Winter Wonderland Clairity Click-it: Nonprofit Links, Free Resources
I just can’t stop taking inspiration from the inimitable Seth Godin.
There are two ways for an artisan or professional to see the world:
Scarcity. This is the idea that if there were fewer photographers, more people would hire me to do wedding pictures. That if the bar exam were more selective, it would be easier for my firm to get clients. And if everyone would just stop imagining they could be an author/musician/magician/painter, my life would be a lot better. (And AI should be barred from doing what I do.)
Abundance. This is the more resilient and likely idea that when others show up to participate in your craft, it brings energy, insight and activity to the field.
The truth is that books don’t sell very well in the supermarket, where there are no other books. They do better in the bookstore, right next to all the other books.
— Seth Godin
Don’t fight your fellow nonprofits. This isn’t a competition. It’s a cooperation. Working together to build a better world. Where you can collaborate, do so. When you can refer a donor to a colleague, do so. A rising tide raises all boats.
Okay, let’s get in to today’s content. I’ve collected lots of resources over the past two weeks – all with the hope you’ll find something to help you enact your mission. As always, a big thank you to my sponsor, Bloomerang, for making it possible for me to spend the hours of time hunting, gathering and choosing the eclectic resources I believe will best meet the needs of the diverse range of folks who comprise our critically important social benefit sector.
You’ve got this!
Thank you for doing your vital work, with gratitude,
Claire
P.S. If you’re an enrolled Clairification School student, your MAY TIPS are live. If you’re not yet enrolled, there’s no better time.
Clairity Click-it, Your Nonprofit Ticket to…
SPECIAL FEATURE: Reframing Your Approach
ARTICLES
Click-it: Stop Saying ‘Nonprofit’: Reframing Your Social Benefit for Stronger Fundraising. In NonProfitPRO, I ask why we define ourselves by what we are not? No other sector does this. Philanthropy, fundamentally, is a value-for-value exchange. “Nonprofit” doesn’t communicate purpose. It doesn’t express value. It doesn’t explain why anyone should care. Donors are looking to participate in something meaningful — to act on their values, to be part of a solution, to experience the joy of contributing to a better world. Neuroscience confirms this: giving activates the brain’s pleasure centers. The question is whether your organization’s story is activating that pleasure — or triggering fatigue. Try these seven reframes, and see how they begin to transform your culture.
Click-it: The Psychology of Framing: Why Your Words Are Literally Shaping Your Donors’ Brains. Kia Chatmon, Heart for the Community Consulting, writes about what neuroscience and narrative research tell us about the stories we’re telling and the ones we’re not. As I too have written numerous times (see article above), framing matters profoundly. When we get it wrong, what happens in the brain works against success – big time — in your marketing outreach and fundraising. No matter what you or your leadership may believe, humans don’t process information as data points, we process it as stories. We look for heroes, villains, and meaning.
ARTICLES
Annual (Year-Round) Fundraising
Click-it: Transactional Donors. This article from Steven Screen, the Better Fundraising Co., makes an excellent point about so-called “transactional” donors. They’re not, per se, bad. In fact, you often need them to attract new supporters. What’s “bad” is not doing the work after the gift is received to turn this one transaction into a second, third and fourth gift – hopefully, a lifetime of giving.
Click-it: 7 Ways to Get More Recurring Donors to Give by Bank Account. Monthly giving expert, Erica Waasdorp, talks about why electronic funds transfer (EFT) improves donor retention and lowers costs. Sounds good, yes? She explains exactly what you need to do to succeed.
Boards and Staff
Click-it: The Meaningful Reset: Designing Nonprofits to Survive Board-Staff Conflict. Personality clashes only become organizational conflict when structures and culture create the conditions for them to take root. Often, the underlying causes are power dynamics, biases, and role confusion—sometimes all at once. Kristin Lincoln looks at all this and more in an article for Nonprofit Quarterly.
Click-it: 3 Ways a Board Member Can Help Raise More Money (Without Making the Ask Yourself). Marc Pitman writes on the Engage Blog about how to overcome your board members’ fear of asking for money. Help them get plugged into one of the other parts of fundraising that may be a lot more fulfilling, and a lot less terrifying.
Donor Retention
Click-it: Thank-You Letter Sent 4 Months Late. Sincerely, the Entire Nonprofit Sector. Wish I’d written this! Patrick Kirby, of DoGoodBetter, entertainingly lays out the simple-to-fix problem a majority of nonprofits have. I know, because I’ve had the same experience as Patrick. More. Than. Once. Here are three things you can do this week to stop treating gratitude like an afterthought and start treating it like the donor retention strategy it actually is. I preach the second tip all the time, but I really like the first one!
Events
Click-it: From Guest List to Gift Match. This is one seriously useful article! It’s a webinar recap from a session between Auctria and Double the Donation highlighting actionable strategies for transforming a standard event into a high-octane engine for matching gift revenue. You can apply the strategies to your guest list, natch, but can also modify them and use them to improve your income from corporate matching gifts all year round. Seriously, you’re likely leaving a lot of money on the table right now.
