Fundraising Engines: How to Build Repeatable Campaigns That Compound Over Time

‍Podcast episode transcript ↓

Josh:

For many nonprofits, fundraising feels cyclical.

One big event drives revenue, then momentum fades, and the planning starts all over again.

So what would it look like to build a true fundraising engine instead of relying on one-time events?

How can nonprofits design repeatable campaigns that carry momentum forward instead of resetting every season? And what needs to change to create results that compound over time?

I’m Josh with Anedot, and welcome to Nonprofit Pulse, where we explore trends, insights, and resources that help nonprofits accomplish their mission.

On this episode, we're joined by Christina Edwards on the topic of fundraising engines how to build repeatable campaigns that compound over time.

Christina is the founder of Splendid Consulting, creator of the Social Street Team Method, and host of The Purpose & Profit Club Podcast.

She has trained more than 10,000 nonprofit professionals across 20 countries to raise more money in less time, without grants, galas, or guesswork.

She previously led digital strategy for Jamestown’s $325 million Ponce City Market and has been featured on national stages including GiveCon, the Boys & Girls Clubs of America National Conference, and the Chick-fil-A Impact Accelerator.

Hey, Christina, thanks for joining us on Nonprofit Pulse.

Christina:

I'm excited to be on.

Why nonprofits should think of fundraising as an engine instead of one-time events

Josh:

Yeah, excited for our topic today, which is fundraising engines how to build repeatable campaigns that compound over time.

And a lot of folks have heard or explored the concept of what is a fundraising engine.

But maybe just to start us off, what do you mean when you say nonprofits should think of fundraising as an engine rather than many one time events?

Christina:

Yeah, I think the engine analogy is a great way to just think about your fundraising over the course of the year.

What I see is maybe there's an engine that exists in Q4, right?

It's maybe kicked off by your year end appeal or Giving Tuesday, and there's some sort of framework for how we fundraise in Q4.

But Q1 through three are just kind of like eh, we don't really know what we're doing.

Maybe we have a one off spring event or a one off summer event, but that's it. Versus having an engine is really a plan.

And that engine it's like is going 24/7, 365 and then we're layering on certain inflection points, which we'll talk about today to give fundraising like front and center attention at certain points throughout the year.

So again, so yes, your funding may be kind of bottom heavy to the last of the year.

And that's not wrong or bad. But like let's bring in some funding so you can have more sustainable growth throughout.

The risks of relying on large events as your primary fundraising strategy

Josh:

Yeah, so a lot of nonprofits, they rely on a one single large event in the year to really meet budget and to further their revenue.

What are the risks and limitations of that model?

And like I said, it's pretty common. There's reasons for that many nonprofits, started with that one event and just became kind of this baby of theirs, and it's very effective.

But what are the limitations and risks there?

Christina:

Yeah, I think it's part of an outdated operating system, just to level set.

I'm not anti event. I am anti high expense, high time, high people power to put on the event for what can be diminishing returns year over year.

And then when you stop and look at the event you're like does anyone like the auction anymore?

You're all kind of like, I hate the auction except for like maybe three very well-meaning donors love the auction.

But the rest of everybody, having personally been assigned an auction committee on a board before, I know what it's like, and it's like, we don't even want the auction anymore.

So it can have diminishing returns. It can really burn out what could be a very, very engaged board, staff, volunteers, etc.

The other thing to look at is when you rely on a big event to sort of make or break your budget, you're really putting yourself in harm's way.

I had an executive director come to me last year, and that's exactly how her organization was funded.

They did a big gala, and they have a lot of high profile people, celebrities who come to this gala. They're very well connected.

And there was an illness that prevented her from having the gala. They had to cancel the gala.

We could also zoom back just a few years and look at Covid and then as even 21 and 22, if certain events weren't happening, like you're putting yourself at risk if you don't know how to fundraise well, and I don't mean a trickle fundraise, whoosh turn on the faucet fundraise without getting people together for the dry chicken dinner.

