Build lifelong relationships

Imagine it's Giving Day, the Homecoming crowd hears you're close to your goal, and plenty of people want to chip in. A few pull out their phones, but then they have to find the right page, pick a fund and type in their card details, and somewhere along the way, the moment's gone.

Our newly introduced Text-to-Give feature for institutions, foundations and nonprofits gives them an easier, much more straightforward way to say yes. They text one word, like GIVE, to your number, and a link comes back with the fund and amount already filled in. They tap, they give, and they get back to the game.

How it works for donors

Say Emily, who graduated in 2019, is at the game. She texts GIVE to your number and gets a reply with a link to your Annual Fund page. The fund and amount are already chosen, so she just taps ‘Give’.

Donors can pick their own amount too. If Emily texts GIVE 100, the page opens with $100 filled in.

Setting it up on Almabase is easy. Pick a keyword and link it to a giving page or a fund.You can keep a word running all year or turn one on just for Giving Day, a gala or reunion weekend.

Less cleanup for your team

After a big giving day, someone on your team usually has to spend time cleaning up the gift data. They match gifts to donor records, add the right codes, and make sure everything is in place before the gifts go into Raiser's Edge.

Text-to-Give gifts come in ready to go. Each  gift already has its appeal, campaign and package attached, and it syncs to Raiser's Edge NXT or Blackbaud CRM. You can also track  which word brought in each gift.

Text-to-Give gifts go through the same payment processor you use for your giving pages, whether that's Blackbaud Merchant Services, Stripe, Braintree or Authorize.net. There's nothing new to set up.

A keyword for every fundraising occasion

Text-to-Give is meant for more than just a Giving Day. Each keyword can point to its own fund and has its own report, so you can set one up for almost anything on your calendar.

Giving Day and Giving Tuesday

Put your keyword on every social post, email and livestream graphic, and schedule it to switch on in the morning and off at midnight. When you announce a matching gift, donors can act on it in seconds.

Homecoming and athletics

Put the keyword on the scoreboard or have the announcer read it out at halftime. Fans can give to athletics or the annual fund without leaving their seats.

Reunions and class giving

Give each reunion class its own keyword, linked to its class gift fund. The reports show how each class is doing, which makes a friendly class challenge easy to run.

Galas and auctions

Show the keyword on the big screen during the paddle raise and put a QR code on every table. Guests who'd rather not raise a hand can still give.

Graduation and the senior class gift

Seniors live on their phones. A keyword in the commencement program or on a senior send-off flyer makes the senior class gift an easy first gift, and a habit you can build on.

Family weekend and campus events

Family weekend, concerts and plays bring parents to campus who want to support their student's experience. A QR code in the program lets them do that on the spot.

Year-end and mail appeals

Add one line next to the reply envelope: text GIVE to give now. It's an easy option for alumni who don't write checks anymore.

See what's working

Each keyword gets its own report. It shows how many people texted, how many opened the link, how many gave and how much you raised. So if you use one word at your gala and another on social media, you can see which one did better.

Every word also comes with a QR code and ready-made text. You can add them to a flyer, a slide or your alumni newsletter.

Donors stay in control

Texting to give doesn't sign anyone up for your other text messages. A parent who gives once at a spring concert won't start getting texts about every event. And if someone replies STOP, they stop getting texts.

Set up text to give before Giving Tuesday

If you already use Almabase Giving and Texting with your own Twilio account, you'll find Text-to-Give under Text Communication.  Choose a word, connect it to a giving page and fund, and share the QR code.

Giving Tuesday is on December 1. You can reach out to your CSM to get set up in time, or book a demo if you’d like to see how it works.

Capital campaigns are the ultimate test of your nonprofit’s fundraising strategy. Does your team have the capacity, experience, and resources necessary to raise millions over the course of several years?

For many nonprofits, the trickiest part of this question is whether they have enough major donor relationships for their campaign to succeed. Without proper preparation and strategy, it’s not uncommon for nonprofits to find themselves halfway through the quiet phase with little idea who to turn to for their next gift.

To help your nonprofit source the major donors it needs for its next capital campaign, we’ll explore three essential strategies for identifying and connecting with prospective major donors.

1. Assess your current donors.

Often, nonprofits think they can’t run a capital campaign because they lack major donors. After all, if your top donors are only giving $10,000 or $25,000 a year, how can you expect them to donate $500,000?

