7 recession-proof fundraising first principles

Hasta luego. Tot ziens. À bientôt.

The podcast got too big, too quick for these two social sector entrepreneurs and we need some time to regroup.

What’s NOT changing?

The concept of Donor Growth - more AND deeper relationships with more of your donors. We want to be here to support you–intellectually, emotionally, professionally–and will figure out more and better ways to do it. That’s our promise to you.

Why are you stopping the podcast?

You’ll have to listen to find out! As usual, we share with full transparency.

Wait a sec, does this mean you guys are out of a job now?

If only. Fortunately, we’ll continue to steward our thriving businesses. Check out BuildGood and the Annual Fund Toolkit!

What’s next?

You tell us. How could we best serve you? Would you host us for a Donor Growth meetup in your area? 

Thanks so much for being a part of this adventure! We look forward to catching up with you soon.

GET CONNECTED

Follow Louis Diez on LinkedIn 

Follow Mike Duerksen on LinkedIn 

Join the Donor Participation Project here—a community of fundraisers who get together every month to co-create solutions that increase donor participation.

Get access to the 5 Minute Fundraising Fix—a FREE mini course that will help you craft compelling fundraising messages that move donors to action and increase response. 

ABOUT THE HOSTS

Louis Diez advises nonprofits in annual fund development, digital fundraising, and engagement strategies. He's the host of the Donor Participation Project and founder of the Annual Fund Toolkit.

Mike Duerksen hosts the Build Good Fundraising Podcast. He’s the founder and CEO of BuildGood, a fundraising agency that helps nonprofits raise more money from individual donors. 

Everyone wants new donors.

But few organizations are ready to invest in donor acquisition—and more importantly, the work it takes to invest in the relationship with new donors. 

Or are they?

Today we talk about a few different ways organizations are acquiring—and keeping—new donors. 

We get into what’s working, what isn’t, and what we wished worked.

GET CONNECTED

Follow Louis Diez on LinkedIn 

Follow Mike Duerksen on LinkedIn 

Join the Donor Participation Project here—a community of fundraisers who get together every month to co-create solutions that increase donor participation.

Get access to the 5 Minute Fundraising Fix—a FREE mini course that will help you craft compelling fundraising messages that move donors to action and increase response. 

ABOUT THE HOSTS

Louis Diez advises nonprofits in annual fund development, digital fundraising, and engagement strategies. He's the host of the Donor Participation Project and founder of the Annual Fund Toolkit.

Mike Duerksen hosts the Build Good Fundraising Podcast. He’s the founder and CEO of BuildGood, a fundraising agency that helps nonprofits raise more money from individual donors. 

Acquisition… the final frontier.

Everyone thinks they know what acquisition is and seem to be either firmly for or against.

How did some nonprofits get really big through direct mail acquisition?

Now that many nonprofits are losing donors, how should they think about it?

On Part 1, we dive into acquisition tactics—from faith-based organizations to higher education.
If you feel like you need clarity around this topic, this is the right episode for you.

GET CONNECTED

Follow Louis Diez on LinkedIn 

Follow Mike Duerksen on LinkedIn 

Join the Donor Participation Project here—a community of fundraisers who get together every month to co-create solutions that increase donor participation.

Get access to the 5 Minute Fundraising Fix—a FREE mini course that will help you craft compelling fundraising messages that move donors to action and increase response. 

ABOUT THE HOSTS

Louis Diez advises nonprofits in annual fund development, digital fundraising, and engagement strategies. He's the host of the Donor Participation Project and founder of the Annual Fund Toolkit.

Mike Duerksen hosts the Build Good Fundraising Podcast. He’s the founder and CEO of BuildGood, a fundraising agency that helps nonprofits raise more money from individual donors.

Are we in a recession? 

Who knows. 

But it’s no secret: a lot of nonprofits are seeing a decline in revenue after the covid bump we experienced for a few years. 

On today’s podcast, we get into 7 principles of fundraising that will help you keep the main thing the main thing—even when cash flow changes.

These aren’t just principles to whether a recession. 

They’re timeless first principles that apply to your fundraising in good years and in lean years. 

1. Consistency compounds 
2. Money flows where attention goes
3. Action yields information 
4. Trust is worth more than a bigger return  
5. Growth is a choice
6. Charity is not a zero sum game
7. Your calendar and your budget = values

Your turn. 

What would you add?

GET CONNECTED

Follow Louis Diez on LinkedIn 

Follow Mike Duerksen on LinkedIn 

Join the Donor Participation Project here—a community of fundraisers who get together every month to co-create solutions that increase donor participation.

