Steven Screen, Author at The Better Fundraising Company

Script for Getting Matching Funds

Steven Screen | February 5, 2026January 29, 2026Ask

After a month of big-picture, more thought-provoking posts, let’s get tactical.

If you’ve ever had to ask major donors to provide matching or challenge funds, I have something for you today that I think you’ll like.

Here’s the brief “case” to make to your major donors. After you ask them if they’ll provide a gift to be used as challenge funds, tell them the following:

It’s well–documented that challenge funds increase how much a fundraising campaign will raise, so by doing this your gift will have a greater impact than it normally does.
Here’s how that happens. When a fundraising campaign has challenge funds, more people give to the campaign than if the campaign didn’t have them. So your gift will cause more people to give.
Additionally, when a fundraising campaign has challenge funds, people give larger gifts than they do when campaigns don’t have them. So your gift will cause people to give more.
So by making a leadership gift and allowing us to use it as challenge funds to inspire other donors to give, you’ll have more of an impact, and you’re helping our organization and beneficiaries more than you normally do.
And, if you give your gift now and allow us to use it as challenge funds, you also get to enjoy watching the campaign unfold while knowing that your generosity is inspiring more giving to happen than would have happened without you!

Combine the “script” above with the info in this post (one of our most popular posts ever) and you’re on your way to having multiple campaigns with matching or challenge funds this year!

Matching Funds vs Challenge Funds

Steven Screen | February 3, 2026January 29, 2026Ask

Both “matching funds” and “challenge funds” multiply the power of a donor’s gift – but one works better than the other.

Here’s a working definition of each, plus an example of how they work.

“Challenge funds” describe a situation where the nonprofit will receive the funds regardless of how the campaign performs.
- If a nonprofit announces that an appeal has $50,000 in challenge funds, and the appeal raises $35,000, the nonprofit still receives (and often already has received) the $50,000 from the donors who gave/pledged the challenge funds.

“Matching funds” describe a situation where the matching funds are conditional, and are only released to the nonprofit in direct proportion to how much the campaign raises.
- If a nonprofit announces that an appeal has $50,000 in matching funds, and the appeal only raises $35,000, then the nonprofit only receives $35,000 of the matching funds.

Both matching funds and challenge funds are excellent at increasing the amount of money an appeal or campaign raises. And it’s also helpful to know that matching funds tend to work a little better than challenge funds.

The generally accepted reason matching funds are more effective is they they are conditional. This taps into what behavioral economists call “loss aversion” – your donors don’t want your nonprofit to miss out on this opportunity, which increases their likelihood to give a gift.

It leads to copy like:

“Please send in your gift today because I want to unlock every single dollar of the matching funds – plus, your gift will be doubled!”
“We have until [deadline] to raise the [match amount] to take advantage of the matching funds.”
“Every single one of these matching dollars can fund [your nonprofit’s mission], but only if we raise [match amount] by [deadline].”

That copy really drives home the conditional nature of the funds, and it works like crazy. (As always, it helps your donors to know what’s at stake.)

The next time you have matching or challenge funds, be sure to describe them correctly. And lean into them because both are great at increasing response rate and average gift!

A Strong Foundation

Steven Screen | January 29, 2026January 14, 2026Repeat

Gall’s Law states that “a complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked.”

The same is true for individual donor fundraising: a complex fundraising system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple fundraising system that worked.

And here are the key elements to “a simple system that works”…

Ask like help is needed
Thank like the donor’s generosity meant something
Report, using “before & after” stories, to show positive change

There are additional things you can do, of course. For instance, you can manage your major donors with a proven system. You can optimize your online giving experience. You can engage people in your community.

But if your fundraising system doesn’t have these three elements at its heart, you’re unlikely to last long or grow large.

‘By November, your year-end cake is already baked’

Steven Screen | January 27, 2026January 14, 2026Repeat

At last year’s Storytelling Conference, Chris Davenport shared storytelling advice from successful movie directors. Here’s one of my favorite things he highlighted:

“What an audience feels at the end of the movie is entirely dependent on what they felt earlier in the movie.”

Here’s the parallel to that in fundraising:

How much you raise at the end of the year is dependent on the fundraising you sent your donors earlier in the year.

Here are some examples:

If a nonprofit has shown up often in donors’ lives throughout the year, with relevant content, its year-end campaign will raise more. The organization has earned its place to be one of the organizations a donor thinks of at year-end.
If a nonprofit has not done any fundraising for several months, its year-end campaign will raise less. Because it disappeared for months, the organization is less top-of-mind for donors and won’t receive as many gifts.
If a nonprofit has made it clear through the year that its work is needed, its year-end campaign will raise more. The organization has made it clear that it’s working on something important, and donors tend to support causes and organizations that they feel are important.
If a nonprofit has spent the year only talking about how well things are going, it will raise less at year-end. The organization has shared only success stories, so it sounds like things are going great and help isn’t really needed, thank you very much.

