Responsive Fundraising

The 2025 Responsive Fundraising Roadshow is kicking off with TWO stops! We’re excited to share our first two dates: Cincinnati — Thu, 4/10 with AFP, Greater Cincinnati Chapter Colorado Springs – Fri, 4/25 at Every Home for Christ Both events are open to the public and designed for board members, senior leaders, and fundraisers looking to navigate the shifting landscape of philanthropy with greater clarity and confidence. Too many fundraising programs get stuck in cycles of high donor attrition, rapid staff turnover, and unmet goals. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Let’s create fundraising environments where generosity and fundraisers can thrive. Join us for a fast-paced, highly interactive learning experience where we’ll introduce our four sensemaking tools and unpack what effective fundraising truly looks like. A huge thank you to AFP - Greater Cincinnati Chapter and Every Home for Christ for partnering with us to launch our 2025 season! We’ve been hosting the Responsive Fundraising Roadshow since 2014, and we love collaborating with organizations that want to foster meaningful learning experiences and strengthen their nonprofit community. Want to bring the Responsive Fundraising Roadshow to your city? Let’s make it happen! Reach out to me or a member of our consulting team to explore how we can highlight your work and bring this event to your community. More details on our website—link in the comments! #responsivefundraising

Schambra’s piece makes it clear: Big Philanthropy (BP) isn’t standing above the fight anymore—it is the fight. For years, the nonprofit sector assumed that critiques of elite power wouldn’t apply to them. But now, both right- and left-wing populists see philanthropy as part of the problem. Conservatives argue it’s been taken over by progressive ideologues, while progressives see it as a tool for billionaire influence. The details may differ, but the conclusion is the same—BP has too much control, and people are fed up. The reason this backlash feels so intense is because BP isn’t just funding causes—it has woven itself into government, media, education, corporate boardrooms, and cultural institutions. It’s no longer just a counterweight to power; in many cases, it is the power. That’s why today’s populist revolt isn’t just about philanthropy’s politics or priorities—it’s about the way BP has positioned itself as an unelected, untouchable force shaping society. The real question is what happens next. If BP keeps doubling down—insisting it knows best, that it’s the safeguard against chaos—it’s only going to escalate the fight. The more it tries to consolidate its influence, the more likely we are to see a push to dismantle it altogether. This isn’t just about tax policy or political ideology. It’s about who gets to shape civil society—elite institutions or the people they claim to serve. #responsivefundraising #philanthropy

In today’s article in The Butterfly Effect, we ask: Is professional fundraising facing its harshest winter yet? And what happens if three mainstays of contemporary fundraising—Big Philanthropy, government funding, and consumer-oriented giving tactics—don’t disappear, but become increasingly unreliable? With the Trump administration unplugging every possible obligation it can, private foundations refusing to pick up the phone, and consumer confidence starting to dip, the question nonprofit leaders and their fundraisers need to be asking is: How do we make it to spring? The winter will be difficult, but despair is not the answer. The way forward lies in two commitments—engaging in high-context communication and maintaining high expectations. The first will be the hardest, requiring deep relational work instead of resorting to cheap, quick fixes. The second will be the scariest, because it means trusting donors to rise to the occasion rather than assuming they can’t or won’t. #responsivefundraising #substack

