The Nonprofit Show

Send us Fan Mail This lively Fundraisers forum delivers real-world guidance on the operational side of fundraising and nonprofit management. Cohosts Julia Patrick and Tony Beall tackle a range of audience-submitted questions that reflect the day-to-day realities facing development professionals and nonprofit leaders. The conversation opens with a thoughtful discussion about who should pay for prof...

Send us Fan Mail In this energizing conversation , Ann Fellman, Chief Marketing Officer at Bloomerang , provides a data-forward look at what donors will expect in 2026—and what that means for the business of fundraising. The conversation opens with a “hopeful reframe” rooted in fresh research: Bloomerang conducted a national survey of 1,000 U.S.-based donors in November 2025, and the findings poin...

Send us Fan Mail Every nonprofit says they want board meetings that are strategic, energizing, and worth everyone’s time. And yet… so many board meetings still feel like a quarterly endurance test: long decks, last-minute prep, and a live meeting that turns into a read-aloud. We visit with Robert Wolfe, CEO and founder of Zeck —to reimagine how boards and leadership teams communicate—because meeti...

Send us Fan Mail The Great Wealth Transfer is already in motion, and Gen X is standing in the receiving line! Wendy F. Adams, CFRE, CEO of Cultivate for Good and longtime friend of the show, brings a leader’s lens and a fundraiser’s candor to a question many nonprofits still avoid: Who inherits donor loyalty, and what are we doing to earn it? She shares a personal story that makes the business cas...

Send us Fan Mail Nonprofit financial leaders are being asked to do more with less, manage rising risk, and still advance mission with confidence. Dr. Stephanie Rose-Belcher, COO of JMT Consulting , provides a forward-looking conversation on FinTech forecasts and what nonprofit executives must be preparing for now. Dr. Rose-Belcher reframes finance as the operational backbone of nonprofit leadershi...

Send us Fan Mail We sit down with  Keith Mestrich, Senior Advisor of Nonprofit and Foundation Partnerships at Crescent Cares, for a great nonprofit business conversation. As nonprofit leaders step into a new year filled with uncertainty and rapid change, Keith offers a clear message: finance isn’t a back-office function to tolerate—it’s one of the strongest tools a nonprofit has to stay steady, ma...

Send us Fan Mail In the nonprofit world, “funding” is often treated like a finish line. But in this conversation, Gloria Dixon—Executive Director and Director of Philanthropy at the BECU Foundation —frames it as something more useful: a long-term business relationship built on trust, clarity, and shared accountability. Gloria begins with BECU’s origin story, rooted in cooperative problem-solving:...

Send us Fan Mail The Great Wealth Transfer is no longer a future talking point—it is unfolding right now, and nonprofit organizations that are not prepared risk watching history pass them by. Cohosts Julia C. Patrick and Tony Beall confront what may be the most consequential financial shift the nonprofit sector will ever face: an estimated $90–$100 trillion moving between generations, with $12–$18...

Send us Fan Mail With the kind of energy that makes you sit up straighter: Tim Sarrantonio, now Chair of the Fundraising Effectiveness Project (FEP), leads a boardroom-level conversation about one of the biggest business threats to nonprofits today: misinformation. Tim pulls back the curtain on what FEP actually is—an ambitious collaboration where major CRM and data partners contribute anonymized...

Send us Fan Mail In 2026, nonprofit finance isn’t just about reporting what happened — it’s about shaping what happens next. Ellie Hume (Regional Director, at Your Part-Time Controller) leasds a forward-facing conversation on financial leadership that starts with one powerful idea: your organization’s strongest advantage is what you choose to control. If your nonprofit is ready to “spiral up,” thi...

Send us Fan Mail Why don’t nonprofit boards do their work — and what can executive leaders actually do about it? In this episode we welcome back executive coach, author, and speaker Hardy Smith, creator of the Amazon bestseller Stop the Nonprofit Board Blame Game. Hardy tackles the question nonprofit leaders lose sleep over: when boards underperform, is the problem really “the board”… or the way w...

Send us Fan Mail Organizational assessments can sound intimidating—like a test, a grade, or a “gotcha.” We sit down with Joan Brown, Chief Operations Officer at Third Sector Company , to reframe assessments as one of the smartest business moves a nonprofit can make—especially during leadership transition. Joan explains that a strong organizational assessment is not about blame. It’s a systematic l...

