Ep. 151: NextGen Fundraising: What to Do When “What You’ve Always Done” Stops Working
EPISODE 151
NextGen Fundraising: What to Do When “What You’ve Always Done” Stops Working
About the Episode:
If your fundraising strategy still runs on 2010 logic, this is your wake-up call. In this episode, I break down the concept of NextGen Fundraising—not just for Gen Z, but for every generation of donor who now expects fast, friction-free, modern giving experiences. I share why traditional tactics are burning you out, why your board doesn’t need another gala, and how to cut the clutter and focus on what actually works. Get ready for mindset shifts, strategy overhauls, and some tough love on why clinging to the past is costing you funding. If your nonprofit is still waiting on permission, outdated systems, or “someday” grants—this one’s for you.
Here’s what you’ll learn:
What “NextGen Fundraising” really means
Why traditional fundraising tactics are failing — and how donor habits have shifted faster
The outdated “fundraising OS” most orgs are still using
The myth of long cultivation cycles
Why chasing new donors while losing your current ones is the ultimate leaky bucket
What nonprofit leaders can learn from Shopify and Amazon
How to use Social Street Team® to expand reach
Why being grant-dependent is a risk, not a strategy — and what to do right now if you’ve lost a major funder's support
Real wins from real nonprofits
Why holding out for board meetings or retreats is costing you more than you realize
It’s not your stories—it’s how you’re telling them. If your amazing work isn’t getting the attention (and donations) it deserves, it’s time for a messaging shift. The Brave Fundraiser’s Guide guide gives you 10 done-for-you donor prompts to make your message impossible to ignore. Get it for free here! https://christinaedwards.krtra.com/t/xKuLs6tOiPZa
Christina’s Favorite Takeaways:
“Gen X, boomers, and beyond have had different shifts and different changes in their habits.”
“Nonprofit leaders are trying to run a 2025 mission using early 2000s logic.”
“If your nonprofit is too heavily reliant on grants, that needs to change immediately.”
“If you think grants are the end-all be-all. It's time to rethink that, because grants are time-heavy on the front end.”
“Most organizations are stuck in cycles and strategies built for another world, built for the early 2000s.”
“What we expect now from businesses, organizations, friends, schools, membership, institutions is speed, simplicity, relevance, a message that feels personal, not performative.”
“You should be able to donate to your organization from the couch.”
“Your solo fundraising era is over. The future is a team of ambassadors, creators, and influencers that advocate and bring awareness for your organization.”
“Shopify brands are seeing 80% of revenue come from repeat customers because they've built systems for retention.”
“91% of consumers say they're more likely to buy from brands that remember who they are and send relevant content.”
“Consumers want to be remembered. They want to be known by the brand. They want to develop that trust and connection with the brand.”
“79% of fundraisers are seeing declining results from traditional donor communications.”
“The thriving organizations are adapting fast, not waiting for permission.”
“If you're too grant dependent, that's a vulnerability, not a strategy.”
“Next Gen fundraising helps you diversify revenue and build an owned audience that gives year-round.”
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Christina Edwards 0:00Today, we're going to talk about this concept of next gen fundraising. Now, if I say next gen fundraising, you might be thinking, I'm only speaking to generating new, younger donors like the next generation, like Gen Z and beyond, right? But what I actually mean is the next generation of the strategy your organization is using that it will literally propel you forward into generations to come. So while a lot of what we're going to talk about will be accessible to reaching to younger generations and generating more donors, more supporters, more advocates and younger generations, I don't want you to think that this strategy, this topic today, is only useful for for that, for that segment of the population, because, in fact, one of the biggest things I'm seeing is that Gen X, boomers and beyond have had different shifts and different changes in their habits. We're going to dig into habits today and how the habits of donors, the habits of the way that we consume and technology, the way that we consume anything, the way that we are making our purchase decisions, they've changed, and it's doing a disservice to tell yourself it's only changing for younger generations. Only millennials and Gen Z iers want this, when in fact, that's not the case. So we're going to talk about this idea of, are you rising to the occasion, or are you retreating back and going, can it just be the good old days? Can we just do it this old way? Spoiler alert, no, you can't, but I'm going to share with you some low lift ways that you can rise to the occasion of next gen fundraising, when what you've always done stops working.