However, just because a donor currently isn’t making major gifts doesn’t mean they lack the capacity or affinity to. Rather than trying to make brand new connections, start your campaign by assessing the donors who have already made a commitment to your cause:

• Conduct prospect research. Use prospect research tools to discover which of your current donors have untapped giving capacity. A few wealth markers include real estate holdings, stock holdings, executive job titles, and major contributions to political campaigns or other nonprofits.  
• Analyze donor behavior. Rather than just trying to target wealthy people, consider which of your supporters have demonstrated a commitment to your nonprofit. For example, you might have a donor who only gives $5,000 every year but always attends your annual gala. While not every supporter has hidden wealth, individuals who are deeply engaged with your nonprofit are far more likely to support your campaign than wealthy strangers.
• Make a strong case for your campaign. If you have donors with the potential to give major gifts, you might wonder why they haven’t already done so. For some of them, the answer might simply be that you haven’t given them a reason to yet. By creating a strong case for support that outlines the necessity and impact of your project, you may inspire previously mid-level donors to finally make their major gift.

Even if you overlook a prospective major donor during your feasibility study or quiet phase, you can still connect with them during the public phase. The public phase is an opportunity to invite the broader community to support a campaign that already has strong momentum. A donor may still come forward with a significant gift at this stage, but your campaign plan should not depend on unexpected gifts to reach its goal.

While you shouldn’t factor surprise gifts like these into your fundraising goal, be ready for them and ensure your fundraising team doesn’t overlook any of your current supporters.

2. Your current major donors are a great resource.

Cold donation solicitations rarely work. However, introductions to new prospects facilitated by your top supporters frequently lead to successful conversions. Alongside making major gifts themselves, these supporters can help you connect with other people in their networks who may also be interested in making a major gift.

Before approaching your major donors about helping source new leads, follow these steps:

• Get the donor invested in your campaign. The more committed a donor is to your campaign, the more actively they will network for you. Capital Campaign Pro’s guide to capital campaign committees recommends involving influential volunteers who can help move the campaign forward. When recruiting, consider each person’s commitment to your mission, skills, connections, availability, and willingness to follow through. Doing so will make them more dedicated to ensuring your campaign succeeds,  making it more likely they’ll help source connections and make lead gifts themselves.
• Do your own research. Many communities have a group of major donors who give to a variety of projects. Read donor walls, check the people thanked in playbills, and research other nonprofits’ major campaigns, and you'll likely see the same names coming up over and over again. For instance, if you see five recurring names and have a relationship with one of them, try approaching that specific donor, as they  possibly have connections with the others and can set up introductions.
• Make the donor feel appreciated. Along with helping you find new major giving prospects, working with your current major donors is an opportunity to strengthen your existing relationships.. During your feasibility study, ask a donor who else they think might be interested in making a major gift. Once you’ve followed up with their suggestions, circle back with a quick update and a thank-you. It’s a small gesture that makes donors feel like part of the team and keeps them excited to help you open more doors.

The earlier you can have productive conversations about your campaign with major donors, the better. Early conversations with top donors can help you identify whom to include in your feasibility study and begin building relationships. Use the study to test your case and working goal, and to understand donors’ interest and potential support before finalizing your campaign plan.

3. Explore Foundation and Corporate Giving.

Individual donors are often the primary source of major campaign gifts, but foundations and businesses may also be prospects when their priorities align with your project. Before you begin your feasibility study, put together a campaign readiness checklist to help you prepare for the process and identify who you need to speak with. As part of your campaign readiness checklist, identify the people and organizations you should talk with during the study. This may include foundation leaders and influential business owners with a connection to your mission or project.

Before reaching out, do your homework:

• Review their giving priorities. Look at a foundation’s grant guidelines, past recipients, geographic focus, application deadlines, and restrictions. For businesses, research their community giving, sponsorship programs, and involvement in similar projects.
• Look for an existing connection. If your organization has received support through past sponsorships, consider whether that relationship could lead to a conversation about your campaign. A board member, donor, or community leader may also be able to introduce you to someone at a foundation or business.
• Track institutional prospects alongside individual donors. Add promising foundations and businesses to your campaign prospect list or depth chart, and assess what gift level might be realistic. Funding cycles and priorities can change, so don’t build your campaign goal around gifts that have not been committed.

Foundation and corporate gifts can strengthen a campaign, but they should complement a well-developed pool of individual prospects. Focus your outreach on organizations with a clear connection to your mission and project.

The more major donor prospects your nonprofit has, the more likely you are to reach your campaign goals. To improve your donor sourcing, start with the connections you have and focus on building relationships that can lead you to even more potential donors.

What Are the Most Popular Year-Round Alumni Engagement Initiatives?

More advancement teams are finding ways to stay connected with alumni beyond homecoming and reunions. A mentorship program or a new regional chapter can give alumni a reason to stay involved between the big events, and there's really no shortage of good ideas to try next.

