At this stage of my career, I’m no stranger to organizational policies. Gift acceptance, conflict of interest, whistleblower, you name it. I’ve drafted them, revised them, and sat through plenty of board meetings where they get approved. So I’ll say this plainly: if your shop doesn’t have an AI policy yet, move it up your list. You would far rather write the rulebook now than after a snafu.

And you’re in good company if you haven’t gotten to it. Seventy-six percent of nonprofits still operate without one, according to the State of AI in Nonprofits: 2025 benchmark report. Meanwhile, nearly everyone is quietly using the tools anyway. Most of the sector is flying without instruments.

That gap matters more than a typical policy gap, because AI touches the two core things that fundraising runs on: donor trust and funder credibility. Lose either one, and no amount of clever prompt engineering will win it back.

So let’s build it. Consider what follows your AI policy starter kit. Adapt it, don’t just adopt it. Your organization’s size, culture, and risk tolerance should shape every line.

Owner Julie Johnson with songbird boxes at Tres Sabores Winery in Napa © Tonya Hennessey

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I have a healthy skepticism of AI. I’m not at all a fan of AI energy and water use. Or nefarious developments like AI autonomous weapons systems and the pretty much certainty of AI falling into roque hands in the future. The world needs guardrails, agreements, and all kinds of solutions to environmental and human impacts.

And, and, and.

But there are also many benefits to AI, like breakthroughs in disease. The productivity hacks are real. And as an independent freelance writer and fundraiser, it’s either learn to master it or get left behind.

So I use it, including for this newsletter. I enjoy mastering the prompts, tools, and techniques and becoming more proficient. I always do a check and human hand edit before I hit send or publish. I’ve seen enough tech trends and evolution to know that novelty and wisdom are not the same thing.

That’s the heart of ethical AI fundraising: using these tools with the same rigor you’d bring to a major, six-figure proposal package. Enthusiastically, but not carelessly.

A journey through the canals of Venice, Italy © Tonya Hennessey

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The Organizational Policy Gap That Needs Fixing

Here’s the uncomfortable part. Most of our sector is still improvising when it comes to AI use. Seventy-six percent of nonprofits still don’t have a formal AI policy, according to Nonprofit Tech for Good’s State of AI in Nonprofits: 2025 report.

This means three out of four organizations are letting staff use generative tools with no shared guardrails on what’s appropriate, what’s disclosed, and what’s off-limits. That’s not a responsible AI nonprofit strategy. That’s improv night, and your donor list is not the audience you want workshopping material on.

My PREMIUM piece this Thursday delves into creating your organization’s AI Policy.

Foundations Are Watching—and Some Are Saying No

Candid’s August 2024 survey of grantmakers found that 23% of foundations will not accept grant applications containing AI-generated content, while only 10% explicitly welcome it. My caveat is that this is two- year-old data that surely has evolved.

Many funders are still figuring out where they stand. One funder put it plainly in that same survey: “Our due diligence requires reviews of financials and site visits where AI impact would be limited or neutralized.”

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Translation: funders aren’t anti-AI, they’re anti-shortcut. AI proposal writing ethics is as much about whether you used a tool, as whether the finished proposal still sounds like your organization, has a human filter, and holds up under scrutiny and due diligence.

My Three Non-Negotiables

After decades of raising grant and gift dollars the analog way, here’s where I’ve landed on AI ethics for nonprofits:

Donor data stays out of the AI tool. Full stop. This is my hardest line. Your donor database holds names, giving histories, wealth indicators, sometimes health or family details—deeply personal, confidential information that donors entrusted to your organization, not to a third-party server. Feeding that into a public AI tool is a breach waiting to introduce itself. Keep AI use in the drafting and productivity room, not the donor database.

Say so, plainly. If AI helped shape a proposal, letter, or report, disclose it when it’s material to the relationship and the situation. Transparency isn’t just a legal hedge; it’s good manners, and donors and funders alike respect it rather than being surprised.

Watch for bias like you’d watch a campfire in dry brush. AI bias is real—these tools learn from historical data, and historical data reflects historical inequities. It’s an incomplete picture. If you’re using AI to screen prospects, draft case statements, or summarize program outcomes, read the output with a critical eye for language that flattens nuance, leans on stereotypes, and is incomplete.