Get access to the 5 Minute Fundraising Fix—a FREE mini course that will help you craft compelling fundraising messages that move donors to action and increase response. 

ABOUT THE HOSTS

Louis Diez advises nonprofits in annual fund development, digital fundraising, and engagement strategies. He's the host of the Donor Participation Project and founder of the Annual Fund Toolkit.

Mike Duerksen hosts the Build Good Fundraising Podcast. He’s the founder and CEO of BuildGood, a fundraising agency that helps nonprofits raise more money from individual donors. 

Jump in, we’re going for a ride.

On today’s podcast, Louis and Mike have a chat about some of the things they’ve been thinking about.

From why focusing on the fundamentals in fundraising is so hard, to building a cheap CRM using no-code tools, to wondering if an ask string really matters in fundraising. 

No frameworks. No deep insights.

Just two fundraisers in cars, getting coffee.

GET CONNECTED

Follow Louis Diez on LinkedIn 

Follow Mike Duerksen on LinkedIn 

Join the Donor Participation Project here—a community of fundraisers who get together every month to co-create solutions that increase donor participation.

Get access to the 5 Minute Fundraising Fix—a FREE mini course that will help you craft compelling fundraising messages that move donors to action and increase response. 

ABOUT THE HOSTS

Louis Diez advises nonprofits in annual fund development, digital fundraising, and engagement strategies. He's the host of the Donor Participation Project and founder of the Annual Fund Toolkit.

Mike Duerksen hosts the Build Good Fundraising Podcast. He’s the founder and CEO of BuildGood, a fundraising agency that helps nonprofits raise more money from individual donors. 

Should you focus on donors, dollars, or something else?

Some shops have over 25 metrics that they use to measure gift officer performance!

Others, don’t have any… (or maybe just this one: the is-the-board-happy metric)

What should a fundraising shop measure to make sure it is accountable and progressing toward the nonprofit’s goals?

The answer, according to our conversation today: it depends on:

Your nonprofit’s growth stage

• The type of nonprofit you work in
• What you’re able to measure

What we firmly advocate for: having one or at most two key metrics that we call North Star metrics.

GET CONNECTED

Follow Louis Diez on LinkedIn 

Follow Mike Duerksen on LinkedIn 

Join the Donor Participation Project here—a community of fundraisers who get together every month to co-create solutions that increase donor participation.

Get access to the 5 Minute Fundraising Fix—a FREE mini course that will help you craft compelling fundraising messages that move donors to action and increase response. 

ABOUT THE HOSTS

Louis Diez advises nonprofits in annual fund development, digital fundraising, and engagement strategies. He's the host of the Donor Participation Project and founder of the Annual Fund Toolkit.

Mike Duerksen hosts the Build Good Fundraising Podcast. He’s the founder and CEO of BuildGood, a fundraising agency that helps nonprofits raise more money from individual donors.

Can a simple checklist reduce the complexity of your fundraising operations? 

It sounds too simple. Maybe even too systematized and rigid and robotic.

But what if the complexity of our lives requires the simplest of solutions to give us back the time to do more human stuff…like having coffees and lunches? 

Or calling someone on the phone? Or making a meaningful connection?

And what if a series of simple checklists can help us spend less time worrying about rote and repetitive tasks of fundraising, and more time engaging donors?

In today's short episode, we talk about why now might be a good time to create some simple checklists with your team—and how it might help you increase your fundraising performance.

GET CONNECTED

Follow Louis Diez on LinkedIn 

Follow Mike Duerksen on LinkedIn 

Join the Donor Participation Project here—a community of fundraisers who get together every month to co-create solutions that increase donor participation.

Get access to the 5 Minute Fundraising Fix—a FREE mini course that will help you craft compelling fundraising messages that move donors to action and increase response. 

ABOUT THE HOSTS

Louis Diez advises nonprofits in annual fund development, digital fundraising, and engagement strategies. He's the host of the Donor Participation Project and founder of the Annual Fund Toolkit.

Mike Duerksen hosts the Build Good Fundraising Podcast. He’s the founder and CEO of BuildGood, a fundraising agency that helps nonprofits raise more money from individual donors.

You’ve likely heard this before: “your nonprofit is competing for market share—so you need a clear value proposition to win.”

But is that really true? 

Here are some assumptions we’re making if we think that way:

• That giving to charity is like buying a product or service
• That our competition is other nonprofits (vs. inaction, building up more savings to pass down to kids, or countless other ways people spend money every single day)
• That we are competing in the first place 
• That there’s a fixed pie of generosity 

What if instead we thought about it this way?

