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Apr 15, 2026 • 6 min read

Good versus great

How and why great fundraising builds community and lifts up every part of an organization. Spoiler: It's about people. Not money.

Ted Fickes Ted Fickes
Good versus great

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A half-time fundraising leadership role for a fantastic conservation organization? Yes please! Wilderness Land Trust is looking for a Director of Major Gifts.

Wilderness Land Trust works across the western US to secure private property within designated wilderness areas and ensure its long-term protection. This half-time role for a proven major gifts fundraiser will be based in California or Colorado though remote candidates will be considered. Apply by May 1.

Good fundraising is about money. Great fundraising is much more.

I strongly believe that strategic, thoughtful, and data-informed fundraising will have ripple effects across communications, organizing, and other program and policy work.

Good fundraising increases the number and value of transactions.

Great fundraising builds community, expands a supporter's loyalty and sense of investment in the work, and adds to their capacity to be an active spokesperson for the organization–a node in an ever growing network.

In her article The compounding effect of doing revenue work, Newspack's Kim Bode shares data and results from Newspack's Revenue Development Program. The project supports (mostly) small nonprofit newsrooms as they build the capacity, systems, and tools to run diverse revenue programs (e.g. membership, subscriptions, donations, advertising, events and more).

Participating organizations have found that clearer and better run fundraising/revenue programs result in stronger newsletter performance (growing subscriptions, higher engagement, etc.).

Another result is that organizations with more recurring donors (monthly subscribers) not only raises more money, it keeps people around longer. Longevity and loyalty go together. Readers become subscribers who become, in a sense, investors with a stake in the organization's credibility and impact. I am, in other words, much more likely to stand up for and talk about an organization I give to than one that simply sends me email.

The Donor Organizer Hub is built around the idea that many many more supporters of an organization can and should become volunteer fundraisers. They (and the organization) need tools, systems, and language that teaches, values and sustains volunteer fundraisers.

The project is very intentional about using the word Organizer in its name. A fundraiser, volunteer or not, organizes support and sustainability for the organization. They spread the word. They share what's important about the work with others. Perhaps more importantly they are eyes and ears–they listen and help organizations make sense of the community.

Donor Organizer Hub has put together an Ecosystem Analysis that looks at the structural, capacity, and leadership elements that both support volunteer fundraisers and lead to positive community building through fundraising.

There are also smaller, discrete, micro ways in which fundraising or honing in on revenue can produce better work in other areas.

For email, newsletter, and product folks, a revenue path can force teams to think clearly about goals, audiences, and user needs. For better or worse, you can measure money. You can test conversions. Asking people to pay for something gives you data on what something is worth to someone. If you’re giving value then people will pay for it. If you’re not, they won’t.

Perhaps revenue in this case isn't measured in cold hard cash. Perhaps it's actions taken, sentiment, phone calls made, time spent with others.

In any case, consider how fundraising is not just a transaction, a payment for services. View it, speak of it, plan for it as a method of community investment, belief, and power.

Bright Ideas

☀️ Trust Labs published Explorations in Relational Grit to shares stories and learnings about what it takes to help community leaders cultivate and sustain relationships across disagreement, distrust, disinformation. I love the attention to heat and friction in community and how to develop leaders who can navigate the heat so communities come out stronger.

⚡ In their new report, Building Power, Mobilisation Lab and Intertidal Lab identify how progressive nonprofits and civil society, including US and global funders, have created structural barriers to developing and sustaining the staffing and leadership. They also offer recommendations for developing a talent ecosystem for progressive social change.

💙 In Is Our Homeland the Other? Care as a response to hate, Laura Roth explores if and how feminist care ethics can be used to weaken support for fascist leaders and policies. It's largely, Roth writes, about listening to others and understanding that they too are working in a system that takes away their agency and power. Roth is an Atlantic Fellow for Social and Economic Equity at the International Inequalities Institute of the London School of Economics. [via Erin Eberle]

💪 Liberties, a European human rights organization, recently put out a guide on communicating with the public about the work of human rights groups. Get more from the Civic Space Messaging Lab.

💡 A simple and useful Reddit hack via the great Project C newsletter: you can go to reddit.com/domain/yoursite.com to see everywhere on Reddit that your organization's content is being shared.

🤔 Volunteer programs can center and grow nonprofit community building. Too often organizations don't see and value why people volunteer. It's as much about creating belonging as it is the outcome. A couple pieces to consider:
Reimagining Service: How can nonprofits improve the volunteer experience? [Jennifer Sirangelo / Candid] and Beyond the First Click: How Today’s Volunteers Build Power for Movements and NGOs for something more focused on volunteers in activist spaces. [Julie Szabo and Darren Barefoot / Mobilisation Lab]

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Hey. Ted here. I run Bright+3 where we give changemakers the ideas, inspiration, and tools to create content that builds stronger communities.

I also write this newsletter, Future Community, and run the Future Community Jobs list.

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Ted Fickes
Ted Fickes
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