CULTIVATE CONFERENCE

Major gifts are energy! They power new initiatives, sustain programs, and support BIG ideas! Thriving nonprofit organizations rely heavily on Major Gifts to reach their annual fund objectives and support Capital Campaign objectives.

Major Donors are essential long-term partnerships and invest in your vision, mission, and values. But before you can successfully secure a major gift from a major donor you need to define it and determine how you prospect for that level of gift.

Major gifts are the foundation of successful Capital Campaigns. Campaigns fund new equipment, buildings, and endowments to name a few. So, what planning goes into creating a Capital Campaign? What does a fundraiser need to know before starting a Capital Campaign? We’ll chat about that, and so much more!

Join Hannah Berger and Fundraising Academy on April 26 to learn how you can create an effective Major Gifts program and launch a successful Capital Campaign.

Presented by:

• Hannah F. Berger, MPA, CFRE
  Founder & Principal, The Philanthropy Coach
  

Donor retention and sustaining philanthropic support is paramount to a healthy nonprofit. A well-defined monthly giving program can create a source of ongoing support for your organization, while also opening the door to new donors who care deeply about your cause. This webinar will provide donor engagement and retention strategies to build and sustain a monthly giving program.

Presented by:

• LaShonda Williams, MPA, CFRE
  Trainer, Fundraising Academy
  Associate Director of Alumni Engagement and Annual Giving, South Texas College of Law
  

Fostering donor loyalty is an ongoing activity. The way you engage with donors after they make a gift is as important, or perhaps even more important, than the gift itself. Keeping all levels of donors involved and inspired can be the difference between a good fundraising practice and a great one. During this webinar, you will learn how to make your supporters feel every bit as important as they are, as you learn effective communication strategies to showcase impact and inspire major donors to continue to provide financial support. Join this webinar to learn how you can increase donor loyalty through creative stewardship and meaningful engagement strategies.

Presented by:

• Muhi Khwaja, MPA, CFRE, CFRM
  Trainer, Fundraising Academy and Co-founder & Director of Development and Philanthropy, American Muslim Community Foundation

Every successful fundraiser needs management tools to navigate the relationship-driven Cause Selling Cycle. How do you use management tools to work smarter, not harder? Are you wasting time in qualifying prospects? Do your management tools help you assess and understand your donor’s needs?

Management tools enable fundraisers to efficiently use their time and increase their productivity so that they can raise more money to advance their organization’s mission. Management tools also assist fundraisers in planning and budget control. With a new calendar year ahead, join this webinar to learn how effective management tools can reduce stress and enable more productive fundraising teams.

Presented by:

• Jack Alotto, MA, CFRE
  Fundraising Consultant and Trainer, Fundraising Academy
  

Fundraisers are the bridge between donors and the great impact that can be made in a community. All of this is done by cultivating a culture of giving. But how do you prioritize your career and build a strong foundation in this nuanced, relationship-driven profession?

Much of your success as a fundraiser hinges on what you do before you ever call on the first prospective donor. Today, success in the fundraising profession relies on your abilities to communicate the right knowledge about your cause and gain important insight about your donors. It also calls for the effective use of technology, data, and other analytic tools.

This webinar will dive into six key foundational elements needed to build a long-lasting and rewarding career in fundraising that prioritizes genuine connections. Join presenter Tamika Franklin, CFRE and explore how to foster lasting relationships and develop a career plan for self-motivation and goal setting in the fundraising profession.

Presented by:

• Tamika Franklin, CFRE
  Senior Director, Southern California Major Gifts, UC Berkeley
  

Donors are consistently exposed to a great number of emails and digital touchpoints. So, how do you rise above the noise, make your organization stand out, and showcase your cause’s impact in a way that motivates donors to give? This webinar will present new ideas so you can connect with your donors through an intentional digital strategy. Analyze your email communication cadence and content, learn how storytelling for specific audiences can remind donors why they connected with your organization, and implement digital plans that support growing a culture of philanthropy in your community. With a digital strategy focused on relationship-building, your fundraising teams can learn how to turn one-time gift-givers into long-term, loyal supporters of your organization.

Presented by:

• Adrianna O’Donnell, MBA, CFRE
  Director of Philanthropy, San Ysidro Health
  

Giving to nonprofit organizations is based on a foundation of trust and transparency, which is an integral part of the Cause Selling Cycle. Trust is the foundation on which philanthropy is developed and sustained. So how do nonprofit organizations build and nurture trust among their donors? Recognizing that transparency and accountability play a role in building trust, this webinar will explore ethical principles that nonprofits must practice to develop and sustain donor loyalty.

This workshop will explore the topics of ethics and accountability through real-life scenarios and provide you with tools to implement sound ethical principles. These tools will help you build a culture of accountability in your organization, support your fundraising work, and create loyal donors.

