Fundraising and nonprofit development is not easy. Luckily, there are many great blogs out there providing excellent information to help you learn more about fundraising. We’ve rounded up some of our favorite blogs that will help you grow your skills, get more donations, strengthen your organization, and keep up with the latest news!
Top Fundraising Blogs and Resources for Nonprofits
- Soapbox Engage
- JC Social Marketing
- Joe Garecht Fundraising
- Amy Eisenstein
- Get Fully Funded
- Ann Green’s Nonprofit Blog
- Clairification
- MarketSmart
- The Fundraising Coach
- NonProfitPro
- Moceanic
- Gail Perry Group
Soapbox Engage
Blog Overview
The Soapbox Engage blog is updated weekly with the latest online engagement news and strategies for changemakers. From nonprofit tech, to virtual fundraising, to grants management, events management, and nonprofit news, this blog has a bit of everything.Why we love this blog
Soapbox Engage curates the latest fundraising content (sourced from many blogs and fundraising experts, including all the ones listed in this article), and delivers a newsletter to your inbox every week. No need to scour the internet to stay up-to-date on the latest fundraising trends and best practices. Simply subscribe and watch the latest come to you in the Fundraising Weekly.
In addition to excellent and original blog content, Soapbox Engage provides numerous free guides for nonprofits, including The Definitive Guide to Online Fundraising, How to Boost Your Wording when Asking for Donations, and the Complete Guide to Online Gifts. These detailed guides are free to the community and packed with tips and ideas to take your fundraising to the next level.
JC Social Marketing
Blog Overview
JC Social Marketing helps the modern nonprofit tackle marketing. The blog provides tips to help you get more out of your efforts in online fundraising, digital marketing, and social media.
Why we love this blog
Marketing may not be what drew you to working in the nonprofit world, but it is an essential piece of the fundraising puzzle. We appreciate the breadth of knowledge this blog offers about marketing, especially digital marketing. If you haven’t yet harnessed the power of social media to increase your fundraising efforts, this blog is the one to help you do that!
Joe Garecht Fundraising
Blog Overview
Joe Garecht Fundraising is a blog from Joe Garecht, a professional with 20 years of experience helping nonprofits raise more money so they can do more good in the world! Joe is a world-recognized fundraising consultant, author and speaker. He has written several books to help nonprofit organizations. (Check out his free e-book 10 Great Ways to Find New Donors for your Non-Profit.) Joe is an expert at creating fundraising systems to help organizations find new donors, cultivate them, ask them for gifts, and steward them so that they give for a lifetime. Luckily, he has shared a lot of this information on this blog!
Why we love this blog
There is very practical, useful information on Joe’s blog that covers a variety of subjects for a fundraiser. He includes a lot of necessary nuts-and-bolts things, such as How to Write a Great Fundraising Solicitation Email and Text Fundraising: Your 5 Keys to Success. We appreciate how each blog post is clear, easy to follow, and has strong action items to set any fundraiser up for success!
Amy Eisenstein
Blog Overview
Amy Eisenstein has been a development professional and fundraising consultant for more than 25 years. She is also the CEO of the Capital Campaign Toolkit. She has helped small and large nonprofits alike raise millions of dollars through major gift and capital campaigns. Her primary mission is to make nonprofit development simple, and her blog posts do just that.
Why we love this blog
Capital campaigns are a very useful tool for nonprofit organizations, but can be daunting to undertake, especially for smaller organizations. We appreciate how clear Amy makes the process, offering a readiness assessment, a step by step checklist, and even a guide for board members. Furthermore, many of her blog posts serve to illuminate interactions with donors, such as How to Tame the Scariest Part of Fundraising– The Ask. The information on this blog is useful to fundraisers of all experience levels!
Get Fully Funded
Blog Overview
In 2005, Sandy Rees started Get Fully Funded because she hated seeing great causes struggle to get the funding they need. She had experience growing the revenue at a small food bank from $150,000 per year to over $1,000,000 in less than 5 years. She decided to take what she learned and distill it into simple, easy-to-learn nuggets. This blog breaks down big concepts into smaller parts to help people learn quickly and easily.
Why we love this blog
This blog was created so nonprofit professionals can spend less time struggling and more time changing lives. That passion is very clear. The Get Fully Funded team offers content in a variety of forms to make sure it can be absorbed, including an in-depth, self paced, fun video training that helps people learn to fully fund their nonprofit's budget. They also offer an annual online retreat to bring nonprofits together for their best year ever. The Get Fully Funded team says “your success is our success,” and that commitment is very clear!