Click-it: How to Ask Companies For a Raffle Prize + A Sample Prize Request Letter. No need to reinvent the wheel. Let the event specialists at Eventgroove give you a tested template, a step-by-step plan of action, plus some unique raffle prize ideas.
Grants
Click-it: 3 Mistakes Nonprofits Make With Grant Proposals — And What to Do Instead. Kalie Vandewater cautions on NonProfitPRO against applying to broadly, responding to questions too generically, and forgetting the bigger picture. Specific solutions are provided.
Major, Capital and Legacy Giving
Click-it: It’s Time to Rethink the “Great Wealth Transfer.” For my money, Dr. Russell James is our leading authority on legacy giving. Read anything he has to say on the subject. I particularly appreciate this article, because I’m sick to death about hearing about this so-called transfer to younger generations as a rationale for focusing legacy giving strategies on these folks. It’s not where your focus belongs. And this post, for Market Smart, explains exactly why.
WANT TO BECOME A MAJOR GIFT FUNDRAISING WHIZ? I highly recommend this Veritus Group course: Certification Course for Major Gift Fundraisers. You’ll receive a certification, rack up CFRE points, and set yourself up for excellence for the rest of your career. If you’re the executive or manager, there’s also a companion course for you! After completion you’ll become a member of the prestigious Veritus Scholars. This is the best thing you can do to supercharge your fundraising for the coming year – and beyond! Grab my exclusive Clairification Community discount – a whopping 35% off – using this code: CLAIRE35.
Strategy, Planning, Management and Leadership
Click-it: The Manager Tax. Are you counting things too early, focusing on single transactions rather than longer-term donor retention? Kevin Shulman, the Agitator/DonorVoice, explains why this is an expensive mistake.
Click-it: Your Form 990 Is Public — Does It Build Trust or Raise Questions? I wish I’d written this! Nonprofits don’t get near the mileage they should from their public-facing 990, and this Nonprofit Pro article by Mohammad Sheikh makes explicit exactly what you should do to put your best foot forward. The 990 is not just a compliance filing. It is your organization’s most credible public financial and storytelling document.
Website
Click-it: Why Donors Abandon Your Nonprofit’s Donation Page (and How to Fix it). Donation friction is one of the leading causes of money-left-on-the-table syndrome. It’s well within your power to solve this problem, and the folks at 4aGoodCause lay it all out for you in this article.
Click-it: How a dynamic impact callout beneath the gift array affects donor conversion. This A/B test by NextAfter showed how donation conversion soared over 162% with the simple addition of a call-out dynamic impact narrative beneath the gift array that updated in real time to reflect the impact of each amount. Something you might want to test?
Other Learning Opportunities
CONFERENCES
Click-it: The Future of Fundraising is Now: Responsive Nonprofit Summit [Register for free two-day event, 6-4 to 6-5, 2025]. You’ll have access to 25 sessions, 30 fundraising experts and more, all designed to help you ditch outdated tactics and scale personal connections. The Summit is sponsored by Virtuous in partnership with We are For Good. The co-creator of Charity: water, Viktoria Harrison, will keynote. Speakers include: Nathan Chappell, Founder at Fundraising.AI & SVP at DonorSearch; Tim Paris, Cofounder + CEO at Dataro; T. Clay Buck, Founder and Principal at Next River Fundraising Strategies; Gail Perry, President at Gail Perry Group; Cameron Ripley, CEO at Community Boost, and more.
WEBINARS, PODCASTS, & ON-DEMAND AUDIO RESOURCES
If you can’t attend live, or are interested in sessions happening at overlapping times, note many are available via recording – but ONLY if you REGISTER!
Annual (Year-Round) Fundraising
Click-it: Hidden in plain sight: How to find your next monthly donors in your CRM [Register for free webinar, 5-13-2026]. Join Give Butter and monthly giving consultant Erika Musser for a practical, interactive session on how to identify high-potential supporters and turn one-time donors into recurring givers. You’ll leave with simple strategies for segmentation and outreach you can apply right away.
Content Marketing
Click-it: Your Best Influencer Is On Payroll [Listen to on-demand podcast]. In this Nonprofit Hub podcast, Meghan Speer talks with Deanna Tomaselli from The Motherhood: Influencer Marketing Agency about employee-generated content and why it is the most realistic, budget-friendly way to grow nonprofit visibility, trust, and community support. They dig into how to make advocacy work by keeping participation optional, training staff on the platforms they already use, and addressing brand safety concerns head-on with clear social media guidelines and crisis protocols.
Click-it: Talking About Your Nonprofit On Camera: What to Say and How To Say It [Watch brief, on-demand video]. Learn how to break what you have to say into five clear parts. This video from Blue Avocado helps you understand recording a video for your nonprofit doesn’t require a Hollywood budget or a teleprompter. Ditch the script, speak with genuine passion, and you’re more than halfway there. Then, don’t forget a clear call to action.