Send us Fan Mail 2026 is already rewriting the fundraising playbook—and your nonprofit can’t afford to run last year’s plays. In this Fundraisers Friday conversation, Julia C. Patrick and Tony Beall lay out the business realities that will separate thriving organizations from the ones that stall out: AI adoption, the Great Wealth Transfer, next-gen talent shifts, and smart technology investment. F...

Send us Fan Mail Nonprofit work is purpose-driven, but the business reality is relentless: tight budgets, heavy caseloads, public scrutiny, and a pace that rarely fits inside “normal hours.” In this episode we welcome Rahul K. Maharaj, known as “Mr. Trauma Talks,” for a timely conversation about stress, trauma, and what leaders must do to protect the people who power the mission. Rahul opens by re...

Send us Fan Mail What if the biggest thing holding your nonprofit back isn’t budget, bandwidth, or the board… but the size of the goal itself? In this energizing conversation, Julia C. Patrick turns the spotlight inward for a rare public coaching session with Keith Ellis, “The Impossible Success Coach.” Together they tackle a leadership problem every nonprofit executive and development team knows...

Send us Fan Mail We welcome Katie Warnock, CEO and Founder of Staffing Boutique , for a “New Year Trend Forecasting” conversation—focused squarely on what nonprofit leaders must do to operate smarter, steadier, and more sustainably. Katie opens with a morale boost that’s grounded in real numbers: philanthropy is getting culturally “cool,” even as many executive directors and development leaders re...

Send us Fan Mail If your nonprofit is staring at a funding gap in 2026: your money problem may actually be a structure problem. Host Julia C. Patrick welcomes Dr. Sharon Elefant of The Nonprofit Plug to talk about why grants and big gifts don’t “save” organizations when the foundation underneath is shaky—things like weak financial controls, unclear governance, founder-centric operations, burnout,...

Send us Fan Mail how nonprofits set goals that actually move revenue, relationships, and results. They start with the metric many teams avoid because it can be a rude awakening: donor retention. Tony walks through a simple way to calculate it, then connects the number to what leaders feel every day, time and budget pressure. His reminder lands like a CFO truth bomb: “The data doesn’t lie.” If your...

Send us Fan Mail Year-end doesn’t “arrive” in nonprofits so much as it ambushes us. And that’s exactly why this conversation with John Tiso, VP of Revenue and Service Delivery at JMT Consulting, and Buu Lình Tran, SVP of Financial Solutions at JMT Consulting , feels like a shot of espresso for your finance, accounting, and operations leadership. Host Julia C. Patrick frames the real business chall...

Send us Fan Mail Starting a nonprofit is often treated like a simple administrative step: fill out a few forms, wait a bit, and you’re off to the races. But in this episode, Julia C. Patrick and cohost Ellie Hume sit down with Christian LeFer, CEO of Instant Nonprofit , to talk about what it really takes to launch—and sustain—a mission-driven organization with business discipline. Christian shares...

Send us Fan Mail Consistency is not glamorous, but it’s the engine that keeps a nonprofit’s business model running when the calendar flips and the pressure spikes. In this conversation with  Matt Glazer, Founder and CEO of Blue Sky Partners (Austin-based, national reach), we talk about building consistent engagement without burning out your team or betting the whole year on a Q4 miracle. Matt brin...

Send us Fan Mail Founder syndrome gets tossed around like a diagnosis, but this conversation reframes it as a leadership and governance challenge that shows up in real nonprofit operations: decision rights, communication, accountability, and the organization’s ability to scale beyond one person’s willpower. Guest Brittan Stockert (Donorbox) opens by rejecting the blame-heavy tone of the phrase and...

Send us Fan Mail Fundraisers Friday is back, and Julia C. Patrick and Tony Beall (Mr. Nonprofit Consultancy) tackle a topic that quietly runs the business side of fundraising: donor tier levels. If you’ve ever stared at your donor list and wondered, “Where do we start, and how do we keep this manageable?” this episode is your playbook. They begin with the “why.” Tony frames donor tiers as a practi...

Send us Fan Mail Finishing the year “strong” is not just a slogan for nonprofit leaders; it’s a finance and operations project. Regional Director Ellie Hume from Your Part-Time Controller walks through five concrete steps to wrap up the year with fewer surprises and more control. She starts with yearend giving appeals. Too many organizations accidentally lock donations into narrow buckets by sayin...

Send us Fan Mail Around the world, women and girls walk long distances every day to fetch water, losing education, income, and safety in the process. On this global episode of The Nonprofit Show , we welcome Shilpa Alva, founder and executive director of Surge for Water , beaming in late at night from Samarkand, Uzbekistan. From the first moments, Shilpa reframes water as a gendered economic issue...