The Build Good Fundraising Podcast

Send us Fan Mail Did you know monthly donors are six times more likely to become legacy donors? They are the most committed and loyal to your organization. They're in the habit of giving to you every single month. And many have been with you for years. Yet, most nonprofits don't really consider monthly donors in their legacy marketing. That's why today's guest is going to show...

Send us Fan Mail Have you ever wished you could read your donors’ minds?   Today's podcast is going to give you a three-step framework you can use to gain some insight into your donors' preference and giving behaviour. We're talking to Cherian Koshy, Director of Development for the De Moines Performing Arts.  Cherian is the world's only certified mind genomics advisor in the no...

Send us Fan Mail Acquiring new donors is hard—and expensive. It's also necessary.  But are you missing out on your best source of donor acquisition? It's lapsed donors.  It’s easy to forget about them, but that would be a tragic thing to do. Because you’ll be ignoring people who have proven that they care about the issue your nonprofit is trying to solve in the world. And because you&apo...

Send us Fan Mail You've heard it on this podcast. You've heard it at conferences, in books, and from consultants and other fundraisers: You should be using your data to make better decisions about your fundraising.   And you've likely tracked the data like retention rates, average gift, and lifetime value. But now you're looking at some numbers asking, “What do they mean and wh...

Send us Fan Mail You already know that growing your monthly giving program, mid-level donor program, and legacy giving program are among the most lucrative fundraising activities your nonprofit can pursue.  And chances are, you're already working on building all of them—but you're wondering if could be doing better. So if you already have a monthly giving program in place, today's s...

Send us Fan Mail For many donors, the largest gift they will ever make to charity is the one they leave in their will. Carrying on their legacy and keeping alive the values that were important to your donors in their lifetime is a tremendous responsibility.  It's also a tremendous opportunity for you to increase your organization's impact in the world.  Most donors only include charities...

Send us Fan Mail One of the biggest challenges in growing a nonprofit is donor acquisition and donor retention.  Acquiring new donors  is hard work. And it can be expensive in the short term, especially if you consider that the first-time gift most donors make won't cover the cost of acquisition.  What that means for your fundraising is that you have to have a donor retention strategy in plac...

Send us Fan Mail How would you like to have over 25% of your revenue come in automatically, on repeat, month after month, in a stable and predictable manner? Today's guest is going to show you how to do it. Harvey McKinnon is the master of monthly giving. He's helped thousands of organizations raise billions of dollars in monthly gifts by starting and growing lucrative monthly giving pro...

Send us Fan Mail What compels donors to say yes? That’s the question most nonprofit fundraisers and marketers are trying to find answers for. Because understanding how people make decisions is a key part in making our fundraising more effective. We've talked about how behavioural economics can help your fundraising on this podcast before, but many of you said this was a topic you wanted to kn...

Send us Fan Mail We  all struggle with productivity. There are so many distractions and interruptions that kill our productivity — emails, Slack messages, calendar notifications, text and social media alerts. And it seems like the more successful our nonprofit and career becomes, the harder it is to get things done.  Today on the podcast, we're talking to Rachel Bearbower who thinks about pro...

Send us Fan Mail Do you know how many of the people that visit the donation page on your website actually end up making a gift?  If you're like most nonprofits, the answer may shock you. The industry average conversion rate on donation pages is as low 4%. That means we are failing 96% of potential donors who visit our donation page. It also means we're losing valuable donors who might ot...

Send us Fan Mail Today's guest was fundamental in shifting my thinking about fundraising after I read his book, Emotionraising , a few years ago.  The book used evidence and research from neuroscience, behavioural economics, marketing and fundraising to understand how people go from simply being aware of a cause to actually taking action by donating or volunteering. It validated much of what...

Send us Fan Mail Building a successful nonprofit is about relationships. The people we hire on our team, and the volunteers we work with, are not cogs in a wheel. They are human beings who bring their humanity to work: their dreams,  passions, insecurities, fears, and concerns. If we want to build a fundraising engine to sustain our mission, we need to start by building a healthy team, including a...

