time

But you just crossed the line

You wanna get wild?

Okay, I'll show you wild

If that isn’t the literal start to all of my grant applications… 

Also, there’s a line in this song that I routinely get stuck in my head - Fitcheck for my Napalm Era - that clearly wasn’t written for children. It was written for me. And maybe you? 

But while I connect with this armoring up at the beginning, those of you who’ve seen the film understand that the true message isn’t about what we put on, but what we take off. Spoiler alert: Rumi, the lead singer of Huntr/x, hasn’t told her bandmates that she is part demon. In fact, she’s hidden it, having been told by their mentor to hide the marks and focus on curing herself by permanently closing the barrier between demons and humans. So she veers the group toward meeting her specific needs, claiming it only relates to their shared goal. Which… guilty. 

But when the Saja Boys, literal demons, begin stealing Huntr/x fans with their saccharine-loaded Soda Pop (that I totally sing to my partner to annoy him), the contortions Rumi must make become too much. The facade of perfection cracks, and in classic hero-trope mode, Rumi lies about what’s going on. Because she’s also connecting with lead Saja Boy, Jinu (the Tuxedo Mask of Gen Alpha), causing her to question her beliefs about demons and herself. Cue the total unraveling of belief systems, bands, and human existence. 

More than a happy ending, this movie has an integrated ending. Rumi must accept herself and lead from enlightened, connected values - which saves the day. Jinu helps by absorbing some big demon light (the rules of this magical world are a little unclear) after he realizes that he can still be good after doing something bad. Ah, the B-story redemption, I LOVE IT!

What I love the MOST is the music. Not just because it slaps (or whatever the kids use these days to describe good music), but because it lands. Huntr/x use music to protect the fans (all humans, rightly), and each bring their own strengths to the process. They have a series of songs that offer different approaches to winning the battle: Golden, Take Down, and What it Sounds Like. 

Golden, which is a legit hit, is the first attempt at stepping into the light. It chronicles the work done to become Huntr/x and live their purpose, because they’re done hiding and now they’re shining (like they’re born to be). It’s a lovefest of aspiration, orchestrated with great flourish, and also *so high* in the human voice register that singing along can be rough.

We're goin' up, up, up

It's our moment

You know together we're glowin'

Gonna be, gonna be golden

Oh, up, up, up

With our voices

Gonna be, gonna be golden

And yet - it is in this song that Rumi reveals she has the visible patterns of a demon. But if they can just complete their mission then… 

No more hiding, I'll be shining

Like I'm born to be

'Cause we are hunters, voices strong

And I know I believe

If Golden is a press release about being your most perfect, shiniest pop group, Take Down is what you practice in the shower after a boy pisses you off and requires some unsolicited feedback. It feels real honest when I look at a shitty email and sing to it “I don't think you're ready for the takedown.” But of all the songs, it says the least. It mostly tells someone that they are going down, and who is going to do that taking down. 

So sweet, so easy on the eyes, but hideous on the inside

Whole life spreading lies, but you can't hide, baby, nice try

I'm 'bout to switch up these vibes, I finally opened my eyes

It's time to kick you straight back into the night

But there’s a sticking point when Rumi - who we remember is secretly part demon and hanging out with Jinu and his squee demon animal entourage at night - is supposed to sing that a demon with no feelings don’t deserve to live (it’s so obvious). And honestly, I feel so sad for her hearing her best friends sing “when your patterns start to show / It makes the hatred wanna grow outta my veins,” except that she’s the one with the idea to write a mean song in the first place! Ugh, life is complex… 

Shockingly, this song is manipulated by the demons to take down Huntr/x. The core of hatred redirected toward Rumi, her demon patterns (the symbolism in this thing) not only show, but spread to uncontainable levels, revealing her truth and destroying the trust in the group. Because they knew, they KNEW something was up, and instead of being real with them, Rumi gaslit them. And we, the audience, understand why, we connect to the fear, the pressure, the conditioning that led to those choices. 

But we also know what it means to be lied to, misled, confused, manipulated. 

So now that everything has been torn down, we’re ready to rebuild. Enter the reckoned and raw Rumi, taking on the main demon thing with the stark and honest opening of  What it Sounds Like. 

Nothing but the truth now

Nothing but the proof of what I am

The worst of what I came from, patterns I'm ashamed of

Things that even I don't understand

I tried to fix it, I tried to fight it

My head was twisted, my heart divided

My lies all collided

I don't know why I didn't trust you to be on my side

Acceptance enters our bloodstream like morphine (being administered by a professional), soothing the pain a centimeter of flesh at a time, pulsing through our bodies with the promise of relief - and hope. Because really, it is probably a bajillion times easier to fight demons if you aren’t also having to put energy into hiding the fact that you are also kind of a demon. And if you’re going to go down fighting, do it with integrity. And using ALL of your abilities, not just the most palatable ones. 

I broke into a million pieces, and I can't go back

But now I'm seeing all the beauty in the broken glass

The scars are part of me, darkness and harmony

My voice without the lies, this is what it sounds like

Why did I cover up the colors stuck inside my head?

I should've let the jagged edges meet the light instead

Show me what's underneath, I'll find your harmony

The song we couldn't write, this is what it sounds like

So - the team gets back together in the power of the music. 

We're shattering the silence, we're rising, defiant

Shouting in the quiet, "You're not alone"

We listened to the demons, we let them get between us

But none of us are out here on our own

So we were cowards, so we were liars

So we're not heroes, we're still survivors

The dreamers, the fighters, no lying, I'm tired

But dive in the fire, and I'll be right here by your side

And when it’s time to truly win the day

My voice without the lies, this is what it sounds like

Fearless and undefined, this is what it sounds like

Truth after all this time, our voices all combined

When darkness meets the light, this is what it sounds like

The first time I watched the movie, it was during special one-on-one time with my youngest. She gleefully watched my cry through the last 20 minutes of the movie. She LOVES seeing my cry. Actually, both of my kids love to watch crying, but that’s not the point. The point is that I FELT this movie. I felt the shame of hiding what I believed made me bad or weird – and how much bravery it takes to push through the fear that people won’t love you for who you really are. Because some people won’t. And it hurts to lose them, but if they were in a relationship with a pretend version of you, either you were going to lose the connection eventually, or you were going to lose yourself. 

Fundraising sucks right now. To those of you raking in the dollars, I’m guessing it’s still tough, because there is more need than those dollars can address. It feels like the same amount of work results in fewer resources, or just not enough. We’re seeing or experiencing the real loss of services, of jobs in the sector, and of hope for making the system we’ve been in work for our missions. 

