Steven Screen, Author at The Better Fundraising Company

The ‘Change You Make,’ not ‘How You Make the Change’

Steven Screen | January 13, 2026December 29, 2025Ask

Here’s a rule I live by when asking for donations through the mail or email. It’s subtle but important.

Focus on the understandable change your organization makes in the world, not on how your organization makes the change.

Let me give you a quick “before & after” of an example ask, and then dig into the details…

Focused on how the organization makes the change:

Your gift will fund our research-based brain development program addressing the mental health and cognitive needs of children from 8 weeks to 5 years.

Focused on the change the organization makes:

Your gift provides a pre-school where a child feels safe so that they learn the skills they need to succeed in Kindergarten.

In the “before” example, notice how much “how we do our work” is present:

Their work is researched-based
Their program is a brain-development program
Their program addresses mental health and cognitive needs

Those details are incredibly valuable to the organization, and are what make them effective.

But they are not why most individual donors, in email or the mail, donate.

What makes individual donors donate, based on the fundraising results we see, is the understandable change that the donor’s gift will make. Let’s look again at the example that focuses on the understandable change – you’ll see how it’s focused on things the donor will immediately understand and how the world will be better than it was before.

“Your gift provides a pre-school where a child feels safe so that they learn the skills they need to succeed in Kindergarten.”

The gift “provides a pre-school” – everyone reading immediately knows what pre-school is and who goes there, as opposed to very few people knowing that a “research-based brain development program” is.
“where a child feels safe”’ – feeling safe is an obvious benefit, and indicates that the child didn’t feel safe before, which points to an obvious positive change the donor can help make.
“learn the skills they need to succeed in Kindergarten” – this communicates that the child doesn’t have the skills now, but that the donor’s gift will help provide the skills. The obvious “understandable change” is that the child probably wasn’t going to succeed in Kindergarten, but now they will.

Here’s the hard-won knowledge I’m hoping you’ll work into your fundraising this year: if you focus your fundraising to individual donors on the understandable change your donors can help make with a gift today, you’ll raise more money.

If you want to know more about why this happens, read my post from last Thursday.

And if you want two other ways of describing the same general concept, here you go:

Donors fund outcomes, not process
Focus on what you make possible, not on what you do

Good luck, and I hope your year is off to a great start!

Audience and Channel

Steven Screen | January 8, 2026December 23, 2025Ask

If you’re going to be a very effective Fundraiser, you have to constantly be aware of context.

The two main contexts to be aware of in your email and mail fundraising are Audience and Channel.

Audience

“Audience” is who you’re talking to. For instance…

Individual donors care about different things than institutional donors
Institutional donors care about different things than Program Staff and Organization Insiders
Longtime major donors care about different things than First Time Email Donors

If you’re not constantly thinking, “Who am I talking to right now and what do they value,” you’re constantly missing opportunities to connect. Because if your voice or message is perfect for one of your audiences, it’s not close to perfect for your other audiences.

Channel

“Channel” is the method you’re using to communicate to your audience. For instance…

In the mail and email, you have a different amount of time than you have over lunch with a donor, so you communicate differently
At an event, what you tell a donor is different than what you’d say over lunch
In a grant application, what you tell an institutional funder is different than what you tell an individual donor.

If you’re not constantly thinking, “What channel am I communicating with the audience right now and what works best in this method,” you’re probably making one method work well and causing the other methods to be ineffective. (By the way, the most common phase of this for smaller nonprofits is to be effective in person 1-on-1, but not effective in the mail and email – which is why we at Better Fundraising have jobs 🙂 )

The clearest example I’ve come across to illustrate this is the following:

	Audience	Channel	Knowledge Level	Time Spent Reading
Grant Application	Institutional funders	Multi-page Grant application	Likely knowledgeable about your sector and work	Several minutes
Email appeal	Individual donors	300-word email	Unlikely to be knowledgeable about your sector and work	Several seconds

At the foundation, a subject-matter expert is paid to read your application. On the individual donor’s phone, a non-expert is more likely to flick through your email than to read it.