Like we have to have another piece of that puzzle throughout the year.

What nonprofits need to stop doing to move from scattered fundraising to repeatable campaigns

Josh:

Yeah, so thinking about common things that nonprofits need to stop doing is maybe that large gala, but what are some other things that nonprofits should stop doing to move on from that culture of scattered fundraising efforts to more repeatable campaigns?

Christina:

Yeah, I think reactionary fundraising can be in this mix, which is it may be a well-meaning board member or staffer who is maybe getting on a little comparison.

I saw that org do this thing. We need to do that. And why aren't we doing it yesterday? That's very reactionary.

And it actually pulls you off of what you're actually planning for fundraising.

So I would look at that. I would look at all of your events. And really you want to look at a couple of different things.

Are they moneymakers? Do people even attend them? I had another executive director say we've been doing these events, they’re community events. And again, less and less people show up to them.

So do we want to reimagine the event or do we want to sunset the event looking at that too, is just like, what are some things we want to stop doing?

Social media is a big one. We were talking about that in the green room before we started, but I personally believe that social media is another one where, much like an event, you can say, look at what I did.

I created this content, I posted it, I had this beautiful caption with the event or with a grant. I applied for all these grants.

We didn't get them, but I kept applying. So you can show your work. You can show your work, like to your teacher.

But when I sit down and I say to a fundraising, or development team, I say, okay, great.

How much revenue is coming in through your Instagram account?

They're like, well, nothing, not really much, but look like it looks great. I'm like, it totally looks great. So maybe we want to reevaluate how we think about social media.

It's not that I'm saying stop doing social media, but where can we like pull some time from that and actually reallocate it to higher fundraising activities?

What leaders should prioritize before launching their next fundraising campaign

Josh:

Yeah. And when it comes to building that sustainable, fundraising momentum, what should leaders prioritize first before launching their next campaign?

Christina:

Yeah, I think since we're talking about outdated tactics, one of the things is it's sort of like I think it's the sunk cost fallacy.

I think that's what it's called. But this idea of like, we've always done this and this we have always done this might also look like your donation tool. That is a big one.

And your donation tool could be a huge barrier to you not only selling tickets to your event, but raising money online, getting more recurring givers, really having a high converting campaign because your donation experience is terrible.

And my litmus test for that is, can I grab my phone, sit on the couch behind me, and donate to your nonprofit without having to get up?

I'm not going in my purse. I'm not going to look for my credit card info. I certainly don't want to log into anything. That's what we need.

And do I have to pinch to zoom like I really need it to be a frictionless experience.

Otherwise you've lost a lot of people. And what I'll hear back is, yeah, but like our board loves this tool or our finance person loves this tool.

They don't want to learn another thing. That's like welcome to the world. This is your job now. Like we can all do better.

And so this resistance is tightly holding on to old school thinking, old school tools can really prevent you.

Sometimes I'll tell my clients, can you just try it for this one campaign? If you hate it, great.

We think about this auction software. Well we're willing to use a new tool for an auction, or we're willing to use a new tool for a PR campaign.

Can you use a new tool for this next fundraiser? And let's just see what happens.

You're going to have your donors go, holy crap, that was so much better.

So that's one of the things that can really help foundationally, help your organization fundraise faster.

What a $10K+ sprint campaign is and the core components that make it successful

Josh:

So one of the things you mentioned on your website, in your content, is you talk about running a 10K sprint campaign, meaning $10,000 or more.

What exactly is a sprint campaign and why do you find it so effective for nonprofits?

Christina:

Yeah, so I came up with this concept in my program, the sprint method, where we teach how to run sprint campaigns.

So sprint campaigns are where you raise five figures. So $10,000 or more in every single sprint. And a sprint is less than 30 days.

Many of our clients do a sprint in 7 days, 3 days, 14 days, 10 days.

