The Build Good Fundraising Podcast

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to the first ever BG Live—a live recording of the podcast on Zoom that anyone can join. To make sure you're invited to future BG Lives, make sure to sign up for our email newsletter at www.buildgood.com . --- You probably know charity: water to be an admired innovator in the fundraising world.  They do things so wonderfully different.  And they've set the gold st...

Send us Fan Mail On today's podcast, we're revising the best advice and proven practices on how to get more gifts in wills. For many of your donors, the gift they leave in their will might the largest gift they ever make to your charity. Not only that, but research has shown that donors who choose to leave a gift in their will, often times also end up increasing their giving while they&a...

Send us Fan Mail Today we're taking a look back at the best practical advice on monthly giving our guests have shared on the podcast.  From what it takes to build a flagship monthly giving product, to tactical advice on upgrading monthly gifts, to how to resource a strong monthly giving program—we're revisiting "can't miss" content that'll help you build your monthly...

Send us Fan Mail Here’s a common pain point for many nonprofit CEOs and fundraising leaders: we’re spending too much time on the operations of the shop, and not enough time connecting with donors. There is a way to reclaim some of that time. But it’s not sexy. It’s not glamorous. It’s kind of a pain to implement at first. It’s for sure never a priority. But it will—in the long term—make your life...

Send us Fan Mail Do you shy away from building custom online experiences and automations because you think you need to hire a developer or know how to code? The good news is there are more and more completely no-code solutions available to nonprofits to actually build custom workflows and improve the donor experience.  You don’t need to be a developer in order to build something that will improve...

Send us Fan Mail You’ve often heard us talk on this podcast about getting closer to your donors and leading them toward making their best gift for your organization—a gift that is meaningful to them and increases their own sense of wellbeing. But how do you move beyond fundraising communications to building personal, 1:1 relationships? On today’s show, we’re talking to Michael Dixon from Responsiv...

Send us Fan Mail There’s no way around it: our world is a mess. Giving has levelled off after a season of overwhelming generosity. We’re facing record inflation. The housing market is unpredictable. The stock market is a mess. Supply chains are broken.  Society seems to be more polarized than ever before. And the ongoing war in Ukraine is ever-present in the public consciousness.  Regardless of ho...

Send us Fan Mail For many of us who grew up with the internet, email marketing seems like a fairly established medium.  But compared to most other forms of marketing and fundraising, email is still a relatively new format.  And it continues to change. So for today’s episode, we sat down with a fellow Canadian fundraising agency founder to look back at the last decade of sending emails for charitie...

Send us Fan Mail What does a person get when they make a gift to charity?  Most of the time, they’re not buying a product or service. They’re buying a story about the kind of person they are. And what they get in return is the way you treat them…and communicate with them…and update them.   So, isn’t it our duty to put a lot of thought and care into our donor communications?  Don’t we owe it to our...

Send us Fan Mail If you’re a regular listener of this podcast, you know intuitively that the donor experience is more important than just getting the gift.  Because a great experience leads to greater commitment, and loyalty and satisfaction…and yes, money in the long term.  But before you can improve the donor experience—and increase supporter satisfaction—you need to know how to measure it in th...

Send us Fan Mail Have you ever walked into a meeting with a prospective funder feeling nervous?  Maybe you weren't sure how to lead the conversation. Maybe you felt a power imbalance. Or maybe you felt like you were there to beg for money, rather than being there as an equal partner or peer. If you've been there, today's episode is for you. Meet Mallory Erickson. Her mission is to h...

Send us Fan Mail Have you heard of philanthropic psychology….or phil psych for short?  It’s the science behind fundraising that first and foremost cares about stewarding the love that is at the core of philanthropy.  So instead of being focused on growing revenue from your donors, it’s focused on growing your donors' human capacity to love others—as well as themselves.  And when you help peop...

Send us Fan Mail How important is your organization's brand when it comes to the success of your fundraising? How about your culture?  Today’s guests have a strong point of view: they’re out to prove that how a nonprofit brand operates on the inside is more important than how it looks on the outside.  Mark Miller and Ted Vaughn have led nearly 100 rebrands for purpose-driven organizations wit...

