Nonprofit Answers: Nonprofit Fundraising, Marketing, Monthly Giving

Most fundraising plans are last year's calendar plus hope. In the first episode of A Plan You Can Defend, a three-part series on building next year's fundraising plan, we follow Dana and Joanne at Riverbend Community Food Pantry into their planning day. We start with the numbers: what to gather, how to read last year honestly, and how to set a goal you can explain in one sentence.

In this episode you'll learn:

• Why a small team can build a full year's plan in one working day, but only if the numbers are on the table first.
• The four things to request before your planning day (gift-level giving export, finance's revenue report, channel costs, and hours), and why gathering them usually takes one to two weeks.
• Why you reconcile last year's total with finance before you plan anything.
• The guessing exercise that shows the gap between what your team remembers and what actually happened.
• Net per hour: why a gala and an email appeal can look very different once you count costs and staff hours.
• How to read donors by lifecycle and gift level, and what one point of retention is worth to you.
• Why the goal starts with your organization's strategy, and how to build it top-down and bottom-up.
• How to set a floor, a target, and a stretch, and the one-sentence test every goal has to pass.
• This week's action item and homework: send the data request, and do the guessing exercise before you look at the real numbers.

Riverbend Community Food Pantry, Dana, Joanne, and all of Riverbend's numbers are fictional and illustrative.

Ready to build next year's plan? Your 12-Month Fundraising Plan in One Day walks you through it step by step: nine modules and about three hours of video, built for executive directors and development teams of one to three people. You get the Planning Day Kit (data checklist, request emails, one-day agenda, team exercise guides, and a printable wall calendar), the Planning Workbook spreadsheet in a blank version and as Riverbend's filled-in example, the One-Page Board Plan, and the Co-Strategist Prompt Library for using AI without sharing a single donor's name. Lifetime access to the videos and downloads.

Resources mentioned

• Your 12-Month Fundraising Plan in One Day

It's the first Monday in January. The pantry is quiet, and Dana is looking at a printout of about two hundred new donors with two feelings at once: gratitude that they showed up, and a little dread, because she knows how often first-time donors never give again. In this final episode of Finish Strong, we talk about the part of year-end that happens after December 31. Year-end brings new donors in. January decides whether they stay.

In this episode you'll learn how to:

• See why a second gift matters more than a bigger first one, and why keeping a donor costs far less than finding one.
• Thank every donor within 48 hours with a real thank-you, not just a receipt.
• Run a board thank-a-thon in early January, a job every board member can do.
• Build a 90-day welcome series: personal thanks, a story about what their gift did, an invitation to come closer, and then a first ask to become a monthly donor.
• Report back to everyone who gave: the total, the promise kept, and one face.
• Debrief with your team in January and record your real numbers, so next October's plan starts from facts, not guesses.
• Use AI to draft your welcome series while you hand-write notes to your top new donors.

Riverbend Community Food Pantry, and Tanya's story, are fictional, but if you've worked at a small nonprofit, you'll recognize them. Your new donors said yes in December. January is your chance to show them it mattered.

Resources mentioned

• Finish Strong Full Course
• Free 12 Days to Build a Great Year-End Fundraising Plan

It's December 15, a little after four in the afternoon. Dana clicks schedule on the last of her final-week emails and heads out for the holidays. The biggest week of Riverbend's year is about to happen, and the person who planned it won't be in the building. That's exactly the plan. In episode six of Finish Strong, we prepare for the last 72 hours of the year, when a huge share of giving comes in.

In this episode you'll learn how to:

• Understand who gives at the very end: tax-motivated donors, procrastinators, and people who meant to give in November.
• Build a six-email final-week sequence, with four of those emails in the last 72 hours.
• Write and schedule everything by December 15 (December 22 at the latest) so a small team can rest.
• Audit your donation page on a phone: load speed, gift amounts, the monthly option, the receipt, and other ways to give, like donor-advised funds and stock.
• Remember that in the US, a check with a December 31 postmark counts for this tax year.
• Make personal thank-you calls to top donors who haven't given yet.
• Run December 31 well: who's watching, updating the match total, and when to stop sending.
• Use AI as a second set of eyes on your emails and donation page before you schedule.

Riverbend Community Food Pantry is a fictional organization, but if you've worked at a small nonprofit, you'll recognize it. Your donors want to finish their year well, and a clear, easy last week helps them do it.

Resources mentioned

• Finish Strong Full Course
• Free 12 Days to Build a Great Year-End Fundraising Plan

It's the Monday before Thanksgiving, and Dana has eleven emails in her inbox with Giving Tuesday in the subject line. None of them are from donors. In episode five of Finish Strong, we take some pressure off: you don't have to win Giving Tuesday. You have to decide what it's for, and then do that one thing well.