The harder part is finding the capacity to run them all. In our research report, The State of Year-Round Alumni Engagement (2026), limited staff capacity was the most cited barrier to year-round engagement, named by 69% of the 103 advancement professionals we surveyed. A third of them also work in teams of five people or fewer, so adding program after program isn't realistic for most.

The good news is that you don't need dozens of new programs to engage alumni throughout the year. You can just start by assessing which initiatives are actually worth your team's time and effort.

In this blog, we'll look at the most popular year-round initiatives from the report and which ones are easiest to sustain. We'll also go through which programs keep alumni coming back and what the ones that last have in common, along with a few examples from the field.

1. The most popular year-round engagement initiatives

We asked respondents which initiatives they run to keep alumni engaged outside of their big annual events. The three most common answers were:

• Volunteer opportunities (57%)
• Career networking (48%)
• Alumni storytelling and user-generated content (48%)

Beyond the top three, the report shows a wide variety of programs. Instead of listing them one after the other, in this blog we will group them by what they offer alumni.

Ways to give back

• Volunteer opportunities (57%)
• Mentorship programs (36%)
  

These programs, while giving alumni a way to contribute their time and experience, also line up with what alumni say they want. The 2026 National Alumni Survey found that when it comes to volunteering, 55% of alumni are interested in sharing career insights. Traditional roles rank lower, with attending alumni events at 33% and serving on leadership committees at 28%.

Career connections

• Career networking (48%)
• Alumni directory (30%)
• Alumni job board (20%)

These are the programs that help alumni find each other and open doors professionally. A directory or job board also keeps working in the background once it's set up, since alumni can use it whenever they need it.

Communities built around a shared identity

• Parent and family engagement (45%)
• Affinity groups (40%)
• Regional communities (38%)
• Young alumni programs (34%)
  

These programs bring alumni together around something they have in common. That might be where they live or what stage of life they're in.

Stories and conversations

• Alumni storytelling and user-generated content (48%)
• Class notes (39%)
• Polls and micro-engagements (13%)
• Online discussion forums (5%)
  

This group keeps alumni informed and gives them a voice. Interestingly, polls and online forums are among the least common initiatives in the survey, even though they tend to ask very little of alumni.

Looking at the full picture, institutions are moving towards giving alumni multiple segmented ways to get involved, instead of relying on one uniform ask.

2. Which programs are easiest to sustain?

When we asked which initiatives had been most successful for sustained engagement, volunteer opportunities came out on top at 34%, followed by affinity groups and regional communities at 27% each. The common thread is connection, as these programs bring alumni together around a shared identity or purpose.

But the report also found that this is what makes them demanding. The initiatives that create the deepest engagement need the most ongoing coordination and staff attention. Mentorship is a good example: When we asked what's hardest to keep alive, mentorship came up more than any other answer. It demands significant staff time and one-on-one attention, and alumni who sign up don't always follow through.

There are three ways to look at how sustainable a program is.

High-lift vs. low-lift

A high-lift program needs a lot of hands-on work every cycle. For a mentorship program, someone has to match mentors and mentees and send reminders. They also have to handle drop-offs and prepare for the next cohort.

A low-lift program asks very little of your team or your alumni. East Stroudsburg University Foundation found early traction through simple, low-effort ways to get alumni involved. A recurring social media prompt called "Morning Warriors" asks alumni to share a quick update about their day. It gives them an easy way to interact with the university without registering for an event or receiving an incentive.

One-time vs. recurring

A one-time moment has to be rebuilt from scratch every time, while a recurring program builds on itself.

💡 Punahou School in Honolulu turned several one-off moments into standing programs: A once-a-year "gift season" push became an always-on gift guide directory. Ad hoc carnival volunteering became a formal system that captures contacts for ongoing outreach.

The gift guide is one of several self-serve programs Punahou has built for its global network of over 30,000 alumni. Alumni business owners submit their details once, and their business appears in the directory and in personalized email digests. Alumni who used to contact the school for career help can now use a self-serve job board, which has recorded more than 2,000 interactions. Alumni also keep the school’s regional chapters alive by posting announcements and connecting with peers. Today, Punahou averages more than 7,000 engaged alumni every month. 

Staff-dependent vs. community-driven

Some programs only move when your team is actively involved, while others run with alumni initiative.

💡At Illinois Tech, a mapping tool showed alumni who lived nearby or were traveling to the same place, so one alumni association president used it to organize a dinner with a dozen alumni in Greece, entirely on his own. Similar self-organized meetups have since taken place in other cities, without any event appearing on the university's calendar.