Presented by:

• LaShonda Williams, MPA, CFRE
  Trainer, Fundraising Academy
  Annual Fund Director, Prairie View A&M University
  

Events are an important tool for fundraisers and can have an immense impact! A strategic event can offer relationship-building opportunities, create chances to connect with your constituents, and involve the community you serve. Learn how to re-evaluate your organization’s event strategies and discover how goal setting can help you and your team produce an event that maximizes Cause Selling strategies!

Presented by:

• Laura Rice, MBA, CFRE
  Senior Director of Sustaining Philanthropy, San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance
• Muhi Khwaja, MPA, CFRE, CFRM
  Trainer, Fundraising Academy and Co-founder & Director of Development and Philanthropy, American Muslim Community Foundation

This August marks the 11th anniversary of Black Philanthropy Month, which celebrates and elevates African-descent giving. Celebrate with us as we set aside time to connect, reflect, and grow your impact with an enlightening conversation about Black fundraising and philanthropy.

Gain insight on this important topic with our esteemed colleagues: Tamara Craver, LaShonda Williams, Vincent Wilson and Marcus Brewer. All of our panelists are seasoned professionals with backgrounds in education, consulting, healthcare, and social services. Join us to hear their insights, through practical and applicable stories, for engaging black fundraisers and philanthropists to support your mission.

Further your fundraising skills by carrying these insights into your everyday work!

Moderator:

• Tamara Craver – President & CEO, Reality Changers

Panelists:

• LaShonda Williams – Annual Fund Director, Prairie View A&M University
• Vincent Wilson – Deputy Director of Development, Obama Foundation
• Marcus Brewer – Special Projects & Development Director, Change Happens!

An organization’s case for support is one of the foundational pillars of fundraising because it clearly defines what your organization does, why what you do matters and is relevant to those you serve, and, most importantly, why people should support your cause. Your campaigns and programs/activities begin with a case for support. Once your case for support has been shared, reviewed, edited, and finalized, you can use it to develop numerous fundraising and marketing materials like grant proposals, fundraising letters, brochures, newsletters, and press releases. Furthermore, a case for support can deepen your engagement and conversations with your donors and prospects.

This webinar will walk you through how your case for support can inform how you navigate critical activities and conversations that move your prospects toward a successful ask.

In this webinar, you will:

• Explore which elements of your case for support you can use when you are uncovering your prospects’ interests, values, and connection to your cause
• Identify which components from your case study will help you deepen your engagement with donors and prospects through meaningful conversations
• Assess how to enhance your donor presentations by sharing case elements that are important to donors
• Use your case for support to organize your solicitation plan with individual donors

Successful fundraisers see objections for what they really are: opportunities! There’s no getting around it. If you’re a nonprofit fundraiser, you will face objections from your pro-spects and donors. Instead of trying to avoid or ignore them, let’s embrace them!

An objection is vastly different from a rejection. When you view objections with a welcom-ing attitude, they become valuable and may help guide you toward a successful ask and deeper relationship.

Sometimes objections are straightforward, but other times, they indicate that the prospect is interested in what you are saying. Classifying and clarifying the objection helps you se-lect the best technique for addressing them. This webinar will give you the knowledge to successfully navigate your donor’s questions and hesitations so you can continue to culti-vate the relationship towards a successful ask.

In this webinar, we will:

• Learn how to uncover hidden concerns or questions.
• Categorize objections and explore techniques to address them.
• Become familiar with the six-step plan for dealing with resistance.
• Discover how to leverage social media to anticipate and forestall any possible donor concerns.

What does fundraising action planning accomplish? A proper fundraising action plan creates a framework and foundation for your organization’s activities and programs. Your plan will ultimately set forth how your organization will support the communities you serve day in and out, and how your fundraising activities will ensure your organization’s health and growth.

Planning clarifies the strategies, values, and vision of our organization. Planning tests our mission and engages the hearts and minds of staff and board. Planning answers, the important question of why our organization matters, what results we expect so that we can make a difference, and it provides us with the directions we need to get to our results.

This webinar will guide you through the fundamental steps to:

• Develop your rationale for creating a fundraising action plan.
• Explore questions to ask prior to starting your planning process.
• Map out the key planning steps.
• Curate resources and templates to kickstart your planning today.

Philanthropy as we know it has changed. New virtual tools have created new avenues for human connection, and fundraisers are faced with the challenge to deepen relationships with their donors in a quasi-virtual climate. As a fundraiser, you may have gained new donors with whom you have only connected virtually. Or, you may have discovered new donors in your database with whom you have never connected. How do you introduce new prospects with your organization and connect with your existing donor base without the opportunity to meet with them in person? The good news is you can still develop strong, authentic relationships with your donors in a virtual or hybrid format.