A friend of mine put this memorably. He used to run the annual fund for a national nonprofit you’ve heard of. Over beers one night he said,

“Look, by November, your year-end cake is already baked. All that’s left to do is see how it turns out.”

What he meant was the fundraising you do throughout the year has a large effect on how well your year-end campaign performs. (You can, of course, have a strong year-end campaign without communicating much during the year. But a strong year-end campaign after a strong annual campaign will raise even more.)

I share this here in January so that, as you’re creating your fundraising this year, you set yourself up during the year for the best year-end campaign you’ve ever had.

Assume Abundance

Steven Screen | January 22, 2026December 30, 2025Ask

As you begin your year, assume abundance.

When something bad happens, and you’re wondering if you can send an emergency email to your email list, assume abundance.

Later in the year, when you’re wondering if you can ask that major donor for a second gift, assume abundance.

When you’re architecting your fundraising event, and you’re discussing how to increase the average gift, assume abundance.

But there’s always fear around assuming abundance. We fear we’ll bother people, or offend people, or wear out our welcome.

I’ve been doing this for 30+ years now. The negatives we fear do not materialize, but assuming abundance does occasionally create a little friction. Case in point: just yesterday we heard from a client who “assumed abundance” last fall and began fundraising like it. They raised far more money at year-end than ever before. After sharing the results, they said: “we had a donor complain about our year-end appeal, and when our CEO met with that donor, the donor handed him a $1,000 check.”

To summarize: this nonprofit assumed abundance, raised more than ever before, experienced a little bit of friction, received a larger gift than they normally would have, and deepened a relationship with a major donor.

Assume abundance. Assume a tiny bit of friction.

It’s worth it.

Specialized

Steven Screen | January 20, 2026December 30, 2025Repeat

Another helpful idea to start your year with:

As a nonprofit moves forward on its fundraising journey, each piece of communication tends to become more specialized.

Specialization happens because, as you grow and start to measure the performance of everything, you find that the more specialized pieces of fundraising tend to perform better.

But this is hard for smaller nonprofits at the beginning of their fundraising journey. When you don’t communicate to donors very often, each piece of communication tends to “say all the things.” An appeal letter will thank donors for their previous gift, and ask for a gift, and share a story to report back, and update people on the recent programmatic change.

All of those different messages tend to make it hard for individual donors moving fast to know what you want them to do. (This is why Better Fundraising help nonprofits specialize their comms into three main buckets: Asks, Thanks, and Reports.)

And here’s the thing for today: don’t wait to specialize until you’re one of those big, sophisticated organizations – specialize now so that you become one of those big, sophisticated organizations.

For Individual Donors, There Is No ‘Later’

Steven Screen | January 15, 2026December 29, 2025Ask

When your individual donors receive your fundraising in the mail or email, they make decisions very quickly.

Right? An individual donor doesn’t receive a fundraising email in April, set it aside somewhere, then come back at a scheduled time to review all the fundraising emails she’s received.

She either gives a gift in response to the email… or she doesn’t. There is no “later.”

Contrast this to a Foundation. Foundations receive lots of grant applications by a certain deadline, have people who are paid to read and vet the applications, and at some point later the decision makers thoughtfully ask themselves, “Should we give a gift or not?”

Here’s what this means:

Foundations ask themselves, “Should I give a gift or not?”
Individual donors ask themselves “Should I give a gift right now or not?”

And this, my friends, is why having urgency in your email and mail fundraising is so effective.

When individual donors read fundraising with no urgency, there is no strong reason for them to give a gift “right now.” Will you get some gifts? Of course! Donors are great and they love what you do.

But contrast this to a piece of fundraising that has some urgency – maybe there’s a deadline, or matching funds that expire, or a surge of people that need help. That urgency communicates to the donor that their gift is needed now, and will make a difference soon. This gives a donor reasons to give a gift “right now.”

If your nonprofit doesn’t have any urgency in your fundraising, it means that as you are reading this, there’s a whole group of people who love what you do but tend to not send gifts because they never need to “right now.”

Here at Better Fundraising, we tap into that group of donors (and their “pent-up giving”) again and again. We start working with a nonprofit, we add urgency to their fundraising, and it unleashes giving from many of their donors who have been sitting on the sidelines.

The same easy increase is available to you – but you must include urgency.

If you don’t provide donors a reason to give right now, you’ll receive fewer gifts right now.

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.