We might stretch it out to about 30 days. But I really want you to think about a sprint versus a marathon.

I personally, and my son, we were playing this like would you rather game? And it was like, would you rather for a triathlon do the running, the biking, or the swimming?

And I was like, yeah, biking or swimming all day, every day.

I don’t want to run that far, I can sprint, I'm down for a sprint. I'm not your marathon girl.

And I also think your development team, your executive director, your board, if you want them to help you fundraise, whoever, anyone who's like in adjacent in your ecosystem, they don't want to fundraise for the next four months.

Like they have to do when they're selling gala tickets for a table.

So sprints are much more attainable. They're like little bite sized.

Again, we're sprinting, we sprint and then we rest. So the way that I teach it inside the sprint method is we have a very clear start date, a very clear stop date, we have a very clear goal.

It sounds maybe a little obvious, but I would say that well over half of organizations that come to me at every single funding level will be running fundraisers without a goal.

Maybe they're an internal goal. Maybe. But their sort of goal is like, we just need money.

And I'm talking about, we have a client that did 20K in 20 days, we have a client that did 10K in 10 days. It just has to be catchy like that.

But a goal, where are we going? We're plugging it into our GPS.

Josh:

Yeah.

And what are the core components of a sprint campaign that maybe barely breaks even versus one that produces those compounding results we've been talking about?

Christina:

I would say the ones that don't hit their goals aren't sprint campaigns.

There's a cog missing from very, very simply from did we even have that framework of like designing our sprint?

When does it start? When does it end? What's our goal? Do we have a donation tool?

PayPal is not a donation tool. Do we have an old dinosaur tool like have we foundationally, have we done that?

Have we gotten that set right? How do we come up with a strong story?

Again, one of the other mistakes I'll see is that people call their fundraiser, or what I would call internal speak.

It was like the fundraising campaign. It's like, no, no, no, no, no, no, I'm not public facing calling it my fundraising campaign.

I'm calling it right, something specific. So we branded, we've named our campaign. We've come up with a really strong story.

And then one of the like, I find like fuel to the fire elements that we add is this idea of peer power.

So you can add in peer fundraisers or you can just add in advocates in your ecosystem to build up visibility.

This is how we borrow audiences and really get that moment, that inflection moment.

So instead of running alone, like, I don't want to run the ten miles alone, right? I want to sprint.

And also I want to sprint with like some friends because it's going to be easier with some friends. We're all going to cheer each other on.

We're all going to see that momentum and other people will be like, hey, what are you doing?

I'll meet you tomorrow. I want to run too. That's the vibe of a sprint campaign.

How to design campaigns that build long-term donor engagement and repeat giving

Josh:

So pivoting from the sprint campaigns to maybe longer campaigns, repeatable campaigns, how can nonprofits design those to raise money consistently?

Actually build long term donor engagement and that repeat recurring giving.

Christina:

Yeah. So sprint absolutely.

We have a lot of clients who are using sprint campaigns that framework for recurring giving because again, I think we think I want recurring givers 365 days of the year, right?

And that's true. Like I want somebody to sign up to be a monthly donor all day, any day.

But we also need to like put it front and center at key points throughout the year.

Like you might have a membership drive similar to that. Like you're having a recurring donor sprint.

And so once you've done that, so we have lots of clients who have done that. Once you've done it once, it's very easy to replicate because you already created the strong story.

You already have the fundraising page built out, you already have the social proof.

And then what we do is we have recurring giving sprints at two, three times a year.

That's how we go from having 12 recurring donors to 120 recurring donors in a very short amount of time.

What a realistic sprint campaign looks like for small teams

Josh:

Yeah, and I'm just thinking about the nonprofits with a small staff, as most nonprofits have a smaller staff.

So for those with small teams, limited bandwidth, what does a realistic sprint campaign look like without overwhelming that small team?

Christina:

So I was just talking to my clients. They're co-founders of an organization. They run the organization. It's just them.