So what happens when we accept that the old way is gone? That we’ve undergone a dramatic shift in six months, on top of all the small and humongous shifts over the last five years, on top of all the ones before that… We’ve built careers by learning to navigate a shitty system, but what happens when it gets even shittier? 

Y’all know by now that I have way more questions than answers. I can share that I’m in a phase where I’m reaching out for community. I’m looking for spaces to commiserate, dream, externalize revenge fantasies, collaborate, laugh, braid hair, read paperbacks, pet dogs, drink coffee, learn stuff about stuff, and generally rebuild connections. It’s scary to think about doing all of those things while feeling this vulnerable, but that’s the point. It’s the acceptance of who I am that makes me powerful in any space, especially when I am extemporaneously singing. And it’s the acceptance that we have to do it together that makes us powerful together. 

There’s a line in the movie about the Honmoon, the magic barrier that Huntr/x maintains to keep the demons back. When the group breaks up, the Honmoon falls apart, leaving humans vulnerable to constant demon attacks. Celine, the mentor who tells Rumi to hide her patterns, implores her to fix the Honmoon to make everything right again. Rumi says “If this is the Honmoon I’m supposed to protect, I’m glad to see it destroyed.” 

So, what are we building? 

We are Huntr/x, Voices Strong

By now, you probably know that the Internet belongs to Huntr/x, and Huntr/x don’t miss. That's how it's done, done, done.

If you don’t know, KPop Demon Hunters is the Netflix animated musical triumph that none of us knew we needed. The premise is as old as the concept of demons: a group of protectors must use their power to keep evil at bay and preserve humanity. The twists are contemporary AF: the magic requires fans to love the music, the lead protector is part demon, and evil rises in the form of a boy band. Okay, that last one may be more 2002, but it also might be timeless; hard to say. 

The first big song, referenced above, is so 2025 for fundraisers that it hurts:

Ugh, you came at a bad time

But you just crossed the line

You wanna get wild?

Okay, I'll show you wild

If that isn’t the literal start to all of my grant applications… 

Also, there’s a line in this song that I routinely get stuck in my head - Fitcheck for my Napalm Era - that clearly wasn’t written for children. It was written for me. And maybe you? 

But while I connect with this armoring up at the beginning, those of you who’ve seen the film understand that the true message isn’t about what we put on, but what we take off. Spoiler alert: Rumi, the lead singer of Huntr/x, hasn’t told her bandmates that she is part demon. In fact, she’s hidden it, having been told by their mentor to hide the marks and focus on curing herself by permanently closing the barrier between demons and humans. So she veers the group toward meeting her specific needs, claiming it only relates to their shared goal. Which… guilty. 

But when the Saja Boys, literal demons, begin stealing Huntr/x fans with their saccharine-loaded Soda Pop (that I totally sing to my partner to annoy him), the contortions Rumi must make become too much. The facade of perfection cracks, and in classic hero-trope mode, Rumi lies about what’s going on. Because she’s also connecting with lead Saja Boy, Jinu (the Tuxedo Mask of Gen Alpha), causing her to question her beliefs about demons and herself. Cue the total unraveling of belief systems, bands, and human existence. 

More than a happy ending, this movie has an integrated ending. Rumi must accept herself and lead from enlightened, connected values - which saves the day. Jinu helps by absorbing some big demon light (the rules of this magical world are a little unclear) after he realizes that he can still be good after doing something bad. Ah, the B-story redemption, I LOVE IT!

What I love the MOST is the music. Not just because it slaps (or whatever the kids use these days to describe good music), but because it lands. Huntr/x use music to protect the fans (all humans, rightly), and each bring their own strengths to the process. They have a series of songs that offer different approaches to winning the battle: Golden, Take Down, and What it Sounds Like. 

Golden, which is a legit hit, is the first attempt at stepping into the light. It chronicles the work done to become Huntr/x and live their purpose, because they’re done hiding and now they’re shining (like they’re born to be). It’s a lovefest of aspiration, orchestrated with great flourish, and also *so high* in the human voice register that singing along can be rough.

We're goin' up, up, up

It's our moment

You know together we're glowin'

Gonna be, gonna be golden

Oh, up, up, up

With our voices

Gonna be, gonna be golden

And yet - it is in this song that Rumi reveals she has the visible patterns of a demon. But if they can just complete their mission then… 

No more hiding, I'll be shining

Like I'm born to be

'Cause we are hunters, voices strong

And I know I believe

If Golden is a press release about being your most perfect, shiniest pop group, Take Down is what you practice in the shower after a boy pisses you off and requires some unsolicited feedback. It feels real honest when I look at a shitty email and sing to it “I don't think you're ready for the takedown.” But of all the songs, it says the least. It mostly tells someone that they are going down, and who is going to do that taking down. 

So sweet, so easy on the eyes, but hideous on the inside

Whole life spreading lies, but you can't hide, baby, nice try

I'm 'bout to switch up these vibes, I finally opened my eyes

It's time to kick you straight back into the night

But there’s a sticking point when Rumi - who we remember is secretly part demon and hanging out with Jinu and his squee demon animal entourage at night - is supposed to sing that a demon with no feelings don’t deserve to live (it’s so obvious). And honestly, I feel so sad for her hearing her best friends sing “when your patterns start to show / It makes the hatred wanna grow outta my veins,” except that she’s the one with the idea to write a mean song in the first place! Ugh, life is complex… 

Shockingly, this song is manipulated by the demons to take down Huntr/x. The core of hatred redirected toward Rumi, her demon patterns (the symbolism in this thing) not only show, but spread to uncontainable levels, revealing her truth and destroying the trust in the group. Because they knew, they KNEW something was up, and instead of being real with them, Rumi gaslit them. And we, the audience, understand why, we connect to the fear, the pressure, the conditioning that led to those choices. 

But we also know what it means to be lied to, misled, confused, manipulated. 

So now that everything has been torn down, we’re ready to rebuild. Enter the reckoned and raw Rumi, taking on the main demon thing with the stark and honest opening of  What it Sounds Like. 

Nothing but the truth now

Nothing but the proof of what I am

The worst of what I came from, patterns I'm ashamed of

Things that even I don't understand

I tried to fix it, I tried to fight it

My head was twisted, my heart divided

My lies all collided

I don't know why I didn't trust you to be on my side

Acceptance enters our bloodstream like morphine (being administered by a professional), soothing the pain a centimeter of flesh at a time, pulsing through our bodies with the promise of relief - and hope. Because really, it is probably a bajillion times easier to fight demons if you aren’t also having to put energy into hiding the fact that you are also kind of a demon. And if you’re going to go down fighting, do it with integrity. And using ALL of your abilities, not just the most palatable ones. 

I broke into a million pieces, and I can't go back

But now I'm seeing all the beauty in the broken glass

The scars are part of me, darkness and harmony

My voice without the lies, this is what it sounds like

Why did I cover up the colors stuck inside my head?

