Three Things That Would Actually Move the Needle This Year
Today’s Fundraising Friday comes from my colleague Caitlin Padanyi, who leads Member Success at The Fundraising Academy and spends her days in the trenches with nonprofit teams figuring out what’s actually working.
We recently onboarded a wonderful group of new organizations into the Fundraising Academy. Through those conversations I had with nearly 50 nonprofit leaders a clear pattern emerged. These are small teams doing meaningful work with limited resources. They are filled with passion and ideas. What they lack is margin.
Every one of them came to the table with a packed calendar: events to put on, grants to write, databases to maintain, social media to keep alive, and somewhere buried in the mix, a nagging awareness that they should probably be having more conversations with their best donors.
What struck me was how similar their situations were. The same strengths kept showing up, and so did the same gaps.
The good news first
The teams I met with have real assets. They have leaders who instinctively pick up the phone to say thank you when a gift comes in. They have staff members who genuinely complement each other’s strengths. They have a deep connection with the important work they do. And they came into the Fundraising Academy with refreshing honesty about where they are, which is the single best predictor of whether they’ll really make the most of their time with us.
But when I looked at what’s actually going to move their fundraising forward this year, three things rose to the top.
1. Protect time for major donor meetings. And be ruthless about it.
This is the single highest-return activity these teams consistently struggle to make happen. And it’s not for a lack of care! In every case, the potential is right there in the donors who’ve been giving faithfully with almost no communication. They have tours and events that bring generous people through the door. There’s an executive director with strong relationship instincts. But the donor meetings keep getting bumped when event prep heats up, or a grant deadline lands, or the week just gets away from them.
The shift can be small.
It requires one meeting a week, treated like a standing appointment that doesn’t move. One conversation with someone who already cares about your mission. That’s it. Over a year, that’s fifty conversations you weren’t having before. For a small organization, imagine the impact of fifty conversations! That’s huge.
The hardest part isn’t adding good ideas. It’s making room for them.
2. Build a simple post-event stewardship sequence.
Every organization we talked to has at least one signature event bringing hundreds of new people into their orbit. Now, I want to call out that I’m publicly on record as being down on events. I hate a lot of things about them. At the same time, I know events can be crucial for small nonprofits. Where the opportunity lies for small teams is making a simple plan for what happens after the event.
This can be very basic. You can do it with three touches: a genuine thank-you within 48 hours, a personal follow-up from a staff member within two weeks, and an invitation to experience the mission firsthand within 60 days. Maybe it’s a tour, a classroom visit, a walk through the space. That’s the kind of plan you can write on a sticky note (and I love a sticky note).
The building blocks are already there. Carefully crafted events are filled with compelling ways to show donors the work. The magic comes when you can formalize the pathway from “bought a ticket” to “became a real relationship.”
That gap is where the most valuable people quietly disappear.
3. Cut or contain one thing that’s eating energy without a clear return.
This was the conversation that came up on every single call, and it was always the one that brought the most relief. In each case, we ended up giving the team explicit permission to not do something. Drop the workplace giving initiative, skip the peer-to-peer walk, shelf the program that’s technically nice but isn’t core to the strategy.
Small teams have a particular vulnerability to calendar creep. Something gets added one year and then just… stays. There’s not enough time to evaluate whether it’s still earning its place.
Meanwhile, the truly high-value work like those donor meetings or that follow-up sequence keeps getting squeezed into whatever margin is left.
Every hour freed from a low-return obligation is an hour that could go toward the conversations with major donors. The math is hard to argue with.
A challenge for you this week
The throughline here is focus over volume. If you’re a small team, I already know you’re a group of people who show up and care. That’s something that’s unique, and it’s an important part of what makes you so special and effective.
My challenge to you is to prove that you care… with your calendar.
Will you book one spot in your calendar this week and call a major donor? Start by just saying thank you. Then maybe share a story you’ve heard recently. Let that start the ball rolling.
And will you send me a message when you do so I can cheer you on?
