2026 Virginia Fund Raising Institute

Unlock the secrets to maximizing your fundraising potential with this session. In today’s competitive nonprofit landscape, staying ahead with the latest donation trends is crucial to boosting contributions and engaging donors effectively.
Whether you’re a seasoned fundraiser or new to the field, this session offers valuable insights to propel your organization’s mission forward. Don’t miss this opportunity to elevate your fundraising efforts and make a greater impact in your community.

Great donor discovery isn’t about asking the perfect question – it’s about listening for what matters most. This interactive session helps fundraisers sharpen their listening skills, recognize donor cues, and respond with curiosity instead of rushing toward the ask. Participants will explore practical ways to follow a donor’s lead, ask better follow-up questions, and build trust through responsive conversation. Attendees will leave with tools they can immediately use in discovery, stewardship, and solicitation conversations.

Businesses hold on to customers like glue. Nonprofits? We let donors slip like sand through our fingers. The average business says, “See you next time!” and 3 out of 4 customers return. But in our world, 4 out of 5 first-time donors never give again. Fundraising without stewardship is just acquisition on repeat. Here’s the truth: acquiring donors is expensive, exhausting, and unsustainable unless you keep them. Retaining a donor costs 20 cents on the dollar. Acquiring a new one? $1.50. Ill-informed leaders can treat stewardship as fluff, luxury or an afterthought but donors decide to stay – or stray – in the downtime between your appeals. Retention hinges on how you communicate when you’re not asking. Ready to swipe right on donor love? Discover which stewardship strategies are the most effective and the simple metrics to measure it: retention and average gift value.

As nonprofits engage in conversations and focus on increasing the levels of giving to their cause, they often leave out an essential part of fundraising… building relationships that result in retention and sustainability. Relationships, steps from meet to ask, follow-ups, thanking donors, maintaining relationships, and retention are elements of quality donor relations. Join us to discuss building donor relations that have a solid foundation, keep donors engaged, create interest, cause action on the part of a donor and ultimately result in donor retention. Get a look at donor relations through the eyes of your donor and take home nuggets that you can implement right away to create more robust development departments and happier donors.

As we move deeper into a decade shaped by rapid change, adaptability is no longer optional—it’s foundational. Fundraising continues to rely on the timeless cycle of cultivation, solicitation, and stewardship, but success today requires greater agility, personalization, and discernment. Data and emerging technologies, including AI, can support this work, but they do not replace human connection at the heart of strong donor relationships.
In this environment, strong donor relationships are built by thoughtfully cultivating relationships before the ask and stewarding them well after it. Strong stewardship must be embedded at every level of the donor pyramid, transforming data into lasting connection.
This practical, interactive presentation explores how today’s fundraising leaders can blend human connection with data-informed insights, using tools like wealth screening and AI as lenses to sharpen focus, prioritize effort and ask better questions. Drawing on real-world examples, the session will show how intentional actions before and after the ask can significantly strengthen trust, engagement, and long-term donor loyalty. Participants will also explore how to thoughtfully integrate virtual and in-person strategies to meet donors where they are.

Many fundraisers need to Make the Ask in person, on the phone, online and in writing – to major donors, to corporations, to foundations and even to Board members. When you’re making that ask you need to manage your nerves and ensure that you are shaping your Ask to have maximum chance of success. Old fashioned Moves Management is too crude an approach, as asks for becoming much more customized, more organic, and even more casual.
This session shares five key stages for any successful ask
•Passion- creating the most powerful emotional state for yourself and your prospect that addresses their concerns and motivations.
•Proposition- shaping your Case for Support to make it easy for the prospect to understand and see how they can help.
•Preparation- getting ready to meet an individual by designing a well-formed outcome and anticipating the challenges.
•Persuasion- building fast comfortable rapport and adjusting to your prospect’s communications and decision preferences.
•Persistence- handling challenges and objections effectively and where appropriate analysing what led to repeatable success.
The session is based on the Amazon best-seller Making the Ask – by Bernard Ross and Clare Segal.

During this session you will building confidence in your committees, relationships and event execution. You will learn how to recruit and drive your committees to a common goal. You will understand how to take your event to the next level with intentional asset opportunities that deepen your partnership with your sponsors. You will leave inspired to cultivate beyond your sponsorship benefits to expand your fundraising impact in the room.

Mapping psychological barriers—fear of failure, reputational risk and public scrutiny, trust issues, and family and generational concerns—to actionable engagement strategies. What truly motivates donors to give—and what holds them back? Have you ever asked donors this question directly? With a combined 45 years of fundraising experience, Carrie and Martha will guide you through overcoming both external and internal barriers to meaningful conversations.

Donors don’t just give to support a cause; they give to feel seen, connected, and valued. This session makes the case that belonging is the most reliable indicator of fundraising performance. Drawing from research in positive psychology, we’ll explore how fundraisers can design identity-affirming touchpoints, activate board members as authentic ambassadors, and build trust through coordinated donor experiences. Participants will walk away with a simple framework and a roadmap to embed belonging into daily fundraising practice. This session is ideal for fundraisers focused on improving retention, increasing donor lifetime value, and building culture through action.

Planned giving is no longer just about bequests at the end of life. Today’s donors are more financially sophisticated, values-driven, and likely to use tools such as donor-advised funds, appreciated assets, non-cash assets, and blended gifts to align philanthropy with life planning.
This session explores how fundraisers can modernize their planned giving approach to meet donors where they are by integrating DAFs, major gifts, non-cash assets, and legacy planning into a cohesive, donor-centered strategy that reflects today’s economic realities.
Participants will leave with practical frameworks, messaging strategies, and actionable next steps they can apply immediately.

This workshop is for people who believe deeply in the mission of their work, and are curious about the potential for fundraising to be a catalyst for spiritual growth. We define a ‘spiritual practice’ as a way of showing up for oneself to tend to one’s spirit and the spirit of one’s community. We will offer a way of practicing fundraising through a mindful and relational orientation to inviting financial support, rooted in self-honesty, generosity and gratitude. Participants will be invited to reflect on their relationship to money, scarcity, and abundance, as well as where they find their sense of security. This will lay the groundwork for participants to consider how they could practice fundraising as spirit-tending and invitational in their own context, whatever their spiritual or religious background.

CapDev and Grymes Memorial School team up to share and discuss takeaways from a recent major campaign. Learn about the value of good campaign preparation, relationship development, how to approach events, use of leadership, development staffing, building a strong proposal, a stewardship matrix, and the cadence of campaigns. This interactive session delves into examples and engages participants in exploring concepts.