I should've let the jagged edges meet the light instead

Show me what's underneath, I'll find your harmony

The song we couldn't write, this is what it sounds like

So - the team gets back together in the power of the music. 

We're shattering the silence, we're rising, defiant

Shouting in the quiet, "You're not alone"

We listened to the demons, we let them get between us

But none of us are out here on our own

So we were cowards, so we were liars

So we're not heroes, we're still survivors

The dreamers, the fighters, no lying, I'm tired

But dive in the fire, and I'll be right here by your side

And when it’s time to truly win the day: 

My voice without the lies, this is what it sounds like

Fearless and undefined, this is what it sounds like

Truth after all this time, our voices all combined

When darkness meets the light, this is what it sounds like

The first time I watched the movie, it was during special one-on-one time with my youngest. She gleefully watched my cry through the last 20 minutes of the movie. She LOVES seeing my cry. Actually, both of my kids love to watch crying, but that’s not the point. The point is that I FELT this movie. I felt the shame of hiding what I believed made me bad or weird – and how much bravery it takes to push through the fear that people won’t love you for who you really are. Because some people won’t. And it hurts to lose them, but if they were in a relationship with a pretend version of you, either you were going to lose the connection eventually, or you were going to lose yourself. 

Fundraising sucks right now. To those of you raking in the dollars, I’m guessing it’s still tough, because there is more need than those dollars can address. It feels like the same amount of work results in fewer resources, or just not enough. We’re seeing or experiencing the real loss of services, of jobs in the sector, and of hope for making the system we’ve been in work for our missions. 

So what happens when we accept that the old way is gone? That we’ve undergone a dramatic shift in six months, on top of all the small and humongous shifts over the last five years, on top of all the ones before that… We’ve built careers by learning to navigate a shitty system, but what happens when it gets even shittier? 

Y’all know by now that I have way more questions than answers. I can share that I’m in a phase where I’m reaching out for community. I’m looking for spaces to commiserate, dream, externalize revenge fantasies, collaborate, laugh, braid hair, read paperbacks, pet dogs, drink coffee, learn stuff about stuff, and generally rebuild connections. It’s scary to think about doing all of those things while feeling this vulnerable, but that’s the point. It’s the acceptance of who I am that makes me powerful in any space, especially when I am extemporaneously singing. And it’s the acceptance that we have to do it together that makes us powerful together. 

There’s a line in the movie about the Honmoon, the magic barrier that Huntr/x maintains to keep the demons back. When the group breaks up, the Honmoon falls apart, leaving humans vulnerable to constant demon attacks. Celine, the mentor who tells Rumi to hide her patterns, implores her to fix the Honmoon to make everything right again. Rumi says “If this is the Honmoon I’m supposed to protect, I’m glad to see it destroyed.” 

So, what are we building? 

Flooded

Y’all,

Texan is not a simple identity. It comes with layers of pride, frustration, humor, awe, and a certain inescapable sense of grandiose that I can only describe as Big State Energy. And as a born, raised, and reclaimed Austinite, I have forever felt the eyes of Texas upon me. When you grow up in the middle of it, this state feels legitimately inescapable. Frankly, I only have the patience to drive my way out of it once or twice a year, if that.

But being in the middle has its perks. I was always at the Capitol building as a kid, whether touring with my grandparents, performing on the front steps, or receiving the Queen of England - then eventually covering the Texas Legislature for my high school paper. My nerdiness included math, performing arts, writing, and civics. And back then, it was easy to go shop on the drag as a teenager, or go to a show downtown, or hang out at a coffee shop that treated you like garbage in a fun way. I called it Austin customer service.

But the part of the Central Texas lifestyle that I took for granted the most growing up was the water. As I explained to people in DC who complained about the days above ninety degrees (lol), my summer lifestyle back home consisted of being in an air conditioned car, an air conditioned building, traversing between the two, or submerging myself in a body of water. And while most days the water was a pool, on special days, it was natural water. Feeding ducks next to Barton Springs, fishing for minnows in Shoal Creek, splashing off of boats in Travis County, or the ultimate treat: tubing on the Guadalupe.

It was there, my ass numb in the freezing cold waters, that I first learned what sunburned ears felt like. Years later, as the water kept the beer a drinking temperature, I learned what sunburned armpits felt like. The last time I went, I was somehow the only person who (1) didn’t drink but (2) did throw up, because I had some sort of stomach bug. However, no one questioned me puking behind a tree on the walk to the old school buses that would take us back to where we parked.

These memories were further down the river than Mystic, which is nestled among the other camps and small communities in Kerr County. The Presbyterian camp where my youth group went did not have campers low enough to be swept away last weekend, but I have slept near the banks of the Guadalupe, kept awake not by fear, but by the spinning feeling that comes with spending too much time on a playground merry-go-round. It’s beautiful out there. The kind of views that make it possible to believe in something greater than yourself.

I am thankful that my kids were complaining about being bored indoors while the rain fell. And while the pond next to our community rose more than 100%, we were never in danger. We got wet because I can’t remember to take umbrellas anywhere, not because we were up to our chins in rushing floodwater. My mom couldn’t stop giving us updates over the weekend about the ongoing devastation a few counties over. I started checking the levels of Lake Travis, our source of drinking water, to watch the numbers creep up from 43% to 62% full in the course of the holiday weekend. A thin silver lining to the utter devastation.

Yes, climate change played a role here. As well as levels - seemingly every level - of government failure. There were individuals who ignored warnings, and those who heroically rescued folks in harm's way. Across Central Texas, there's a pervasive heartbreak that has yet to crest. A betrayal from the very source of life, comfort, and fun that helps justify the choice to live in this heat. On the heels of a monumental betrayal in Washington, DC, to make rich people richer. Because we don’t need sirens in flood zones, we need more yachts for billionaires.

In addition to feeling, I’ve donated to the Kerr County Flood Relief Fund with The Community Foundation of the Texas Hill Country, which pledges to pass funds on to vetted charities. Please consider doing the same.

There’s another natural resource I love here in Central Texas: Patty Griffin. She makes music for these times. She has Rain, Not Alone, Long Ride Home, Top of the World (covered by the Chicks), and many more. I deconstructed her song Peter Pan for my sister’s Good Bones podcast. Being from here, I have no idea if she is real famous or just famous to me. She is one of the original soundtracks to my catharsis, and I turn to her in moments of devastation at every level. And right now, When it Don’t Come Easy lands.   

So much love to y’all, your teams, your families, your pets, and your nature. May the memories of those we’ve lost be more than a blessing, but also an inspiration to continue the good fight.