In this webinar, we will discover how you can reignite donor relationships, uncover your donor’s “Why,” and align your cause with what matters most to them. Fundraisers have the opportunity and privilege of connecting with people, discovering what they truly care about, learning their personal stories, and connecting them with meaningful causes. Join Muhi Khwaja and Fundraising Academy Cause Selling Education so you can confidently engage your supporters and convert them into lasting champions for your organization.

Today, many fundraisers are facing new challenges and opportunities in this fundraising climate. The way we approach and conduct philanthropy has permanently shifted, and as fundraisers, we must revisit how we cultivate and retain our donors in a quasi-virtual world. As a fundraiser, you may be new to an organization, or you may have new donors you have not yet cultivated. Perhaps you’ve never met your donor in person, as your entire relationship has been built virtually! In this webinar, you’ll explore how you can use these situations to your advantage and ultimately discover the most important fact of all — your donor’s “Why.”

Prospects are the lifeblood of fundraising. Join presenter Christa Stoneham and discover the vast resources you have within your own database to identify and qualify current and future prospects. We’ll walk you through the steps you must take before you ever approach your donor, as well as the steps that will further your prospecting efforts and set you up for fundraising success.

Let’s take a breath, celebrate all that you’ve accomplished, then reflect and refine your plans for this new year!

What worked for you and your team last year? What tools, skills, and strategies will you apply to reach your goals this year? What didn’t work? Often, missteps and failures are perceived as just that: failures. With this mindset, fundraisers miss out on the opportunity to uncover critical lessons and develop new best practices from which their organizations can benefit.

It’s time to shift the narrative! This webinar will help you reframe “failures” as a hidden asset for your fundraising toolkit. Jack Alotto, CFRE, will reflect on his memorable missteps, exploring how he and his team dissected past mistakes and created new opportunities for their organizations.

Join us to learn how you can recover from your own “epic fails,” build your fundraising skill sets, and help your organization’s achieve ultimate fundraising success.

Major gifts are critical to the success of an organization’s annual fundraising goals. In this webinar we will begin developing your Major Gifts strategy for the new year. Dive deeper into your current donor database and begin crafting a prospecting and stewardship plan that supports cultivating major gifts on a one-to-one basis with your individual donors.

Learn how the Cause Selling Cycle can help you build longer-lasting relationships with your donors to help sustain your organization. Preparation is key to a successful Major Gift ask. Engage in a discussion with Adrianna and leave with strategies you can activate right away!

Confirming gifts from donors is the natural conclusion to a successful presentation. Nonetheless, asking for the gift can be intimidating for any fundraiser, particularly if they cannot anticipate potential roadblocks. In this webinar, we will present strategies for welcoming and navigating donor objections to ultimately secure donor commitment. Participants are invited to engage in discussion and take away effective closing tactics from the field.

Join presenter Laura Rice, CFRE, and fill your fundraising toolbox with evidence-based closing tactics, strategies to shift donor hesitancy into commitment, a nuanced understanding of unsuccessful closing, and the ability to process and learn from rejections. Walk away with renewed confidence and a fresh perspective on making The Ask.

When you have reached the moment to present your cause to your prospect or donor, will you be ready? How does your prospect like to receive information? How do you like to deliver information? What drives your prospect to give? What do they care about most? These questions are key elements that will allow you to build and deliver a strong, meaningful, and successful presentation each time.

This webinar will discuss how to build a strong presentation that will succeed with any donor or prospect’s social style and how your own social style will inform your presentation planning. Learn how to develop your own units of conviction – strategic mini donor presentations. Explore the importance of fundamental questioning and listening for presentation planning and stewardship strategies that inform and build on successful presentations. Preparing units of conviction in advance will allow you to quickly adapt to any prospect and present your cause at a moment’s notice, like reaching into your bag and pulling out the right tool at the exact right time.

The “Moneyball” thesis is simple: By using statistical analysis, small-market baseball teams can change their odds for success by accruing assets that are undervalued or overlooked by other teams (and selling ones that are overvalued). Through a Cause Selling lens, this thesis could be compared to a small organization regularly securing large donations that have traditionally been captured by larger national entities and institutions such as medical research organizations, hospitals, global humanitarian organizations, and more.

In today’s society, where nonprofit sector information is more accessible and transparent than ever before, it’s not just the mission of the more established organizations that yields larger donations. There are considerable disparities at play, and one of them is the ability to secure the very best in fundraising talent and the systems and tech that support their continued success.

Cause Selling, a relationship-driven fundraising model, prepares emerging fundraisers to more intentionally and authentically develop lasting relationships with their donors. Developed using future-proof, for-profit sales best practices, the eight-step Cause Selling Cycle guides fundraisers through a strategic process to identify qualified prospects, connect them with their cause, and transform their prospects and donors into lifelong supporters and champions. This webinar will explore how to leverage Cause Selling principles to set yourself apart, attract new revenue sources, and future-proof your career.

