This is for development directors, major gift officers, and executive directors who are running or preparing a campaign and feel stuck waiting for conditions to settle. By the end, you'll be able to set a working goal and build three response scenarios around it, name the assumption your plan is quietly resting on, and talk to your board about uncertainty in a way that increases their confidence.

This is for major gift officers, development directors, and executive directors who want their recognition to match how values-driven and next-generation donors want to be seen. By the end, you’ll have a practical recognition audit to run, a way to distinguish meaningful recognition from vanity recognition, and a clearer framework for navigating sensitive naming questions.

In my recent conversation with Mark Stuart, President and CEO of the San Diego Foundation, one idea kept coming back to me:

Fundraising is not a department.

It is a team sport. Listen in to learn what that means in practice.

This is for major gift officers, development directors, and executive directors who want to deepen trust with their closest donors and move beyond one-directional reporting. By the end of this post, you'll be able to design a listening touchpoint, tell a listening session apart from an advisory council, and turn what you hear into decisions donors can actually see.

This is for major gift officers, development directors, and executive directors who feel like the only person in the building who thinks about donor relationships. By the end of this post, you'll be able to describe what a culture of philanthropy looks like in practice, name the small steps that shift it, and understand why your internal communication channels matter more than you'd expect.

This is for major gift officers, development directors, and executive directors who want to honor generous donors without absorbing behavior that crosses a line. By the end of this episode, you'll understand the power dynamics that show up in major gift work, you'll know the red flags that a relationship has drifted out of balance, and you'll have language you can use this week to reset expectations while protecting everyone's dignity.

This article is for major gift officers, development directors, and executive directors who want a practical way to bring the right internal partners into their biggest donor relationships. After reading, you will know why this kind of collaboration matters more in 2026 than it used to, exactly who belongs at your table and why, and how to run a coalition meeting that produces real next steps instead of another calendar entry.

This is for development directors, major gift officers, executive directors, and event volunteers who want their donor events to build real relationships without draining the team. By the end of this post, you'll understand why donors increasingly value depth over spectacle, you'll have the 3P framework for designing your next gathering, and you'll know what a real follow-up system looks like once the event ends.

This is for major gift officers, development directors, executive directors, and small teams who want more hours for donor relationships without adding more hours to the week. By the end of this episode, you'll know the three categories of work that are safe to delegate to AI and automation, two workflows you can pilot this week, and the guardrails that keep any of it from feeling impersonal to a donor.

Today we're talking about inclusive major gift fundraising. Not as a campaign theme. Not as a single event with a diverse photo lineup. As a daily discipline that shapes how you build relationships with every donor, especially the donors whose culture, identity, or lived experience differs from your own.