Send us Fan Mail Email fundraising is one of the easiest ways you can build a deep and lasting relationship with your donors. And it remains one of the most cost-effective tools you can use to increase donor loyalty and revenue. But most organizations struggle to acquire email addresses from donors or potential donors. And many don't have a clear strategy on how to turn leads into donors.  On...

Send us Fan Mail Do you have a fundraising plan for 2021? Do you have a roadmap for how you will fund your mission during the next 12 months — and beyond? The simple act of developing a fundraising and development plan will already make you more likely to succeed, according to a new study co-authored by today's guest. But beyond just having plan, there are 4 main factors that influence just h...

Send us Fan Mail In the last podcast of the year, we take a look at 3 things nonprofit leaders should do more of in the New Year to grow the value of their donor file. They don’t require you to completely change the way you do things. In most cases, they simply require you to prioritize your time and resources in a slightly different way.  You might be weary and worn out from this year. Some of yo...

Send us Fan Mail On a special Christmas edition of the podcast, we are getting a behind the scenes look at how an independent artist raises funds to support their mission.  Today we’re talking with Steve Bell. Steve is a singer-songwriter, author, and speaker. He has been sharing his music and message for almost 30 years across Canada, the US and beyond.  Steve has a two-sided business model. He t...

Send us Fan Mail A lot of direct response fundraising advice focuses on creating effective strategies, messages and donor journeys — but we rarely talk about the design of our fundraising. In fact, many organizations outsource the design of their fundraising to graphic designers who know a lot about how to make things look pretty, but know nothing about fundraising or how donors make decisions. Th...

Send us Fan Mail If you are serious about growing your fundraising and building  meaningful and lasting relationships with your donors, then you have to start by understanding who your donors are — truly are.  What motivates them? What values are important to them? How do they see themselves in the world?  Discovering your donors' identity — and then creating donor journeys and communications...

Send us Fan Mail Every day the human brain makes tens of thousands of decisions — most of them quickly and effectively, but not always rationally. And that can have a big impact on your fundraising. Today, we’ll learn from Dana K. Segal how donors make decisions, and how the science behind behavioural economics can be applied to improve your fundraising. Dana is a senior partner consultant at the...

Send us Fan Mail Multi-channel fundraising — the concept that we should cultivate donors across as many channels as we can — gets talked about a lot. And for good reason. The data shows that multi-channel giving is the best way to grow and maintain revenue. But high-quality multi-channel communication is hard to do. So what exactly are nonprofits doing in their marketing to truly be multi-channel...

Send us Fan Mail We are witnessing the greatest transfer of wealth in human history. Is your nonprofit benefiting from it? If you don't have a strong planned giving program integrated into everything you do, chances are you're leaving money on the table. You're not serving your donors well. And you're vulnerable to economic downturns and unexpected changes in revenue. But it do...

Send us Fan Mail We live in the golden age of fundraising.  With so much software, technology and tools at our disposal, it's never been easier to capture the attention of donors, reach new audiences and generate revenue. And yet, fundraising performance as a whole remains largely stagnant.  Can relying too much on technology actually hinder our ability to make meaningful and personal connect...

Send us Fan Mail Over the last few months it’s become clear to many nonprofits that monthly donors are the heroes we need, but don’t deserve.  During COVID, most revenue streams have been shaky and unpredictable. But what seems to have remained very stable is monthly giving. And that has caused a renewed interest in acquiring, retaining and upgrading monthly donors. The problem is, most monthly gi...

Send us Fan Mail 2020 has been a strange year, but one of the positives has been a strong movement towards equity and inclusion in the workplace. For too long, systemic oppression has held back our under-represented colleagues. The good news is many leaders are working through this issue in their own organizations, while also pushing the nonprofit sector to take a leading role when it comes to inc...