Join us for an interactive panel discussion on Black experiences in professional fundraising. Moderated by seasoned fundraising practitioner and Fundraising Academy instructor Tamika Franklin, this conversation will explore multiple perspectives and help you build on your experiences and background knowledge as an emerging fundraiser. From their careers as fundraisers of color, the panelists will share how they leverage background knowledge as an asset to grow professionally. Build on your own professional experiences with these insights to inform and enrich your fundraising practice.

This August marks the 10th anniversary of Black Philanthropy Month, which celebrates and elevates African-decent giving. Celebrate with us as we set aside time to connect, reflect, and grow your impact.

Today, many fundraisers are finding themselves facing different challenges and opportunities in the current fundraising climate. As a fundraiser, you may be new to an organization, or you may have new donors you have not yet cultivated. Perhaps you have never met your donor in person, as your entire relationship has been conducted virtually! This webinar will explore how you can use these situations to your advantage and ultimately discover the most important fact of all – your donor’s Why.

Join us for a live panel discussion on exploring philanthropy and building successful nonprofit careers. This conversation will focus on key recommendations for emerging nonprofit professionals. Moderated by a Fundraising Academy alumni, our panel of mentors will share their stories and experiences in the fundraising world. Learn from your peers and the amazing community of experienced fundraisers and nonprofit professionals to find resources to help you succeed.

Panelists:

• Javier Guerrero, President and CEO, Coastal Roots Farm
• Suzanne Stone, Chief Strategic Solutions & Programs Officer, Livestrong
• Michael Riordan, Director of Marketing, Compass Community Center

Dive deep into each step of the Cause Selling Cycle as Tony Beall, Sr. Director of Fundraising Academy, joins the American Nonprofit Academy on The Nonprofit Show to share his stories and best practices. Tony is joined by co-hosts Julia C. Patrick, CEO of The American Nonprofit Academy, and Jarrett Ransom, The Nonprofit Nerd and CEO of The Rayvan Group. In this series, you will learn how to connect potential donors with your cause and build stronger relationships with them.

In this webinar, you will learn how to structure meaningful, question-driven conversations that will help build lasting relationships with donors. Because the entire process should be focused on the donor, the Need Discovery step is the most critical. It’s there for you to ask questions and get to know your donors so that you can discover what matters most to them. At its core, fundraising is engaging donors and learning what they do, how they do it, who they do it with, and why they do it that way. Find the answers to those things, and you can align what matters most to them and your cause. Together we will study the functions served by various types of questions and when to use them in the Cause Selling Cycle.

The past year of COVID-19 has been a wild ride for nonprofits, full of unexpected challenges, new daily realities, and, in many cases, increased demand for services. Now we can look back at 2020 and reflect on the best practices that nonprofits have implemented in our new virtual world. Take a dive into the lessons learned and how fundraisers can continue supporting their organizations into 2021.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXwHfUia9lk

This webinar highlights why online fundraising is vital to your organization’s long-term fundraising strategy, explores ways to position your organization on social media, shows how to cultivate peer-to-peer fundraising and provides details to improve data analytics.

In this webinar you’ll learn how to data mine your existing database and resources to identify and qualify prospects; discover how to thoughtfully leverage referrals and centers of influence to open new doors to prospects; and practice qualifying prospects using MADDEN, a proven prospect qualifying process.

In this webinar you’ll learn how to qualify and curate leads for a more targeted engagement strategy; communicate your cause with prospects, donors and colleagues during a time of crisis; and ramp up your stewardship program in an uncharted fundraising landscape.

Time management can seem like an intimidating topic. In this webinar you’ll learn how to manage your time and take control of your activities. Lenise will teach you how to establish processes that help you direct your actions and achieve focus for better results in your fundraising career.

In this webinar, you’ll learn about the strategies you can take now to protect your organization during these uncertain times. You’ll complete the webinar equipped to take timely and effective action.

In this webinar, we’ll explore the most effective ways to grow your social media reach and tap into the unique opportunities of each platform.

In this webinar, we’ll explore how to identify and activate influential supporters to take their advocacy to the next level.

There’s no getting around it. If you’re a nonprofit fundraiser, you will face objections from donors. Instead of trying to avoid or ignore them, smart fundraisers see objections for what they really are: opportunities.

Don’t miss this opportunity to learn how you can prepare your organization for crisis before it hits. Organizations of any size and in any sector of the nonprofit world can be pulled into a controversial issue. But you can be prepared and confident when the time comes.

Does your institution need more investors? Do you have ownership in ensuring the fiscal health of your institution? Cause Selling the Sanford Way may be the solution you’ve been seeking. Learn about the relationship-driven donor cycle and the role an academic leader plays in each stage, and gain a better understanding of how to build donor work into your role.