Nonprofit News

2020 brought more changes to the nonprofit hiring and talent management landscape than any other year in recent history. What can we expect in 2021? We spoke with three of our Executive Search team members to learn what they are watching as we move forward.

Keep reading for our conversation with Kris, Marian, and Dan. We discussed the future of remote work, how racial justice has influenced nonprofit hiring, what skills will be in demand in 2021, and more.

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The state of the world has made us want to connect with more of you, more often. For the rest of 2020, the Campbell & Company Communications team is sharing a new article every week that explores a topic in case development and fundraising communications, drawn from our work.

Whether it’s thinking about how to approach fundraising communications against the backdrop of current events or tackling an evergreen challenge we see time and time again in nonprofits across the sector, these articles focus on practical tips to empower fundraising leaders in their day-to-day work. Subscribe to the series here.

Well folks, the end of 2020 is in sight. 

We’ve made our way through all 100 months of the year, wave after wave of Covid-19, and one massive election counted and recounted a dozen times. 

Working from our homes and closets, we’ve moved our whole fundraising, communications, and event strategies online with a combination of brilliant strategic maneuvering and absolute freestyling. 

Over here on the Campbell Communications team, we’ve worked with our colleagues to navigate as many different client quandaries and creative challenges as there are stars in the nonprofit sky, thrown together this article series on an educated whim, and put out 25 or so articles and a half dozen webinars. 

So, what have we learned? Apart from the fact that we all need a nap. 

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To guide your major gift team as they navigate uncertainty, we compiled an article collection that explores how to make the most of the four pillars of major gift fundraising—Leadership, Staff & Systems, Case for Support, and Donor Engagement—in times of crisis.

If your organization is navigating a challenging situation, we know now more than ever is the time to stick to your mission and implement best practices. In this collection, we share strategies to help build relationships, leverage donor data, tweak donor communications, and retain high-performing fundraisers.

Download the article collection.

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So you’ve heard gift tables are an essential fundraising planning tool…but they require MATH?! You ask yourself: are they really that useful? Yes! A gift table that’s properly set up will show you everything you need to know about your campaign at a glance.

And while there may be more math involved in building the table than in anything you’ve done since high school, it’s a surprisingly simple process—half an hour in any spreadsheet software will get you most of the way there.

Before you get intimidated by gift table math and logic, take a look at two resources our team developed: a guide to creating gift tables and an Excel workbook with gift table examples.

Download the guide and Excel workbook.

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The state of the world has made us want to connect with more of you, more often. For the rest of 2020, the Campbell & Company Communications team is sharing a new article every week that explores a topic in case development and fundraising communications, drawn from our work.

Whether it’s thinking about how to approach fundraising communications against the backdrop of current events or tackling an evergreen challenge we see time and time again in nonprofits across the sector, these articles focus on practical tips to empower fundraising leaders in their day-to-day work. Subscribe to the series here.

Say it with me: I’m a writer.

Sure, fundraising requires much more than putting pen to paper: the charisma to build relationships, the knack for deftly navigating a database, and the courage to ask for money.

But perhaps the most unsung skill of a fundraiser-in-the-trenches is the language we speak every day on the Communications team at Campbell & Company: writing.

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The state of the world has made us want to connect with more of you, more often. For the rest of 2020, the Campbell & Company Communications team is sharing a new article every week that explores a topic in case development and fundraising communications, drawn from our work.

Whether it’s thinking about how to approach fundraising communications against the backdrop of current events or tackling an evergreen challenge we see time and time again in nonprofits across the sector, these articles focus on practical tips to empower fundraising leaders in their day-to-day work. Subscribe to the series here.

It’s morning in the Eastern time zone on November 4^th, 2020. As I am writing this, I have no idea who the next president will be.

There was just some late—sorry, early-breaking news that sounds good for my guy, but all of this is closer and less clear than I’d like it to be. This feeling is familiar—the topsy-turvy sense of reality, the disappointment with friends and family who don’t see eye-to-eye.

By now, you’ve probably guessed my political leanings, but you almost certainly haven’t guessed something else: I’m feeling (slightly) cooler and calmer than I did in 2016. I know—I’m a little surprised myself.

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The state of the world has made us want to connect with more of you, more often. For the rest of 2020, the Campbell & Company Communications team is sharing a new article every week that explores a topic in case development and fundraising communications, drawn from our work.

Whether it’s thinking about how to approach fundraising communications against the backdrop of current events or tackling an evergreen challenge we see time and time again in nonprofits across the sector, these articles focus on practical tips to empower fundraising leaders in their day-to-day work. Subscribe to the series here.

“I’m not sure if our campaign is sexy enough.”

I can hardly count how many times I’ve heard this worry from a client over the years—a potentially self-defeating apprehension that their campaign isn’t exciting, sparkly, or new-and-different enough to attract serious consideration from donors.

We can all picture the kind of campaign they’re imagining—the glitzy temple-building project where you get a name-brand architect, recruit all the biggest names in town to your committee, print a 30-page brochure with bold statements over gorgeous renderings, and build a landmark new building that you probably can’t afford to operate and might glimmer-glamour you to the brink of insolvency in the next recession.

Those campaigns sure can be fun. But they were never more than a highly visible fraction of successful campaigns to begin with, and their true heyday was probably all the way back before the Great Recession.

They certainly aren’t going to be the norm when we emerge from our bunkers and cautiously begin planning the first wave of post-pandemic campaigns.

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The state of the world has made us want to connect with more of you, more often. For the rest of 2020, the Campbell & Company Communications team is sharing a new article every week that explores a topic in case development and fundraising communications, drawn from our work.

Whether it’s thinking about how to approach fundraising communications against the backdrop of current events or tackling an evergreen challenge we see time and time again in nonprofits across the sector, these articles focus on practical tips to empower fundraising leaders in their day-to-day work. Subscribe to the series here.

When it comes to philanthropy, the idea of “worthiness” is often an important factor in a donor’s decision to give. Causes are worthy of investment. Problems are worth solving. Committing to a nonprofit with a mission you believe in is a worthwhile undertaking.

But there is an insidious side to worthiness that sometimes plays out in our sector, too. When the assessment of “worthy” (and consequently: “not worthy”) is turned on the people our organizations serve, it becomes a weapon.

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