Always use your human filter to factcheck and edit the final product. This goes for emails as much as documents. Your mission deserves better than autopilot.

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The Groove, Not the Grind

I’m being transparent: I use AI to help draft this very newsletter—research, structure, a rough pass that rewrite in my own voice, checked against every fact I can verify. I lay out exactly how, and why, on my updated About page, under “How I Make It.” Check it out.

AI isn’t always the villain in this story, and it isn’t the hero either—it’s more like a competent research assistant and productivity multiplier with a chronic overconfidence problem. Use it moderately and appropriately, always with a human hand, disclose it honestly, and keep your donors’ data exactly where it belongs: with you, protected, and never connected to an AI tool.

He’s home now and on 3-4 weeks bedrest. He’s a tough ‘lil guy—if you could send some positive vibes his way I’d be ever so grateful. Thank you so much.

Now, on to the business at hand.

Picture this. You’re building a grant budget, and you reach the line labeled “indirect costs.” Your cursor hovers. Type too high a number, and you worry the funder will see a charity that can’t manage its money. Type too low, and you know your organization will be quietly subsidizing this grant with money it doesn’t have.

If that moment feels familiar, you have met the nonprofit overhead myth firsthand. It’s one of the most persistent misunderstandings in our field, and learning to push back on it, gracefully and with evidence, is one of the most valuable skills a fundraiser can build.

My sweet dog Marcos resting after emergency surgery © Tonya Hennessey

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What the Overhead Myth Actually Says

In October 2014, three of the sector’s most influential watchdogs, BBB Wise Giving Alliance, Charity Navigator, and GuideStar (now part of Candid), published an open letter to donors that reshaped this conversation. Their message was direct: “The percent of charity expenses that go to administrative and fundraising costs is a poor measure of a charity’s performance.”

The letter named something fundraisers had felt for years. Low overhead does not necessarily mean high impact. In fact, chronically underfunded overhead creates what researchers call the nonprofit starvation cycle, where organizations underinvest in the very staff, technology, and systems that let programs run well, then struggle to deliver the results funders want to see. As the letter put it, “the people and communities served by charities don’t need low overhead, they need high performance.”

The evidence backs this up. Research cited in that campaign found that better-performing charities actually reported slightly higher overhead than lower-performing ones, roughly 11.5 percent compared to 10.8 percent. Efficient does not mean cheap. It means well run.

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Why the Grant Overhead Debate Persists

Here’s the honest part. More than a decade after that letter, the grant overhead debate has not disappeared. Candid’s own research shows that 61 percent of donors still choose where to give based on how “efficiently” they believe an organization uses its funds, often judged by that old “90 cents of every dollar” framing. That pressure trickles down into how nonprofits build budgets and how program officers evaluate them.

The cost of that pressure is real. Sector surveys show that more than 60 percent of nonprofit staff report demanding, unsustainable workloads, a direct consequence of organizations trying to look lean on paper. Knowing the research is one thing. Changing the conversation with your funders is another, and that is where your language matters.

How to Frame Overhead Costs Positively to Funders

Start by retiring the word “overhead” in your budget narratives. Replace it with language that names what the money actually does: professional development for program staff, the database that tracks outcomes, the evaluation work that proves your model, the finance team that keeps the organization compliant and trustworthy with public and private dollars.

Then connect every indirect dollar back to results. Instead of asking a funder to accept a percentage, show them what that percentage buys: retained, well-trained staff, reliable technology, and a leadership team with the bandwidth to plan ahead rather than react. Funders fund confidence. Give them a reason to have it.

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What’s an Acceptable Overhead Rate?

There’s no single right answer, and that is precisely the point the overhead myth campaign was making. Still, fundraisers need something to anchor a budget conversation, so consider two reference points.

The federal government’s own Uniform Guidance (2 CFR 200.414) sets a 10 percent de minimis indirect cost rate as a floor, meaning any organization without a negotiated rate can claim at least that much without justification. Many private funders now treat that as a bare minimum rather than a ceiling. The MacArthur Foundation, after analyzing IRS Form 990 data from more than 130,000 nonprofits, found that financially healthy organizations carried indirect cost rates closer to 29 percent, and it now reimburses grantees at that rate.