Just given that context, of course the two pieces of fundraising should be written differently.

So as you think about your fundraising for this year, may this year be one of increased awareness at your nonprofit for which audience you’re talking to and which channel it’s taking place in.

Don’t Get Too Hung Up on Authenticity

Steven Screen | January 6, 2026December 23, 2025Repeat

In general, “be authentic” is good advice to nonprofits.

However, to be successful in fundraising long term you will absolutely need to do some things don’t feel authentic to you at first…

For instance, it doesn’t feel authentic for anyone to send 12 pieces of direct mail a year. Yet tens of thousands of nonprofits are joyfully do it each year because it raises so much money, is so good at identifying new major donors, and keeps the relationship going with people you can’t meet in person.

It’s doesn’t feel authentic for anyone to send out 50 fundraising emails a year. Yet that’s happening thousands of times a year from successful fundraising organizations.

For a relationship-driven MGO it doesn’t always feel authentic to keep a spreadsheet with an annual communication plan and giving goal for each major donor. Yet that’s happening hundreds of thousands of times a year by MGOs who know that “having a plan and working the plan” is the key to maximizing revenue from major donors.

My point is just to say that the idea of “authenticity” is often taken too far. It becomes a binary when it should be a guiding principle.

Stay authentic to who you are and what you believe in. But don’t miss out on successful strategies and tactics because you wouldn’t naturally do them.

Progress, Not Perfection

Steven Screen | January 1, 2026December 23, 2025Repeat

It’s January, and it’s good to admit that your fundraising in 2026 will not be perfect.

Everyone will make mistakes and miss opportunities.

But our job is to make progress, not to be perfect. And progress can look pretty simple:

The plan for your top major donors is a little more specific this year
You send one more piece of fundraising than you sent last year
You spend a little time getting better at subject lines and teasers so that your open rates are higher this year (and next year)

“Raising more money” can feel hard. Making progress and getting a little bit better at fundraising isn’t.

Pie and Sisyphus

Steven Screen | December 30, 2025December 15, 2025Repeat

To repeat one of the best lines I’ve ever heard about fundraising:

Fundraising is like a pie-eating contest where the prize for eating the most pie is that you’re asked to eat more pie.

“You raised 4% above projections this year,” the Board says, “let’s aim for 6% over projections in 2026!”

It’s kind of like Sisyphus, doomed to push a boulder up to the top of a hill but always having it slip from his grasp before reaching the top.

But there’s an unsaid part of the Sisyphus myth that was pointed out to me a few years ago: each time the rock rolls back to the bottom of the hill, Sisyphus has a restful, unencumbered downhill walk before he starts again.

So today – when the appeals have been sent, the calls have been made, the emails for today and tomorrow already programmed and ready to go – I hope you are enjoying your “restful, unencumbered downhill walk” as all the money comes in.

Enjoy your walk, and happy new year!

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

Steven Screen | December 25, 2025December 15, 2025Repeat

This Christmas, we’re thankful for three things about you:

Thanks for the work you do as a Fundraiser. You’re part of the solution, and you’re “bending the arc” towards justice.
Thanks for being vulnerable and courageous enough to ask for help.
Thanks for giving donors the gift of your fundraising – without you, they can’t do the good they want to do.

Thanks also for your time and attention this year. We love being a part of your fundraising journey.

Tonight, we’ll raise a glass to you. And to generosity. (And, if you had matching funds as part of your year-end campaign, to the Angel’s Share!)

With gratitude for you and what you do,

Jim, Steven and all of the Better Fundraising team

Every Gift is a Sign of Connection

Steven Screen | December 23, 2025December 9, 2025Repeat

It’s a week until the end of the year.

Let’s take just a moment to breathe in the generosity of the season.

Gifts are happening online. Checks are arriving in the mail. Gift notices keep coming in. Excited texts are being sent.

And at the moment each of those gifts was made, there was joy, or inspiration, or relationship, or belief. Maybe even some sacrifice, and some duty, too.

Every single gift is a sign of a connection to your work and your mission.