Illinois Tech needed a way to stay connected at scale. Instead of routing everyone through the same channel, the university built affinity-based online communities organized around things like athletics and regional chapters, so campus partners can post directly to the groups people care about. According to the Illinois Tech case study, the university recorded more than 123,000 engagement activities in a single month and has over 2,600 alumni subscribers to its digital spaces.

If you want to find where your own programs sit, the report suggests picking one high-impact program and mapping every step involved in delivering it. Then highlight the tasks that take up the most staff time and look for places where:

• Processes can be standardized
• Alumni volunteers can take ownership
• Technology can reduce manual work

3. Which programs create repeat engagement?

Programs that are popular and busy needn't necessarily be the ones that last. A couple of helpful things to keep in mind when you look at your own portfolio:

Popular doesn't always mean effective

Career networking is run by nearly half of the teams we surveyed (48%), and mentorship programs are run by 36%. Yet neither made it to the top of the list for sustained engagement, and mentorship was named as the hardest program to keep alive. Volunteer opportunities are the exception, they were both the most common initiative and the one rated most successful.

The lesson here is to judge a program by what it keeps producing over time, rather than by how many institutions offer it.

Attendance doesn't always lead to ongoing engagement

Mike Gombita, Director of Alumni Engagement and Annual Giving at East Stroudsburg University Foundation, described a pattern many teams will recognize: People register for an event and attend it, and afterwards, they receive a survey and some photos. And "Then that's it," he says.

He described the real goal as creating a pathway while the institution still has an alum's attention, so they can move into the next phase of involvement. That might be volunteering or nominating someone for an alumni award.

💡AFS-USA had no dedicated alumni department until Jennifer Cusick stepped into the role less than a year ago. After prioritizing basic data cleanup and a CRM migration the team built two simple tracks. One follows the calendar through a quarterly newsletter. The other follows each alum's life stage through automated birthday emails, plus a digital badge and certificate sent shortly after alumni return from their program. That badge worked better than almost anything the team had tried. They also turned their "Welcome Home Webinar," which used to be a staff-led presentation followed by a list of asks, into a peer-led virtual meetup run by alumni just a year or two older. As Jennifer, their Director of Alumni Relations, put it, "No young person wants to go to a webinar."

Look for programs that create more than one moment

The strongest programs give alumni a natural next step. The report maps out what this can look like:

• Attends a networking event > returns for another event, joins a regional community, then becomes a mentor
• Volunteers for the first time > volunteers again, takes on a leadership role, then becomes an advocate
• Joins a mentorship program > completes the program, continues mentoring, then joins other initiatives
• Downloads career resources > attends a career event, joins an affinity group, then volunteers to support students
• Attends a giving day event > makes a first gift, becomes a recurring donor, then joins another engagement opportunity
  
  

Each interaction is one step in a longer journey, and this is also where volunteering shows its value. According to the 2026 National Alumni Survey, recent volunteers are 3 times more likely to have given to their alma mater last year than those who have never volunteered. They are also 3.5 times more likely to give again the following year.

💡Castilleja School, an independent girls' school founded in 1907, has around 4,000 alumnae worldwide. Through Casti Connect, a network built on Almabase, alumnae update their own profiles and share their expertise and willingness to mentor. A monthly digital digest and a quarterly eNews point them to digital spaces with around 20 posts a month, where they can register for events or connect with peers. The results show how one program can feed another. In 2025, 57 alumnae returned to campus as speakers, Career Day went from 4 alumnae speakers out of 20 to more than 15, and 46% of contactable alumnae have reviewed and added to their profiles.

4. What makes a program sustainable?

Across the survey data and the stories institutions shared with us, the programs that last have a few things in common:

• Repeatable: The program runs on a rhythm your team can repeat without rebuilding it each time.
• Easy to participate in: Alumni can join without a big commitment. The 2026 National Alumni Survey notes that younger alumni and first-time volunteers are less likely to commit to standing committees and open-ended roles. Short virtual mentoring sessions, event-based micro-volunteering, and Giving Day ambassador opportunities are easier ways in.
• Easy for staff to operate: Reminders and follow-ups don't depend on someone doing them by hand every time.
• Relevant to different alumni segments: A recent graduate and a retired alum should both be able to find a reason to take part.
• Able to generate multiple engagement moments: One interaction should naturally lead to another, so alumni have a reason to come back.

We'll go deeper into how to build each of these into your programs in our next blog.