Major, Capital and Legacy Giving
Click-it: Blending Gifts for Fundraising Success![Register for free webinar, 5-20-2026]. Annual giving. Major gifts. Planned giving. Too often, these efforts operate side by side instead of together—leaving opportunity on the table for both immediate impact and long-term transformation. In this Stelter webinar, Phil Purcell, Central Territory Director of Planned Giving at The Salvation Army, will explore how a blended approach can unify your fundraising program and strengthen results across the board.
Technology as Tool
Click-it: The Right Way to Use AI for Nonprofit Fundraising Emails [Listen to free, on-demand podcast]. AI should be your GPS: helping you get there faster, not deciding where you’re going. In this Purpose & Profit Club session, Christina Edwards tells you what to use AI for and what to never hand over to it in your fundraising. Sure, AI can give you something “fine” in seconds. But, “fine” emails don’t raise money, and donors can feel the difference.
DOWNLOADABLE GUIDES, PAPERS, TEMPLATES & OTHER RESOURCES
Donor Acquisition
Click-it: Finding New Donors for Your Nonprofit: A How-to Guide. This guide from Donor Search responds to FAQs about acquisition, suggesting a S.M.A.R.T plan for reaching your specific goals. It addresses web presence, social media, leveraging personal networks, and more. It’s got all the basics, and also talks about how their software can help.
Events
Click-it: How to Thank Donors After a Fundraising Event: A Follow-Up Playbook. The moment your fundraising event ends, the next one begins. Not in the logistical sense, but in the relationship sense. What you do in the 48 hours after an event is one of the strongest predictors of whether a donor gives again next year. This terrific playbook from Soapbox Engage covers the full post-event follow-up sequence: who to thank, when, how, and what to say at each stage.
Strategy, Planning, Management and Leadership
Click-it: 5 Ways the 2026 Nonprofit Benchmark Report Can Increase Fundraising Results {Read analysis; you can also download the report]. The third annual Virtuous Benchmark Report is out, and it confirms you’re in competition for your donors’ connection. In other words, relationships that compel people to stick with you. Here, Nathan Chappell, Chief AI Officer, offers five ways AI can help you build sustainable support — not to automate your fundraising, but to deepen the connections that make fundraising work in the first place. Download the full report.
Click-it: 40 Nonprofit Trends for 2025 [Download free guide]. This guide from NonProfitPRO brings together insights from 31 industry experts — including nonprofit professionals, technologists, consultants, and educators — to predict the most important trends shaping the sector this year.
NOTE: You’ll find my tip at #34. There are so many good ones – you could lead a discussion group with your team around each of them! What a great way to begin to instill a culture of philanthropy in your organization. I challenge you to at least pick half a dozen to explore with your colleagues. Feel free to let me know how it goes!
Technology as Tool
Click-it: The Nonprofit Productivity Report: How AI Can Redefine Workloads. Momentum conducted a survey of nonprofit professionals, exploring the most time-consuming aspects of a fundraiser’s day-to-day and how AI could expedite those tasks. With this information, you can help your team work more efficiently, focus on the initiatives that drive impact, and, ultimately, improve fundraiser tenure.
Click-it: The Nonprofit Leader’s Guide for Optimizing Fundraising Operations with Technology. This guide for using automation as a virtual gift officer comes from Market Smart. It makes the case for leveraging technology, and shows what automation can and cannot do.
Writing and Design
Click-it: How to Use White Space in Fundraising [Download free report]. This is a useful checklist from veteran direct mail specialist Lisa Sargent. Don’t let anything get mailed without adhering to each of these rules!
Did You Miss My Newest Articles?
Here are links to the most recent articles on the Clairification blog.
🎯 4 Nonprofit Strategic Planning Myths—Debunked (And What Actually Works in Uncertain Times)
🌱One Thing You Absolutely Must Know about Today’s Donor Engagement Journey
📞Donors Screening Calls? 12 Strategies to Stop Being Defeatist.
💡 5 Strategies to Improve Nonprofit Use of Donor Data
❤️ Fixing a Wobbly World: What You Can Do to Restore Balance
💌 Top Strategies to Leverage Your Small to Mid-Sized Nonprofit’s Secret Advantages
🌟 3 Secret Advantage Ingredients Small to Medium Nonprofits Have
🤔❓Finally… if you have a question, any question…
Ask your question here. And check out my free fundraising advice column on the Bloomerang blog! You can bookmark the Ask an Expert page for any time you have a question. Here’s one: How to Plan a Fundraising Event That Actually Raises Money
REMINDER for Clairification School students: Don’t forget to log in to your “My Clairification/Subscriber Dashboard/Monthly Tips” to grab your exclusive, timely tips for each month. MAY TIPS are live. Your support is much appreciated, and helps me to support you. Thank you!
Sharing some art this week. Some from the street; some from the De Young Museum in San Francisco. Enjoy!
Spring has fully sprung in this glass window. Not Tiffany, but… famous somebody.
Beautiful bowl of giant glass fruit, as seen from balcony above.
Per “The Pink Lady: wall mural artist: “Symbol of strength, dignity, and resistance for all who are fighting for a world free from violence and oppression.”
He’s late, he’s late… Do you know where you’re going?
May have shared this before? I pass by it every week, and LOVE it so much! A great reminder to get your duckies in a row — but with flair.
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