Kim Caldwell

You Did This (and you should be proud)

I’ve been binge-watching “ER” lately and it’s left me in my feels. I grew up in Chicago and turned eight just a week before the show aired. I would visit my parents in their downtown office, and race down the stairs every few hours to feed the parking meters. Our state-of-the-art car phone was in a small briefcase.  And it was the height of the AIDS epidemic. 

AIDS is a major theme in ER. In just the first few episodes, a young girl dying of AIDS is abandoned by her adoptive parents at the ER.  In 1994, AIDS was the leading cause of death for all Americans between the ages of 25 and 44. Now, while HIV continues to disproportionately impact black and brown communities and is certainly still a serious disease, for most of us, it’s not part of our daily experiences or weeknight TV. 

Thirty years. We saw a deadly disease emerge, peak, and become manageable. We saw a country turn a blind eye to an epidemic, and we saw relentless activism lead to real change. 

In 1981, the CDC asked for $40 million to fight "Gay Related Immune Deficiency" but got $1 million. By 1982, it was AIDS. Groups like the San Francisco AIDS Foundation and NAPWA formed. People with AIDS faced stigma, but the Denver Principles affirmed their humanity. The president didn't speak about AIDS until 1984, four years in which the virus ravaged communities. 

30 years ago, gay men - particularly Black men - were dying from an unknown disease with no known treatment, while the mainstream media laughed about the “gay flu.” 30 years ago,  people with HIV/AIDS were living - and dying - on the streets because they were rejected by healthcare practitioners.  

Today, it feels like we’re reliving the worst chapters of history. Target, coordinated harm comes from the highest offices in the country. And it’s easy to feel helpless.  

But watching “ER” is one reminder that change has never come from the top. It’s come because people - people like you and me - have demanded it. It doesn’t happen overnight, but it happens. 

Let's not sanitize the past: when the AIDS epidemic first erupted, it was met with governmental denial and inaction. Let's not forget the insidious role of systemic biases – homophobia, racism, and more – which meant that millions of individuals who could have benefited from timely access to treatment tragically perished. Let's not forget how crucial research was shamefully delayed due to this apathy and prejudice. And let's never forget that the hard-won progress we celebrate today stands upon the shoulders and the graves of our ancestors who fought tirelessly and often lost their lives.

But in one generation, much was won. Not by the government, but by advocates, groups, and nonprofits. Researchers discovered AIDS - and eventually meaningful treatments like PrEP. Nonprofits educated and advocated. Individuals and advocacy groups cared for the sick. Communities held memorials. Private institutions funded research. And courageous storytellers bravely portrayed the stark reality of this epidemic in ways that compelled the world to see, to empathize, and to engage in a dialogue that directly challenged the prevailing governmental narrative.

Let’s repeat the history of our ancestors.  Let’s keep fighting like hell to name injustice out loud. To fight for each and every one of our neighbors. To tell real stories.  And to keep pushing forward. 

Community Power In Action

We must lean on each other. Strong community bonds drive meaningful social change. We need collective action where we fight for each other and ensure the most affected lead the way to solutions.We need to reflect on what could have been to remind ourselves that we’re not going back. 

The community response to the AIDS epidemic is one of countless reminders that the real engine of progress is movement buildings. When we come together - whether one person helping a neighbor,or a local leader organizing a coalition - we can pool resources, amplify voices, and work towards actual change - the kind so mainstream and accepted it starts showing up on Thursday night TV. 

What does movement building look like daily? Remember, you are not alone. Find your people – other organizations and groups already working on mission-aligned issues. Seek fellow nonprofits, community organizing groups, and advocacy networks. Show up: attend rallies, town halls, coalition meetings, conferences (yes, really, the networking is worth it), and anywhere else your people gather. Being in community starts with being together. Seek collaboration, build individual relationships, and work in lockstep with those around you.

So, in a time where helplessness can feel overwhelming, how will you show up and fight? Perhaps you will launch a collaborative project with a mission-aligned organization. Maybe you will share bold stories on behalf of your constituents. Perhaps you will host or attend trainings. Remember that every step forward you take is a step toward collective liberation.

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Feeling alone? Here are some places to start….

Community-Centric Fundraising: This emerging approach challenges traditional fundraising models by prioritizing community needs, building authentic relationships, and redistributing power, offering a values-aligned framework for engaging supporters.

The Nonprofit Hive: This online platform provides practical articles, templates, and guides covering various aspects of nonprofit management and fundraising, offering actionable insights for day-to-day operations and growth.

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A few articles I found helpful when writing this article were The AIDS Crisis: Our Contribution to Patient Care and HIV/AIDS Protocols in the 1980s-90s and How HIV/AIDS storytelling has evolved in pop culture among many others.

Stories Spurring Synergy!

Isn’t it a bummer when a word you love becomes overused and trite in the zeitgeist, so when you are searching for the perfect description of a phenomenon, your best match feels meaningless? I experienced this with synergy. I LOVE synergy! Meaning I love the sound of the word, the look of the double Ys, and I love that it means something bigger than the sum of its parts. It so often describes the magic felt when you’re collaborating so well with someone or with a group of folks and the result surpasses your most audacious expectations. 

So when synergy became passe, one of those joke words used to mock business folks taking themselves too seriously, I took it personally. The “suits” did this to me, and they did this to synergy, which was just doing its best to describe something wonderful. We deserve this word, free of baggage, accurately describing stuff. 

Stuff like what happens when you use our Anatomy of an Ask worksheet to plot out your email campaigns, putting together all the parts for you to sum up into a meaningful invitation into investment in your organization. And yes, it can lead to a great series of emails with the potential to fund your mission. But more than that, it can open up the creative and strategic process of asking for funds to more team members to influence and give input into your campaign. 

This was one of the themes that came up on our October Lunch and Learn, being able to collect more stories about your mission in action to incorporate into end of year giving. Those real, tangible, stories that show how all of the pieces come together for progress toward the world we want to create. The examples that take your value proposition from squishy to compelling. The reason you do the work that you do. 

There was a common concern: we don’t get the stories from Program People. We tell them we need stories and they don’t have any. We say “you HAVE to have stories” and they say “I have a thousand things to do right now, please go back to fundraising.” And as a former Program Person, I remember being hesitant to engage, either worrying that my stories would end up being misrepresented or just not having the space to slow down and think about my work from someone else’s perspective.  But with the Anatomy of an Ask, Program People can see the framework and the strategy behind the ask, better understanding what you’re looking to communicate to whom and for what purpose, and better mine their own memories for examples of your mission in action. 

For the trusting you’ll use the stories well, that’s trust you have earned or will earn through ethical, values-based storytelling that honors the dignity of every person involved. And that’s your standard, so we’re all set there! 