For too long, capital campaigns have been orchestrated like well-oiled machines—rigid, overbuilt, and designed for efficiency, predictability, and control rather than fostering transformational experiences that bring communities together. Organizations often default to formulaic structures, pre-set timelines, and engineered tactics, as if success is simply a matter of executing the right steps in the right order. But in reality, campaigns don’t unfold in straight lines—they move in patterns of donor behavior and meaningful interaction, constantly adapting to shifts in the external environment that cannot be predicted ahead of time.? At Responsive Fundraising, we take a different approach. Our Four Waves framework helps fundraisers see that campaigns aren’t mechanical systems with fixed inputs and outputs. Instead, they unfold like social movements, shaped by donor readiness and organizational momentum. Rather than relying on theatrics and third-party tools, fundraisers can learn to discern opportunities through conversation, visioneering, and social reinforcement. Regardless of a campaign’s scale or scope, Responsive’s Four Waves reveal that campaigns are patterns of interaction that align capacity with confidence and commitment. What You’ll Take Away: ? How Responsive’s Waves help you observe micro- and macro-levels of donor behavior rather than relying on intrusive third-party tools. ? Discover how Responsive’s Waves reveal themselves across all three lanes of fundraising—whether in annual funds, major gifts, or capital campaigns. ? How to design campaigns that meet donors where they are instead of forcing them through a rigid sequence. ? Why discernment—through meaningful interactions and past giving—affords the greatest learning opportunities a fundraiser can ask for. If you’re ready to move beyond the well-oiled machine mentality and embrace campaigns as dynamic, social movements, join us for this conversation on Tuesday, April 1st. ?? Registration link is in the comments. #responsivefundraising #capitalcampaigns #fundraising

Posting this now—at one of LinkedIn’s quieter moments of the week, Thursday at 4 PM, a time for more careful reflection—feels fitting, given the topic. We all know the phrase: it’s the thought that counts. This is a simple, fundamental truth about the gift relationship—one that fundraisers in #GiveNowCity betray every single day. In GNC, generosity is treated like a checkout process: quick, seamless, and easily regrettable. What happens when the logic of the marketplace collides with a world where people are already slowing down, second-guessing their commitments, and rethinking their financial obligations? Maybe the best thing fundraisers could do right now isn’t making giving easier. Maybe it’s making it matter. This is the second in a series exploring the unwritten rules of donor-centric fundraising—deeply ingrained assumptions that shape fundraising practices, particularly among fundraisers who hail from Give Now City. Also, our first two roadshow dates for 2025 are officially set! We’ll be in Cincinnati with the AFP - Greater Cincinnati Chapter on Thursday, April 10, and in Colorado Springs at Every Home for Christ on Friday, April 25. #responsivefundraising #substack

Fundraisers are taught to keep things comfortable. Don’t challenge the donor’s thinking. Stay agreeable. Keep it warm and fuzzy. But if donors don’t actually know where you stand—if they don’t feel like they know you—what is there to build real trust on? Yes, a donor may appreciate being heard. Yes, they may enjoy the conversation. But when things feel too tidy, too contrived, too inauthentic… does their support reflect a genuine relationship, or merely a go-away gift—signaling no real commitment and no chance of translating into lasting support? Donors give in the most meaningful ways when they feel a real connection—not just to the cause, but to the people behind it. And that kind of trust isn’t built on pretending everything is business as usual. It’s built through real conversations—especially in times like these. The world is messy right now. Nothing on the news is particularly heartwarming or upbeat, and we can’t pretend otherwise with our donors. This isn’t going to sit well with a lot of fundraisers—especially those who hail from Give Now City, where anything that might ruffle a donor’s feathers is always off-limits. But these aren’t usual times. We have to be real. We have to show up fully—even daring to talk about things that would have been completely off-limits in much more stable times. The traditional playbook no longer applies. We explore some of what that means in today’s article in The Butterfly Effect. #responsivefundraising #substack

Nonprofits are in a panic—not over Big Philanthropy hoarding $900 billion or facing government scrutiny, but because The Chronicle of Philanthropy dared to say it out loud. Instead of questioning why these massive foundations might fear transparency, nonprofits are rushing to shield them, as if protecting a fragile piggy bank from the big, bad press. But here’s the real question: If Big Philanthropy truly stands on principle, why does it need defending? And why are the very organizations most starved for funding the ones working hardest to defend those hoarding it? Maybe The Chronicle isn’t the problem. Maybe the problem is that philanthropy has been insulated from scrutiny for so long, we’ve forgotten how to hold it accountable. #responsivefundraising #substack