Each donor now feels little bit better about themselves and the world, and they helped advance your mission.

I hope you love what you get to be a part of as a Fundraiser. Here at Better Fundraising, we sure do.

Four Quick Learnings from Giving Tuesday

Steven Screen | December 18, 2025December 17, 2025Report

I just read M+R’s report on Giving Tueday and there are a couple things that I think are helpful for all of us Fundraisers to know.

According to their data…

Giving Tuesday Continues to Grow

15% more was donated this year compared to last year.

Giving Tuesday continues to grow. For organizations that are still holdouts, or still holding their nose at Giving Tuesday, I suggest allocating more resources to it next year.

More Donors This Year

6% more people gave gifts this year compared to last year.

I think this is a reflection of demographics; as more people who are comfortable giving online age into their prime giving years, more people are going to participate in Giving Tuesday. I expect this trend to continue.

Matches & Celebrities

I’ll quote directly from M+R here:

“It’s increasingly hard to stand out in email inboxes with the influx of Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and Travel Tuesday (?) promotions, but tried-and-true tactics like matches and celebrity signers who can really speak to your mission are still helping organizations speak to donors.”

While small nonprofits have a hard time affording celebrity signers, but most of us can get a match. If you didn’t utilize matching or challenge funds this year, make it a priority to find a match for next year.

Giving Driven by a Fundraising Text is Increasing

M+R says,

“Nonprofits that have invested in growing their mobile lists over the last few years are starting to see major returns.”

If you’ve built your mobile list at all this year, there’s still time to set up text messaging to your donors for this year-end. The company we recommend to nonprofits is Tatango – they’ve been great for our clients.

I hope this is helpful, and good luck with your year-end fundraising!

How Things Work

Steven Screen | December 16, 2025December 9, 2025Repeat

I’ve always liked to understand how things work.

Engines, supply & demand, how plywood is made, you name it.

Early in my fundraising career, when looking at detailed fundraising results, I noticed the following three things that go a long way to explaining how mass donor fundraising works:

Appeals raise more than stewardship pieces. OK, great. An appeal is the best thing an organization can do increase revenue. And if an organization wants to raise more money, its annual plan should prioritize sending appeals. Appeals are also great at getting donors to give again, which is the definition of “retaining” a donor.
Stewardship pieces increase donor retention. Great. We need to make sure that every annual plan has some stewardship pieces – but need to remember that they raise less than appeals.

The immediate next question is, “What’s the right mix of appeals to stewardship pieces?” Back to the fundraising results I went. I looked at the nonprofits who were out-raising similar organizations while also retaining a high percentage of their donors. And that’s when I noticed:

The organizations that had the healthiest mix of Revenue and Donor Retention sent roughly 2 appeals for every 1 stewardship piece. The 2:1 ratio maximized their revenue & impact today, while also retaining donors so that next year went great.

I’ve used that rough ratio successfully for hundreds, probably over a thousand nonprofits since then. It keeps on working.

(It is, of course, a little different in a major donor context where you are in relationship with the donor. The 2:1 ratio does not apply.)

Here’s one of the things all this makes you realize: you can over-steward your mass donors, and there are real negative consequences to doing so. If a nonprofit over-stewards its mass donors, it raises less money in the short term and retains fewer donors in the long-term.

Think of stewardship as “planting seeds” and appeals as “picking the fruit.” If you plant a lot of seeds, but don’t pick the fruit very often, you have less of a harvest than you earned. Fruit doesn’t pick itself.

Interestingly, the biggest hurdle to smaller nonprofits sending out more appeals is emotional resistance. People cannot believe the 2:1 ratio is correct. They don’t enjoy sending appeals. They can’t believe that donors enjoy giving in response to appeals.

That’s why much of Better Fundraising’s work is sitting with nonprofit leadership, talking to stakeholders, sharing examples & stories, and helping them be comfortable trying one or two steps of a different approach.

If you’d like to have that conversation, let’s chat. It’s what we do. You do the dreaming about the impact you could have if you raised a great deal more in 2026, and we’ll help you have the conversation and start raising more money and retaining more donors!