Please keep copying the Anatomy of an Ask and using it to structure your solicitations and capture the synergy of your incredible team! Synergy reclaimed!

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Board Engagement: The Clean Before the Clean

Thanks to everyone who joined our August Lunch and Learn to prepare now for end of year board engagement! For those who missed it, we talked a lot about the clean before the clean.

If nothing else, this conversation validated my own cleaning habits: sometimes I don’t for a while. I’m a busy gal; and getting my kids out the door with two shoes on and getting nutrition in their bodies and actually enjoying them sometimes can eat up HUGE chunks of time - and rightfully so! But when it’s time to have people over, or even host guests overnight, it’s time to play catch up. 

What I’ve learned is that taking things on as ONE BIG CLEAN doesn’t work. I am never actually prepared, and whatever I miss will be visible (and possibly smellable?) to my guests. So I’ve adopted the clean before the clean: dust off my cleaning skills a week before I need to, then I have muscle memory AND a a more complete clean when people show up. And if I miss a spot, you get a week-old blip, not an [insert time period too long to admit publicly]-old situation. 

Translating this to board engagement: if you want your board ready to fundraise for the end of year, dust off those cobwebs now! That doesn’t mean you have your board start their end of year work today, but find something immediately actionable, meaningful, and achievable that warms them up for the big time. This way, they are using the muscles they will need come November without the cognitive dissonance of “it’s too hot and terrible out here for me to feel motivated for the holidays right now” causing inaction.

Also, we are focusing on practicing the actions we want board members to take this year, not just fundraising in general. So if you want folks to share requests with their network, have that be the ask right now! Can’t you imagine the conversation with your board chair, or your development chair, where you generate a plan to engage now for better engagement in two months?

And remember: the clean before the clean is not a lather, rinse, and repeat! If it wasn’t right for your board last year, doing it twice may not be what makes it right this year. And any learning from the first engagement can be incorporated into the end of year implementation! 

Keep up the great work; our lives are better because of the resources you’re securing for your mission!

Before you Automate: Audit

Excitement for automation reached a fever pitch at our Lunch and Learn this week. We shared the fears we have overcome about automation, the conditions that support effective automation, and the ultimate goal of automation. We don’t automate to automate; we automate to achieve our goals more efficiently. 

Like any other new competency, incorporating automation into your organization’s operations has to start with a clear connection to your mission. How does shifting tasks from human- to machine-managed contribute to your organization’s mission? 

• Efficiently creates an output that contributes to your operations

• Free up staff time to work on projects that require human attention

• Save the frustration, boredom, and potential for error that comes with humans doing the same tasks over and over

• Experience the well-being of a human who isn’t worried she’ll forget to to the thing that she is supposed to do correctly and on time

We also talked about the reasons automation might not be right (or just right now) for your organization.

• You don’t have a reliable process or resources to take human judgment out of the job

• Your organization’s culture doesn’t support process innovation, or new practices in general

• You don’t have the budget to support the level of technology and support it would take to automate a process

• Doing things the long way helps you learn them better, which helps with later steps in your process

• You are up to your armpits in the day-to-day, and zooming out to make decisions and changes to support automation might literally kill you.

Wherever you are in your thinking about adding automation, try taking a moment to assess where you are right now with an Automation Audit. It’s not hard, it’s 100% made up, and it can be the discovery section of an Automation plan!

Audit Questions:

• What processes are already automated? Want to know what automation your organization will tolerate? Start by investigating what already exists with questions like:

• Why was this process automated?

• Who made the decision to automate?

• Who set up the automation?

• How is automation checked, maintained, and updated? 

• What technologies are already being used to facilitate automation? 

• How has this automation changed the human/department that implemented it? 

• What does our organization react to? Generally, systems that are automated have an external trigger, whether it is someone clicking submit on a contact form, a new donation coming in, or just a specific day happening in a month or year. So when thinking about how automation can expand from the current uses, ask questions like:

• What is on to-do lists every week, month, quarter, etc. that stays mostly the same?

• What makes me feel like a machine when someone asks me to do it for them? 

• What communications, reports, data sets, calculations, are 70% or more the same every time you do them? 

• What has to happen for our organization to stay compliant and 

• How does our organization navigate change? Automating a process comes with some risk. While doing something once instead of a thousand times has some appeal, worrying that you did it a little wrong that one time, with a thousand receipts of your error in the inboxes or feeds of your biggest supporters can feel daunting for any decision-maker. And if your organization tends not to update processes regularly, but rely on people who have been “doing it this way forever,” it will be important to build the will for automation before you start your free trials. 

• When have we successfully updated a process and what did we learn?

• How can we start small and iterate on an automated process? 

• How does the potential rewards of the change line up with the risks - and how can you reduce the likelihood of risks? 

• Do you (or someone on the team)  have the energy to champion this right now? 

This is not an exhaustive list of questions to answer, but a starting place for collaborative and deliberative decision-making to invest in your long-term capacity for impact. 

What questions are you asking when it comes to automating processes? And what answers are surprising you? Share your thinking and spark ideas for your peers just trying to shut their laptops at a reasonable hour!

Revolutionize Your Well-being: Nurturing Your People, Tools, and Practice Self Care for a Balanced Life

This January, I gave birth to my second child. Hurrah! Three days later, my six-year old spiked a fever so high she was rushed to the emergency room in an ambulance. Not hurrah - I was a wreck. My husband posted on Facebook asking for support, and before we knew it my fridge was so full I could hardly open it without a cascade of tacos, casseroles, and really good beer threatening to attack me. 

I was - and still am - overwhelmed and grateful for the outpouring of support.  Eating all those tacos while breastfeeding my son gave me time to reflect that we tend to get support when our lives are really good or really bad but not when they’re just…coasting along, kind of hard but not catastrophic. And that support far too often is confined to our personal lives. But what about the day to day stresses of work? We can’t pretend that we leave our personal lives at the door between 9am and 5pm, particularly when we work in emotionally-taxing social justice fields. 

January is often a time of big ideas and big planning - resolutions at home, goal setting at work. And, if you’re in development, you’re also processing thank you gifts, refreshing your development plan, and calendaring board meetings. But, this is coming off end-of-year giving - our busiest time of year! - and a time of significant burnout.  So, instead of resolutions, goals, and to-dos this year, I’m updating my “professional self-care system” and reflecting on the people, tools, and practice I have to make sure that I am not burning out. 

Radical Self Care & a Real Support System

It wasn’t until I started really engaging in the Community Centric Fundraising Movement and anti-racist training that I learned that the concept of self-care came from Audre Lorde as an act of resistance. I only knew self care as it had been co-opted by capitalism: bubble baths, massages, and glasses of wine. IIt wasn’t until I was a mother and an entrepreneur that I realized a critical part of my self-care was the people, tools, and systems upon which I relied. And last year, as I explored how I could better live, parent, run a company, and show up as a friend/peer/colleague, I started writing down my self-care support system, or my “toolkit”. 

