GivingTuesday falls on December 1 this year, which leaves about seven weeks. If you haven’t started planning, you can still run a good campaign, but you have to be picky about where the hours go. Lock in a matching gift this week. Choose one story and stop looking. Give each board member five to ten names to call. And write every email before Halloween.

Your local bank could be your next funding partner. Discover how the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) creates opportunities for nonprofits to secure funding, access expertise, and build partnerships that strengthen communities.

On GivingTuesday your donors’ inboxes fill up with appeals from every organization they’ve ever supported. Your email becomes one of thirty saying roughly the same thing. The organizations that do best year after year add something the inbox can’t compete with: a person the donor knows, calling to ask. Your major donors and top prospects shouldn’t get the 8 AM appeal with the countdown graphic. They should get a call from someone they trust, a week or two before the day.

The Gift of Time I missed my grandmother. She lived in Chile, a world away, and I was too young to do much of anything about it, let alone give money. But I realized I had something to offer: my time. So I started volunteering at Baycrest, a home for older adults in...

Most of us picture field hospitals and refugee camps when we hear “humanitarian.” But most giving happens close to home, and the hardest part is staying after the cameras leave.

How can earned revenue support your mission without pulling you away from it? Explore three ways to connect business and purpose, and what each requires in funding, staffing, access, and accountability.

A shared interest may bring people through the door, but it takes more to make them stay. Membership grows when people feel welcomed, build relationships, and trust that the experience will live up to its promise.

People have choices, even when they care about your mission. Creating earned revenue begins with understanding your audience, the alternatives they consider, and the quality and trust that give them a reason to choose you.

A full room can hide a weak business model. Turning interest into sustainable earned revenue takes a plan that accounts for quality, resources, costs, customer acquisition, and the risks of delivering what you promise.

Every person carries within them a cause that resonates deeply—whether it’s educational equity sparked by their own struggles in school, environmental conservation inspired by childhood memories in nature, or economic mobility driven by witnessing family hardship. This personal connection, what we call “affinity investment,” represents the most powerful starting point for transformative philanthropy.

A match gets a company’s attention. Your team’s skills and network keep it there. Two ways philanthropists can help grantees win corporate support.

Are you thinking about joining a donor trip to see your favorite cause in action? Or perhaps you’re considering inviting friends to experience the work you’ve been supporting? Site visits can be transformative experiences that deepen understanding, strengthen commitment, and create lasting connections with the communities and causes you care about.

A funder’s contribution can extend beyond the grant. Building partnerships, advocating with other donors and supporting staff and operations can help turn a shared mission into services people can access.

An endowment takes years to build, but its benefits can begin today. Discover how working alongside a grantee strengthens operations, builds partnerships and creates new opportunities.

How families can move beyond frustration to create shared missions, stronger communication, and lasting legacy The conversation starts the same way in boardrooms across the country: "How do we get the next generation more involved?" What follows is often a familiar...

Meditation was the starting point. But supporting women in Uganda meant looking beyond the program to the needs of their children and families.

How do you build an endowment for the future without diverting resources from children who need support today? Drawing on an international orphanage’s experience, this article explores the tension between immediate needs and long-term financial security—and the decisions required to protect both.

An endowment can provide financial stability, but it cannot rescue a university struggling with declining enrollment, rising costs and outdated practices. Drawing on my experience working with a private university, I explore how listening to leadership, rethinking recruitment, embracing digital education and managing cash flow can help an institution build a more sustainable future.

What is trust-based philanthropy? Trust-based philanthropy is a charitable approach that reimagines the relationships between donors, nonprofits and communities to rebalance power and decision making. It emphasizes partnership over paternalism, with six core practices:

We wrote the check and stepped back. No restrictions, no advance approvals—just a request to understand what happened at the end of the year. What the university president accomplished with that freedom surprised us and offered a valuable lesson about trust, leadership and accountability in philanthropy.