This morning, on my way to the airport, I was thinking about why so many in our sector prefer grants over gifts. With the Trump administration signaling every intention of withdrawing as much federal support as they can justify, many of us are panicked at the prospect of having to secure funding another way. At such a time as this, one of the questions for those worried about how they’ll keep the lights on, pay their staff, and continue delivering services to their communities is simple: Are you asking for a grant, or are you asking for a gift? And have you truly considered the implications of either? This isn’t an especially complex question, yet it feels like a timely one and raises a deeper question: What kind of relationship do we want to have? A grant is spelled out in black and white, much like a contract. The terms are clear, predictable, rational, and efficient. It feels safe because it doesn’t require us to engage in a messy relationship. Once the contract is signed, what once had to be negotiated now feels like an entitlement—an obligation we can collect on. But this is precisely the kind of arms-length relationship that is letting everyone down—the explicit terms are, in many cases, an illusion. A gift, in contrast, doesn’t work the same way. Instead of everything being spelled out and easy to collect, we have to rely on trust, genuine conversation, and a commitment to the relationship. Unlike a grant, which is designed to maintain power and control, a gift—at its best—is intended to relinquish them. Lewis Hyde, in The Gift, describes how many of us would rather be “two-steppers” when it comes to the gift—people who enjoy the warm and fuzzies of the gift exchange but resist the messy middle. We don’t want to commit to the emotional labor required to be fully present in a genuine gift relationship. But that’s precisely what makes a gift different from a grant—and why it’s so much harder to give and receive. #responsivefundraising #substack

In today’s Substack, I reflect on five things the gift wants to reveal to us—lessons we’ll never grasp by imposing the logics of consumerism, individualism, moralism, or sentimentalism where they don’t belong. As much as we try to convince ourselves otherwise, the gift resists modernity’s urge to make everything deterministic—to reduce it to planning and control. The gift doesn’t want to be managed. It wants to move. It wants to surprise us. It wants to be experienced. What many of my colleagues refuse to see is that contemporary fundraising doesn’t just distort the gift—it mischaracterizes the relationship. It turns generosity into a commodity to be bought and sold, a tax to be enforced, a spectacle to be performed, or an expression of self-reliance. We’ve come to expect the gift to behave like something it was never meant to be. For over a century, philanthropy has been shaped by society’s dominant forces—and in the process, we’ve stripped the gift of what makes it most powerful and meaningful: spontaneity, connection, and surprise. #responsivefundraising #substack

It’s not too late to sign up for tomorrow’s free webinar! When I worked at the Epilepsy Foundation, I learned something that transformed the way I approach my work: the majority of our donors were either living with a seizure disorder or had a loved one who was. Not appreciating this key aspect of their identity created barriers. These weren’t just names in a database or dollar amounts in a brokerage account—they were people just like me, whose personal experiences shaped their giving decisions. This wasn’t just a data insight—it was an aha moment that helped me connect the dots through three of Karl Weick’s sensemaking principles: Identity Construction – Understanding who our donors really are and how their experiences profoundly influence their giving. If we don’t recognize the fullness of their identity, we miss the deeper motivations behind their generosity. Cues – It’s not just about what information we rely on—it’s about how we gather that information. We can’t ensure the advantage of thick data if we’re not in the field, actively listening, observing, and engaging with donors. Fundraising isn’t just about transactions—it’s about building relationships that provide richer, more meaningful insights. Enactment – Donors aren’t just funders; they are active participants in a shared story. At the Epilepsy Foundation, I wasn’t just fundraising—I was aligning experiences. Many of our donors, like me, had grown up with a seizure disorder or had a loved one who had. We weren’t on opposite sides of an ask; we were part of the same journey. Fundraising isn’t a formula—it’s sensemaking. If you’ve ever felt like it’s part strategy, part intuition, and maybe even a little bit of magic—you’re not wrong. Let’s make sense of it together. Join us tomorrow at 11am eastern! Registration link in the comments. #responsivefundraising #substack