That range, roughly 10 to 30 percent depending on your funder and your organization’s actual cost structure, is a far more useful benchmark than an arbitrary program-ratio target. Build your real budget first. Let the evidence make your case.

What language do you use to talk about overhead with your funders? Let me know in the comments, I read every one.

So let’s talk about what actually belongs in your grant or major gift proposal budget, category by category, and how to justify each one so reviewers nod instead of squinting.

Tree of Knowledge, Beeple’s Infinite Loop Exhibit, Node Foundation © Tonya Hennessey

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Personnel: Your Biggest Line, and Your Best Story

Personnel usually eats 40 to 60 percent of a program budget, and it should. This is the work. List each position by title, note the percentage of time devoted to the grant-funded project, and calculate salary costs based on that percentage. A program coordinator at $95,000 working 50% time on this grant is a $47,500 line item, not a guess.

Funders question personnel lines when the math doesn’t show its work, or when a title sounds inflated for the responsibilities described. Be specific. Writing “0.5 FTE Program Coordinator, overseeing curriculum delivery and family engagement” beats “staff time” every time.

Fringe: The Line Everyone Forgets to Explain

Fringe benefits are calculated as personnel cost times your fringe rate, covering FICA, health insurance, retirement contributions, and workers’ compensation. If your organization has a negotiated rate, use it and say so. If you don’t, calculate it honestly from your actual benefits costs. Funders rarely blink at a fringe rate between 20 and 35 percent. They do blink when fringe is missing entirely, which usually signals a budget built in a hurry.

Direct Program Costs: Where Specificity Wins

Direct costs are, as Candid puts it, “any personnel and non-personnel costs that you wouldn’t have if you didn’t have the project.” Think supplies, training materials, participant incentives, travel to program sites, and evaluation. This is where vague language gets you in trouble. “Office supplies, $500” invites a follow-up email. “Curriculum materials for 40 participants at $12 each, $480” invites a grant award.

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Indirect Costs: Overhead Isn’t a Dirty Word

Indirect, or administrative, costs cover the rent, utilities, IT support, and accounting that keep the lights on so the program can happen at all. Every nonprofit has them. The mistake is either hiding them inside inflated direct costs, or apologizing for them like they’re something to be embarrassed about.

Be upfront about your rate, whether it’s a federally negotiated indirect cost rate or a reasonable percentage you can defend. Funder caps on fringe and indirect costs typically range from 10 to 25 percent, and the encouraging news is that more funders have been raising their caps in recent years. That shift reflects a growing, and frankly overdue, understanding that nonprofits need to pay rent, keep the lights on, and carry insurance just like everyone else. A 10 percent cap might look responsible on a grant guideline PDF, but in practice, it can starve an organization of the essential funds it needs to actually function.

As Candid’s guide to nonprofit budgeting notes, a proposal budget” describes your project’s story to reviewers with numbers, instead of words.” Overhead is part of that story. Foundations and individuals that fund real impact know real impact requires real infrastructure.

Justification: The Narrative Under the Numbers

Every budget line item needs a reason to exist, and that reason belongs in your budget narrative. Why two part-time coordinators instead of one full-time? Because your constituent population spans three neighborhoods, and you need boots on the ground in each. Why this cost for your program evaluation? Because you’re measuring outcomes a funder actually cares about, not just counting attendance.

Candid’s own guidance is blunt about why this matters: “Make sure the line items in your budget match the activities described in the broader grant proposal,” since many funders review the budget first, before they even finish the narrative. Your budget should mirror your program description like a reflection, not a rough sketch of it.

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The Bottom Line

A grant budget that funders trust isn’t the cheapest one, and it isn’t the most padded one either. It’s the one where every number has a clear, honest reason for being there, the personnel line reflects real capacity, fringe is accounted for, direct costs are specific, and indirect costs are transparent rather than tucked away. Get that right, and your budget stops being a compliance formality. It becomes the clearest, most persuasive part of your entire proposal.