They also have full time jobs. They are doing this part time and they are running sprint campaigns.

So one of them even has a child under one years old. I'm like, they are not unicorns, they are superstars. But if they can do it, you can do it.

So you can very quickly. But it takes a few things.

We've already talked about some of the foundational pieces, and the other piece is like, you have to be decisive, you have to be willing to go, this is what we're doing, this is when we're doing it, and we go.

So we have clients who will join sprint and then start absolutely launch their sprint within two weeks. It doesn't take a lot of time to plan.

If you think about it, you're doing this. You can do this on the couch after your kids go to bed and build out your donation page.

You can use our AI tool to help you come up with a story. You can use our templates.

And the people that you're kind of leveraging for that peer power, that community advocacy are already people in your ecosystem.

And so you're bringing them in. Again, this doesn't sound like you're asking them to take on a part time job, because that's what, seven days, ten days.

It's very, very easy. So I have that in mind.

I always am thinking about the, I would say like 98% of my clients are smaller teams. I work with a lot of solopreneurs as well, small teams.

So I've not designed anything I'm saying, assuming you have a major gifts officer, assuming you have multiple development people, assuming you have just a full marketing team. No no no no.

How storytelling transforms fundraising from transactional to mission-driven

Josh:

You alluded at storytelling earlier and I want to kind of lean into that.

What role does storytelling play in transforming a fundraising campaign from merely transactional, hey, we're trying to hit this goal, help us hit this goal, to truly mission driven?

Christina:

It's everything. It's everything. And I think true storytelling, high conversion storytelling that are getting people from I'm looking I'm interested.

You've stopped my scroll, I'm reading, but I'm actually going to take action. I'm going to donate, has to have guts.

It has to have heart in it, has to have a really strong point of view.

I always say that if your story sounds like I could just swap out your nonprofit name for ten others in your sector, that's like that's like I want to know there's a great organization in Phoenix.

Like I know their voice, even though they have multiple people who sends emails, who writes social posts on their team. It has personality it has heart to it.

So your story is everything and you can have all of those elements, but kind of just a vanilla, sterile story.

And it's going to be hard to fundraise. So it takes guts. It takes guts.

How to use digital tools to build a consistent online fundraising engine

Josh:

You mentioned digital tools earlier and I want to double click on that.

So how can nonprofits leverage digital tools like email, text, social media, giving pages to turn campaigns into consistent online fundraising engines?

Christina:

Yeah. So giving pages are essential.

There are certain times you're gonna wanna use a form. There's certain times you might want to use a longer form giving page essential.

And something that, again, has a great user experience, not the one that your finance person is used to using, but the one that has a great user experience for your donors, donor prospects.

So that's really going to be important. Email foundationally is the backbone to your fundraising engine.

So email is really, really important. I think a lot of times when I talk about email, email's been around for so long, right?

It's not shiny, it's not new, it's not the next thing. And it works. It works, it works, it works.

So if we side by side put a client, the same client. And they have a campaign and they mainly go social media forward on it, right?

Maybe they do some direct mail on social media. And then we have that same campaign and they really push email first with some supporting on social media, right?

But it's like email first, meaning strong story. We're sprinting in our emails, are increasing the number of emails we send.

We're really making sure everyone knows, oh, they're fundraising right now. They're running a campaign. That thing is going to 10X outperform the social media campaign.

So email is really essential to this whole like ecosystem. Text messaging is a huge opportunity as well.

So if that is something that you have available inside your organization, definitely use it for your sprint campaigns.

I'm going to flag, though, we've had our sprinters who are just texting friends, texting personal contacts, alumni, colleagues, and like personal texts, right, 1 to 1. That works really well.

You can even ask your board or something like that, anyone who is part of that network to drop it in, maybe their work Slack channel, their WhatsApp group.

There's so much opportunity to again, this is all fundraising from your couch. It's super, super easy, like super, super simple but not easy in the sense that you're going to have your own mindset drama come up.

