Category: Uncategorized
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The One Number That Tells You Where Your Major Gift Program Is Leaking
When a major gift program underperforms, it’s almost never everything at once. It’s one weak link. A pipeline too thin to support the goal. Visits that never quite get scheduled. Asks that get delayed past the point of momentum. Or asks that get made but don’t close, over and over. Fix the right one and…
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Stop Collecting Fundraiser Feedback and Start Analyzing It
This year during performance review season, I asked my direct reports four simple questions: The responses I got back were valuable, but then I used AI to analyze all of the responses to look at patterns and themes. The result was far more insightful than I expected. The analysis identified recurring strengths, common frustrations, coaching…
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Three Questions to Ask Before Every Year-End Appraisal
It’s appraisal season. If you manage fundraisers, you’re probably knee-deep in review forms right now. Here’s what most managers miss: the appraisal isn’t just your chance to give feedback. It’s your best shot all year at getting it. Your gift officers know exactly what’s helping them and what’s slowing them down. Most of them will…
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Your Major Gift Toolkit (Free), Built for Your Nonprofit
Most small development teams don’t have a system for raising major gifts – they have a to-do list and good intentions. The Major Gift Toolkit changes that. It’s a step-by-step playbook that walks you through the entire arc of a major gift, from finding the right prospects to getting the signed gift agreement. It covers…
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I Spent a Year Pushing My Team to Make More Asks. Here’s What the Data Actually Told Me.
This past fiscal year I made a big effort to get my fundraising team to make more asks. More asks means more dollars, I thought. So I pushed it all year, tracked every ask by type, and even ran a monthly recognition for the fundraiser who made the most asks. Now I wanted to know,…
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I Used AI to Analyze My Fundraising Team. The Results Were Eye-Opening.
As managers, we all know we should be looking at the trends in our team’s performance – what’s working, what isn’t, who’s improving and who needs support. But pulling that together takes time most of us don’t have. I recently compared my team’s FY26 metrics against FY25 using the prompt at the bottom of this…
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The Ask Readiness Checker Is Here – and It Won’t Let You Off the Hook
I’ve been saying it for a while: the most common mistake major gift fundraisers make isn’t a bad ask. It’s no ask at all. Gift officers spend months cultivating prospects they could have asked a long time ago. They keep adding touchpoints. Scheduling lunches. Sending articles. Waiting for the “right moment.” Meanwhile, the prospect is…
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The Ask Readiness Checker Is Here – and It Won’t Let You Off the Hook
I’ve been saying it for a while: the most common mistake major gift fundraisers make isn’t a bad ask. It’s no ask at all. Gift officers spend months cultivating prospects they could have asked a long time ago. They keep adding touchpoints. Scheduling lunches. Sending articles. Waiting for the “right moment.” Meanwhile, the prospect is…
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Why Your Donors Are Ghosting You (And the One Email That Fixes It)
You had the meeting. The conversation went great. They seemed genuinely interested in making a gift. Then nothing happens. You get no response from the prospect in the coming months after multiple outreach attempts. Radio silence from them. If this sounds familiar, you’re not alone. But here’s what most of us get wrong about why…
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How a Simple Graphic Can Transform Your Fundraising Culture
Anyone who’s closed a major gift knows the truth: you didn’t do it alone. That transformational commitment? It was years in the making. It involved your president sharing a coffee with a prospect, a program director giving a behind-the-scenes tour, a board member making an introduction at just the right moment. Major gifts don’t come…