💡 Merchant Taylors' School runs alumni relations as a one-person shop. Lisa Connor, Head of Development and Alumni Relations, used to spend a lot of her time setting up campaigns and updating the database by hand. After the school switched to Almabase, she was able to put several programs on autopilot. The alumni directory lets alumni network on their own, and automated emails through the mentorship program nudge mentees to take the next step or share feedback. Weekly digests update automatically, and email communications are scheduled well in advance. Since the school started offering alumni more ways to get involved, average annual donations have tripled, it now has more than 70 active mentors, and 90% of alumni have engaged with the school at least once.

Summing it up

The most popular programs may not automatically be the right ones for your team. So, before you add something new, ask whether it can run on a steady rhythm and whether it gives alumni a reason to come back.

Start with what you already have, look at which programs bring alumni back and which ones rely too heavily on staff time. The goal is a smaller set of programs that keep working for your alumni in the long run.

For more insights on how institutions are approaching year-round engagement, including which programs teams find hardest to sustain and seven stories from the field, explore the full State of Year-Round Alumni Engagement (2026) report.

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For a long time, alumni engagement revolved around a handful of big dates on the calendar. Homecoming, reunions, a gala, and a giving day did most of the heavy lifting, and the months in between remained quiet.

The 2026 National Alumni Survey found that 86% of alumni are satisfied with their overall experience as a student, but only 50% feel the same way about their experience as an alum. Alumni still value their time at the institution, but what many of them are missing is a relationship that carries on after they leave campus.

This is why more advancement teams are trying to stay connected with alumni throughout the year, instead of only around a few key moments. But what does year-round engagement actually look like across advancement teams today? Which programs are teams running, what's getting in the way, and how are they using data, technology, and AI to keep up?

To find out, we surveyed 103 advancement professionals across roughly 90 institutions for our research report, The State of Year-Round Alumni Engagement (2026). Most respondents were based in the US, and we also heard from teams in Canada and the UK. They came from a wide mix of organizations, from solo shops to teams of over 100 people, and from K-12 offices to large public universities.

Since the survey was opt-in, the findings work best as a reference point for spotting patterns across the field. This blog will give you five that stood out the most from the report and what they could mean for your team.

1. Alumni engagement is moving beyond flagship events

Signature events still matter: A reunion or homecoming can create a moment alumni remember for years, but for most teams, those events no longer make up the entire engagement strategy.

When we asked respondents to describe their approach, only 8% said their engagement is mostly event-led. Here's how the rest of the answers broke down:

Teams are building portfolios of smaller touchpoints instead of relying on one flagship program. The most common year-round initiatives in the report were:

• Volunteer opportunities (57%)
• Career networking (48%)
• Alumni storytelling and user-generated content (48%)
• Parent and family engagement (45%)
• Affinity groups (40%)
  

Class notes, regional communities, mentorship programs, and young alumni programs followed close behind.

What this shift means for advancement teams

As the report points out, every event sorts your alumni into two groups: the ones who can show up and the ones who can't. An alum who lives far away or is raising a young family may want to stay involved but simply can't make it to campus. A broader portfolio gives them a way in.

It also helps alumni feel more connected. The 2026 National Alumni Survey found that alumni who recently volunteered with their alma mater are 8 times more likely to feel very connected and 5 times more likely to feel very informed than those who never have.

That said, more programs don't automatically lead to better engagement. When we asked which initiatives had been most successful for sustained engagement, volunteer opportunities came out on top (34%), followed by affinity groups and regional communities (27% each). Mentorship, on the other hand, came up most often as the hardest program to keep alive.

So before you add another program to the calendar, the report suggests running each one through three questions:

1. Does it create meaningful value for alumni?
2. Can we sustain it with our current resources?
3. Should we expand it, redesign it, or retire it?
   
   

Punahou School in Honolulu, for example, used the six-month gap between its February carnival and June alumni luau to plan a multi-year events calendar. You can read how it worked in the full report.

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2. Capacity is the biggest barrier to going year-round

Coming up with new engagement ideas is the easy bit for most teams. Keeping those ideas running year after year is where the challenge is.

Limited staff capacity was the most cited barrier in the survey, followed by low alumni participation and budget constraints: 

This challenge shows up regardless of team size. A third of respondents work in teams of five people or fewer, but larger teams reported the same problem.

Take a mentorship program, for example: Someone has to match mentors and mentees, send reminders, handle drop-offs, and prepare for the next cohort. As the report puts it, successful engagement creates more work, and the more opportunities you offer, the harder they become to sustain.

The tension between wanting more and delivering more

As teams move beyond an event-centric model, they're supporting more initiatives throughout the year. More opportunities for alumni also means more resources are needed to keep those programs going.

Low alumni participation adds another layer. More than half of respondents (53%) named it as one of their biggest barriers, and young alumni came up again and again as the hardest audience to engage consistently. Ironically, these are also the years when engagement matters most. But the period right after graduation is often the busiest in an alum's life, so institutional communications easily get lost among career changes and personal milestones.