Am I being annoying? Am I emailing too much? Will people unsubscribe? And the answer to all of those is do you want to hit your goal?

If you want to hit your goal, the answer to those are no. This is the currency. This is how we do it. You're not being annoying to people who care about your mission.

Josh:

I love that, I love that, and there's going to be fear involved.

Whenever you 10X your output because you've got a 10X goal, there's always going to be fear and trepidation and just accept that, acknowledge it.

And let your team members know too, that, hey, look, there's gonna be times where we think, oh, we're pressing the boundary of what our culture is or our values at times.

I don't want to overstate that, but there might be things where in previous years in the organization, it's like, well, we never want to be annoying.

That's one of our kind of communication values. And it's like someone may bring that and say, is it annoying to text people? I personally hate being texted by fundraisers.

Christina:

There's always that person.

That's why we have the stop to opt out. And you who hates receiving text, you're going to love the stop to opt out feature, but we cannot develop our entire fundraising strategy on you and your preferences.

You know wrong. Like you can't just have one person, one vocal person. And you have to also remember that if you want a different result, you have to do something different.

But that change is hard.

So for me, it's usually one person who is like, I'm so ready to try something different and they have to pave the way for the people around them in the organization to go, we're doing this, and then those people will come on board and be like, holy crap.

Like, I remember one of my clients, Megan, she was like, I felt a little barfy.

And I was like, ah, means you're on the right track. And my other client said, and she said, this was a very different version of fundraising. I had never done anything like this before.

And it's so funny because I was like, was it? Was it that different?

And then I had to think about it like, yes, it is very different when you have 20 or 30 years of fundraising experience and you're trying it this way, but I'm like, stick with me and you'll see that you raise more in less time, which means you have more time for yourself.

You have more time, less burnout, less stress, less white knuckling.

So for me, like the barfy feeling, the fear feeling, like Ron, who's mad about texting, like I can handle all of that because it gets me to where I want to be faster.

The biggest mistakes nonprofits make when scaling campaigns

Josh:

Love that. So what mistakes do you see nonprofits making when they take a campaign, they see success, and they try to scale it, but maybe too quickly.

Or they're copying what larger organizations are doing that might not be quite a fit.

Christina:

So retention is what was like flashing in my brain when you're talking about that.

So when you have a sprint campaign, you're going to see an influx of repeat donors, people already in your world and new donors.

My favorite is like, I don't know how they found us. I have no idea who they are.

I'm like, that's, we're doing it. That's the point, right? So you've got an influx of repeat donors, you've got an influx of new people.

They may have donated because they heard about it from their neighbor. They may have donated for any reason.

Now is the time to roll out the red carpet for them. You're in the honeymoon period.

So like, don't blow it right? Don't be the you only call when you need something boyfriend.

So you really have to think about ahead of time, do I have a system in place for that? Do I have a system in place so it's not one at a time bespoke because it's just me doing it?

Something very simple, like a 3 to 5 part email welcome series that works while you're asleep is a beautiful thing. That's helping to introduce your organization, who you serve. Do not assume because they donated, they are super familiar with your cause area. They may have donated because they were moved by your strong story, but don't really understand totally. They're not fully problem aware. Now's a great time to help them understand what you do, the impact you have, telling them a story.

Those are really, really important kind of retention markers. What else is happening?

You want to look at beyond that email welcome series. What else is happening for those new donors?

So making sure that you have that in place is going to be really, really key.

The other thing I want to flag this in the mistake section is this idea of like Christina saying, I sprint, this sounds great, I'm going to sprint now, and then I'm going to sprint next week, and then I'm going to sprint next week, and then I'm going to sprint next week and then right.

That's too much for everyone, right? So I really want you to think about if you're just listening, my hand is like doing the peaks and valleys. I want you to think about peaks and valleys.

