You can create a systemic fundraising model that drives revenue generation, yields a high return-on-investment, and scales to the size of the impact you need to make.​ We're offering a free eight-session master class series that will enable you to create a tailored model for your shop that propels growth. 

​

​But there is one (not so) small catch. You will need to change your operating model.​​​​​​

​​​​​​​

The phrase “new era of philanthropy” is being used more and more to describe a fundamental shift in how giving is practiced and understood. The new era prioritizes deeper relationships with fewer donors resulting in much larger average gifts and exponential increases in the amounts raised. The old model resembles marketing and sales—direct mail, gala events, and transactional fundraising.

​

New era fundraisers adopt a highly personal approach with donors focusing on long-term engagement, measurable impact, and alignment with their personal values. It’s not just about more money—it’s about different expectations, values, and strategies shaping the way philanthropy operates.​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​​​​​​​We came into the nonprofit sector from a for-profit business background, so a scarcity mindset never made sense to us. While nonprofits are certainly different from for-profit enterprises in many ways, the fundamental truths of how finance works remain the same—you can’t do more with less. Life-changing missions require a significant investment in resources, tools, and people.

​

What will this series of free classes do for you?

​

• You will get a quick and easy look at your potential gain. No cost. No obligation. No pitch.

• You will identify what’s really blocking your overall revenue growth and keeping you from becoming a high-ROI operation.

• You will learn the path to steady, predictable revenue so you can grow your shop’s capabilities and capacity to build relationships with investment-level donors.

• You will understand how to speak the language of finance to a board and organization that does not understand the economics of high-performance fundraising.

• You will create a step-by-step action plan that aligns hours with dollars, dictating which new activities you will start, which current ones you will decide to continue, and those low-return activities (including “sacred cows”) which you will stop.

• You will learn how to pivot your organization, staff, and strategy from fragmented fundraising to a systemic unified process that engages investment-level donors.

• You will be able to turn your process partners into high-revenue generators.

• You will know how to align your staff’s time within a critical path framework to achieve a high-ROI model.

• You will understand the infrastructure, training, and ongoing coaching your newly integrated development team needs to maximize production.

• You will be empowered to break free from the activities that limit growth, create cash flow issues, and never secure the investment-level gifts needed to grow.

• You will know how to decide what to stop doing so you can start spending time on attracting investment-level donors and securing larger gifts. ​

• ​

​

​

​

​

​

​

 

We’ve been paid millions of dollars in consulting fees to provide this information. Now we’re offering it in a series of educational sessions that are absolutely free.

 

Are we nuts?

​

No, just ambitious.

​

We’ve been in business since 1983 doing campaigns and performance improvement initiatives with a relatively few large organizations. Our official mission is Helping People Succeed. Our informal mission is to bring meaningful change for performance improvement to the nonprofit fundraising sector.

 

​​​​​​​​​​​​We’ve realized we’re not going to do that by continuing to focus on a limited number of larger clients. We’ve earned and learned a lot in the past 20 years. But the only way we’re going to make real change in the sector’s fundraising model is to change our business model. So, we created and sponsor the Fundraising Performance Institute.

​

​​​ Here’s brief look at the master-class curriculum.

 

Session 1 (Webinar)

Operational Efficacy
The Overlooked Predictor of Success in Fundraising

​

The Capability Maturity Model was originally a software engineering assessment tool funded by the Department of Defense and developed at Carnegie Mellon University. This session, first offered at the 2025 AHP International Meeting, focuses on how organizations can benchmark themselves against five defined maturity levels of operational efficacy for fundraising organizations. It also introduces the lean six sigma, advanced management science and metric measured process concepts that set the stage for the online performance improvement master classes that follow.​

​

Session 2 (Webinar)

Your Focused Frontline

Discover Your Organization’s Potential

​

The key to more than incremental gains in fundraising is finding and retaining high-value donors. This master class session focuses on the economics of fundraising and starts with an exercise to determine, based on where you are now, how much more your organization can raise in the next three years using the Fundraising Performance Improvement Framework. Success comes from focus that shifts resources away from transactional fundraising practices to where the rate of return is as much as five times better. Your resources will then be result-focused, with 80 percent directed to where 80-percent of your return will come.