Ann Green’s Nonprofit Blog
Blog Overview
Ann Green is a nonprofit communications consultant, and knows that connecting and engaging with your audience is the key to good communication. Her blog posts offer useful information to help with writing and editing fundraising letters, newsletter articles, etc, as well as planning communication plans, donor relations plans, thank you plans, and more.
Why we love this blog
Not all nonprofit professionals consider themselves strong communicators. But when it comes to fundraising and nonprofit development, communication is a very central part of the job. This blog demystifies how to communicate with your donors, setting you up for success no matter how strong of a communicator you think you are.
Clairification
Blog Overview
Claire Axelrad’s blog, Clairification, provides a pathway to passionate philanthropy. Note that we said philanthropy, not fundraising, which is Claire’s philosophy. This blog offers tools to become a passionate philanthropy facilitator, which it defines as much more than a forgettable fundraiser.
Why we love this blog
The ethos of “passionate philanthropy” is values based, relationship based, and culture based, and keeps delivering meaning to donors as central to your mission. We appreciate how Clairification keeps why we all do this work as central. Plus, the blog is very well organized and easy to find what subjects you want, which is incredibly helpful!
MarketSmart
Blog Overview
MarketSmart is a planned and major gift marketing software and services firm that helps nonprofits raise more money more efficiently. Their Smart Ideas blog offers straight talk about major, mid-level, and legacy gift fundraising to help you be a better fundraiser.
Why we love this blog
This blog is great for organizations seeking to raise major gifts. Their straight talk includes blog posts such as 3 Things You Must Define to Receive a $5 Million Gift and Unlock Bigger Charitable Gifts: 3 Types of Questions that Position Donors for Maximum Generosity. Receiving large gifts can be a tough hill for organizations to climb, but they make a huge difference in the work we’re able to do. This blog makes that climb not so tough!
The Fundraising Coach
Blog Overview
The Fundraising Coach was founded by Marc A. Pittman, an international leadership coach and fundraising trainer. These posts feature fundraising advice and tips for nonprofits that he has gained in many years of experience.
Why we love this blog
Marc. A Pittman has been called the “Johnny Appleseed of fundraising,” due to his passion. And that passion is very clear in his posts. It truly does feel like he is your coach, as many of the posts read like an uplifting pep talk, such as “Inspiration and Advice for a New (Fiscal) Year.” His posts are personal and interesting, and the tips will be very helpful if you’re embarking on a new fundraiser.
NonProfitPro
Blog Overview
NonProfitPro is developed for thought leaders and innovators. They cover topics ranging from internal issues such as human resources, board and volunteer management to technology to tax and legal matters, news and, of course, raising funds.
Why we love this blog
The range of topics covered on this blog is so vast! They have a variety of staff bloggers, and cover everything from data management and leadership management to e-philanthropy and direct marketing. Whether you’re thinking deeply about the right number of board members to have, or are looking to maximize your social fundraising this season, this blog is likely to have an answer for you!
Moceanic
Blog Overview
Moceanic offers courses to help you become a smarter fundraiser, and distills this information into their blog posts. They offer strategies and practical tips that help you tap into your donors’ true motivations.
Why we love this blog
This website is fun. They offer detailed information to help you analyze your messaging, such as in their blog post Are You Fundraising in the Right “World?” It Makes All the Difference! And in addition to that, they have a distinct graphic style for their images that adds pizazz to each post. Getting down in the details can feel a bit boring on occasion, so we appreciate the pizzazz that Moceanic brings to every post!
Gail Perry Group
Blog Overview
Gail Perry Group is a staple in the fundraising world, and their blog is filled with comprehensive and sharp tips. They emphasize creative and fresh fundraising strategies that you can put into action to thrive.
Why we love this blog
This blog is great for large nonprofits who are looking to enhance their fundraising strategies. Blog posts such as Honest Questions to Consider About Your Organization’s Fundraising Strategy help you get a large part of the benefit of working with the Gail Perry Group as consultants, for free! If you need to reassess your fundraising strategy because you’re hoping to bring in more major gifts, or you’ve noticed something isn’t working as you thought it would, this is the blog for you.
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