Again, your audience knows they are fundraising, and then they know that you're not fundraising because you're doing more nurture, you're doing more storytelling, more gratitude, more impact spotlights.

They're hearing from you in both scenarios. They're hearing from you both. But you're not always in a constant state of fundraising.

The first step to launching your first $10K+ sprint campaign in 30 days

Josh:

So thinking of our listeners out there who are sold on running a sprint campaign and they want to run a sprint campaign in the next 30 days.

What would you recommend as their very first step?

Christina:

Plug the GPS point. So when do we start it? When do we end it? What is the theme of it?

Sometimes I want to say like, what are you raising it for? But I think people think maybe restricted. That's not what I'm saying.

I'm saying what are we spotlighting? What is the story?

What is the need? What is the impact? Really identifying those. Who are my allies that will help come alongside me in this process?

I would start there. Those are your first steps and then flagging email and flagging donation tools are important factors too.

Closing thoughts

Josh:

Love that. So just wrapping up, Christina, any resources out there that you'd like to recommend? Any from yourself or from others?

Christina:

Yeah. So I have a free class, so I'm happy to share that with everyone where I really go into some case studies and share what it's like to run a sprint campaign.

If you go to Splendidcourses.com/sprintclass, you can grab access to that course any time.

And I also have a podcast, The Purpose & Profit Club Podcast, so you can come find me there.

But I really want to offer that it's never too early or too late to start this. I think one of the mistakes people make is at any level you can weave in sprint campaigns.

So for example, if you're an emerging nonprofit, you're doing a lot of grant applications, you're doing a lot of 5Ks, auctions, raffles, you're going to love sprints because you're gonna have your time back.

You're gonna have your freedom back. And your friends and family are going to have you back because they're going to see that, like you can talk more than about just your nonprofit, right?

But then I have a lot of organizations that are very large and established organizations that come to me.

And at first glance I'm like, oh, that's interesting. Like their 990 looks like they're rocking and rolling.

You peek under the hood, you look and you see they're so heavily grant funded and reliant on those grants that they could shatter in an instant.

And it is never too late. So I have a client that said we are a $3 million organization. We've never done anything like this.

And I'm like, we're about to have so much fun because their audience is big enough. Their audience has been waiting and their audience has responded so well to these sprints.

It's almost like, children playing on a playground, just like doing like, free play. And then you bring them in and instead of recess, you're like, we're all going to play a game of kickball.

And it's like everybody comes in. So if you're a larger organization, this is going to make your life so much easier.

Plus, from a planning point, you can actually again, look at, what we usually do with larger organizations is we say, what do you already have going?

They have a couple of pillar fundraisers or pillar appeals or events. Great. Now either we're going to make some of those sprints, we're going to layer them on.

So it's again more successful. Or we're going to look at those holes in the calendar and boom, we're bringing influx of funding in those.

Josh:

Awesome. And as always, just head over to Nonprofitpulse.com to check out the show notes.

You can connect with Christina, find the resources she's mentioned.

And I would say, yeah, connect with Christina because her socials, love them. I love watching all of her content. And I think you will too.

So last question, Christina, just the last question of every episode.

If you were standing on stage in front of a thousand nonprofit leaders and could share one thing with them about our topic today, one sentence, what would you say?

Christina:

I would say that we want it to be up into the right growth.

However, forward momentum means you're going to hear no’s, you're going to fall, and you're going to get back up.

Josh:

Love that. Love it. This has been such a great episode, Christina, thanks for joining us and I hope everyone will check out your links over at Nonprofitpulse.com and connect with you and your resources.

And again, just thanks for coming on the podcast and sharing so much wisdom.

Christina:

Amazing, thanks for having me.

Josh:

Hey, thanks for listening.

If you enjoyed this conversation, please share or leave us a rating and review wherever you listen to podcasts.

Also, head on over to Nonprofitpulse.com to sign up for our monthly newsletter, as well as check out all the links and resources in the show notes. We’ll see you next time.