So you are entering. We are in a new fundraising era. A lot has changed just this year, in the past few months, and most people, most organizations, have not updated their tools or their strategy. So what it might look like is, you launched the gala, the same one that always does well, you posted the campaign, you sent the newsletter, and it's not performing the way it used to. Right now, nonprofit leaders are trying to run a 2025, Mission using early 2000s logic. Okay, imagine trying to stream Netflix, your favorite show to binge watch on Netflix with a dial up connection. If you're like me and you remember those dial up days, it wouldn't work. And so there, what we're seeing is this old school strategy kind of being slapped on new school thinking and new preferences and new tech, and the two aren't going together. So your mission deserves better. Let's take a pulse of what I'm seeing in this climate, one major funders are consolidating, so some are cutting ties. We've seen huge changes in federal and state funding being slashed while need is rising. I've seen organizations have to pivot overnight, and it has the tinge of COVID, days when lockdown happened and everyone had to get really creative on everything. Businesses trying to stay open. Do you remember what restaurants were trying to do just to keep afloat? Nonprofits trying to fundraise, when their program services, funding a big event, all of those things got cut. So I'm seeing a similar sort of knee jerk reaction to a specific group of nonprofits, the ones that were too heavily reliant on federal, state grant funding, foundation funding. In fact, this is true. I sat on a community, I forget what they call it, a community call a community forum with a local nonprofit here in Atlanta that made a huge pivot, and their community was not happy. They have a fee for service model, and they escalated their fees over 500% and I could read between the lines, and a few other people could too, and what we saw was, Oh, your big grant funding, your big federal funding got slashed, and you don't know what to do. This is your only avenue. This is your knee jerk response. So there's a couple of things here. One, good reminder, if your nonprofit is one, too heavily reliant on grants, that needs to change immediately. Two, if. You think grants are the end all be all. It's time to rethink that, because grants are time heavy on the front end. They are not guaranteed that you will receive them on the back end. And then there is the time in the reporting back. Sometimes they're even restricted, which is really frustrating too. You can't even use them towards your program. I'll never forget when my kids Co Op got a grant awarded, and they got this big, fancy blender, only to really realize that, like the way that the school was run. Number one, the kids weren't eating a bunch of blended foods. And two, there wasn't a role for anyone to to be in charge of the blended soups and smoothies throughout the day. So it ended up being like this grant that no one grant reward that no one really used, which is a bummer, right? So let's bring us back. We're going to talk about how you can think about next gen fundraising, a modern system for faster, bolder, donor centered growth, without all the busy work. So the problem that I'm seeing isn't your mission isn't your programs, isn't the people you serve. That isn't the impact in the people you serve. Isn't any of that. What you're doing is working, but is your fundraising operating system, your fundraising OS, think about a laptop. Do you have an old laptop from like, 10 years ago? 15 years ago? If you're like me, I still have my old laptops. I don't know what to do with them. I probably don't remember. Don't remember the passwords to them. I probably they probably won't turn on it anyway, but it feels weird to get rid of them. So I have a couple of old laptops. I might even have my laptop from college, which is a brick. Is a brick. It is so heavy, okay, many of you are using that old brick as your fundraising strategy. What do I mean? Most organizations are stuck in cycles and strategies built for another world, built for early 2000s built for the 2010s what does that look like? Year long cultivation, Legacy donors or a couple a handful of old, rich white dudes driving your funding make or break funding legacy donors driving strategy grant pipelines as lifelines, Grant pipelines taking too much of the big piece of your funding. Boards who say they support but never actually ask anyone right that never actually take action that aren't truly engaged in every other sector, tech, media, retail, consumer behavior has changed significantly from a decade ago, significantly, but fundraising is still stuck in like the windows days early, Windows days right? But your truth is your donors and your donor prospects, your supporters, their entire expectations, preferences and habits have changed. What we expect now from businesses, from organizations, from friends, from schools, from membership, institutions is speed, simplicity, relevance, a message that feels personal, not performative. We are very, very impatient. We'll get into that in a little bit. But the majority of people, their preferences have changed so significantly. I really need you to hear this. They're not waiting around to be cultivated. I find that most people have more they more on their to do list more on their I want to do list. They want to have girls night with friends, they want to go out, they want to do this, they want to do that. And they're like, there's not enough hours in the day. How many times have you heard a friend say that I have so much to do, I'm so busy. Do you think that that donor really wants you to take them to coffee and then take them to dinner and then follow up on the follow up? No, they're like, they want to hear about your upcoming program that you want to launch, how you want to launch that pilot, and they want to know how much it's going to cost to fund it, and if perhaps they can be part of that kind of seed funding round, right? They don't want you to take 11 months to make the ask. I promise you that I don't remember. They definitely don't want you to keep taking them to coffee before you make the ask, right? I find there's this, like, bottom line me, mentality, that that for profit businesses have picked up on, they have picked up on that they realize that to acquire a customer is going to take more action, more marketing messages, more reminders, and not like, well, we'll just like, let's they'll just come when they're ready. No, those businesses that think that way go out of business, right? They'll just, they'll, you know what, Christina, they'll just be become a client. They'll just shop with us when they're ready. Can you imagine if Old Navy thought that? Can you imagine if bombas socks thought that? Well, they'll just come to our website when they're ready. No, they're like, we're gonna send Christina 22 emails in 30 days. And we're not, we're not mad about it, we're not embarrassed about it, right? We got new socks. She needs to know about it.