In this episode you'll learn how to:

• See Giving Tuesday honestly. Most of the people who give to you that day already know you.
• Choose one of three ways to play it: go all in with a launch, focus on one narrow goal like new monthly donors, or skip the ask and send gratitude.
• Run a four-touch plan if you're going all in: a preview the week before, a morning launch, an afternoon progress update, and an evening last call.
• Let a few board members carry part of the day with personal texts to friends who trust them.
• Win the day after: thank every donor within 48 hours, report the total honestly, and protect your December 31 giving.
• Use AI to draft board messages that sound like each board member, not like your organization.

Riverbend Community Food Pantry is a fictional organization, but if you've worked at a small nonprofit, you'll recognize it. On a day full of noise, the warmest message your donors get can be yours.

Resources mentioned

• Finish Strong Full Course
• Free 12 Days to Build a Great Year-End Fundraising Plan

Last year, Dana was at her kitchen table at 9:30 on the night of December 18, writing an email that had to go out at eight the next morning. This year she's writing that email in the first week of November, when she's rested and has time to think. In episode four of Finish Strong, we build your email calendar from November 1 through midnight on December 31, so your donors hear from you when they're ready to give.

In this episode you'll learn how to:

• Get past the fear of "too much email." Most organizations email too little, and donors who are ready to give need a reminder.
• Plan four phases: echoing the letter in early November, the Giving Tuesday run-up, December 2 through Christmas, and the final week.
• Write about twenty emails in a few batches instead of one at a time in December.
• Mix five types of email (story, impact update, match countdown, thank-you, and last call) so twenty emails don't feel like twenty asks.
• Stop asking once someone gives, and move them to a thank-you track.
• Write versions for monthly donors and lapsed donors, and keep the real ask for top donors personal.
• Get the mechanics right: send from a real person, keep it plain, use one clear link, and make sure your donation page works on a phone.
• Use AI to draft from your letter and calendar, then edit every line by hand.

Riverbend Community Food Pantry is a fictional organization, but if you've worked at a small nonprofit, you'll recognize it. Every email is a chance to show your donors what their generosity is already doing.

Resources mentioned

• Finish Strong Full Course
• Free 12 Days to Build a Great Year-End Fundraising Plan

Dana's first draft of the year-end letter opened with "Riverbend Community Food Pantry is pleased to share" and a number about pounds of food. It was accurate, and it wasn't going to move anyone sitting at a kitchen table with a stack of mail. In episode three of Finish Strong, we rebuild the letter, the backbone of your whole campaign, around one simple idea: one person, one problem, one gift.

In this episode you'll learn how to:

• Use the shape of a strong appeal: one person, the problem, the donor as the solution, the offer, the deadline, and a P.S. that restates the ask.
• Choose whose story to tell, get written permission, and tell it with dignity instead of pity.
• Write to one donor: more "you," short paragraphs, plain words, and a reply card that matches the letter.
• Turn one letter into four versions for top donors, lapsed donors, monthly donors, and new donors.
• Time it right: in mailboxes before Thanksgiving, then a shorter second letter in early December that announces the match.
• Use AI as your editor, not your author.

Riverbend Community Food Pantry, and Tanya's story, are fictional, but if you've worked at a small nonprofit, you'll recognize them. When your letter is about one person and what your donor can do for her, the donor gets to be the hero.

Resources mentioned

• Finish Strong Full Course
• Free 12 Days to Build a Great Year-End Fundraising Plan

Dana laid last year's year-end letter on Marcus's desk. Across the top it said, "Help us fight hunger in our community." She asked him one question: "If you got this in the mail, how much would you give?" He honestly didn't know. In episode two of Finish Strong, we turn a sincere slogan into a real offer, one your donors can picture, afford, and finish.

In this episode you'll learn how to:

• Build an offer with four parts: a specific need, a price, an outcome, and a deadline. For Riverbend, that's "Keep the shelves full in January. Forty dollars gives a family a week of groceries."
• Create an offer ladder where every gift level is tied to its own outcome, plus a monthly option.
• Start each donor's ask near their last gift, even with a basic donor database.
• Use a simple one-to-one match. Research by Karlan and List found that announcing a match raised giving, and bigger ratios did no better than one-to-one.
• Find a match from your board, a top donor, or a local business, and hear what that ask meeting actually sounds like.
• Run your match honestly: launch it on Giving Tuesday, be clear about the terms, and never fake one.
• Use AI to brainstorm offer lines, then pick the one a donor could repeat to a friend.

Riverbend Community Food Pantry is a fictional organization, but if you've worked at a small nonprofit, you'll recognize it. When you give donors a job they can finish, you let them be the hero of the story.

