Fundraising for Small Nonprofits: A Development Director's Guide
If you are the entire development department, you already know the arithmetic. One person, one database if you are fortunate, a board that means well, and a list of things that all feel urgent: the appeal letter, the grant report due Friday, the donor who called about her receipt, the event somebody thinks would be a great idea. Most of the advice written about fundraising for small nonprofits quietly assumes a team, a budget, and a software stack you do not have. This guide is written for the shop of one, or one and a half, and it follows a single question: where does a small organization's limited time earn the most?
This is not a failure of effort. Many of the small nonprofits I know are working incredibly hard, often on a part-time salary and a full-time sense of responsibility. The problem sits in the structure. When one person owns every task, the loudest task wins every week, and the quiet work that actually grows giving, the thank-you calls and the conversations with your best donors, slides to the bottom of the list. I spent years in pastoral ministry raising money myself, and I know how that happens. What follows is what I have learned about arranging the work so the quiet things get done.
The Reality of the Small Shop
Small is the norm in this sector. A 2025 Candid analysis of IRS and Candid data found that nearly 60 percent of U.S. 501(c)(3) organizations are very small, with annual budgets below $50,000. In the sample Candid studied, 22 percent of those very small organizations received at least one foundation grant between 2019 and 2023, compared with 72 percent of other nonprofits, and together they received only 0.4 percent of foundation funding. If you have been told that the answer to your funding gap is more grant applications, that number deserves a second look before you spend your winter on them.
The capacity picture reaches well beyond the smallest budgets. UnderDeveloped, a 2013 study from CompassPoint and the Haas, Jr. Fund that remains one of the few large looks at nonprofit fundraising capacity, reported that almost one in four nonprofits had no fundraising plan and one in five had no fundraising database. Three out of four executive directors said their boards were not doing enough to support fundraising. The data is more than a decade old, but anyone who has worked in a small shop will recognize the shape of it. Nobody is lazy in those numbers. They describe organizations asking a few people to carry a function that usually takes a team.
Start Where the Money Actually Is
According to Giving USA's report on 2025, Americans gave $617.2 billion to charity, and $394.2 billion of it, about 64 percent, came from individuals. For a small shop that settles a lot of questions. Foundation grants are harder to count on at the smallest budget sizes, corporate partnerships take staff time you may not have, and events consume more hours than almost anything else you can do. Individual donors respond to a phone call, a handwritten note, and the sense that someone at the organization knows who they are. Those are things one person can actually do.
This also changes how you think about the donors already on your list. In a small shop, every donor is a meaningful share of the total, and losing one hurts in a way a larger organization would absorb without noticing. A thoughtful annual giving program starts from that fact: your existing givers are the most valuable fundraising asset you own, and the work is to keep them and help them grow.
Three Plays Instead of Thirty Tactics
The fundraising internet will hand you a hundred tactics, and each one sounds reasonable on its own. A small shop does better with a short list of plays it can run well all year. Here are the three I would start with.
Keep the donors you have. New donors are expensive to find and easy to lose, and the first gift is where most of the leaking happens. A simple, consistent welcome, a prompt thank-you, and one real update inside the first ninety days will do more for your totals than a new campaign. The details of why first-time givers disappear are in this look at donor retention, and the fix is mostly a matter of rhythm.
Make it easy to give every month. A recurring gift turns a once-a-year decision into a standing commitment, and it gives a small organization something it rarely has, which is a predictable base. You do not need elaborate technology to begin. A monthly option on your donation page and a short, warm invitation to your most loyal annual donors is enough to start, and the practical steps are laid out in this guide to starting a monthly giving program.
Have a handful of real conversations. Pick your ten most engaged donors and plan to sit down, or at least get on the phone, with each of them over a quarter. Ask what drew them to your mission and what they hope to see. You are listening more than asking at this stage. A light, repeatable system for tracking those relationships, like the one described in this piece on moves management for any size shop, keeps the conversations from depending on your memory.
