MPW Team

 

MPW's Fundraising In and Out List for 2024

Our team of experts is excited to share what we know will bring you fundraising success in 2025 and what you should leave behind in 2024. Leave us a comment below to let us know what you think is in or out in for fundraising this year!

OUT
Generic Outreach: Mass email blasts are solely generated by AI without personalization or segmentation. Taking the time to customize and personalize is almost always worth the effort.
Overreliance on Galas: High-cost fundraising events with limited ROI and simply tone-deaf to the mission and spirit of an organization.
Single-issue messaging: The messaging lacks the whole, richer picture of the organization's impact on the community.
Print-Only Campaigns: Ignoring the digital-only donor demographic who view the paper as a waste of time and harmful to the environment
Opaque Financial Reporting: Donors expect more clarity on how funds are utilized. A simple profit and loss with assets and liabilities as a snapshot and trend is all you need.
One-Time Gifts Focus: Prioritizing new donor acquisition over long-term retention. A short-term strategy that can result in a gift but not a long-term commitment to make an impact.
Traditional "Cold Calls": Donors increasingly prefer digital or asynchronous communication (without human interaction, perfect when someone wants a quick answer).
Ignoring Small Donors: Overemphasis on major gifts at the expense of broad support. The millionaire next store often gives test gifts or wants to see the relationship grow before considering a major gift.
Top-Down Decision-Making: Exclusion of community voices in program development.
Overlooking Gen Z Donors: Missing out on younger, cause-driven audiences by not engaging in how, when, and communications ways they respond to.
Doing more with less: There's no such thing as 100% all the time. Burnout among fundraisers is due to too many priorities, fragmented focus, and the board’s pet projects.
Inflationary pressures: for now, prices are stable so no need to fear donor conversations . . . truth is, we should never fear conversations with donors.

IN
Impactful Storytelling: Tailored narratives that align with donor values and your organization/institution’s mission that resonate emotionally. Bonus points: segmenting the audience to improve engagement (ex., First-time donors, loyal, planned giving committed, donor’s area of interest, etc.).
Donor-Advised Funds (DAFs): Leveraging DAF growth for long-term funding strategies.
AI-Driven/Assisted Campaigns: Saving precious staff time to personalize outreach using machine learning to predict donor behavior, generate language, qualify prospects, and other ways to leverage your time.
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Goals: Focused initiatives to address systemic inequities with outcomes that align with institutional goals should always be in and never out.
Recurring/Subscription Giving Programs: Subscription-style giving models for sustained engagement are used to grow the base of donors and their engagement and develop interest in major and planned giving.
Digital-First Events: Virtual events with innovative audience engagement tools that utilize the strengths of virtual engagement without being a substitute for in-person engagement.
Generative AI for Content Creation: Assist in writing grant proposals, crafting emails, and marketing content efficiently.
Climate Action Funding: Rising donor interest in addressing environmental issues, particularly in light of increased intensity and public exposure of the damage caused (ex. Los Angeles fires).
Transparency in Impact: Real-time reporting of outcomes via dashboards, scorecards,  apps, and other digital interfaces to prompt decisions and actions.
Collaboration Across Sectors: Partnerships between nonprofits, corporations, and governments for larger-scale impact.
Doing better with what you have: being more strategic, intentional, and focused.
Abundance Mind Set: concentrate on opportunities for growth and lead with optimism.
Empowering Social Media: Engage donors or prospective donors in honest conversations, polls, and invitations to become part of your organization by participation, volunteering, and of course, giving.
Donor Surveys: to understand their thoughts, feelings, and how they wish to interact with your organization.
The Rule of 95/5 is still in effect: ninety-five percent of giving will be from five percent of donors.
Growth in net worth for the top 5% wealthiest: Make sure your most capable donors know the giving opportunities available to them.
Estate giving: driven by the growth of assets/net worth over the last few years.
Corporate giving: growth in GDP and S&P+ lower taxes and more access to capital = room for philanthropy.

 

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