Nonprofit Fundraising & Finance Best Practices | The ENGAGE Blog by Blackbaud

Donor Cultivation

Find Your Next Funder: Use Prospect Research to Secure Major Donors

What's the difference between an awkward conversation and a major giving prospect? Prospect research. [...]

October 21, 2024| 4 min Read

Grants Strategy

Why Hospitals Should Invest in Climate Actions as a Community Benefit Strategy

October 21, 2024| 7 min Read

Change Management

Leading with Innovation: Becoming a Chief Future Officer

October 21, 2024| 4 min Read

Disaster Response

10 Tips for Managing Crisis Volunteers in Natural Disasters

October 18, 2024| 4 min Read

Data Insights

Strengthening Social Impact: Actionable Insights from The Generosity Commission Report

October 15, 2024| 5 min Read

Latest Posts

Data Management

4 Nonprofit Financial Statements and How to Create Them

Effective financial management equips you to make the most of your nonprofit’s limited resources. To produce meaningful reports to help [...]

November 5, 2024 | 4 min Read

Digital Marketing

6 Best Practices for Increasing Engagement with Digital Impact Reports

To get the attention of your donors and increase their engagement, you can make your impact report come to life. [...]

November 5, 2024 | 3 min Read

Donor Stewardship

Best Fundraising Tips Ever: Experts Share Ideas That Work

You can’t work in the social good sector without being very familiar with the concept of paying it forward. Donors [...]

November 4, 2024 | 5 min Read

Giving Tuesday

Stand Out This GivingTuesday: 200 Email Subject Lines

As GivingTuesday approaches, the inboxes of your supporters are bound to be flooded with messages from countless organizations, each with [...]

October 31, 2024 | 7 min Read

artificial intelligence

How to Use AI for the Right Ask (Without Being Creepy)

We’ve all received cringe-worthy fundraising messages that just don’t feel quite human. They’re vague, don’t explain the impact of the [...]

October 30, 2024 | 5 min Read

Change Management

What It Means to be a Connected K–12 School

The definition of “a connected school” could be many different things. Each description, at its core, stems from the answer [...]

October 29, 2024 | 7 min Read

boost your year-end giving

Employee Giving

Employee Giving Strategies to Boost Year-End Impact

October 24, 2023 | 5 min Read

End-of-Year Giving

5 Actions to End the Year Strong

December 5, 2023 | 2 min Read

Payment Processing

December Stress Relief: Automation for Gift Processing

November 9, 2023 | 3 min Read

End-of-Year Giving

5 Fundraising Power Principles to End Your Year Strong

The nonprofit fundraising numbers make a compelling case for a strong end-of-year effort. A remarkable 30% of annual giving occurs [...]

October 17, 2023| 4 min Read

Featured Experts

Stacy Rooney

3 Tips for Keeping Gift Officers Motivated

Justin Goodhew

Co-founder and CEO of Trellis

Turning Event Attendees into Long-Term Donors: Pre-Event Strategies

Rachel Werner

CEO of RBW Strategy

Untangling (and Preparing for) the New Uniform Grant Guidance

The Engage Podcast

Tune in to the ENGAGE Podcast to hear experts from across the community share best practices, tips, and must-know trends that will help organizations maximize their impact.
Explore Podcasts

Sector Trends

How NASCO Effects Change in Nonprofit Regulators

July 25, 2024 |22 min Listen

Grateful Patient

Create a Successful Doctors’ Day Fundraising Strategy

February 29, 2024 |24 min Listen

artificial intelligence

The Role of AI in Corporate Social Impact

February 8, 2024 |36 min Listen

Hidden Gems

Digital Marketing

3 Proven Ways to Find and Convert New Donors

If you’re like every nonprofit on the planet, you’ve got one thing on your mind: acquiring new donors! No matter [...]

October 11, 2023 | 5 min Read

a large group of people crossing a city crosswalk

Data Insights

How to Use Data to Improve Prospect Identification

I have always found one of the most exciting things about the nonprofit sector to be its diversity. Nonprofits encompass [...]

September 26, 2022 | 6 min Read

Peer-to-Peer Fundraising

33 Perfect Exercise Captions for P2P Fundraisers

We know the struggle—you just took the perfect gym selfie and your results are popping, but what on earth are [...]

July 30, 2024 | 2 min Read

Employee Giving

Reinvigorate your Employee Giving Program

Rita Garza, Founder of Rhythm Strategy Consultancy, guest posts on our blog by giving us some new tips and tricks on how to reinvigorate an Employee Giving Program so that your Corporate Social Responsibility strategy is ready for disaster season, campaign season, and anything employee engagement may throw at you!

February 25, 2020 | 7 min Read

Donor Stewardship

Draft Your Dream Team for Donor Stewardship

If good stewardship is centered on building a sustainable community of supporters, who will partner with you to help that [...]

