Did you know? If 10% of your sporadic donors become recurring donors, you can boost five-year fundraising revenue by more than 70% (source: Virtuous) But how do we increase recurring gifts? Check out today's blog post for 5 tips!

In this ever-changing environment, the need to have a diverse funding mix becomes even more critical for organizational survival and prosperity. Learn how you can determine if you have a diverse enough portfolio of funders as a starting point to strengthening your financial future.

To help you understand the recent executive order on Federal grantmaking, these 9 steps will give you a general concept of how federal grants operate and your role as the applicant or recipient in the process.

Fund development work relies on relationships. People give to people. Understand the importance of building relationships and leveraging your board and volunteers to expand your circle of relationships to expand your fundraising success.

Having advocates on your board does not happen overnight nor does it happen by osmosis or chance. You have to prepare them. These 5 tips can help you grow a more advocating board.

You've probably heard me say many times that you want to make a specific ask of a donor, meaning putting a dollar amount in front of them. Learn why and how and hear an example of how one organization may have left money on the table by not making a specific ask.

Your membership program isn’t just fine. It could be fundraising gold. If you’re not building relationships, you’re leaving dollars (and future board members) on the table.

Too many nonprofits think that they cannot talk to lawmakers about the causes that matter to them because they know that lobbying can jeopardize your 501c3 status. While the latter is true, you can engage in advocacy. Learn the difference between the two in this short video.

In this uncertain grant environment, these 10 basic steps can help increase your chances of success.

Now is the perfect time to reach out and thank your donors for investing in your organization and show them what a difference they make in fulfilling your mission. At the halfway point through the year, giving tends to slow down which should give you some time to implement some stewardship activities while cultivating your donors to give again at the end of the year.

In our latest survey, 90% of Quad Cities nonprofits say they’re feeling or anticipating the squeeze. That means real impacts on local programs, staff, and services our community relies on. But there’s strength in this story, too. Nonprofit leaders are stepping up, and so can you.

Whether you are a board member, new nonprofit executive or new to development work, understanding the basics of budgeting will go a long way toward your career and organizational success. This overview discusses the basics of organizational and program budgets and how to create them with a specific focus on smaller organizations who do not have a dedicated finance person.

If you want to grow your organization's revenue, invest in major giving. This blog post covers 5 key reasons to adopt this development strategy today.

Do financial statements get you confused? What they are and how to read them? This short primer will give you an overview of the most common financial statements - the profit and loss statement and the balance sheet, useful to new grant professionals, executive directors, board members or anyone who does not feel comfortable with this way to understand their organizations financial position.

Here at Wastyn & Associates, we do our best to stay current with these trends so we can provide you with the most relevant advice for today’s world, grounded in well-established elements of human nature, human motivation, and basic economics.

Today, we share with you 9 trends that you and your organization might consider embracing – or at least monitoring.

Because it costs so much more to recruit new donor than to retain a current donor, how you treat new donors can make a significant difference in your bottom line. These three strategies can help you retain more donors … and raise more money.

2025 has certainly been a stress filled year so far. Nonprofit professionals have born a lot of the brunt of that stress. Try some of these tips that I have found help me reduce my stress in my days and weeks. I hope you can find something that works for you as well.

The last two blog posts talked about why you should use data to prioritize your development work and where you can find that data. This one outlines 6 ways in which you can use that data to work smarter, not harder, and raise more money in the process.

The broader environment in which nonprofits operate has become uncertain at best, downright scary at worse. Many of our donors also exist in this environment. Should you continue to ask for money and, if so, how? (HINT: YES!!)

The first and best place to find data to support your development work sits in your donor database. Once you have examined the data from your database, today's blog post offers 3 strategies to help you dig deeper to find hidden giving potential.