Claire Axelrad

Any engagement other than donor engagement is meaningless — at least if your purpose is to drive contributions. Why care about clicks if they result in nothing more than likes and follows? When cobbling together your fundraising strategy, consider how to get from awareness to interest to engagement to investment.

The biggest fundraising time of the year for most nonprofits is here. You’ve no doubt been working on the big things for year-end. Yet often it’s the little things that count and pack a surprising wallop. Here are eight simple efforts that could help your nonprofit raise more money before Dec. 31.

A blunder is a careless mistake. It happens when you don’t 100% have a handle on what you’re doing, so taking good care becomes challenging. Have you ever blundered into disaster asking for a major gift? Let's review the top eight blunders I have encountered.

If you desperately want to instill a culture of philanthropy, but it’s just not coming together, read these practical tactics to attack the problem from the sides rather than head on.

The sorry state of donor retention has been a topic of discussion for at least the past decade. Yet too many nonprofits still don’t prioritize donor retention strategies. A prompt, personal, powerful thank you is the bare minimum. What do you do to keep donors close?

So, where do new nonprofit donors come from? From putting yourself out there! Stop saying, “If people only knew about us, they’d support us.” Waiting passively for folks to be attracted to you is a losing proposition. Your job is to proactively attract them...

You may feel talking about mortality right now is a big "no-no." You’d be wrong. I understand the impulse to avoid this subject. Especially now. Because it may feel insensitive. A bit like ambulance chasing. Yet that’s not what legacy philanthropy is about.

This is the biggest fundraising time of the year. Don’t sleep through it!

Twice in the past month I’ve been asked for a major gift. Pretty much out of the blue. Without much preparation, relationship-building or making of an inspiring case for support. It was clear to me what the charity would get out of it: my money. It was not so clear what I would get out of it. Should I not care?...

While you were sleeping, something transformative happened. People began to behave differently. To get their information differently. To communicate with their friends differently. To purchase things differently. We live in a digitally revolutionized, highly connected, hugely networked zeitgeist...

Claire Axelrad, JD, CFRE, principal of Clairification, ties enduring moral tales to effective major gift fundraising strategies. There’s a lot of common sense here, and these stories provide important reminders...

One of my pet peeves as a donor is making a contribution (via a peer-to-peer request or tribute gift in honor or memory) in support of a friend; then receiving nothing but a form receipt...

A recent opinion piece by Frank Bruni in The New York Times, "How to Get the Most Out of College," really resonated with me. And not just because I have a stepdaughter—just packed off to her brand new dorm room, filled with a mixture of trepidation and exhilaration...

Probably not as much as you might think. But… a little bit. This article covers how major donor prospects are fundamentally the same as other prospects. After all, first and foremost, they’re people. And people want to feel good...

Claire Axelrad writes on Clairification about how the most donor-centric thing you can do is ask people for a philanthropic gift. Of course, not all the time. And not without being diligent about matching what you ask for to who you ask and what they care about. And not without tempering your “ask” approaches with “gift” approaches; you do have to do a fair amount of wooing...