So what we're doing, and the shift we're seeing, is that. But people aren't waiting around to be cultivated. They're primed by E commerce and digital experiences that meet them fast and friction free. Friction free. Why should donating feel harder than checking out on Amazon? Seriously, why should it feel harder? Because, you know, and this is why we had Sal on the podcast, and this is one of the pieces that he went into on the digital donor generation, which is all of the generations, right, is not about age. You should be able to donate to your organization from the couch. Number one. Number two, I should be moved to donate from to your organization from the couch. You with me? It should it take? The phone call, the gala, the direct mail, the handwritten note, how could you reach me? How could you reach me as I am right now? What would that take? That's defining that's the piece of next generation fundraising that I want you to think about. So what is next gen fundraising? Well, it's not just a tactic. It's a new operating system. It's not an 18 month campaign. It's not a deck. Oh, it's not the perfect slide deck. I promise. I know you think it is. It's not the perfect slide deck to one rich board member, one well connected somebody that is the Hail Mary that will save the day, right? It's not fingers crossed, hope and a prayer that you get that grant right. No, it is activating faster, activating your network, activating donors faster, no more. Long lead time for prepping. Now we teach a campaign launch process, our three phase campaign system in both of our programs, the sprint method and the purpose and profit club. We teach that because there is a right way to launch a fundraising campaign or a current giving campaign, and it's not just zero to ask for money. There is a process we teach, but it is not six months long. You're gonna start lean, start, launch, quick and earn while you build. Earn While you build. It doesn't have to be perfect. And, in fact, your people don't want it perfect. You're going to leverage influence. This is why you hear me talk about ambassadors, partners, social street teamers. That is the future of fundraising period. Your solo fundraising era is over. The future is a team of ambassadors, creators and influencers that advocate and bring awareness for your organization. The social Street Team method turns attention into traction without a big budget. We're not paying them without paid ads or a fancy production. In fact, the best street team campaigns are the ones that the Creator does in their voice, with their style, not some sort of overly slick or professional or professional or stylized content, turning up the conversion. Don't just get clicks, get gifts, right? If you're someone who has said, Yeah, but we've got a great email list, or we have a huge direct mail list, or a lot of people really love our blah, blah, blah golf outing, our thing, right? Okay, sure, but let's go a little further, a little deeper. Is their love for it converting into dollars? Is it converting into donations? Are you monetizing that email list, or are they just clicking and actually not going through the process of becoming a donor. Are they giving once a year instead of twice, three, four times a year? Okay?