After a demanding 1st six months of this year, it’s a good time for an unplug and reset. The Giving Groove will be on break from June 30-July 13 for a bit of summer chill and relaxation.

Enjoy your 4th of July holiday and 250 years of this American experiment. We’ve got a lot of work to do in the 2nd half of the year, and we’ll dive back into it on the 14th.

Cheers! Tonya

Vintage 4th of July on the Farm. Lighting Snakes. © Tonya Hennessey

This masterclass is for development officers who are ready to build a real DAF strategy. For those who want not just to passively receive DAF grants but to actively identify and cultivate DAF donors. We’ll get to the solicitation piece in upcoming issues.

The numbers behind DAF giving make this worth your full attention. Let’s get into it.

Tapas at the fabulous El Xampanyet in Barcelona © Tonya Hennessey

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DAF donors are not just major donors with a different payment method. They have distinct giving behaviors and particular dynamics that shape how cultivation works. Understanding those dynamics makes you a better partner—and a more effective fundraiser.

Big Sky in Farm Country — Park River, North Dakota © Tonya Hennessey

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Who DAF Donors Are

Donors who use DAFs tend to be strategically minded about their philanthropy. Opening a DAF—making an irrevocable contribution to a charitable account with no immediate grant requirement—is a deliberate planning decision. These are not impulsive givers.

Research from Candid and the DAF Research Collaborative shows that DAF donors give more frequently, more consistently, and at higher levels than comparable donors who give directly. Donors who switch to DAFs increase their giving by an average of 67% in the year they open the account and give an average of 4.2 times per year.

A DAF donor is often among your most valuable long-term relationships.

The Identification Challenge—and How to Solve It

When a gift arrives from Fidelity Charitable or a community foundation, you may not know who sent it. Here are some core strategies for identifying DAF donors:

Flag all gifts from known sponsoring organizations in your CRM and build a report of those gifts over the past five years, sorted by amount. Cross-reference this report with your known major donors. Check if anyone is giving both directly and through a DAF; they may be consolidating into the DAF over time.

In donor cultivation conversations, ask: “Do you use a donor-advised fund for any of your charitable giving? Some of our donors find it helpful for us to know, so we can make sure you have what you need.” This opens the door without pressure.

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Cultivation Language That Works

Lead with impact, not mechanics. A DAF donor already knows how their fund works—they don’t need you to explain it back to them. What they want, like all major donors, is to know their giving is making a tangible difference.

Be specific about opportunities to fund. “We’re hoping to find a donor who wants to fund the wetlands restoration pilot—$40,000 over two years would cover the full cost.” This gives a DAF donor something concrete to recommend to their fund. As a rule, vague asks produce vague responses.

How can a donor know what level of funding you really need and what your organization wants to fund unless you communicate it?

Make the DAF giving logistics invisible. Your EIN and grant instructions should be easy to find, but not the centerpiece of your communication. The relationship is the centerpiece. The mechanics are the plumbing.

Recurring DAF Grants: The Relationship Deepener

One of the most significant recent trends in DAF giving is recurring grant recommendations. According to the DAF Research Collaborative’s 2025 report, approximately 40% of DAF distributions are now recurring.

These donors have set up standing annual, quarterly, or monthly grant recommendations to the organizations they care most about. This is the DAF equivalent of a major donor pledge, but it’s set on auto-pay.

If you have a strong relationship with a DAF donor, ask whether they’d consider setting up a recurring grant recommendation. Frame it as both a convenience (“many of our DAF donors find it simplifies their annual planning”) and a partnership (“it helps us plan our programs with more certainty, delivering more impact”).

For donors who are genuinely committed to your mission, this ask is often welcomed.

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Stewardship That Keeps the Relationship Alive

For anonymous DAF donors whose identity you don’t know, make your organization so visible and so clearly impact-driven that when they decide who to include in next year’s grant recommendations, you’re top of mind. For identified DAF donors, stewardship should be indistinguishable from your best major donor stewardship: personal thank-yous, impact updates, invitations to deepen engagement. The vehicle doesn’t determine the relationship tier. The relationship does.

This Thursday in Premium: We’ll dive into advanced DAF strategy— your DAF donor identification system, cultivation timelines, and how to raise the DAF conversation at the right moment.