Send us Fan Mail Have you ever run a phonathon?  They're a tried-and-true way of engaging donors and raising money, especially for higher education institutions. However, running a successful phonathon in-house is no easy task. That's why on this weeks' show, we're talking to an OG phonathon strategist, Clinton Crow from LEAD Philanthropy.  Clinton signed up to make phone calls...

Send us Fan Mail Would you like to acquire,  keep and upgrade new donors online? And do it all using marketing automation?  It's possible—by building a digital fundraising factory. And it's not as complicated as you might think. Today on the show, we're talking to Dutch fundraising expert Ewald Verhoog on how to build a digital revenue engine from the ground up.  Ewald is the author...

Send us Fan Mail Is your nonprofit profitable? Do you plan to run a surplus every year? When you cost out projects for funders or donors, do you include a profit margin? If that sounds like something you would like to do, but struggle to do, today's episode is for you. Because we’re not talking about generating more revenue—we’re talking about how to keep more of your revenue, using Profit Fi...

Send us Fan Mail Monthly donors...we all want more of them! Today we're going to hear how Greenpeace Canada uses a simple email strategy to grow monthly giving. And the good news is: you can do this, too! Greenpeace Canada focuses on using open and honest emails as a core strategy to ask people who have signed petitions to consider becoming a monthly donor. And in just two years, they've...

Send us Fan Mail Your offer is the single most important thing that makes a difference in your fundraising. It's how you move donors toward greater generosity and inspire them to give.  But not all fundraising offers are created equal. Many fundraisers struggle to create compelling offers for their causes because they don’t provide urgent and tangible services like food and water and medical...

Send us Fan Mail On the eve of the new year 2022, there’s no mistaking that the world has changed—and that includes fundraising.  The role of charity and public society has certainly changed, but so have the expectations of donors.  Today, we invite a few smart fundraisers to share their prediction about what will matter most in fundraising in 2022.  Today we will be joined by: [02:41] - Dan Sonne...

Send us Fan Mail Few nonprofits are using the phone to talk to their donors and raise funds. It might seem old school. It takes time, and it can feel awkward to call somebody up on the phone and ask for their support.  But phone fundraising can be a very effective tool to not only raise funds, but also deepen your connection with your donors. And get to know them for who they are. Today is a maste...

Send us Fan Mail Good fundraisers know that stories work better than statistics, that characters work better than calculations and that whoever tells the best story wins.  Still, we sometimes neglect the donor's personal story...the story they are writing with their life. And if we start to understand that story, and those characters, it might lead to transformation gifts.  But how do you adv...

Send us Fan Mail LinkedIn is a powerful tool for staying up to date on career opportunities, but it can also make you more valuable as a fundraiser and nonprofit leader by building your personal brand.  If you're on LinkedIn and you're not very active, you don't know what to post, or you're not sure it's even worth your time, this episode is for you. Today, we are talking...

Send us Fan Mail Gift catalogues can be a great way to meaningfully engage your donors in the work you do—and they can raise a lot of money. But how do you create one?  How do you optimize it? How do you develop the offers and the price points? How do you choose which gifts to feature more heavily than others? How do you put it all together?  There's an art and a science to it all, and today...

Send us Fan Mail On this podcast, we often focus on improving the craft of fundraising. But we rarely talk about the mindset is takes to be a fundraiser—and be proud of it. The truth is, most of us likely started out as reluctant fundraisers. We  "fell into" the job, and learned to love it along the way. And while there is plenty of training out there to learn best practice fundraising,...

Send us Fan Mail If you are struggling to use social media—particularly Facebook—to drive revenue and contribute to your fundraising, today's episode is for you. We are talking to Julia Campbell, the author of Storytelling in the Digital Age: A Guide for Nonprofits .  Julia runs a digital marketing consulting business, where she helps nonprofits stop spinning their wheels on social media and...