The Build Good Fundraising Podcast

Send us Fan Mail In today’s pod we sat down with Dr. Margaret Faulkner, Senior Marketing Scientist at the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science to talk about how nonprofits really grow. The Institute is famous for its evidence-based approach to marketing and the groundbreaking book How Brands Grow . Dr. Faulkner brings decades of research from blue-chip commercial brands to the nonprofit...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode we sit down with Mike Todd from Transform Philanthropy to demystify Donor Advised Funds (DAFs).  While often misunderstood or overlooked, DAFs are the fastest-growing giving vehicle and can serve as a recession-resistant revenue stream for your organization. Because DAF money is "pre-funded" by donors who have already received their tax receipts, asking f...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode we sit down with Scott Billows , founder and CEO of Belmar , to walk through a practical, step-by-step framework for evaluating and implementing a new CRM. You’re going to learn how to build a priority "this is what I need" list, gain internal alignment, and navigate vendor selection—including why you might want to skip the traditional RFP process in favo...

Send us Fan Mail The donor pyramid is collapsing. Individual giving is shrinking. And yet, total philanthropic revenue is still growing—just from fewer and fewer people. In this episode, we sit down with Anton Lipkanou, President of Delve Deeper, to unpack what’s really happening beneath the surface of donor data, and how fundraisers can respond. Together we explore: Why donor files are aging fast...

Send us Fan Mail Giving Tuesday isn’t just one day on the calendar— it’s a chance to build a core pillar of a larger year-end campaign.   In this episode, we sit down with Rapinder Dhinsa from Make-A-Wish Canada to learn how she turned Giving Tuesday into a powerful, multi-year growth engine. Rapinder shares how her team built a campaign that got stronger every year — layering in new channels, int...

Send us Fan Mail Imagine building a huge organization on the back of “$5.38 buys a meal for a neighbour experiencing homelessness”, when a meal is just the doorway, not the destination. It’s a situation many nonprofits find themselves in. Their programming has changed and evolved, but their core value proposition and fundraising offers haven’t—because they are tried, trued, tested and proven. In t...

Send us Fan Mail Think asking for money is scary? Michael Mitchell has been there, done that, and sweated through enough awkward asks to keep the deodorant industry in business for a lifetime.  After two decades of nervously asking for everything from $90 to $9 million, he's discovered something unexpected: asking can actually be kind of amazing. Yes, asking someone for money feels about as n...

Send us Fan Mail Fundraising appeals are packed with bad habits that refuse to die—bolded words, underlined sentences, multiple hard asks, and financial symbols littered throughout. The data is clear: none of this is actually helping. So what does? This practical, no-fluff session recorded live at the Build Good Summit will strip away ineffective tactics and replace them with a proven, behavioral...

Send us Fan Mail Monthly giving has been the buzzword of the nonprofit industry for the past few years. But most conversations about recurring giving lack substantial data and evidence about what really works to increase recurring revenue.  While it can be inspiring to see examples from complex organizations that are seemingly "doing it right", growing your recurring giving program often...

Send us Fan Mail When emergencies happen, donors respond. But too often, that generosity fades just as quickly as it arrives.  While acquiring new donors is important, how can we better cultivate and steward those who have already given?  How do we bridge the gap between crisis-driven giving and long-term donor commitment?  And how do we engage supporters in a way that reflects the evolving expect...

Send us Fan Mail Imagine the impact you could make if your organization had predictable, repeatable, and scalable revenue?  In this session recorded live at the Build Good Summit, UNICEF Canada will share how they created and scaled Paddington’s Postcards, an innovative monthly giving subscription that sends postcards from all around the world to Canadian families making a monthly gift, while teac...

Send us Fan Mail In this short session with the Canadian Cancer Society and FundraiseUp, you’ll hear why people are less forgiving of nonprofits than they are consumer brands when they're letting go of their hard earned money.  The nonprofit sector as a whole remains years, if not decades, behind ecommerce in their efforts to remove friction from the transaction. But new data shows that it&ap...

Send us Fan Mail This fast-paced excerpt from a workshop at the Build Good Summit dives into journey mapping as a powerful strategy to cultivate donor relationships and build a supporter-centric organization.  Designed for forward-thinking leaders in social impact, the session offers hands-on insights into using journey mapping to create a seamless, tech-enabled approach to engaging donors, advoca...