A self-care system - like self care in general - is often touted as important to one’s mental health and overall wellness. But what exactly is that support system? The list usually includes exercise, diet, sleep, mindfulness, and more. It often also only shows up when we’re not okay - like after a birth or a hospitalization like we experienced. 

But what about our day-to-day wellness? How can we build a toolkit that we use every day, and that supports us as much at work as it does at home?

Building My Self-Care Toolkit as a Social Impact Entrepreneur 

I’ve proudly been in therapy for 16 years, and gratefully take an SSRI every day to keep my brain chemistry happy, so I consider myself as adjusted as your average millennial who graduated during the 2009 recession and parented a two-year-old through the COVID-19 pandemic.  My self-care support system, though, turned out to be a lot wider and more tactical than just weekly therapy. 

My People

“Staying connected” is on the list of recommended self-care activities, but what exactly does that mean? I’m a consummate extrovert, so the people around me not only fill my cup, they’re a hugely critical part of me staying happy and centered.

• My Giant Squid Group team is on the top of my professional self-care system. We have meaty conversations about all aspects of our work, but also spend time laughing about the antics of our kids, sharing dog photos, and discussing weekend plans. I know that whether I need to process a decision, celebrate a win, or just share an idea, my team is there. This wasn’t always the case in previous work settings, and it may not be true for you (although I hope that you do have some support within your work environment!)
  

• My Online Mom Group. When my daughter was born in 2017, I found a group of moms on Reddit. Seven of us slowly migrated to a private Slack channel. Fast forward seven years later and we have matching tattoos, have celebrated weddings, divorces, losses, and wins, and talk every single day. These women are also some of the smartest women I know, so they’ve become my sounding board for everything from marital gripes to - you guessed it - work.
  
  Having a group of peers who are managers, leaders, entrepreneurs and friends means I can bring my most vulnerable challenges and get real feedback and support.
  

• “Ride or Die” key vendors and clients. There are people in my virtual rolodex that I know I can text with any question or problem, from where to order last minute signs to how to handle a contract challenge. Those who know me well know that I’m still sad I had to say goodbye to my florist when we left Chicago in 2016. That rolodex is an important part of any Development professional’s toolkit!
  

• Furry Friends:  Not people, but maybe better? Being with horses is a hugely important part of my wellness. It’s not uncommon for me to take work calls while out at the farm where I board my rescue pony. I’ll groom her, feed treats to the herd, and soak up the equine healing. 

Read More: Why Good Development Staff Leave So Often

Tools

One thing that I realized as I started really exploring my self-care support system was how much I needed to rely on external tools. Like so many of us, my day-to-day is hectic: two businesses, a kindergartener and an infant; and a small army of rescue animals mean our days are hectic and loud. Throw in a chronic illness and I realized I had to outsource my brain.   

• I adopted voice to text  for just about everything - from writing blog posts like this on my phone, to sending messages to my team. It saves my carpal tunnel and helps me brain dump when my brain is at its best.
  

• Tech tools like Zapier, Sunsama, Google Workspace, and ChatGPT help me work more efficiently. I learned just because I can do something doesn’t mean I can’t outsource it to a tech tool.
  

• Did I mention I like to work while hanging out with my horse? My phone hotspot is a go-to tool for me. I can work in the car, at a picnic bench, you name it. That’s not to say I’m always working - I choose those times to mix head-down work and outdoor time sparling, but when it’s a beautiful day and I have writing work or fun phone calls, a change of scenery fills my cup. 

Read More: 30 Minutes To Use Your Fundraising Technology Better! ⏰

Practice

I think this is where most people will share that they exercise, pray, meditate, and eat salad. I can only aspire to be that person. For me, my practice includes: 

• Every day naps. See: chronic illness. I’m always exhausted so a daily nap isn’t a luxury, it’s absolutely critical.

• Crafting.  It’s my meditation. I crochet on calls, embroider while watching TV, and create laser-cut creations on the weekends.

• “Beach Reading”: My extroverted self finds it hard to slow down and unplug. My meditation practice is pretty pathetic (I’m working on it!) so right now, my go to is audio books that let me unplug, whether I listen to them on my walks or while doing a jigsaw puzzle. 

So, this year, my challenge to you is to eschew new year's resolutions for your own self-care support system.  Your people, systems, and practice are not optional: they're critical tools for all of us to show up at home, at work, and for our missions. Find what works for you, whether it's taking daily naps or working while hanging out with your furry friend. Make self-care a priority and watch as it positively impacts your work and overall well-being. You deserve it! Now go and create your own self-care toolkit. Your future self will thank you. 

Ready…Set…Slow: An End-of-Year Giving Manifesto

As the end of the year approaches, the world of nonprofit fundraising begins to buzz with anticipation. It's the season of year-end giving campaigns, appeals for support, and the rush to meet annual fundraising targets. For many nonprofits, this time of year can feel like a frenzied sprint toward the finish line, leaving both staff and supporters breathless.

But what if we were to propose a different approach? What if we traded the frantic dash for a more sustainable, human-centric, and collaborative method of fundraising? In this blog post, we'll explore the idea that, instead of rushing to meet year-end goals, nonprofits can benefit from a "slow and steady wins the race" mindset that not only minimizes burnout but also builds stronger, more lasting connections with their supporters.

Chapter 1: The Mad Dash

The Traditional Approach: A Hectic Race to the Finish Line

In the traditional approach to year-end giving, nonprofits often find themselves caught in a whirlwind of urgency. The pressure to meet year-end fundraising targets can be immense. While the desire to finish the year strong is understandable, this approach can lead to a host of challenges.

The pressure to meet year-end fundraising targets: As December 31st looms large, nonprofits often scramble to secure last-minute donations. The fear of falling short can be overwhelming and lead to hasty decision-making.

The risk of donor fatigue and disengagement: Bombarding donors with urgent appeals can lead to fatigue. Supporters may become desensitized to constant pleas for assistance, causing them to disengage from the organization.

The toll on nonprofit staff and volunteers: Nonprofit staff and volunteers often bear the brunt of the year-end rush. The demands of managing campaigns, processing donations, and communicating with donors can lead to burnout.

The Allure of Quick Fixes: The Bells and Whistles

To combat the pressure of year-end fundraising, many nonprofits turn to quick fixes. These may include flashy campaigns, urgent appeals, and promises of immediate impact. While these strategies can yield short-term gains, they often come at a cost.