We’ve had a family emergency in recent days, so the next edition will come out on Wednesday this week. Thanks for your patience!

On a different note, I’ll be sending out a reader survey next month—I want to make sure I’m covering the topics you have a burning desire to learn more about and that will be most useful to you. Always good to change things up a bit. So think about it! Thanks.

Odette Estate Winery, Napa Valley © Tonya Hennessey

P.S. - Don’t you love sustainable wineries? There are more in Napa and Sonoma Counties than you probably realize, if you’re in the SF Bay Area. My partner and I are touring women-owned, family-run Tres Sabores in St. Helena this week for a travel story on Napa beyond the glitz. From their website: “As a California Certified Organic Farm (CCOF), we cultivate grapevines, heritage olives, Meyer lemons, pomegranates, and more in our heirloom garden. Our ranch is also home to an ecosystem including bluebirds, red tail hawks, a herd of sheep, a flock of Guinea fowls, and more.” This is the wine country that you rarely read about.

But I digress.

See ya Wednesday, Tonya

The critical thing to understand is that just like with foundations, building professional relationships is key to your success.

Peruvian Ceviche at La Mar SF © Tonya Hennessey

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Relationships, Not Transactions

There’s a version of major gift fundraising that is essentially transactional: prospect identified, cultivation scheduled, ask made, gift received, stewardship letter sent, cycle repeated. It can work, to a certain extent. But that’s an older and less effective model.

There’s another version. The one where a donor calls your executive director on a Saturday because they read something that connects to your work. Where they bring a friend to a site visit who becomes your next major donor. Where their estate plan includes a bequest that funds your organization for years.

That version is built on a genuine relationship. And a genuine relationship with high-net-worth donors requires understanding what these individuals and families want from a philanthropic partnership. This advice is meant to be tailored: always work with your organization’s definition of what a major gift is and its level of readiness.

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What High Net Worth Donors Want

According to Altrata’s 2025 Ultra High Net Worth Philanthropy Report, the top motivations for significant philanthropic giving are not tax efficiency or social obligation. They are personal connection to cause, a desire for tangible impact, and a sense of partnership in the work they fund. These donors want to matter to your organization, not just to your budget.

In practice, that means access. Access to program staff, to the communities you serve, to the thinking behind your strategy. They want to understand your organization’s work at a depth that goes beyond your annual report. And they want their perspective—their questions, their network, their ideas—to be genuinely welcomed.

These deeper donor relationships take organizational preparation and readiness. Don’t rush things if you haven’t built a level of trust with your donor, even when you urgently need the funds. Don’t offend a great donor and throw the relationship off track.

The Donor Cultivation Moves That Work

Major donors value site visits and firsthand program immersion. Nothing builds a strong connection with high-net-worth donors like direct experience of your program. Not just a tour—an immersive experience—let them sit with participants, speak with staff, and observe the work’s complexity firsthand.

These kinds of engagements consistently lead to significant and sometimes transformational donations. This has been proven time and again over my 25 years in the field.

Facilitate access to your organizational leadership and thinking. Share a research finding before it goes public. These gestures communicate that this person is a partner in your mission, not just a name in a database.

Think about partnership opportunities appropriate for your particular organization and its style. Take it step by step, considering your organization’s size, staffing, and readiness. What is the right balance between partnerships and independence? What are your organization’s boundaries?

Some high-net-worth donors—particularly those with entrepreneurial backgrounds—want to do more than write a check. A named endowment, a challenge grant they design, a pilot program they help conceive. When a donor is genuinely invested, channeling that energy into something specific deepens the relationship and often increases the gift.

But don’t let donors direct your organization’s programs or strategy. Desires to do so should raise red flags. In the worst-case scenarios, these situations pull organizations into work that falls entirely outside their mission.

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A Word on Patience

Genuine relationships with high-net-worth donors are a long arc. It takes two or three years of consistent, thoughtful engagement before a truly significant gift materializes. Plan for this.

The fundraisers who build extraordinary major gift programs are genuinely curious about the people in their portfolios. They remember details from conversations months ago. They send a note when they read something that reminds them of what a donor cares about. That’s both a technique and an art.