This is what smart organizations are doing. They're building repeatable systems that match the speed of modern generosity. They are not saying, what are the other nonprofit doing? They're saying, let's innovate. Let's do it differently. Let's rise to the occasion of our ideal donor, who's very busy, who's very connected, who wants to make a gift today. What would be exciting and interesting for them to learn, for them to hear about, for them to donate to so let's zoom out and look at the nonprofit sector and some really important trends I'm seeing. So in the E COMM And creator economy, we're seeing a couple of really important trends I want to share with you. One, Shopify brands are seeing 80% of revenue come from repeat customers. Let that sink in, Shopify, by the way, if you're not familiar with Shopify, Shopify is the back end of the website, processor, hub of so many online brands. So if you've bought a candle, a t shirt, a microphone, a book, a lipstick. Many of those things I just mentioned were from Shopify websites. Hosted websites, okay, so they have a huge footprint in the E com sector, and this data is worth saying a second time. They're seeing that 80% of their revenue. To repeat customers because they've built systems for retention. We know in our sector, in the nonprofit sector, that eight out of 10 donors only give one time. That is the ultimate leaky bucket, right? That you're constantly trying to refill. Okay, so what does a next gen fundraising strategy look like for you? Well, it needs to attack that churn immediately. You need to retain people. I want you to double your current retention rate. What would that look like? What the strategy be there? 91% of consumers say they're more likely to buy from brands that remember who they are and send relevant content. Consumers want to be remembered. They want to be known by the brand. They want to develop that trust and connection with the brand. Now I will offer this is especially true for younger generations. So how are you helping your donor, subscribers, ambassadors, feel that connection? The average person makes a decision in under 60 seconds, because digital has shortened the trust window, and yet nonprofits emails are long winded, overly formal, sterile, and three steps way, way, way down on the page is that tiny, tiny, little donate button. We are not rising to the occasion of that 60 second nd window on social media at seven seconds, seven seconds before we start scrolling on by right. So the attention spans have gotten shorter, the decision making time has gotten shorter. So where can you rise to that challenge? Some fundraising trends we're seeing in this year, 79% of fundraisers are seeing declining results from traditional donor communications. We're seeing that grant applications are up, but funding is not the organizations that are thriving are adapting fast, not waiting for permission. Please, please, please, do not take this episode and say, You know what I hear, what she's saying. I think we should run this campaign. I think this would be really cool. Let's just take it, let's run with it in the next 10 days, and then say, Hang on. Let me ping that to the board president. Let me send that over to the board chair. Let me see what Joan and accounting thinks. No, you do not have time for everyone to have that group. Think everyone has that buy in. You do not have that time. And the for profit brands that are that are thriving, the ones that are growing, that are ones that are seeing that retention, they're not waiting for Joan and accounting to say, You know what? That's a really cool campaign idea. No, her lane is accounting, marketing, com, sales. Their lane is driving revenue, and that's how I want you to think about it. That's how I want you to think about
it. I you. So we recently had a couple of wins in the club that I want to share with you. So one member just had our biggest fundraiser ever, and it wasn't a gala, it wasn't a grant, it wasn't a multi year plan, okay, it was a high impact online campaign with a small in person component, okay, that's it. She raised over five figures, not a problem, and it was more than she had ever raised in a short period of time. In that window, no PR firm, no big celebrity, no big golf outing, just urgency, clarity, support and a very clear, forward thinking campaign strategy. Okay, this is what's possible for your organizations, too. So if you're thinking, Oh, but our team is so tiny, that's why this system exists. Next Gen fundraising is designed for Lean teams, because it kind of streamlines. It cuts the clutter. You focus on actions that actually convert. You don't have time for the golf outing. I have news for you. I don't remember what call I was on, but somebody said to me, and they were a solo shop, solo shop ed, and they were saying that a board member really wanted to do an event this fall. And based on all that I heard and all that they were working on and their time constraints and their board constraints, I said, you don't have time for that. You have time to play an event. If you want to have a fall event, you need to have secured the venue yesterday. You don't have time for that. So yes, that event would be fun, cool, but you want to zoom out and go, What is the cost of putting on the event? There's the cost of the actual event itself. Maybe that's $30,000 all in food, venue, etc. There's the time the cost. It took you, your staff, your board, your volunteers, away from every other activity to do that event. Okay? Same thing for grants. You know, if you're an executive director, let's say and you don't have a grant writer, right? You're not hiring out full time for that, or your contract for that, and you're doing that, or maybe your programs person is doing that, or your fundraiser is doing that. I've seen all of it, right the what is the cost of applying for the grant for which you don't get awarded hours and hours and hours and hours? What could they have done instead, in this next gen fundraising that would have had a higher ROI than $0 and time wasted. I know that's tough love. I know it's hard to hear, but it's true. Okay, so it's really important to think about where you can cut the clutter and focus on actions that convert. So maybe you're saying, Christina, we