Your Rally Point Episode 29: Fundraising for Small Nonprofits with Joanne Toller

The whole game of fundraising fits in three words: acquire, renew, upgrade.

In this episode of Your Rally Point Podcast, James Martin sits down with Joanne Toller, nonprofit coach, educator, and CFRE (Ret.), whose whole mission is helping small nonprofits stop throwing spaghetti at the wall and start running a real fundraising pipeline. If you're a founder who had a beautiful idea, got into it, and then discovered fundraising is hard, this conversation is built for you.

Joanne takes the dense, technical body of professional fundraising knowledge and scales it down into plain English for organizations that don't have a development department, because they are the development department.

👉 Learn more about Joanne's work at https://www.causespecialists.ca/ and on LinkedIn

Quick answer: Fundraising for small nonprofits comes down to three moves: acquire new donors, renew the ones you have through good stewardship, and upgrade committed donors toward larger gifts. Joanne Toller's advice is to build your thank-you and reporting systems before you launch any campaign, follow a simple 90-day process instead of guessing, and use AI as a tool without letting it do the actual thinking for you.

Acquire, Renew, Upgrade: The Whole Game in Three Words

Ask Joanne for the basics and she answers instantly: acquire, renew, upgrade. Find the donors, keep the donors, then turn loyal donors into a major-gifts pipeline.

What's telling is that she doesn't lead with acquisition. Everyone wants more donors, but the real leverage is renewing and engaging the people you already have, done through cultivation and stewardship. In plain English, that just means how you thank donors, how you communicate and report back to them, and how you recognize them.

"It's a pipeline. We bring in donors, nurture them, get them engaged, and then move them up."

What "Small Nonprofit" Really Means

When Joanne says small, she means it. Most of the organizations she works with raise under $250,000 a year, and many are under $50,000.

At that size, founders often have no idea where to start. They're posting on social media, sending cold sponsorship requests, and applying for grants they aren't yet eligible for because they don't have the three-year track record. It's a lot of effort scattered in every direction.

Her reassurance is that you don't have to reinvent the wheel. Fundraising is a genuine skill with technical pieces behind it, the kind that fill the thick CFRE and AFP textbooks. Understanding even the fundamentals makes a small shop far more competitive, because winging it rarely works in a crowded field.

The First 90 Days: A Pipeline You Can Actually Run

Joanne's signature framework is a 90-day process that emerged naturally from coaching small nonprofits one by one. The sequence:

• Identify your prospects. Map out everyone who could realistically give, using a few specific tips and tricks.
• Build your case for funding. Articulate why you exist and why it matters, incorporating donor psychology and a little neuromarketing.
• Design a campaign that fits. It has to land with your donors, match your mission, and respect your capacity. (She's not going to recommend a golf tournament to a solo founder.)
• Put renew and upgrade systems in place. Build the machinery to thank, retain, and eventually move donors toward major gifts.

The point isn't a five-page plan dropped on your desk. Joanne works alongside her clients, sometimes to a fault. She admits she'll grab a task and just do it, including once building a frustrated student's entire website, because she cares more about the person's success than the tidy boundary of a coaching session.

Build Retention Before You Launch

Here's the move most small nonprofits skip: set up retention first.

Before launching any campaign, Joanne makes sure a client has a system to thank, report back to, and acknowledge the donors they're about to bring in. There's no point opening the front door if there's a hole in the bucket.

The stakes are real. Sector retention often sits around 30 to 40%, well below the 60% many teams aim for. She describes one organization with a terrible retention rate that wanted to launch a capital campaign, which is a tough proposition when you can't keep the donors you have. The fix was refreshingly simple: schedule impact reports, write great automated thank-you emails, and make thank-you calls. Picking up the phone doesn't take long, it builds real relationships, and it teaches you enough about your donors to write better appeals later.

James adds his own version: handwritten thank-you cards after meaningful meetings. People respond to it because they can feel a human on the other end.

Use AI as a Tool, Not a Shortcut

Joanne loves technology and AI, but she's been watching small nonprofits misuse it.

She's seen a student build an entire strategy with AI that didn't fit the organization's mission and wasn't even ethical. She's seen mission statements so obviously machine-generated that any donor would spot the "AI slop." Her rule when working on the case for support is blunt: do the work yourself. She'd rather see your chicken scratch than a polished paragraph the AI thought for you, because writing it yourself is how you actually internalize and believe it, which is what lets you go share it with real humans.

That same instinct is pushing her clients back toward authentic, old-school tactics: a well-run door-to-door campaign in a community that already knows them, and a good old-fashioned direct-mail letter. AI can help, but run it past someone who's traveled the road, because the ethics, the mission alignment, and the authenticity all matter.

The Upgrade: Ask for the Bigger Gift

Upgrading is where the pipeline pays off, and it's mostly about being willing to have the conversation.

Joanne's examples are concrete. A $1,000-a-year donor invited to become a $100-a-month recurring donor, which is more revenue and far more stable. A $1,000 donor asked to be the $2,500 matching-gift sponsor for a campaign, who said yes. A donor who typically gives $30,000 asked for $120,000, because the relationship and the understanding of impact were already there.

The throughline: a donor's consistency is a signal that they care. Capacity matters less than willingness to have the conversation. And the surest way to a no is to never ask. You miss 100% of the shots you don't take.

For founders who find the ask uncomfortable (almost everyone does), Joanne points to structure. There's a six-step process for making an ask, and when the nerves hit, you can simply follow the framework. Believe in the mission, get a little uncomfortable, and trust the process.

About the Guest: Joanne Toller

Joanne Toller, CFRE (Ret.), is a nonprofit coach and educator who helps small nonprofits master the fundamentals of fundraising in plain English. She found the work almost by accident in her early twenties, when an aunt who was a well-known fundraiser pulled her in, and she's been hooked ever since. Today she offers courses and coaching, from self-paced training up to a hands-on VIP partnership, and deliberately keeps her programs small and personal.

👉 Learn more at https://www.causespecialists.ca/, and connect with Joanne on LinkedIn.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do small nonprofits start fundraising? Start with the fundamentals instead of scattering effort. Joanne Toller recommends a simple sequence: identify your prospective donors, build a clear case for support, design a campaign that fits your mission and capacity, and put retention systems in place before you launch. You don't have to reinvent the wheel.

What is a donor pipeline? A donor pipeline is the path a supporter travels from first gift to deeper commitment: acquire, renew, upgrade. You bring donors in, nurture and steward them so they stay, then invite the most engaged toward larger or recurring gifts and eventually major gifts.

What is a case for support? A case for support (or case for funding) is the clear articulation of why your organization exists, what impact it creates, and why someone should give. Joanne advises writing it yourself rather than outsourcing it to AI, because doing the work is how you come to believe it and communicate it convincingly.

What is a good donor retention rate for a nonprofit? Many organizations aim for around 60%, but real-world retention often sits closer to 30 to 40%. Improving it even modestly has an outsized effect, and the simplest levers are consistent thank-yous, impact reports, and personal thank-you calls.

Should small nonprofits use AI for fundraising? AI can be a useful tool, but not a substitute for your own thinking. Used carelessly it produces off-mission, generic, sometimes unethical output that donors can spot. Use it to assist, then have someone experienced check it for mission alignment and authenticity.

Ready to Go Deeper?

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And if you're ready to build donor communication that feels human and actually keeps people giving:

👉 Book a demo at https://www.rallycorp.com/demo

Because a strong mission deserves a system that can sustain it.

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