Flashy campaigns and urgent appeals: Year-end giving campaigns are often characterized by flashy graphics, urgent language, and the promise of instant change. While these tactics may capture attention, they can lead to transactional giving rather than meaningful engagement.

The danger of transactional giving: Transactional giving occurs when donors make one-off contributions in response to urgent appeals but don't develop a deeper connection with the organization. This type of giving is less likely to result in long-term support.

Short-term gains vs. long-term sustainability: Quick fixes may help meet immediate fundraising goals, but they often lack a long-term vision. Sustainability takes a back seat to the urgency of the moment.

Chapter 2: Embracing a Sustainable Mindset

The Slow Movement: Lessons from Slow Food and Slow Travel

Embracing a sustainable mindset involves drawing inspiration from movements like Slow Food and Slow Travel, which prioritize intentionality, mindfulness, and meaningful experiences over haste.

Applying the principles of intentionality and mindfulness: Fundraising should be a thoughtful and deliberate process. It's about cultivating genuine connections with donors, understanding their values, and aligning them with the organization's mission.

The power of cultivating genuine connections: Slow fundraising values quality over quantity. It's about forging relationships with donors that extend beyond a single transaction. These relationships are built on trust, shared values, and a sense of belonging.

From Scarcity to Abundance: A Shift in Perspective

A sustainable approach challenges the scarcity mindset that often accompanies year-end fundraising. Instead, it encourages nonprofits to recognize the abundance of resources and support available.

Recognizing the abundance of resources and support: The world of philanthropy is vast, with countless individuals and organizations eager to make a difference. A sustainable approach acknowledges this abundance and seeks to tap into it authentically.

Fostering a culture of gratitude and appreciation: Sustainable fundraising emphasizes gratitude as a core value. It's about genuinely appreciating each donor's contribution and showing them that their support matters.

Chapter 3: Human-Centric Fundraising

The Value of Personal Stories: Putting Faces to Your Mission

Human-centric fundraising places people at the center of the narrative. It's about telling stories that resonate on a personal level and evoke emotion.

How personal narratives create emotional connections: Sharing stories of individuals whose lives have been positively impacted by the organization's work can create powerful emotional connections with donors.

Empowering supporters to become storytellers: In a human-centric approach, supporters aren't just passive donors; they become storytellers themselves. They share their experiences and perspectives, amplifying the organization's message.

Collaborative Campaigns: Building a Community of Supporters

Sustainable fundraising recognizes the value of collaboration and community-building. It's about engaging donors as active participants rather than passive contributors.

The strength of partnerships and alliances: Collaborations with like-minded organizations, businesses, and influencers can expand the reach of fundraising efforts and tap into new audiences.

Co-creating campaigns with your audience: Donors are not just sources of funding; they are partners in the mission. In a human-centric approach, organizations involve donors in the campaign's creation, seeking their input and feedback.

Chapter 4: The Sustainable Approach to EOY Giving

Year-Long Cultivation: Engaging Donors Beyond December

A sustainable approach to year-end giving extends far beyond the month of December. It's about engaging donors consistently throughout the year.

The benefits of a year-round engagement strategy: Sustained engagement keeps donors connected to the organization's mission. It involves regular communication, updates on impact, and opportunities for involvement.

Staying in touch without soliciting: Donors appreciate being kept in the loop about the organization's work, even when not actively soliciting donations. This ongoing connection fosters loyalty and trust.

Collective Impact: Celebrating Shared Achievements

Sustainable fundraising celebrates achievements as a collective effort. It's about acknowledging that the organization's impact is a result of the entire community's support.

Acknowledging the collective effort of your community: Donors, volunteers, staff, and partners all play a role in the organization's success. Recognizing this collective effort strengthens the sense of community.

Showcasing the real-world impact of sustained support: Instead of focusing solely on financial metrics, a sustainable approach showcases the real-world impact of sustained support. It tells stories of lives changed, communities improved, and progress achieved.

Chapter 5: Preparing for a Different Kind of Year-End Giving

Setting Realistic Goals: Rethinking Success Metrics

Sustainable fundraising reevaluates the metrics of success. It's about shifting the focus from monetary targets to holistic measures of impact and engagement.

Focusing on engagement, retention, and collaboration: Success metrics include donor engagement levels, retention rates, and the depth of collaboration with supporters.

Letting go of arbitrary fundraising targets: While fundraising goals are essential, they should be realistic and reflective of the organization's capacity. Letting go of arbitrary targets reduces the pressure to meet financial quotas.

Building a Sustainable Campaign Plan

Crafting a sustainable year-end giving campaign requires careful planning and consideration.

Crafting a year-end giving campaign that aligns with the "slow and steady" approach: Campaign messaging, appeals, and strategies should reflect the organization's commitment to sustainability and community.

Leveraging digital tools for storytelling and community building: Technology can be a powerful ally in sustaining engagement. Digital platforms offer opportunities for storytelling, donor interaction, and community building.

The Journey, Not the Destination: Why Sustainable Fundraising Matters

The Long-Term Gains of a Slow and Steady Approach

Sustainable fundraising is about recognizing that the journey is as important as the destination. It's a commitment to building trust, fostering community, and making a lasting impact.

Building trust and loyalty among donors: Trust is the foundation of sustainable giving. Donors who trust the organization are more likely to stay engaged and offer long-term support.

The rewards of a donor-centric, sustainable approach: The real rewards of sustainable fundraising extend beyond financial contributions. They include a network of engaged supporters, a strong community, and the knowledge that your organization is making a meaningful and lasting difference.

Ready to Slow Down: Taking the First Steps

Embracing the idea that a sustainable approach is both achievable and fulfilling is the first step towards a more intentional and impactful year-end giving season.

Inviting fellow nonprofits to join in this transformative journey: The shift towards sustainable fundraising is not just a solitary endeavor. It's a movement that can benefit the entire nonprofit sector. Let's invite others to join us on this journey towards a more purposeful and sustainable approach to year-end giving.

As the year-end giving season draws near, let's challenge the notion that success is only measured by financial targets. Let's adopt a sustainable approach that values human connections, collaboration, and the long-lasting impact of our work.

Ready… set… slow. It's not just a new way to fundraise; it's a revolution in how we approach philanthropy, one that's more meaningful, purpose-driven, and enduring.

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A Slightly Sacreligious Giving Tuesday To-Do List

Hey fundraiser...I see you. I'm also over here hiding in my coffee cup, in denial that Giving Tuesday 2022 is in 40 days.

And I'm feeling pretty overwhelmed by all of the end-of-year preparations I need to do. I bet you're feeling about as clueless as I am right now.

We're being bombarded with messaging that Giving Tuesday is the most important time of year for fundraisers. And while it's true that this is a critical time for nonprofits to engage with their donors, it doesn't have to be as overwhelming as it seems right now.

