Hey Fundraiser!

By Mary PetersenBusiness Education Self-Improvement Courses Non-Profit

Hey Fundraiser! episodes

November 06You're Not Being Ghosted. You're Being Forgotten.
Is your donor really ghosting you, or have you simply given them nothing worth responding to? In this episode, Mary shares how to ditch the dreaded "just checking in" email, create meaningful connections, and become someone your donors actually look forward to hearing from.

🎓 The Professional Development Budget Kit. Free Download! Everything you need to get your organization to say "yes" to funding your growth: templates, talking points, and an ROI calculator.
💸 Major Gift Intensives. We're headed to 6 cities in 2027. Are we headed to yours? Join us for a 3 day deep dive into major gifts! Only 30 seats per city.
🌻 The 2027 Growth Pass. Only 5 seats available. The Growth Pass bundles Mary's three flagship live experiences into one powerful year of learning. One Major Gift Intensive. One Ask Workshop. One Small Table Intensive.
🪑 The Small Table Intensive. Half a day. Build or rebuild your major gift program around fewer donors and deeper relationships, using the methodology from my book Small Table Big Philanthropy.
🎯 The Ask Workshop. Half a day. The exact words to use when it's time to ask for 5 and 6-figure gifts. Walk in nervous about the ask. Walk out with the scripts.
💻 Connect with Mary Petersen
Website: heyfundraiser.com
YouTube: @...
27 min
October 30Your Donor Isn't the Problem. The Voice in Your Head Is.
What if they get upset? What if I ask for too much? What if they think I only want their money?
Oh, for the love, fundraiser! We've got to stop having imaginary conversations with our donors and then making decisions on their behalf.
In this episode of Hey Fundraiser!, Mary tackles the fears, assumptions, and negative self-talk that keep fundraisers thinking small, acting small, and raising smaller gifts.
We're talking about showing up authentically, being unapologetic about being a fundraiser, asking for permission to ask, and trusting donors to make their own philanthropic decisions.
Because here's the thing: Your job isn't to decide what a donor will give. Your job is to give them the opportunity.
Stop letting fear do your fundraising. Your mission deserves better!

🎓 The Professional Development Budget Kit. Free Download! Everything you need to get your organization to say "yes" to funding your growth: templates, talking points, and an ROI calculator.
💸 Major Gift Intensives. We're headed to 6 cities in 2027. Are we headed to yours? Join us for a 3 day deep dive into major gifts! Only 30 seats per city.
🌻 The 2027 Growth Pass. Only 5 seats available. The Growth Pass bundles Mary's three flagship live experiences into one powerful year of learning. One Major Gift Intensive. One Ask Workshop. One Small Table Intensive.
🪑 The Small Table Intensive. Half a day. Build or rebuild your major gift program around fewer donors and deeper relationships, using the methodology from my book Small Table Big Philanthropy.
🎯 The Ask Workshop. Half a day. The exact words to use when it's time to ask for 5 and 6-figure gifts. Walk in nervous about the ask. Walk out with the scripts.
💻 Connect with Mary Petersen
Website: heyfundraiser.com
YouTube: @...
1 hr 1 min
October 23The 2027 Major Gift Plan: What I’d Have in Place Before January 1
Want a stronger major gift year in 2027? Don’t wait until January to build the plan. In this episode of Hey Fundraiser!, Mary shares the 11 things she wants fundraisers to put in place before the year begins. You’ll learn how to map your revenue goal to real prospects, identify your top 50 and top 20 donors, build stronger Offers & Outcomes, decide who needs to be seen in Q1, and determine who could realistically be asked in the first six months. Mary also covers cultivation, stewardship, the role of your executive director and board, professional development, and one of the most important planning questions of all: what are you going to stop doing so there is actually time for major gifts? The goal is simple: enter 2027 with clarity, focus, and a plan built around the right people, the right opportunities, and the right next moves, so January is about execution instead of starting from scratch.

