Before you send a single email or stuff a single envelope, reach out to donors—by phone or email—and announce your campaign is coming.

This one act can boost your response rate up to five times higher. If you actually reach a donor and they feel connected to your cause, half of them will give. Do it well, and that number can soar 70%. Incredible.

But skip the notification and rely only on a generic appeal letter or email? Expect a limp response rate of just 1–3%. Maybe 5% if you're lucky. (It's like brewing coffee without heating the water—you'll still get something brown, but nobody's drinking it.)

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Let's be honest: most nonprofits don't need another event. They need better ones. The kind that doesn't drain staff, exhaust volunteers, or leave donors wondering why they just spent two hours listening to speeches when they could have been home in slippers. That's where specialty events come in.

Savvy fundraisers love specialty events—typically gatherings of 10 to 75 people—because they create something you simply can't replicate at a big gala. Donors see friends they respect, meet peers they admire, and experience your mission together. There's energy in the room. Momentum. A subtle but unmistakable sense that this is something worth being part of.

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Every nonprofit eventually hits a moment of polite stagnation. Board meetings are full, calendars are packed, and everyone is working hard—but progress feels heavier than it should. Conversations repeat themselves. Decisions take longer. Direction becomes unclear. Passion wilts. The organization isn't broken, but it isn't quite clicking either.

That's usually when someone finally says what everyone else is thinking: "We should probably do a board retreat." Or, "Maybe it's time for a planning session." The idea hangs in the air for a moment, feels responsible and hopeful, and then gets quietly shut down with a familiar phrase: "We just don't have the budget for that right now."

That sentence sounds practical. It feels disciplined. And most of the time, it's the wrong conclusion.

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Fear not! To raise money, you and your fellow board members don't have to cold call strangers (or worse, friends), or suffer through awkward donor coffees where you feel like the people at the table next to you are eavesdropping on your shaky pitch.

Nope. There's an alternative. It's a heck of a lot easier for board members to do things that support the fundraising efforts of the organization, rather than do something terrifying they loathe. Below is a list of 21 things board members with no fundraising experience can do to support the fundraising efforts of the organizations they care so much about.

And for those board members who love to ask for money, give them a list of people to call and meet, and let them work their magic. For everyone else, have them choose a few things from the list below. Their contributions will lower the work burden of the fundraising staff and provide valuable resources and impact that will ultimately help raise more money.

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Fundraising—it's part charm offensive, part emotional trapeze act, part caffeine-fueled chaos. Some days you feel like a philanthropic superhero, and other days you're crying into your donor database while searching for the 'undo' button. But you don't have to go it alone. Enter the Rainmakers: the mythical, magical, magnificently strategic fundraisers who know how to play the long game—with flair.

What's their secret? These 10 fundraising principles. We're talking about donor stickiness, connection asks, custom everything, and enough 'You' language to make even Shakespeare blush. Strap in, folks. You're about to take a rollercoaster ride through fundraising best practices—Robin Williams style.

Listen and learn . . .

Your first face-to-face meeting with a donor isn't a sales pitch or interview. And it's definitely not the time to comb through the details for your 30-page strategic plan. It's a discovery conversation—a delightful dance where you listen, learn, and laugh.

Apply the following 10 tactics to get your first meeting right and the odds of landing a second meeting (and ultimately a donation) jump to more than 70%. Not bad for the cost of a latte and scone.

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Here's a crash course in what "not" to do when fundraising, what donors secretly loathe, and a short list of how to ask for money without breaking into hives.

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Ah, the board retreat. A magical time when board members gather to dive into strategic discussions, unleash big ideas, and nod sagely at visionary plans. You laugh, you brainstorm, you may even awkwardly roleplay. By the end, you've covered walls with stickies and flipchart paper, deepened your culture, and high-fived over fresh possibilities.

And then… nothing.

Everyone returns home. Retreat outcomes are emailed but never opened. The notes from the flipcharts are filed away and the long list of follow-up ToDos sits unopened in Dropbox. Another week passes and the staff still waits for next steps. The energy? Gone. The ideas? Ghosted. And that beautiful vision for the future has faded into the background noise of daily operations.

Welcome to the infamous retreat afterglow hangover —where inspiration without implementation goes to die.

This podcast is your resuscitation manual for retreat outcomes. Because unless you want all that time, energy, and trust to evaporate like a dry erase marker, you need more than good intentions. You need action planning. You need structure. And most of all, you need ownership.

Listen in and learn . . .