Once your nonprofit receives a major gift, you should immediately enter the stewardship phase to strengthen and retain that relationship. Start by showing sincere appreciation, recognizing the donor’s impact in a meaningful way, and planning thoughtful, ongoing ways to keep them engaged with your organization’s mission.  

Managing all of these activities can quickly get overwhelming, especially if you have a small team. The good news? Your nonprofit’s fundraising tools can help. With the right approach, you can use your technology to engage major donors, improve relationships, and ultimately increase giving. Here are a few tips to help make the most of your tech stack.

Legacy gifts are among the most impactful contributions your nonprofit can receive. Most donor pyramid models put planned gifts at or near the top, even above major contributions from repeat donors. Plus, bequests (the most common type of legacy gift) make up nearly 10% of the entire charitable giving landscape and are growing in their combined value, according to Giving USA 2024.  

If your organization doesn’t have a solid strategy for soliciting and managing planned gifts, now is the time to create one! One of the keys to a successful legacy giving program is building strong donor relationships. Stewardship is especially important with planned gift donors, since their pledge and actual gift can be years apart. 

In this guide, we’ll walk through four strategies for showing gratitude to legacy donors and retaining their lifelong support. Let’s dive in!

Every major gift officer understands the pressure to close big gifts. When it comes to securing these contributions, the key to long-term success isn’t moving faster; it’s slowing down and building genuine, lasting relationships. 

Major donors often seek a deep connection with the causes they support. Cultivating these relationships requires a thoughtful, individualized approach. It takes time, patience, and consistency, but the payoff is well worth it! 

Strong relationships with major donors lead to greater lifetime giving, increased donor retention, and more meaningful impact. Let’s explore proven strategies to help you develop lasting partnerships with these supporters, from the first gift to long-term stewardship.

The surrounding community provides nearly limitless opportunities for nonprofits to grow and expand their reach. Community outreach is a key strategy for acquiring donors and developing strong relationships with your organization.  

As your nonprofit explores new ways to improve outreach, it’s important to consider strategic partnerships, which can significantly enhance these efforts, providing additional resources, visibility, and support. In this guide, we’ll explore how to build and strengthen community partnerships to advance your fundraising goals.

Donor stewardship goes beyond securing a one-time gift; it’s about building donor relationships, deepening their loyalty, and encouraging recurring support. Strong donor relationships mean your nonprofit has a steady base of support, making it easier to grow and withstand market fluctuations that can interrupt strategic plans.  

A Donor Stewardship Matrix is an effective tool for prioritizing and personalizing engagement with donors, ensuring that your organization builds meaningful relationships and maximizes donor retention. It categorizes donors based on two key dimensions: 

1. Level of Giving (e.g., major gifts, mid-level gifts, recurring gifts, one-time gifts)
2. Engagement Level (e.g., active involvement, event participation, responsiveness to communications).

Each donor falls into a quadrant or segment, allowing you to tailor strategies based on their behavior and contributions. This guide explores how your nonprofit can create a donor stewardship matrix in five steps and how it can help you attract more gifts. 

Storytelling is a powerful tool for any nonprofit's communication strategy. The stories we tell resonate, build connections, and inspire action. 

Beyond telling stories about your cause or beneficiaries, there's a goldmine of potential in sharing the stories of your donors. These narratives not only showcase the impact of their contributions but also inspire others to get involved as donors.

In this blog post, we'll explore how you can effectively capture and use donor stories to enhance your nonprofit’s marketing and communication efforts. Consider this your quick guide to making the most of the stories your donors have to tell.

Once your nonprofit receives a major gift, it’s your job to maintain that relationship by showing appreciation and communicating the donor’s impact. You might steward major donors by sending program updates, inviting them to VIP events, and publicly recognizing their support. All of these efforts are effective, but you can make them even more impactful by incorporating storytelling. 

Telling stories is vital to successful nonprofit communications, even in the stewardship phase. Use these strategies to fine-tune your approach and improve major donor relationships through the power of storytelling.

Your nonprofit likely tells plenty of impact stories — on your website, in conversations with major donors, through program impact reports, and during your donor acquisition and volunteer recruitment efforts. Demonstrating your organization’s impact through storytelling is a powerful way to engage your stakeholders and prove the value of your work.

But for your stories to inspire real action from your audience, they must be grounded in data. In this article, we’ll explore a few steps you can take to infuse data into your stories, helping you earn more support for your cause, steward donors, and improve relationships with funders.

Attending the Nonprofit Innovation and Optimization (NIO) Summit last month was an unforgettable experience! 

The energy was electric, and the opportunity to connect with other nonprofit leaders was invaluable. The summit spared no detail with an incredible Indiana Jones-themed production titled "Generosity Jones and the Holy Grail of Fundraising"—a fun and memorable touch.

And very fitting - don’t you feel like fundraising is always an adventure of its own?

While the summit was packed with insights, one message stood out: optimizing the donor journey is critical, especially as we approach year-end fundraising. Read on to discover a breakdown of some of the things we learned and simple steps you can take to maximize your year-end success.

Major campaigns, like capital or comprehensive campaigns, are no small feat. Before you can successfully engage your community and guide your organization to new fundraising heights, you must ensure your stakeholders are ready for such a monumental undertaking. 

That’s where feasibility studies, also known as campaign planning studies, come into play. In this guide, we’ll walk through five fundamental steps your nonprofit must take to plan and carry out a successful feasibility study.