Who is this site for?
ADVANCE YOUR FUNDRAISING SKILLS.
YOU can be an excellent fundraiser!
This site is for anyone with a passion for a cause. As you’ve progressed through your fundraising career, you’ve learned new techniques to reach donors and take advantage of different channels. You will develop deeper fundraising and marketing skills here.
I’ve created this site to teach you the art and science of fundraising. Articles and training videos are categorized and rated by level of experience, beginner, intermediate, and advanced. No matter your starting point, you will be able to learn how to be an excellent fundraiser.
Natural born fundraiser is a myth. You can learn a deeper knowledge of fundraising and raise millions of dollars for your favorite cause. I want to show you how.
What skills will you improve?
THE ART AND SCIENCE OF FUNDRAISING.
Fundraising is similar to other industries: there are specific skills you will learn to become a great fundraiser.
From understanding the motivations to why people give to writing fundraising copy that converts, as someone new to fundraising, you’ll need to understand the psychology of the donor and how to present your fundraising campaign. You’ll also need technical skills for managing a donor database, analyzing results, and creating tests to optimize performance.
You will learn how direct mail differs from digital, how to perform direct mail donor acquisition programs and how we’ve adapted those acquisition programs online.
Using the foundation of your existing fundraising skills and knowledge, you will learn how to write better appeals, developer deeper donor relationships, take advantage of cutting edge fundraising techniques, and produce a world class marketing and fundraising program at your nonprofit.
What should I read first?
LEARN MORE ABOUT FUNDRAISING.
Articles for Increasing Fundraising Knowledge
5 Ways to Build Loyalty with Your Donors
Much of the fundraising material written today is about acquiring new donors, yet building loyalty with your existing donors and getting that second gift is finding its way to the top of the nonprofit list of strategies. Smart organizations are aggressively courting first time givers to engage for multiple gifts. Many organizations are now focusing on
8 Steps to a Timely Disaster Fundraising Response
It can be very frustrating not being able to get out a timely appeal. I remember a specific incident where we were sitting five days after a disaster, and we had not yet sent out our email appeal. At that time I made a decision that that wasn't going to happen again, that we weren't
Episode 012 – What is Retargeting?
Retargeting, also known as remarketing, is a technology to show ads to a warm audience. In this episode, Jeremy discusses what retargeting is, how it works, two different types of retargeting, and how your nonprofit organization can use retargeting to get more supporters and deepen your relationship with existing donors.
Mistakes That Will Sink Your Fundraising Campaign
I've made a lot of mistakes. I've had to learn a lot of hard lessons. Nonprofit fundraising isn't always easy. There are many rules and guidelines that industry pros have learned through expensive testing over decades. When you learn these lessons, some come from your own expensive mistakes, you will learn how to best fundraise
8 Ways to Reactivate Unresponsive Email Addresses
Do you have people on your email list who haven't interacted with your organization in some time? Do you want to learn how you can save these people and reactivate them to continue wanting to receive your emails? Let's explore 8 steps the organization can take to reactivate these people, or decide what to do
Episode 007 – My Executive Director Keeps Editing Out Fundraising Best Practices
Do you have someone who edits out fundraising best practice from your appeals? Someone who doesn't like the urgency, postscripts, hyphens, folksy language, or handwritten notes? Is your fundraising suffering because of it? In episode 7, Jeremy answers a question from Julia about how to handle an Executive Director who doesn't understand fundraising and is undermining her efforts.