🎓 The Professional Development Budget Kit. Free Download! Everything you need to get your organization to say "yes" to funding your growth: templates, talking points, and an ROI calculator.
💸 Major Gift Intensives. We're headed to 6 cities in 2027. Are we headed to yours? Join us for a 3 day deep dive into major gifts! Only 30 seats per city.
🌻 The 2027 Growth Pass. Only 5 seats available. The Growth Pass bundles Mary's three flagship live experiences into one powerful year of learning. One Major Gift Intensive. One Ask Workshop. One Small Table Intensive.
🪑 The Small Table Intensive. Half a day. Build or rebuild your major gift program around fewer donors and deeper relationships, using the methodology from my book Small Table Big Philanthropy.
🎯 The Ask Workshop. Half a day. The exact words to use when it's time to ask for 5 and 6-figure gifts. Walk in nervous about the ask. Walk out with the scripts.
💻 Connect with Mary Petersen
Website: heyfundraiser.com
YouTube: @...
21 min
October 16I Looked at Your Major Gift Program. Here Are the 7 Places It’s Leaking Money.
Where is your major gift program quietly leaking money? In this episode of Hey Fundraiser!, Mary walks through seven of the most common places she sees organizations leaving major gift revenue on the table, and most of them have nothing to do with needing more donors. You’ll learn why oversized portfolios dilute your best work, how to make sure your strongest prospects are getting your strongest attention, why wealth screening means very little if you can’t actually get in the door, and how to tell whether cultivation is creating movement or just activity. Mary also digs into offers that are too small or too programmatic, the expensive habit of waiting too long to ask and then asking for too little, and why stewardship after the gift may be your biggest long-term opportunity. She gives you a simple seven-question audit to identify your biggest leak and encourages you to fix one thing first, because one strategic change can create better cultivation, stronger asks, larger gifts, and deeper donor relationships. Plus, Mary shares how these exact challenges will become working sessions at the 2027 Major Gift Intensives, where fundraisers will bring their real portfolios, donors, offers, and roadblocks and leave knowing exactly what to change on Monday morning.

🎓 The Professional Development Budget Kit. Free Download! Everything you need to get your organization to say "yes" to funding your growth: templates, talking points, and an ROI calculator.
💸 Major Gift Intensives. We're headed to 6 cities in 2027. Are we headed to yours? Join us for a 3 day deep dive into major gifts! Only 30 seats per city.
🌻 The 2027 Growth Pass. Only 5 seats available. The Growth Pass bundles Mary's three flagship live experiences into one powerful year of learning. One Major Gift Intensive. One Ask Workshop. One Small Table Intensive.
🪑 The Small Table Intensive. Half a day. Build or rebuild your major gift program around fewer donors and deeper relationships, using the methodology from my book Small Table Big Philanthropy.
🎯 The Ask Workshop. Half a day. The exact words to use when it's time to ask for 5 and 6-figure gifts. Walk in nervous about the ask. Walk out with the scripts.
💻 Connect with Mary Petersen
Website: heyfundraiser.com
YouTube: @...
18 min
October 09Your Donor Isn’t Stuck. Your Cultivation Strategy Is.
Is your donor really stuck, or is your cultivation strategy stuck? In this episode of Hey Fundraiser!, Mary explains the difference between a touch and a move, and why activity alone does not create major gifts. You’ll learn how to give every donor interaction a purpose, the five things Mary wants to understand before moving toward a solicitation, and how to introduce money into the relationship long before the ask. She also shares why permission-based fundraising can dramatically accelerate cultivation, how to recognize when “they need more time” is really fundraiser fear, and how to diagnose exactly why a donor relationship has stalled. Mary walks through her Relationship Rhythm of value, mission, access, and progress, shares the permission-based approach she used before closing the largest gift of her career, and gives you a simple exercise for your top 20: write down the single next move for every donor. Because “continued cultivation” is not a strategy. The goal is movement, clarity, and knowing when to deepen the relationship, make the ask, or bless and release.

🎓 The Professional Development Budget Kit. Free Download! Everything you need to get your organization to say "yes" to funding your growth: templates, talking points, and an ROI calculator.
💸 Major Gift Intensives. We're headed to 6 cities in 2027. Are we headed to yours? Join us for a 3 day deep dive into major gifts! Only 30 seats per city.
🌻 The 2027 Growth Pass. Only 5 seats available. The Growth Pass bundles Mary's three flagship live experiences into one powerful year of learning. One Major Gift Intensive. One Ask Workshop. One Small Table Intensive.
🪑 The Small Table Intensive. Half a day. Build or rebuild your major gift program around fewer donors and deeper relationships, using the methodology from my book Small Table Big Philanthropy.
🎯 The Ask Workshop. Half a day. The exact words to use when it's time to ask for 5 and 6-figure gifts. Walk in nervous about the ask. Walk out with the scripts.
💻 Connect with Mary Petersen
Website: heyfundraiser.com
YouTube: @...
20 min
October 02Stop Selling Programs: How to Position Offers and Outcomes So Donors Understand Them
If your major gift opportunities sound like a menu of programs, you may be unintentionally teaching donors to restrict their giving. In this episode of Hey Fundraiser!, Mary goes deeper on Offers & Outcomes and shows how to position your work around the change a donor can make instead of your internal program structure. You’ll learn the difference between a program and an offer, why specificity does not have to mean restriction, how to package cross-program work into a compelling major gift opportunity, and why donors should be investing in outcomes, not accounting codes. Mary also explains how to stop asking donors to design your strategy, how to price an outcome so it becomes an investable opportunity, and how flexible funding can actually make stewardship stronger because you can report back on the result the donor helped create. She shares examples from housing, healthcare, higher education, and the arts, plus a simple exercise to help you rework your own language: “With an investment of X, you can help us Y.” The goal is to stop selling programs and start inviting donors into meaningful, measurable change.