What’s been your most effective major donor cultivation move? Let us know in the comments—we read every one.

Here’s the truth: the follow-up is part of the ask. Done well, it signals professionalism, genuine interest, and organizational competence.

Done badly, it signals desperation and makes program officers hide behind their out-of-office messages.

Let’s talk about how to do it right.

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First, Read the Room (and the Guidelines)

Before you do anything, go back to the funder’s website. Many private foundations spell out their LOI review timeline and whether they accept follow-up inquiries.

If the guidelines say “we will contact you,” that means you wait. Ignoring this instruction is the grant equivalent of texting someone back before they’ve had a chance to reply. Don’t be that person.

If the guidelines are silent on follow-up? You have a green light, with some ground rules.

The Two-Week Rule

Wait at least two weeks after submitting before reaching out. Foundations receive hundreds of LOIs during open cycles, and program officers are doing real work under real deadlines.

A follow-up sent two days after submission doesn’t show enthusiasm; it shows impatience.

After two weeks, a brief, professional email is entirely appropriate.

According to Candid’s LOI best practices, the goal of any follow-up should be to confirm receipt and offer to provide additional information, not to lobby for your proposal.

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What to Say (and What Not to Say)

Your follow-up email should be three paragraphs, max. Open by referencing your LOI, the date you submitted, and the organization and project name. Keep it specific so the reader doesn’t have to search their inbox.

Second paragraph: briefly restate why this project aligns with the foundation’s priorities. Not a full pitch, just a thread back to what matters to them.

Third paragraph: offer to answer any questions or provide supplementary materials, and thank them for their time.

Please don’t say: “Just circling back.” “I wanted to touch base.” “Following up on my follow-up.” These phrases have become so overused that they’re practically white noise.

As Vu Le of Nonprofit AF once quipped, “the nonprofit sector runs on a special dialect of buzzword soup that exhausts everyone, including the people writing it.” Be direct. Be human. Be specific.

One Follow-Up Call, Not Many

A short phone call is also appropriate, generally once. Leave a voicemail if they don’t answer, and be sure to pace your follow-up so you’re not overwhelming.

This is not a multi-channel marketing campaign. You are not trying to convert a lead. You are building a relationship, and relationships are built on respect for boundaries.

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Use the Waiting Period Productively

The weeks between your LOI and a funding decision are not dead time. This is your chance to follow the funder on social media, attend any public events they host, and track their recent grants to refine your understanding of their priorities.

By the time they reach back to you, you should know their grantmaking landscape better than you did the day you submitted your LOI.

Think of it like studying before a callback audition. You already impressed them enough to get a second look. Now show up prepared.

The Long Game

You need to understand that most LOIs don’t become full proposals on the first submission. Seasoned fundraisers know that a “not this cycle” response is often an invitation to try again.

A gracious, curious reply to a decline, asking what might make a stronger fit in the future, is one of the most underused tools in the field.

Seriously, showing that you’re not offended by being declined and following up for feedback is a great way to keep the conversation going.

The goal isn’t just one grant. It’s a funder relationship that funds your mission for years.

That’s the groove. Now go out and get it.

The free issue this week established the foundation: program officers want to trust you, they read faster than you think, and they genuinely want to say yes.

Today, we get into the mechanics of the conversations themselves—what to do before you pick up the phone or log in to Zoom, how to conduct a pre-submission call with confidence, how to navigate a site visit, how to follow up without being annoying, and what the red flags look like on both sides of the relationship.

I’m going to give you sample language to use in your communications. Scripts aren’t words you read verbatim—they’re scaffolds you internalize, so that when you’re in the moment, the right words come more naturally.

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I poured enormous energy into anticipating exactly what language would make a funder open their checkbook. But after some time in the trenches, and honestly, a few invaluable training courses, I learned the reality is simpler, yet far more demanding: they just want to trust you.

Program officers want the quiet confidence of knowing your organization will execute its plan. They want the assurance that if things go wrong mid-grant, you’ll pick up the phone instead of hiding behind a slick final report. Your budget, your narrative, your meticulously mapped logic model? They all exist for one singular purpose: to lay out your case and prove you can be trusted.