Sherborne Boys School in England runs roughly 40 events a year with a two-person team, and one of its changes was timing careers events for the week before university terms start, when younger alumni are actually reachable. Read more about what the team changed in the report.

3. Personalization is still more aspiration than reality

Most institutions already have a lot of information about their alumni. The survey shows which data points teams rely on most to segment their audiences:

Other segments: Career/industry (20%), Volunteer activity(16%), Community participation (9%), Little or nosegmentation (8%), and Constituent type (1%).

Knowing who someone is vs. what they care about

A graduation year and a major tell you who someone was when they left campus. They don't tell you what that person cares about today or what would make them want to engage again.

According to the 2026 National Alumni Survey, fewer than 1 in 10 alumni feel very well known by their institution, and 54% say their personal interests aren't known at all. Only 14% believe their institution has a good understanding of their current career or life stage.

Our survey shows the same gap from the institution's side. When we asked respondents to describe how personalized their engagement is:

• 48 use basic segmentation, such as sending different emails based on graduation year or giving history
• 27 send one-size-fits-all communications
• 20 have moderately personalized journeys
• 1 reported highly personalized engagement across channels

Why personalization is hard to do at scale

Part of the problem is what happens after an alum engages for the first time. Only 3 of 103 respondents describe their engagement journeys as fully structured, while 77 report no formal journeys and rely on manual processes or ad hoc follow-ups instead.

That means an alum might attend an event, make a gift, volunteer for the first time, or join a mentorship program, and what happens next often depends on individual staff members rather than a consistent engagement strategy. Each interaction risks becoming a standalone touchpoint instead of a step in a longer relationship.

The good news is that many of the signals you need already exist in everyday interactions like event registrations, volunteer sign-ups, and email engagement. Asking a few simple questions can also go a long way, such as:

• What causes do you care about?
• Which events interest you?
• What skills would you be willing to share?
• How would you like to stay involved?
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Once you have those answers, planning the next step becomes much clearer. If an alum is looking for their first job, a networking opportunity or a career mentor might be the right fit. As our breakdown of the 2026 National Alumni Survey put it, alumni want to feel that what they receive reflects where they are in life right now.

4. Engagement measurement has a visibility problem

Teams are running more programs than ever, but many of them can't see the full picture of what all that work is producing.

Only 12 of 103 respondents said they can clearly connect their engagement efforts to fundraising outcomes, and 1 in 4 identified siloed tools and data as a major barrier to scaling year-round engagement.

When event data lives in one tool, email engagement in another, and giving history in the CRM, it becomes very hard to see how one alum's journey is unfolding. You might know that someone attended a networking event, but you might not know that they also opened your last three newsletters, volunteered in the spring, and are now showing signs of being ready to give.

Why measurement needs to go beyond attendance

Attendance and registrations are useful indicators, but on their own, they don't tell you whether today's engagement is creating tomorrow's advocates and donors. If engagement and fundraising are tracked as separate stories, teams end up optimizing for activity rather than outcomes.

A few ways to broaden what you measure:

• Use a wider framework: CASE measures alumni engagement across four modes: philanthropic, volunteer, experiential, and communications. Looking across all four gives you a fuller picture.
• Track repeat engagement: Look at repeat vs. first-time participants and volunteer-to-donor conversion rates. Our guide to alumni engagement metrics goes through these and more.
• Map the journey: Pick one program and identify the milestones that show an alum is becoming more engaged. Then ask whether you can see that entire journey in one place, or if it's spread across multiple systems.
  
  

Cornell College had 1.5 people in alumni relations and 16 across advancement, running five to eight disconnected systems that no one could fully manage after key staff turnover. Instead of changing everything at once, the team moved to one system in stages. They started with homecoming registration and giving days before moving on to the alumni network. You can read how they did it in the full report. 

5. AI is moving from curiosity to practical use

It's been more than three years since generative AI went mainstream, and for advancement teams, it's no longer a novelty. Our survey found that nearly 6 in 10 respondents are already using AI in some capacity:

This lines up with what's happening across higher education more broadly. Ellucian's 2026 AI survey report found that 66% of respondents say their institution is now using AI, up from 49% the year before.

Where advancement teams want AI's help

When we asked where AI could help most, the answers mirrored the bottlenecks from earlier in the report:

• Reporting and analytics (62%)
• Personalization at scale (50%)
• Content creation (47%)
• Identifying high-intent alumni (39%)
• Event follow-up and nurturing (39%)
• Donor readiness insights (34%)
  
  

Only 7% of respondents said they don't currently see a need for AI support. Teams are looking at AI for their biggest bottlenecks first, which suggests it's being seen more as an operational partner.

