Fundraising articles on strategy from the SA Philanthropy team, with cited sources and practical guidance for nonprofit teams.
23 articles
Start with three things you control: an email list people agreed to join, a donation page that works on a phone, and a reason to give monthly. Measure them against published benchmarks, then run one controlled test at a time. Paid advertising comes after these foundations, not before.
The FEP Q2 2026 report estimates giving rose 6.6% while donor numbers fell 1.6%, compared with January to June 2025. By June, 26.4% of last year’s donors had given again, down 0.4 percentage points. For your charity, the priority is to check who returns and how much income depends on a few supporters.
A culture of philanthropy on a board means trustees treat fundraising as shared leadership work, not a task handed to the development director. Each member gives in a way that is meaningful to them, takes on a specific relationship role, and expects donor activity to be reviewed at every meeting. You build it through clear expectations at recruitment, small agreed assignments and a standing fundraising item on the agenda.
A nonprofit development plan turns fundraising priorities into work for one fiscal year. It records income targets, donor groups, costs, owners and deadlines, along with the assumptions behind each target. Use it to agree what your team will deliver, what the board must contribute and when to revise the forecast.
Hire a fundraising consultant when your nonprofit has a defined problem that needs outside expertise or temporary delivery capacity. Hire an employee when the work is ongoing, internally managed and needs daily ownership. Before choosing either, identify the constraint, the available budget and who will make decisions inside your organization.
A fundraising strategy sets the income choices that support your charity's mission. Begin with existing income, donor relationships and capacity, then choose priorities your team can deliver. Turn each choice into an operating plan with an owner, cost, timetable and review point. Trustees retain oversight when delivery is delegated.
Ask for results on programmes like yours, insist on seeing the numbers behind them, and find out who will actually do the work. Check that pricing is published, that strategy and assets stay yours, and that reporting happens monthly in plain language. Fit matters more than size or channel specialism.
In an unfamiliar market nobody knows whether you can be trusted with their money, so brand does the work that reputation does at home. Invest in recognisable identity, local proof, and visible governance before scaling spend. Acquisition costs fall as familiarity rises, and unfamiliar charities pay for that gap in media.
Lead with what the company needs: employee engagement, visibility with a specific audience, or a measurable community outcome. Research the CSR priorities before pitching, propose one concrete programme with named deliverables and a reporting rhythm, and start smaller than you want so the second year has somewhere to grow.
Offer something genuinely useful, capture the email, then earn the gift over a short sequence. A working funnel has one clear resource, a fast landing page, an immediate delivery email, and three to five follow ups that build the case before asking. Measure cost per lead and lead to donor conversion, not downloads.
Total giving keeps rising because larger gifts from fewer households cover the gap, while small and mid donors leave faster than they are replaced. The exposure is concentration risk. Protect against it by measuring donor counts and retention alongside revenue, and by funding acquisition even in years when the revenue line looks healthy.
Start with the donors you already have. Long tenure and modest repeat gifts predict bequests better than wealth screening. Add a legacy question to your surveys and reply cards, publish simple bequest language on your website, and follow up personally with anyone who indicates interest. The programme costs time before it costs money.
Mid-level donors get treated like a mailing list and leave like one. Give the segment a named owner, a service standard such as a call within 48 hours of a gift, and a plan that offers access and information rather than another appeal. Small portfolios with real contact move more revenue than volume mail.
Campaigns raise money for a month; brand raises money for a decade. Keep one recognisable identity, voice, and promise across every Ramadan touchpoint, then let the story inside it change year to year. Donors give faster to a charity they recognise, which lowers acquisition cost when the giving window is short.
Campaigns slip because nobody owns the critical path. Fundraising work runs across creative, data, finance, and program teams, and each handoff is where dates are lost. Assign one owner per deliverable, set the asset deadline two weeks before send, and hold a standing weekly review with the whole chain in the room.
A fundraising video works when it earns attention in three seconds, holds one clear idea, and ends with a single ask. Lead with a face and a real voice, keep the cut under 60 seconds for social, caption everything, and produce several versions so the strongest opening can be identified through testing.
Collaboration grows the pool; competition splits it. Organizations serving the same community can share research, coordinate campaign timing, and co-fund donor education without merging brands. The practical starting point is a joint calendar so appeals do not land on the same donor in the same week from four different charities.
Inclusion becomes real when people from affected communities hold budget, hiring, and strategy decisions, not just seats in the room. That means naming who decides, publishing pay bands, and building the conditions where staff can raise problems without risk. Representation without power is presentation, and donors increasingly see the difference.
Use AI for drafting, segmentation, and analysis, and keep humans on judgement, relationships, and anything a donor will read as personal. Disclose synthetic imagery, never fabricate beneficiary stories, and check outputs against your own data. The advantage goes to teams that move faster without spending the trust they have built.
The framework for winning creative is Research, Optimize, Test, Imitate (ROTI). It is a four-step process you can use to produce fundraising creative that performs. You study what is already running in your market, sharpen your offer and message, run structured tests against a control, then scale the winners across channels instead of starting from a blank page each campaign.
Map the path from first click to second gift, then build content for each stage: acquisition, welcome, first gift, stewardship, and upgrade. Most journeys leak at the welcome series. Send a real thank you within 24 hours, show impact before asking again, and set a fixed next ask date for every segment.
A waqf is an endowed asset whose income funds charitable work permanently while the principal stays intact. It is the closest historical parallel to an endowment, and it offers Muslim donors a familiar, faith aligned route to legacy giving. Charities need clear governance and reporting before inviting waqf gifts.
Search brings donors who are already looking for your cause, at no cost per visit. Build pages that answer the questions supporters actually type, keep donation pages fast and indexable, and publish content that earns links from credible sites. Treat organic search as an acquisition channel with its own targets and reporting.
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