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They Read Faster Than You Think

Most program officers manage between 50 and 200 applications per grant cycle,…

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Picture this: you open a generous grant check from Fidelity Charitable or a local community foundation, but you are left scratching your head about who really made the gift.

If you’ve been in fundraising for more than a few years, this scenario is probably all too familiar: a mystery person made a significant gift through a donor-advised fund (DAF). How do you thank them, and how do you build a relationship with them?

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Why DAFs are a Priority

If you don’t yet have a clear picture of exactly how DAFs work and what they mean for your donor relationships, it’s time to develop one.

The numbers make this an urgent priority for any nonprofit professional. According to the National Philanthropic Trust’s 2024 DAF Report, there are now over $326 billion in assets held in donor-advised funds, which is up 30% from the prior yea…

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We’re going to walk through each phase of the major gift cycle in depth: what you’re doing, what you’re listening for, how you know when to move forward, and what common mistakes to look for at each stage.

I’ll also share a framework for a moves-management tracker you can adapt for your own portfolio.

Fair warning: this is a long one. Pour something, settle in, and treat this as the working document it’s meant to be.

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What Is a Stablecoin, Exactly?

A stablecoin is a cryptocurrency designed to maintain a consistent value, typically by being pegged to a fiat currency like the US dollar. USDC (USD Coin), USDT (Tether), and RLUSD (Ripple USD) are among the most widely used. When a donor sends you $10,000 in USDC, it is worth $10,000 upon arrival. Not $7,200 because Bitcoin had a rough Tuesday.

This is the fundamental problem stablecoins solve for nonprofit finance departments. The volatility of Bitcoin and Ethereum is real and it’s significant. A gift worth $25,000 at the moment of donation might be worth $18,000 by the time your organization receives …

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Let’s build a needs statement from the ground up—sourcing real data, structuring the argument, weaving in community voice, and avoiding the mistakes that cause otherwise strong proposals to lose. This is the guide I wish I’d had when I was starting out.

Set aside an hour, open a draft document alongside this, and work through it as you read. By the end, you should have the bones of a needs statement that can anchor a competitive proposal.

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Your first draft of a proposal is often decent. The problem is the second draft that looks too much like the first.

It’s easy to write a competent first draft and then make small edits around the edges. We tighten a sentence here, swap a word there, and fix a few transitions. What we end up with is a tidier version of the original.

But adequate doesn’t win grants. Compelling does. Let’s walk through the essentials of making strong revisions.

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One of the Most Common Problems: Abstraction

Here’s a sentence pulled from a real grant proposal (with details changed): “Our program serves vulnerable youth in under-resourced communities by providing wraparound support services that addr…

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Over-reliance looks like this: a fundraiser gets a prospect report back from DonorSearch showing a $2 million capacity rating on a longtime annual fund donor and immediately starts treating them as a major gift prospect, without a single qualifying conversation.

They rush cultivation, the donor feels pressured, and the relationship suffers.

Ignoring it looks like this: a development director maintains a 300-person prospect list entirely from memory and board relationships, never uses any wealth screening tool, and misses a cluster of highly capable donors who’ve been quietly writing five-figure checks to peer organizations for years.

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The right relationship with wealth screening is somewhere in the middle: it’s a powerful prioritization tool that tells you where to focus your limited cultivation time—not a replacement for human judgment, relationship, and the qualification conversation.

Here’s how to use it well.

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This is called prospect qualification. It’s the phase of the major gift cycle that many organizations either skip or collapse into the cultivation phase, spending months building a relationship with someone who was never a realistic major gift prospect.

Your fundraising time is finite. Prospect qualification is one way you protect it.

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What Wealth Screening Can and Can’t Tell You

Wealth screening is a starting point, not a conclusion. Platforms like DonorSearch and iWave aggregate public data to produce prospect wealth-capacity estimates, which are genuinely useful for prioritizing a large prospect list.

According to DonorSearch’s research, donors with a history of charitable giving to other like-minded organizatio…

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Classics at the Blackhawk Museum in Danville, California © Tonya Hennessey

Share The Giving Groove

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