Fundraising Academy
Cause Selling Education on The
Nonprofit Show

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.

Key Takeaways:

• Discover the key contributors to a strong first impression.
• Review fundamental questions that will help you uncover your donor’s “Why.”
• Explore how you can deliver a meaningful presentation that aligns your cause with what matters most to your donor.

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.

Strong donor relationships are critical to fundraising success at all stages of the development cycle and at all levels of giving. This webinar covers how to invest in the practice of valuing, nurturing, and earning donor loyalty from the start to retain your loyal donors before and after the holiday giving season.

This webinar covers the latest thinking on well-being in the nonprofit workplace based on presenter Beth Kanter’s book, “The Happy, Healthy Nonprofit: Strategies for Impact Without Burnout.” Hear examples and insights from nonprofits that have created and implemented a culture of well-being in the workplace that supports results.

December is the single biggest month for charitable contributions to nonprofit organizations – more than 30% of annual gifts come in December! So, how do you make the most of this year-end-giving blitz? Start planning early.

First impressions matter — you’ll never get a second chance to make one, so make the initial meeting count. During this webinar, we’ll discuss both your nonverbal approach and verbal greeting, as well as describe the seven interest-capturing statements that deepen your connection with prospective donors.

This valuable webinar will help you identify actual methods and techniques for broadening your pipeline to include a more diverse major donor base.

Whether you’re looking to expand your donor base, grow awareness for your mission, or give your supporters a new way to get involved, peer-to-peer fundraising is a strategy you can’t ignore. This webinar will dive into the strategies and tactics needed to plan and execute a successful peer-to-peer campaign.

Digital fundraising has become a vital tool to effectively and creatively engage, inform, and steward your donors. Join our webinar to learn how to determine the right digital platforms and set goals for your nonprofit’s social media strategy that map to your organization’s strategic goals.

Cause Selling is the key to forming long-term relationships that ensure the future of your nonprofit. Fundraising Academy’s Cause Selling Cycle explores the eight steps that successful fundraisers must take to achieve and surpass their goals. Based on proven for-profit business principles, these steps have been uniquely formulated to combine the best of the business world with the heart of nonprofit fundraising.

This webinar discusses the importance of building meaningful relationships with black donors and communities and why black giving matters.

Kulik will share career strategies, including dealing with multi-generational offices and successfully building relationships with your organization’s donors.