Running three plays well takes a workflow more than extra hours, and a repeatable process for appeals, thank-yous, and donor updates can give some of those hours back.
Want to develop your fundraising skills? Take a look at my Claude Skills page.
Explore the Skills
Protect the Hours That Make the Money
Plays only work if they get time on the calendar. The practice I would recommend most to a one-person shop is a protected block each week, even ninety minutes, reserved for donor relationships and nothing else. Calls, handwritten notes, and personal emails go in that block. Email, reports, and the event committee do not. If it does not have a time on the calendar, in a small shop it usually does not happen.
It also helps to write down a one-page plan with three columns: what you will do for your current donors, what you will do to invite new ones, and what you will deliberately say no to this year. That third column is the one most small shops skip, and it is where your hours are won back. Even a basic split of your list into a few groups, such as monthly donors, recent first-time donors, and your largest annual givers, lets you tailor a message without building a complicated system. The thinking behind it is covered in this piece on donor segmentation for small shops.
Borrow Capacity From Your Board and Volunteers
A small shop cannot hire its way out of a capacity problem, but it can widen the circle of people doing the relational work. Board members can make thank-you calls, host a small gathering at their home, or make a single introduction. Volunteers can handle data entry, address envelopes, and keep your donor records tidy. None of them needs to be a professional fundraiser to help. A clear, small task and someone who follows up are enough to get them started.
The place to begin is the board's own giving, which sets the tone for everything after it. If that conversation has felt awkward in your organization, this look at getting 100 percent board giving offers a gentler way in. From there, the broader question of how to get your board actually raising money is worth working through at your own pace. Even one board member who agrees to make five thank-you calls a quarter gives you hours back.
If You Serve a Church or Ministry
Faith-based organizations carry the same capacity limits with an added twist. Religion is still the largest destination for charitable gifts, at $151.58 billion and 23 percent of the total in 2025 according to MinistryWatch's coverage of the Giving USA report, yet Giving USA's researchers note that giving to religion has grown slowly enough that it takes a smaller share of the whole each year. For a pastor or ministry leader who has relied on tithes and offerings alone, that trend is worth taking seriously.
The good news is that the same principles hold, and the faith context adds some natural advantages. Many congregations can start diversifying a ministry's income beyond tithes and offerings without abandoning what makes them a community. The language of generosity is already in the room, which makes teaching stewardship beyond tithing a natural conversation instead of a pitch. Your oldest and most faithful members are often the ones best placed to begin a legacy giving conversation in your congregation. And when a building or expansion project comes up, a church capital campaign goes better when it rests on the relationships you have been building all along.
Legacy giving is one of the places a small organization can build lasting strength without a large staff, because it begins with a conversation and a donor who wants their generosity to outlive them.
Interested in learning more about how a whole life insurance policy could benefit your nonprofit? Connect with a team member at Sage & Main.
Connect with Sage & Main
Where to Start This Week
If this resonates, here is what I would tell you to do this week.
Open your donor list and find your ten most loyal donors, meaning the ones who have given the longest or most often. Put a call or a coffee with each of them on your calendar over the next ninety days.
Block ninety minutes on the calendar for the same time each week, and label it donor relationships. Protect it the way you would protect a meeting with your largest funder.
Write your one-page plan with three columns: current donors, new donors, and what you are saying no to this year. Share it with your board chair so the no list has a witness.
Ask one board member to make five thank-you calls this quarter, and hand them the list, the phone numbers, and two sentences to say.
Small shops carry more than their share of this sector's work, and they do it with remarkably little. A few well-run plays, a protected hour or two each week, and a handful of people helping you carry the load can change what one person is able to build. I find that exciting, because it means your mission can grow well past the size of your team.
C.J. Bergmen is a pastor, licensed counselor, and fundraising strategist who helps organizations and generous individuals approach giving with honesty and long-term vision.