just lost a major funder, all the more reason to pivot. You can't afford to wait until another funder falls from the sky, right? A next grant cycle. This gets you back in the game fast, and to that point, if you're too grant dependent, that's a vulnerability, not a strategy. I think it's super fun, too. I love it when you get those big grant awards, but it is leaving too many organizations vulnerable. I've seen too many come to the brink of shuttering in the past few months. Some completely pausing services. next gen fundraising helps you diversify that revenue and build an owned audience that gives year round. Your giving should not be happening primarily in November and December. That is also a vulnerability, regardless of where that funding is coming in. I love your end fundraising. I think it's a beautiful thing, but your organization should not be white knuckling it 10 months out of the year only to have a windfall two months out of the year. You with me. If you're thinking about joining the club, you want to join our growth accelerator. You want the support of having a consultant on retainer, an expert consultant on a retainer, but at a fraction of the price. You want access to our strategy, our templates, our scripts, year long, support, but you're saying we can't afford to invest What's your plan if this year ends flat or worse, what's your plan? What's the alternative? I want you to go down there, like, what are we doing instead? What does that look like? We just had a call today, at the time I'm recording this, and we always celebrate wins at the top of our call, and we had an ED show up to the call. I haven't seen her in a few weeks. And she said, catch me up. She's like, well, you remember the 150k we were going after with, for with this particular donor. She's like, well, we got 300k 300k over three years. Like, come on, come on. That's, that's, that's the the transformational amount of funding that helps you continue to do this work, not at a plateau, right? And she had been prepping, she had done the work in advance of that meeting, and so she felt very equipped. And now we spent the rest of the call creating her next phase of this strategy that she's going to appeal to her mid and major donors worth and I'm so excited, and then roll out a more public facing campaign, like it is happening and it's not happening because of a golf outing, and it's not happening because of grants, and it's not happening because she's reliant on one single person, one single Foundation, one single high net worth, contact, right? Hoping is not a strategy. What's riskier is doing nothing, doing the same thing, doing this same OS, the same operating system. So if you're waiting on your board, retreat, annual meeting, Gala, something like that, I just want to offer, are you waiting for everybody else to tell you it's a good idea, because that amount of waiting, that amount of time lost, is hundreds of 1000s of dollars lost as you keep kicking the can to somebody else, volleying over here to see what Jim thinks, volleying over there to see what Joan thinks. You with me. You don't need him another meeting. You need momentum. You need action. Then you learn and build off of that action and those results. That's what it is. If you're saying, Christina, I'm kind of feeling burnt out. I don't think I have the energy. I don't think I can change anything. I don't think I don't think I can layer on any more strategies. That's actually a symptom of why you need a new operating system. You need a new strategy that works with your capacity, that works with your staff size, that works with your org chart, not against it. And that's the problem with these other things, is we think that, oh. Old operating system worked, and so you've been layering on these time heavy strategies that used to work, and now they work at half the result, like half of the half of the benefit that they used to and they take twice as much time. That's the burnout. That's why you feel like you don't have time to do anything else, because you're not doing the thing over here that is very, very quick. Okay, so this is the work we do. This is what we coach on. Inside the purpose and profit club, inside my group coaching program, we are opening enrollment very, very soon. I highly recommend going on and hopping on our wait list, signing up for our upcoming webinar, and remember that your organization, increasing its funding, increasing its impact, doesn't come from replicating a 2010 strategy. It just doesn't we are in a different world. Can you imagine? I'm gonna take us back one more time. If the Amazon experience was today, if I went on amazon.com and I got a 2010 version of whatever that website looked like back, then, everything would be different. First of all, I bet the app would suck. I don't know what the app would look like in 2010 I bet it wouldn't have all of my digital Apple, pay wallets, all the things, everything would be different. We're different consumers today than we were back then, just 15 years ago. So we need to rise to this occasion. inside the clu we don't give you more to do. I promise. I built it for busy people. I built it with you. In mind, we give you the right things to do and help you do them faster. We you get weekly group coaching. You get campaign rewrites. Think of it as a 360 degree view on all assets, all aspects of your next fundraiser, your next event, your next recurring giving campaign, all of it. You get our complete social street team strategy, which is where we give you the blueprint to partner with creators, influencers, board members and ambassadors to become your champions, your expert fundraisers without paying $1 This is not paid partnerships, okay? So you can go to splendid atl.com, forward slash start for details or to book a free call with me. So if you're fundraising like it's 2010 just stop and go. Okay, all right, now I have some insight as to why it's not working. Next Gen fundraising is about stepping into what's working now and what is working in the future, with messaging that moves systems that scale and campaigns that convert. Okay, I will see you in the next one. Go ask yourself today, where can I add a sprinkle in a little next gen fundraising to this upcoming campaign? See you next time you.