October 4, 2023 | 4 min Read

Peer-to-Peer Fundraising

10 Simple Fundraising Tips Guaranteed to Improve Effectiveness

If you're an individual raising money for a cause you care deeply about or a nonprofit organization looking for ways to equip and motivate your supporters to raise money for your fundraising event these tips will give you just what you need.

January 16, 2024 | 5 min Read

Annual Giving

Using Data to Make Annual Giving Work for You

Annual giving folk are a strange breed. I know because I’m one of them. We aren’t tempted by the glamour [...]

November 20, 2023 | 4 min Read

View All Fundraising Posts

Fund Accounting

How Nonprofit Accounting is Different from Small Business Accounting

Accounting is an essential part of any ongoing enterprise. It is the meticulous process of recording and organizing financial transactions [...]

November 21, 2023 | 5 min Read

Fund Accounting

4 Financial Metrics to Increase Transparency for Your Nonprofit

Every day, you and your donors are inundated with thousands of pieces of news and bits of information. It can [...]

December 29, 2023 | 4 min Read

Financial Reporting

Creating the Foundation for a Best-In-Class Nonprofit Finance Team

Nonprofits rely on their finance teams to educate management and the board on all financial aspects related to the organization. [...]

March 29, 2023 | 4 min Read

View all Finance & Accounting Posts

Enrollment and Retention

Is the Higher Education Pipeline Shrinking or Just Taking a Nap?

The phenomenon of our shrinking school-aged population is well documented. People have been choosing to have fewer children, and that [...]

July 24, 2023 | 5 min Read

Alumni Engagement

From Prospective Student to Active Alum—Engagement Fosters Lifelong Support

When you hear the name of your alma mater, what feelings bubble up? What keeps you engaged? In our family, my husband, daughter, [...]

February 9, 2024 | 5 min Read

Female student smiling to camera in classroom.

Awards and Scholarships

Creating a Connected Campus to Award More Scholarships and Improve Student Outcomes

What challenges does your scholarship program face? Get tips and tricks on getting organized and doing even more to support deserving students.

July 20, 2023 | 3 min Read

View all Higher Education Posts

Annual Giving

The Changing Face of School Funding

The world of K-12 education is in great flux right now. Thousands of independent schools are struggling with tuition levels [...]

November 12, 2012 | 2 min Read

Man in the dark coding in front of a computer.

Compliance

Best Practices for Protecting Your K–12 School from Cyber Security Threats

Malicious cyber activity is on the rise worldwide. In private K–12 schools, foreign cybercriminals, school vendors, employees, and even students [...]

January 11, 2023 | 5 min Read

Change Management

Change Management = Changing Mindset

Recognizing the need for change is easy. We all do this in some facet of our life almost every day. [...]

August 14, 2023 | 4 min Read

View All K-12 School Posts

Employee Wellness

Challenges of Establishing an Employee Relief Fund (ERF) and Recommended Solutions

The growth in Employee Relief Funds (ERFs) exploded in the spring of 2020 as Covid-19 began to affect companies and [...]

September 8, 2021 | 4 min Read

Change Management

Responsive Philanthropy: How to Address Community Needs in Time of Crisis

Operations at Headwaters Foundation for Justice, a foundation that invests in grassroots organizations across Minnesota, were humming along well. The [...]

January 13, 2023 | 6 min Read

Volunteer Management

How the Pandemic Has Changed Pro Bono

The pandemic pushed the social sector to make game-changing shifts in community programming, funding models and organizational leadership. Nonprofits that pivoted their programming in [...]

October 18, 2021 | 3 min Read

View All ESG & CSR Posts

Closeup of an audience member taking notes.

Diversity Equity and Inclusion

Participatory Grantmaking: I’m in! Now what?

You’ve read about participatory grantmaking—and maybe even heard about other organizations using this model to distribute control of their funding [...]

October 17, 2022 | 6 min Read

Grants Strategy

How to Get Leadership Buy-in for Streamlining Your Grantee Application

As a grants manager, you know how important it is to have a clear and efficient grantee application process. You [...]

February 8, 2024 | 5 min Read

Grants Strategy

Investigating and Improving the Questions You Ask Grantees

Back in the mid-2010s, I served as chair of the selection committee for the Washington, DC region’s biggest award recognizing [...]

January 22, 2024 | 5 min Read

View All Grantmaking Posts

Donor Stewardship

The Art of Managing, Rather than Mitigating, Risk

In this excerpt of a conversation with Satonya Fair, President and CEO of PEAK Grantmaking, she encourages grantmaking organizations to [...]

December 20, 2022 |25 min Listen

Volunteer Management

Volunteer Smarter, Not Harder: Tips from Your Fellow Social Good Pros

Are you looking for ways to manage your volunteers more effectively? To conclude National Volunteer Month, we’ve gathered the best [...]

April 28, 2022 | < 1 min Read

Manager Skills

4 Critical Elements of Managing Development Officers

There are many factors in fundraising, from early engagement to a donor’s ultimate or legacy gift. Some of these factors [...]

September 7, 2022 | 5 min Read

View All Leadership Posts