Resources mentioned

• Finish Strong Full Course
• Free 12 Days to Build a Great Year-End Fundraising Plan

It's the first week of October, and Dana at Riverbend Community Food Pantry has last year's $210,000 total on one side of her screen and a blank year-end calendar on the other. In this first episode of Finish Strong, a seven-part series on your year-end campaign, we help her answer the question every executive director asks: "What's our number this year?"

Your year-end goal is a math problem before it's a writing problem. In this episode you'll learn how to:

• Break last year's October–December giving into donor segments and find three numbers for each: how many, what share gave, and how much.
• Build a goal from the ground up (donors × response rate × average gift) so you can show your board where every dollar comes from.
• Find the money already in your file: lapsed donors who said yes once, and monthly donors who are glad to be invited into something important.
• Test your plan against your real capacity using three anchor dates: the letter in mailboxes by mid-November, Giving Tuesday on December 1, and the final days of December.
• Use AI to do the segment math and stress-test your goal, with donor contact information removed first.

Riverbend is a fictional organization, but if you've worked at a small nonprofit, you'll recognize it. Your donors are ready to be generous this season. A clear plan helps you give them the chance.

Resources mentioned

• Finish Strong Full Course
• Free 12 Days to Build a Great Year-End Fundraising Plan

This is the last episode of the series, and I didn’t want to end it with another list of tools or twenty predictions about where AI is headed. Half of those predictions would look silly in three years anyway.

So I’m ending with something simpler. AI is going to keep changing. Your mission shouldn’t.

I’ve tried to argue two things at the same time throughout this series. Nonprofits should use AI. The gains are real, and ignoring them doesn’t make you more human. It may just make you unnecessarily busy. But efficiency isn’t the mission. If AI gives you four hours back and those hours disappear into more email, we missed the point. If you spend them with donors and with the people you serve, now the technology is doing its job. That’s what “work smarter, serve more” means. Not produce more. Serve more.

In this episode I bring it all together around a few commitments. Stay curious without getting captured by every new tool. Protect the practices that form you, the writing, the thinking, the hard conversations, and for faith-based leaders, the prayer and discernment that keep you grounded. Lead your culture and not just the software decision, because banning AI in theory while everyone quietly uses it in practice is the worst of both worlds. And stay rooted in what doesn’t change: the person who showed up, who listened, who cared.

I also have a word for those of you who came into this series skeptical. Some of that skepticism is healthy. The alternative to reckless adoption isn’t no adoption. It’s intentional adoption.

Your final homework: finish the framework you started in Episode 11, put it in front of your leadership team or board, and then go use the tools. Call the donor. Visit the program.

Part of the AI for Nonprofits series. Download the free companion workbook at https://nonprofitfundraising.com/ai 

If you're ready to put this into practice with your team, I built a course for exactly that: Build Your AI Fundraising Assistant. It walks you through building one shared AI assistant that knows your voice, your approved numbers, and your real stories, with a person in the loop on every draft. It's made for small development teams, so the time you save can go back to your donors.

The title of this episode says “policy,” because that’s what most people call it. But I don’t think most nonprofits should start with a policy. AI changes too fast. A list of approved tools and banned uses can be out of date almost as soon as you finish writing it. What you need is a framework, something that gives your staff principles they can apply when they run into a situation nobody anticipated.

In this episode we build that framework together. We start with an audit of what your team is already doing with AI, and I’ll tell you how to run it so it doesn’t feel like a sting operation. Then we write a two or three sentence principles statement and pick three to five commitments: how AI touches your relationships, your data, your public content, the truth of your stories, and the decisions you make about people. You’ll notice none of them name ChatGPT or Claude or any other tool. Tools change. Principles last longer.

I also spend some time on a phrase almost every AI policy includes: “AI-generated work must be reviewed by a human.” Glancing at a fundraising letter for twenty seconds and hitting send technically counts. That’s not the standard. The standard is ownership. Who is willing to put their name on it?

I walk through what a complete framework looks like for an eight-person nonprofit. It fits on one page. I also share a sample public statement you can adapt for donors and partners, plus why you need one person, not a committee, who owns all of it.

Your homework is version one of your framework. Four pieces. Then show it to someone on your team and ask, “Where would this fail in real life?”

Part of the AI for Nonprofits series. Download the free companion workbook at https://nonprofitfundraising.com/ai 

If you're ready to put this into practice with your team, I built a course for exactly that: Build Your AI Fundraising Assistant. It walks you through building one shared AI assistant that knows your voice, your approved numbers, and your real stories, with a person in the loop on every draft. It's made for small development teams, so the time you save can go back to your donors.