🎓 The Professional Development Budget Kit. Free Download! Everything you need to get your organization to say "yes" to funding your growth: templates, talking points, and an ROI calculator.
💸 Major Gift Intensives. We're headed to 6 cities in 2027. Are we headed to yours? Join us for a 3 day deep dive into major gifts! Only 30 seats per city.
🌻 The 2027 Growth Pass. Only 5 seats available. The Growth Pass bundles Mary's three flagship live experiences into one powerful year of learning. One Major Gift Intensive. One Ask Workshop. One Small Table Intensive.
🪑 The Small Table Intensive. Half a day. Build or rebuild your major gift program around fewer donors and deeper relationships, using the methodology from my book Small Table Big Philanthropy.
🎯 The Ask Workshop. Half a day. The exact words to use when it's time to ask for 5 and 6-figure gifts. Walk in nervous about the ask. Walk out with the scripts.
💻 Connect with Mary Petersen
Website: heyfundraiser.com
YouTube: @...
41 min
September 25You Found a Great Major Gift Prospect. Now How the Heck Do You Get in the Door?
You found the perfect major gift prospect. Great capacity, strong giving history, real connection to your mission...and they will not respond. In this episode of Hey Fundraiser!, Mary tackles one of the hardest parts of major gift fundraising: getting in the door. You’ll learn why generic “would you like to grab coffee?” emails fall flat, how to make your invitation genuinely worth saying yes to, and why access often matters more than capacity. Mary shares practical ways to use your board, donors, leadership, volunteers, and community connections to create warm introductions; how to invite prospects to advise, react, experience, or see something behind the scenes; and why changing the messenger or communication channel can completely change your results. She also shares creative cultivation ideas that go far beyond coffee and lunch, including the story of the donor she cultivated by walking with him several mornings a week after his back surgery. And if nothing works? Mary explains when it is time to bless and release, because your job is not to get every wealthy person in the door. It is to find the people who actually want a relationship. Major gifts do not start with the ask. They start with access.

🎓 The Professional Development Budget Kit. Free Download! Everything you need to get your organization to say "yes" to funding your growth: templates, talking points, and an ROI calculator.
💸 Major Gift Intensives. We're headed to 6 cities in 2027. Are we headed to yours? Join us for a 3 day deep dive into major gifts! Only 30 seats per city.
🌻 The 2027 Growth Pass. Only 5 seats available. The Growth Pass bundles Mary's three flagship live experiences into one powerful year of learning. One Major Gift Intensive. One Ask Workshop. One Small Table Intensive.
🪑 The Small Table Intensive. Half a day. Build or rebuild your major gift program around fewer donors and deeper relationships, using the methodology from my book Small Table Big Philanthropy.
🎯 The Ask Workshop. Half a day. The exact words to use when it's time to ask for 5 and 6-figure gifts. Walk in nervous about the ask. Walk out with the scripts.
💻 Connect with Mary Petersen
Website: heyfundraiser.com
YouTube: @...
22 min
September 18If I Had to Build a Major Gift Program From Scratch, Here’s Exactly What I’d Do
If Mary walked into a nonprofit tomorrow and had one year to build a major gift program from scratch, what would she do first, what would she ignore, and where would she spend her time? In this episode of Hey Fundraiser!, Mary breaks down the seven things she would prioritize to build a focused, effective major gift program without getting buried in software, policies, giant portfolios, or endless database cleanup. She walks through how to build a Money Map of the donors who can actually move your goal, create compelling Offers & Outcomes that fund change instead of budget lines, get in the door with your best prospects, establish a consistent Relationship Rhythm, identify donors who may already be ready for a larger conversation, build confidence around asking, and steward major donors like true partners after the gift. She also shares what she would deliberately not spend time on in the first six months and what she would want accomplished within the first 90 days. The goal is not more activity. It is more focus: the right people, the right opportunities, the right relationships, the right asks, and exceptional stewardship. Mary also shares how the 2027 Major Gift Intensives will help fundraisers do this work shoulder-to-shoulder using their own prospects, donors, challenges, and fundraising goals, with stops planned in Los Angeles, Dallas, Chicago, Washington, DC, Philadelphia, and New York.