Send us Fan Mail Most fundraisers ask: Who do I send this appeal to?  But the better question is, What appeal do I send to this person? We all recognize people are different—yet fundraising relies on a one-size-fits-all approach. Traditional segmentation—internal labels, past giving, or vague attitudinal groupings—fails to capture what truly drives a donor to give. And it’s not as simple as testin...

Send us Fan Mail Fundraising is at a crossroads. Donor trust is eroding, retention rates are plummeting, and yet, charities continue to rely on the same high-volume, bottom-of-the-funnel tactics—more asks, more urgency, more chasing. But what if the solution isn’t asking more, but becoming something donors want to say yes to? On today’s episode, we listen in to a recorded session from the Build Go...

Send us Fan Mail The way we’ve been doing fundraising events might be all wrong.  We often focus so much on what happens at the event that we miss the bigger picture: what happens before and after matters just as much—if not more. In this episode, we explore how to use the fundraising flywheel to make your events work harder for you and leave less money (and momentum) on the table. We get into: Wh...

Send us Fan Mail After longing for the kind of event we wanted to attend, we decided to create it ourselves. Today, Hannah and Mike walk through why we’re launching The Build Good Summit , an in-person fundraising summit in downtown Toronto happening May 22-23, 2025.  The lack of world-class fundraising conferences in Canada has left fundraisers with two choices: spend thousands of dollars to atte...

Send us Fan Mail Today we're celebrating our 100th episode! Come sit down for a fireside chat (complete with Diet Coke) to share the honest story of how this podcast started, where it's headed, and what that means for BuildGood—and for you. Mike gets real about why the original podcast strategy was completely wrong—and why that might’ve been the best thing that could’ve happened.  In tod...

Send us Fan Mail Today we’re launching the Build Good Summit, and introducing the first speaker—Nathan Hill from NextAfter. Nathan and the NextAfter team recently analyzed how the fundraising of 211 nonprofits impacts donor retention. And in today’s chat, he’s sharing 3 key things you can do to retain more donors—backed by research and actual donor data. If you want to get fresh ideas to grow your...

Send us Fan Mail Today, BuildGood’s resident fundraising copywriter delivers a masterclass in how to craft fundraising copy that leads people toward greater generosity.  Hannah Vermeer gets into simple, easy and effective ways you can change the words you use in your fundraising—and changing the words you use is free. It costs you nothing.   Whether it’s making your donor feel like they have an im...

Send us Fan Mail If you’re tired of riding the revenue rollercoaster—where your nonprofit’s cash flow is always dependent on a few key fundraising campaigns during the year— your big opportunity is building a strong monthly giving program Growing recurring giving not only smoothes out your cash flow year round, it also increases the lifetime giving of your donors. And it’s a direct pipeline to mid...

Send us Fan Mail “Always be testing”. That’s popular fundraising advice.  After all, the only way to get new insights to grow your fundraising is to try new stuff, test, iterate and optimize.   But how do you decide what to test? How do you set up a proper A/B test?  And how do you make sure you learn something meaningful from it?  That’s what we get into in today's chat with Ronen Tal, the D...

Send us Fan Mail Social media isn’t working for most nonprofits. If you’re watching your engagement drop while spending hours on content creation, you're likely about ready to give up on social media for good. And no one would blame you. That’s why we’re continuing our series on new donor acquisition by talking about these challenges head-on. We’re talking to Brynne Krispin from Cause Fokus a...

Send us Fan Mail In our ongoing series on new donor acquisition, we’re talking to one of Canada’s most sought after advertising specialists about how to use Google ads to boost your fundraising.  Kevin Harwood manages more than $10m in ad spend for nonprofits across North America, and is at the forefront of what is working…and isn’t.  On today’s show, we get into:  How to think about online advert...

Send us Fan Mail We’re continuing our series on new donor acquisition—and today we’re getting into the basics of how you can use the Google Ad Grant to attract potential donors through digital content offers. The truth is, most nonprofits aren’t taking full advantage of the Google Ad Grant because they don’t know it works, or because they don’t have a clear strategy on how to use it.  In today’s c...