What to hand over to AI and what to keep human

Rather than evaluating AI tools one by one, the report suggests looking at your team's workload and sorting recurring work into three buckets:

• Automate: Repetitive, rules-based work like cleaning alumni records, generating reports, scheduling communications, summarizing survey responses, and processing event registrations.
• Augment: Work where AI helps staff move faster and make better decisions, such as drafting stewardship emails, personalizing communications, researching prospects, and creating campaign content.
• Retain (human-led): Work that depends on trust, empathy, and judgment, including major gift conversations, donor stewardship, volunteer management, alumni mentoring, campaign strategy, and sensitive communications.
  
  

That last bucket matters a lot in advancement. Your team holds some of the most sensitive data an institution has, like giving history and personal details shared over years of stewardship. It's no surprise that data security and privacy remain the top barrier to AI adoption in higher education, cited by 61% of individuals and 56% of institutions. As we covered in our look at where AI in advancement stands today, the goal is to use AI in ways that protect the relationships your team has spent years building.

What this means for advancement teams

If we put these five findings together, a clear picture comes through: Most advancement teams have already moved past the idea that a few big events are enough. They're building more ways for alumni to stay connected, and they understand why it matters.

Most teams have plenty of ideas. The harder part is keeping those ideas going when small teams are stretched across multiple programs and alumni data is scattered across systems. Many teams also can't see whether their work is leading to deeper engagement or giving, and AI is increasingly being looked at as a way to take some of that pressure off.

If you're thinking about where to start, here are a few takeaways from the report:

• Review your current programs before adding new ones. Strengthen what works, simplify what relies on too many manual steps, and retire what no longer delivers enough value.
• Collect better indicators about what your alumni care about, and use them to decide what each person should hear about next and to plan their longer journey.
• Bring your data together so you can follow an alum's journey from their first interaction to their first gift.
• Be deliberate about AI. Let it handle repetitive work so your team has more time for the conversations that need a human.
  
  

Year-round engagement is ultimately about making it easier for alumni to stay connected in ways that matter to them. The full report covers each of these findings in more depth, along with seven stories from institutions like Punahou, Sherborne Boys School, and Cornell College on what they changed and why it worked.

Download The State of Year-Round Alumni Engagement (2026) report

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Over 400 billion emails get sent every single day! That’s a huge number, and maybe not too surprising when you look at your very own inbox and see 2,359 unread emails.

Yet, email remains one of the most effective ways to communicate with alumni.

So, how do we make our emails stand out?

To answer this, we caught up with Ashley Budd, nonprofit consultant, former Senior Marketing Director at Cornell University, and co-author of Mailed It! She has spent years working on alumni communications and has plenty of lessons to share.

In our recent webinar, How to Write Emails Alumni Actually Want to Open (Even in the Age of AI), Ashley walked us through what makes people open emails, read them, and take action.

Here are seven practical lessons from the session that you can try in your next alumni email.

1. Write for people who are in a hurry

Think about how you read your emails. Do you read every word? Or do you scan the subject lines, glance at a few messages, and open the ones that catch your attention?

Your alumni do the same.

During the webinar, Ashley shared research showing that the average time people spent reading an email dropped from around 13 seconds in 2018 to 9 seconds in 2022. About 3 in 10 people glance at an email for less than two seconds, while around 4 in 10 skim it.

That leaves you with very little time to get your message across.

Ashley's advice is simple: write for the two-second glance.

What you can do

• Put your main message in the first sentence.
• Keep paragraphs short.
• Use bold text to highlight important details.
• Make your call-to-action button easy to find.
• Keep event dates, deadlines, and other key information in the email text, where people can scan it quickly.

Try this: Open your next alumni email and look at it for two seconds. Then look away. Can you tell what the email is about and what the reader should do?

If you can't, it's time to simplify.

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2. Write subject lines that tell people what's inside

We spend a lot of time trying to write clever subject lines. But when people have hundreds of emails to get through, they want to know what each email is about.

During the webinar, we shared this example.

Option A: Alumni Newsletter | October 2026 | Issue 14 Option B: Homecoming photos and 3 alumni events near you

Which one would you open?

Option B gives readers a better idea of what they'll find inside. But there's a catch. If your alumni newsletter has built a strong reputation and people recognize its name, leading with the newsletter's name might work better. It all comes down to relevance. Think about what your audience recognizes, what they care about, and what would make them want to open your email.

Ashley recommends keeping subject lines to around six to nine words. Use simple language and give readers enough information to decide whether the email is worth opening.