 

Session 3 (Webinar)

The Core Process

The Critical Path Engine at the Core of the FPI Framework

​

The Critical Path Method is an algorithm for managing a set of activities to optimize use of time and ensure achievement of planned outcomes. This master class session focuses on the Fundraising Performance Improvement Core Process, a criteria-gated, multi-stage, critical-path way of building authentic, personalized donor relationships that result in larger gifts and lasting donor retention. The Lean Cycle Time concept is key to reducing the average time-to-ask target from 18 to 9 months. Stage Gates keep the focus is on the right prospects at the right times.

 

Session 4 (Webinar)

The Integrated Development Team

The Structure that Makes Your Critical Path Engine Run

​

Most fundraising programs are set up based on diversification as if they were stock market portfolios. Donors are seen more as a type than as an individual. A divide often exists between back-office operations and frontline fundraising. The result is way too little time spent on actual donor-facing work. This master class session focuses on restructuring a fundraising organization into a team that enables frontline fundraisers to focus exclusively on what they do best—more donor-facing time within a donor-centric process. The strategy is to use specialized team roles and technology-supported sub-processes within the context of a critical path process.

 

Session 5 (Webinar)

Pipeline Development

Data, Outreach and Qualification

​

Most fundraising databases include transactional donors who are making much larger individually solicited gifts to other organizations. Databases also list larger donors who are never asked to become involved in helping to enlist other high-value donors. Meanwhile, fundraising staffs are struggling to reverse the irreversible acquisition, retention, and cost trends with smaller-dollar direct mail, digital and event donors. This master class session focuses on the Pipeline Development phase of the Core Process that facilitates recruiting process partners and structures an ongoing high-value donor acquisition process. A structured ongoing outreach process is the reciprocal of the time spent with active individually solicited gift prospects process provides the criteria, tools, structure and support for enlisting potential high-value donors.

 

Session 6 (Webinar)

Active Prospects

Dialogue, Stage Gates, Cycle Time, and Progressive Asks

​

The Active Prospect phase is the “core” of the Core Process. The sequence is the Identify, Engage, Cultivate and Solicit stages—including the Information Ask, Comfort Ask, Trial Ask and Formal Solicitation. This master class session focuses on how to begin with a dialogue focused on the potential donor’s philanthropic passions to create mutually purposeful relationships with donors based on key concepts: Listen & Learn, Connect the Dots, Many Points of Glue, Make the Process the Ask. It identifies the need to resist early inclinations or even invitations to “pitch” so in later stages the relationship manager can act as a philanthropic advisor, knowing what resonates with the donor.

 

Session 7 (Webinar)

Portfolio Management

Balancing the Core Process for Donor Loyalty

​

While the Pipeline Development phase of the Core Process is a one-time journey, the Active Prospect and Portfolio Management phases together bring ongoing balance to the donor-focused individual giving experience. This master class session focuses on the staff teamwork necessary to maintain engagement and build donor loyalty over time through Portfolio Management, the third phase of the process. This is a non-linear phase, The Recognize, Report and Relate stages are not necessarily sequential. Like the Return to Active Prospect stage—for which the date is set upon entry to the Portfolio Management phase—the intent of each ongoing stage is to ensure important aspects of the ongoing engaged donor relationship are planned and never overlooked.

 

Session 8 (Webinar)

Managing Culture & Change

The Intertwined “How We Do Things Here”

​

Change of any significance is intertwined with culture because both are about “how we do things here.” This master class session focuses on how to take a structured approach to transitioning  from a current state to a desired future state. It addresses both culture change within the fundraising team and moving beyond the traditional fundraising thinking about a culture of philanthropy to creating a true culture for philanthropy within the larger organization. The Five Key Steps and Three Best Practices in  Change Management Processes apply to both initiatives.​

 

But, if this all is free, you might ask, how do we pay our bills?

​

Optional premium upgrades, of course.

​

Some organizations will see the need and potential for even more ambitious gains in their level of philanthropic support. We can bring them the infrastructure, support services, and latest technology necessary for higher levels of gain.​

​

But premium services aren't necessary to gain added production through our Fundraising Performance Institute master classes.

​

We’ll help you create your specific model for your shop that propels growth. We’ll even provide training for your frontline fundraisers for free. And nothing will be missing from the “recipe.”

​

There’s no risk. Click here now to reserve your absolutely free master-class seat.

​

 

                                         Claim this opportunity now! 

                                         You have nothing to lose, and everything to gain.

​