🎓 The Professional Development Budget Kit. Free Download! Everything you need to get your organization to say "yes" to funding your growth: templates, talking points, and an ROI calculator.
💸 Major Gift Intensives. We're headed to 6 cities in 2027. Are we headed to yours? Join us for a 3 day deep dive into major gifts! Only 30 seats per city.
🌻 The 2027 Growth Pass. Only 5 seats available. The Growth Pass bundles Mary's three flagship live experiences into one powerful year of learning. One Major Gift Intensive. One Ask Workshop. One Small Table Intensive.
🪑 The Small Table Intensive. Half a day. Build or rebuild your major gift program around fewer donors and deeper relationships, using the methodology from my book Small Table Big Philanthropy.
🎯 The Ask Workshop. Half a day. The exact words to use when it's time to ask for 5 and 6-figure gifts. Walk in nervous about the ask. Walk out with the scripts.
💻 Connect with Mary Petersen
Website: heyfundraiser.com
YouTube: @...
32 min
September 11How to Inspire Unrestricted Major Gifts and Build Donor Trust
Why do donors happily fund programs but hesitate to fund the people, systems, and infrastructure that make those programs possible? In this episode of Hey Fundraiser!, Mary breaks down how to inspire more unrestricted major gifts by building deeper donor trust. You’ll learn why restrictions often reveal where trust stops, how phrases like “we do so much with so little” can reinforce harmful scarcity thinking, and how to reframe overhead as the investment required to produce strong outcomes. Mary shares practical ways to talk about staffing, technology, leadership, and infrastructure with confidence; explains why unrestricted gifts are really confidence gifts; and gives exact language for asking a major donor for flexible support. She also challenges fundraisers to calculate the true cost of delivering their mission, set an intentional unrestricted giving goal, and replace scarcity language with investment language. Plus, Mary previews her upcoming book, Fortune 500 Expectations on a Bake Sale Budget, and makes the case that strong missions need strong organizations behind them.

🎓 The Professional Development Budget Kit. Free Download! Everything you need to get your organization to say "yes" to funding your growth: templates, talking points, and an ROI calculator.
💸 Major Gift Intensives. We're headed to 6 cities in 2027. Are we headed to yours? Join us for a 3 day deep dive into major gifts! Only 30 seats per city.
🌻 The 2027 Growth Pass. Only 5 seats available. The Growth Pass bundles Mary's three flagship live experiences into one powerful year of learning. One Major Gift Intensive. One Ask Workshop. One Small Table Intensive.
🪑 The Small Table Intensive. Half a day. Build or rebuild your major gift program around fewer donors and deeper relationships, using the methodology from my book Small Table Big Philanthropy.
🎯 The Ask Workshop. Half a day. The exact words to use when it's time to ask for 5 and 6-figure gifts. Walk in nervous about the ask. Walk out with the scripts.
💻 Connect with Mary Petersen
Website: heyfundraiser.com
YouTube: @...
37 min
September 045 Questions I Get As a Major Gift Coach
How many times can you follow up with a donor before you become annoying? How do you actually know when it’s time to ask? What happens if you ask for too much? Do you need a polished proposal before you ever talk about money? And where do you even begin when your major gift portfolio is completely overwhelming? In this episode of Hey Fundraiser!, Mary tackles five of the questions she hears most often in her major gift coaching conversations and digs into the strategy behind each one. She shares why silence from a donor doesn’t automatically mean no, how permission-based fundraising can take the anxiety out of asking, why fundraisers often negotiate against themselves before the donor ever gets a vote, when a proposal helps and when it becomes a hiding place, and how to narrow an enormous portfolio into a focused Money Map of the donors most likely to move your fundraising forward. The thread running through all five? Stop letting fear make your fundraising strategy. Great major gift work requires curiosity, judgment, confidence, and the courage to keep the relationship moving forward.

🎓 The Professional Development Budget Kit. Free Download! Everything you need to get your organization to say "yes" to funding your growth: templates, talking points, and an ROI calculator.
💸 Major Gift Intensives. We're headed to 6 cities in 2027. Are we headed to yours? Join us for a 3 day deep dive into major gifts! Only 30 seats per city.
🌻 The 2027 Growth Pass. Only 5 seats available. The Growth Pass bundles Mary's three flagship live experiences into one powerful year of learning. One Major Gift Intensive. One Ask Workshop. One Small Table Intensive.
🪑 The Small Table Intensive. Half a day. Build or rebuild your major gift program around fewer donors and deeper relationships, using the methodology from my book Small Table Big Philanthropy.
🎯 The Ask Workshop. Half a day. The exact words to use when it's time to ask for 5 and 6-figure gifts. Walk in nervous about the ask. Walk out with the scripts.
💻 Connect with Mary Petersen
Website: heyfundraiser.com
YouTube: @...
34 min