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

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

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

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

Feeling stuck in the campaign-to-campaign cycle? Are you on the verge of burnout? There’s a better way to fundraise, and I’m going to bring you in on my top 10 tips to make the pivot today.

If your donor retention rate isn’t where you want it to be, my guess is because you have a broadcast-based fundraising program where to talk AT your donors. Real fundraising success comes to programs that are relationship-based, where we talk TO donors and build an authentic conversation with them that is mission-aligned and community-focused.

If you haven’t started your year-end fundraising yet, don’t sweat it. You can still put together a campaign that will raise your organization funds if you start today. Follow my instructions below to get your year-end campaign going right now.

It’s a constant refrain of mine: Nobody wants to be your ATM. So don’t treat your donors like you can just push the right series of numbers and get money out. I put as much effort into gratitude campaigns as I do fundraising campaigns throughout the year. And for every fundraising campaign I run, I run a gratitude campaign. Here’s how it works…

It’s the number one reason I hear from board members, executive directors, and even seasoned fundraising professionals about why they don’t do direct asks to their donors: “What if they say no?”

I’ve helped organizations grow despite major setbacks, primarily by making sure supporters don’t lose morale in the face of a setback. Here are ten tips I learned in my years of fundraising for advocacy organizations about how to talk to donors in times of trouble.