"I gave at the office." Mic drop. Arms crossed. Done. But what if your disengaged board isn't entirely their fault? If you don't know how your board members tick — what fires them up, what they're good at, how they want to help — that's a YOU problem. Three things you can do THIS WEEK to shift your board from "I gave at the office" to "what else can I do?" Hint: it starts with coffee.

Your ED would rather write a 47-page federal grant narrative than ask a human for money. Sound familiar? Here's the problem: 80% of all charitable giving comes from individuals. Grants account for maybe 10%. If "write more grants" is your whole strategy, you're building on Jell-O and optimism. Three things you can do THIS WEEK to make individual asks feel less scary and start inviting your community to invest.

Your donors know it's the same letter. They know you swapped the year and called it a day. They just stopped responding instead of telling you. This isn't about design — it's about impact. Three baby steps to shift your annual appeal from copy-paste-and-pray to "holy crap, people are actually responding." Write three letters, not one. Lead with a story. Make the ask about THEM.

It's 7:47 AM. You're the development director, event planner, grant writer, social media manager, and apparently IT. A board member just asked you to "pop together" some talking points. Your coffee is cold. Sound familiar? This is a MAYDAY Distress Signal — and it's survivable. Three things you can do THIS WEEK to stop drowning in 10,000 hats and start protecting the work only YOU can do.

Your board shows up to the gala. They eat the chicken. They bid on the wine basket they donated. They clap during the paddle raise. They leave. And when you bring up donor follow-up the next day? Crickets. Sound familiar? This is a MAYDAY Distress Signal — and it's fixable. Three things you can do THIS WEEK to shift your board from gala-only fundraisers to actual mission partners.

Can nonprofits use viral trends and humor in their marketing? Yes — and Yellowstone's thirst trap TikTok phenomenon proves why. Patrick Kirby, founder of Do Good Better Consulting and two-time Amazon bestselling author, breaks down what the nonprofit sector can learn from #ParkTok, why "appropriate" isn't a marketing strategy, and how to break through the noise in 2026's attention economy.

If your nonprofit board won't fundraise, your donors are ghosting you, and you're running a one-person shop on fumes—you're not failing. You might just be in MAYDAY mode. Here's what to do about it.

The One Big Beautiful Bill (yes, that's the actual name and the more I say it, the more fun it is) includes a new charitable deduction that lets people deduct up to $1,000 for individuals or $2,000 for married couples, even if they take the standard deduction. Why does that matter? Because roughly 87% of Americans take the standard deduction. And up until now, those folks got zero tax benefit from donating to charity.

People are unplugging. On actual purpose. And they're way happier because of it. You want to know what the most interesting part of that fact is? A crazy thing that should make every nonprofit development director sit up and pay a helluva lot of attention to? Gen Z is leading the charge.

Stop with the word salad to explain what your nonprofit does.