• People’s ability to grow their generosity isn’t fixed 
• It’s not a function of: are we nicer, prettier, more impactful, more efficient than other charities.
• It is a function of how engaged people are with us… 
• …and how well we align with their values and passions and worldview (those are things you largely cannot change, by the way)

So rather than thinking: how can we stand out from other nonprofits? 

What if we think: how can we “stand in” more in the lives of our donors?

What if we focus on donors, not competition?

Because there’s no competition in the first place.

GET CONNECTED

Follow Louis Diez on LinkedIn 

Follow Mike Duerksen on LinkedIn 

Join the Donor Participation Project here—a community of fundraisers who get together every month to co-create solutions that increase donor participation.

Get access to the 5 Minute Fundraising Fix—a FREE mini course that will help you craft compelling fundraising messages that move donors to action and increase response. 

ABOUT THE HOSTS

Louis Diez advises nonprofits in annual fund development, digital fundraising, and engagement strategies. He's the host of the Donor Participation Project and founder of the Annual Fund Toolkit.

Mike Duerksen hosts the Build Good Fundraising Podcast. He’s the founder and CEO of BuildGood, a fundraising agency that helps nonprofits raise more money from individual donors. 

For decades, the common way of talking about donor-centric fundraising was defined as “the donor is the hero.” 

The sentiment was harmless in its intent. Noble, even.

It was meant to help charity administrators realize that people play the main character in their own lives. They care about their kids and family; and their values and legacy. 

Few wake up in the morning thinking about your charity.

And certainly most aren’t used to thinking about choosing—or being loyal to—a certain kind of nonprofit “brand” simply because of how amazing the organization says they are in their marketing.

But donor-centric fundraising has the power to become harmful when misinterpreted or misapplied.

• It can lead to organizations being donor-led; where donors get to influence how the money is spent or administered 
• Organizations may centre the role of the donor in an outsized way at the expense of staff, volunteers of beneficiaries  
• Donors who write larger cheques may have outsized influence and power 
• It might contribute to the “white saviour complex” problem facing the charitable sector

On today’s podcast, Louis and Mike talk about designing fundraising for the human behind the donor (who they are), and inviting them to be an important part of the team (the community they can join) to help achieve our mission (what they can do).

Getting away from “the donor as hero”, good fundraising is simply focused on relationships; not conversions and transactions. 

And it can still take into account that people often play the main character in their own story—and that holds true for donors, charity leaders and beneficiaries. 

GET CONNECTED

Follow Louis Diez on LinkedIn 

Follow Mike Duerksen on LinkedIn 

Join the Donor Participation Project here—a community of fundraisers who get together every month to co-create solutions that increase donor participation.

Get access to the 5 Minute Fundraising Fix—a FREE mini course that will help you craft compelling fundraising messages that move donors to action and increase response. 

ABOUT THE HOSTS

Louis Diez advises nonprofits in annual fund development, digital fundraising, and engagement strategies. He's the host of the Donor Participation Project and founder of the Annual Fund Toolkit.

Mike Duerksen hosts the Build Good Fundraising Podcast. He’s the founder and CEO of BuildGood, a fundraising agency that helps nonprofits raise more money from individual donors. 

It may not feel like it, but large parts of the world live in greater abundance than ever before.

There is more work, more services, more wealth. And yes, more people.

Increasingly, the hard part is coordinating all of this!

Donors and other external stakeholders (and their information bubbles). Complicated processes using dozens of external services. Employees who don’t share systems or sometimes even a common language!

In this podcast episode, we review the thesis that the role of the CEO is to “create future value.”

In addition to that, Louis argues that coordination should rise to be a CEO priority.

Here are some ways to do it:

1. Improved Communication
2. Common Language
3. Technology Integration
4. Real-Time Information Sharing
5. Marketing and Feedback Channels
6. Professional Coordinators
7. Digital Platforms
8. Standardized Behavior and Roles

GET CONNECTED

Follow Louis Diez on LinkedIn 

Follow Mike Duerksen on LinkedIn 

Join the Donor Participation Project here—a community of fundraisers who get together every month to co-create solutions that increase donor participation.

Get access to the 5 Minute Fundraising Fix—a FREE mini course that will help you craft compelling fundraising messages that move donors to action and increase response. 

ABOUT THE HOSTS

Louis Diez advises nonprofits in annual fund development, digital fundraising, and engagement strategies. He's the host of the Donor Participation Project and founder of the Annual Fund Toolkit.

Mike Duerksen hosts the Build Good Fundraising Podcast. He’s the founder and CEO of BuildGood, a fundraising agency that helps nonprofits raise more money from individual donors