Giving Tuesday is Just Like Any Other Fundraiser

Remember that Giving Tuesday is just like any other fundraiser. That means it's not going to magically increase your donations overnight. Yes, this time of year is important, but there are still things that you can do to make the most of your fundraising efforts so that you can exceed your goals this Giving Tuesday...and beyond!

1. Do have a plan: Make a specific, achievable, and measurable fundraising goal for this Giving Tuesday. Determine how much money you want to raise and how you will measure it, whether that means increasing your donor base or raising more money than last year. The "throw spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks" method of fundraising rarely works...and it's not going to magically work this Giving Tuesday!

2. Don't get too caught up on the perfect campaign launch. Better done than perfect! While you may have countless ideas on what you'd like to do for your campaign, remember that it's better to have a plan and launch than to never get started because all of the pieces aren't perfectly in place. At the end of the day, fundraising is about consistency - both with your message and in how you engage with supporters

3. Do sweat the details and make sure your website and donation page are up-to-date! Check that all of your marketing materials, donation forms, and donation pages are up-to-date and present a professional image so that you don't end up losing donors because of a broken link or messy mobile form!

4. Don't worry too much about what platform, giving tool, or technology to use. Pick the one that's right for you. When it comes to Giving Tuesday, there are a lot of tools and techniques to choose from when it comes to fundraising. And hey, that can be really overwhelming - especially if you don't have a ton of experience with using these platforms or tools. But remember: If your organization has a website, social media account, and donation form that you can use this Giving Tuesday, then you're good to go!

5. Do leverage your network for donations and support. There are people who believe in your mission - current donors, volunteers, friends, family, colleagues, and more - and who want to help. These should be the people you're asking for money, not just new donors!

6. Don't only focus on new donors. Most people give where they already have relationships...and in all the emails and social media post son Giving Tuesday it's unlikely you're going to capture new donors' interest (and money).

7. Do leverage matching funds from your current donors, board members, and other supporters. If you have donors who are willing to give back this Giving Tuesday, then leverage their support by encouraging them to match any donations they make. This is a great way to not only increase the amount of money you raise this Giving Tuesday, but also deepen your current relationships!

8. Don't count on getting matching funds from Facebook. While there's always a lot of chatter and excitement about Facebook's matching giving (in 2021 they disbursed $8M in matching funds) the matching funds are used up very rapidly and the odds of you receiving them are, quite frankly low. You're better off focusing on other matching funds and other revenue sources!

9. Do think about Giving Tuesday as the start of your End-of-Year fundraising strategy. While Giving Tuesday gets a lot of hype and attention, it's not the only day you should be thinking about fundraising. In fact, your Giving Tuesday efforts should be a first step in your broader end-of-year fundraising strategy. Think about how you can continue to engage with donors (and potential donors) throughout the rest of the year as well!

10. Don't let your Giving Tuesday fundraising efforts consume all the time and energy in your end-of-year strategy. Remember, it's only one day out of 365 days! You should be focusing on other revenue sources as well besides just this one day of giving if you want to ensure that your nonprofit succeeds.

Less overwhelmed now? Me too.

Giving Tuesday is a great opportunity to raise funds for your nonprofit and engage with supporters, but it's important not to worry too much about getting everything perfect. Instead, focus on the basics - launching your campaign on time, making sure your website and donation page are up-to-date, leveraging your existing network of donors and supporters for donations, and more. And remember - Giving Tuesday is just the start of your end-of-year fundraising strategy, so keep thinking about ways to engage with donors and potential donors throughout the rest of the year! Good luck!

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A Donor’s Giving Tuesday Confession

Can we talk about Giving Tuesday?

Because I have a confession: as a donor, I dread Giving Tuesday.

Fundraisers know the holidays are a mixed bag. On the one hand, it's a time of year when people are more likely to be in a giving mood. On the other hand, it can be tough to stand out from the noisy crowd and get your message heard. This is especially true on Giving Tuesday, when donors are bombarded with requests from organizations they may or may not have a relationship with. Is there a way to rethink Giving Tuesday so that it's more effective for both donors and nonprofits?

Rethinking Giving Tuesday

Last year I got about 50 Giving Tuesday emails. I opened about three of them - and those three were nonprofits from which I regularly received updates, where I was able to volunteer, and where I already donated. The other 47?

There were a few nonprofits I didn’t even recognize. So, why would I make a gift?

I’ve got a proposition: instead of thinking of Giving Tuesday and End-of-Year Fundraising as your last chance to meet your 2022 budget, let’s think about it as the start of next year’s fundraising season.

Giving Tuesday is not the time to start talking to this year’s donors.

It's a time to update your donors on what you've been up to and what your plans are for the future. It's an opportunity to get to know your donors better and cultivate relationships that will last beyond the holiday season. By taking a strategic approach to Giving Tuesday, you can set yourself up for a successful fundraising year. Here's how:

1. Thank your donors for their past support and let them know how their contributions have made a difference. This is especially important for first-time donors or lapsed donors who may be feeling inundated with requests from organizations with whom they don’t have a personal connection. A sincere thank-you can go a long way in building goodwill and loyalty.

2. Get personal: Sending out a mass email on Giving Tuesday is not the way to go. Rather, take this opportunity to reach out to your top donors and thank them for their support. A personal phone call or handwritten note can go a long way in showing your appreciation. You can also consider hosting a donor appreciation event on Giving Tuesday or throughout the holiday season.

3. Invite them to get involved: Many people want to help but don't know how. Use Giving Tuesday as an opportunity to invite them to get involved in your work. Whether it's volunteering, attending an event, or making a donation, let them know how they can help you achieve your mission.

4. Set the tone for the year ahead: What kind of year do you want to have? Use Giving Tuesday as an opportunity to set the tone for the year ahead. If you want it to be a year of growth, start by reaching out to new donors. If you want it to be a year of impact, focus on identifying ways to multiply your donations. If you want it to be a year of community building, focus on ways to engage more people in your work. No matter what you want next year’s fundraising to yield, start by setting the tone on Giving Tuesday.

Refreshing Your Giving Tuesday To-Do List

The best thing about rethinking Giving Tuesday? Other than the immense amount of stress relief (and a chance you’ll actually enjoy the holiday season), you’ll start January with an amazing to-do list and a portfolio of engaged donors.

Though it may seem like an uphill battle, there are ways to make Giving Tuesday work for you and your organization. By thinking of it as an opportunity to update and engage your donor base, rather than simply asking for money, you can set yourself up for success in the coming year. With a little creativity and planning, Giving Tuesday can be a powerful tool for building relationships and growing your support base—so don't write it off just yet!