Your sender name matters too. People check who sent an email before deciding whether to open it. Use a name your alumni will recognize, whether that's your institution, an alumni association, or a familiar staff member.

Try this: Before sending your next email, write three subject lines. Ask a colleague to pick the one that tells them the most about the email. Use that feedback to improve your final version.

3. Send emails that matter to each group of alumni

Imagine you're hosting an alumni networking event in Boston. You send an invitation to every alumnus in your database, including people who live thousands of miles away. Some might be interested, but most won't be able to attend. This is where audience segmentation helps.

Ashley suggested grouping alumni into three broad categories based on their engagement.

Off-the-grid alumni: People you have trouble reaching. Their contact details may be outdated, or they haven't interacted with your communications in a long time.

Wallflowers: People who occasionally open your emails but rarely attend events, volunteer, or donate.

Engaged alumni: People who regularly open emails, click links, attend events, volunteer, or give.

Each group needs a different approach. Your engaged alumni may be happy to hear from you more often. Wallflowers may respond better to fewer emails with a clear reason to get involved. Off-the-grid alumni may need help reconnecting with your institution.

What you can do

Start with the information you already have.

• Location: Invite alumni to events happening near them.
• Graduation year: Share reunion details and updates relevant to their class.
• Event attendance: Follow up with attendees and invite them to related activities.
• Giving history: Share fundraising opportunities that fit their relationship with your institution.
• Past engagement: Send volunteers information about upcoming opportunities to contribute.

You can also ask alumni what they'd like to hear about. A short survey or a simple choice within an email can help you understand their interests. You don't need to build dozens of segments on day one. Start with two or three groups and see how the response changes.

If your team uses Beacon, Almabase’s fundraising marketing platform, you can segment alumni by giving history, location, and class year, then use dynamic content to tailor each email to the group receiving it. If you use Raiser’s Edge NXT, you can also use your existing segments directly, without exporting or uploading data.

Try this: Pick an upcoming event or campaign. Instead of sending the same email to everyone, create two versions for different groups of alumni. Change the opening, the details, and the call to action to suit each audience.

Then compare the results.

4. Start with what matters to your reader

A common mistake in advancement emails is spending too much time talking about the institution. The email starts with the department, explains the program's history, and eventually gets to the reason for writing. By then, the reader may have moved on.

During the webinar, Ashley showed an example of a Giving Day email.

The original version included background about the foundation and its campaign. The revised version opened with a clear message:

Subject line: Will you help a student stay in school?

Opening line: Some of our students are one unpaid bill away from dropping out.

Call to action: Help a student stay.

The revised email quickly explains why the campaign matters and how the reader can help. This approach works for alumni events, mentoring programs, volunteer opportunities, and fundraising appeals.

What you can do

Before writing your next email, ask yourself:

1. Why should the reader care?
2. What will they gain, or what difference can they make?
3. What do I want them to do next?

Use your answers to write the opening. For example, if you're promoting a mentoring program, you could write:"Help a student take the next step in their career. Share your experience as a mentor this spring."

This gives alumni a clear reason to get involved. You can add more information about the program further down the email.

Try this: Look at the first two sentences of your next email. Do they explain why the message matters to the reader? If they mainly talk about your department or institution, rewrite them.

5. Make it easy for people to take action

Once someone opens your email, the next job is to help them understand what to do. Ashley shared five elements that can make emails easier to read and act on.

• Use simple language

Ashley recommends writing at around a sixth- to ninth-grade reading level. This helps people understand your message quickly, especially when they're scanning it on their phones.

For example:

Instead of: "We invite you to participate in an opportunity to facilitate meaningful professional development for students."

Try: "Help a student prepare for their future career."

Read your email aloud. If a sentence sounds too formal or takes a second read to understand, rewrite it. Ashley suggested Hemingway Editor to check the reading level of your writing and highlights sentences that are hard to read.

• Keep one main call to action

Every email should have a clear purpose. Are you asking alumni to register for an event, make a gift, or sign up as a mentor? Choose one main action and make it easy to find. You can include other links when necessary, but make sure the primary action stands out.

• Write useful button and link text

Links such as "Click here" and "Learn more" don't tell readers much. Ashley recommends using a verb followed by an explanation of what happens next.

Clear link text helps readers understand where they'll go before they click.

• Put the main action near the top

Many emails place the call-to-action button at the very bottom, after several paragraphs of background information.

Ashley recommends placing the primary button near the top, after the opening message. People who are ready to act can do so immediately. Others can keep reading for more information.

• Keep important details out of image banners

Images can make an email look good, but people may skip over them while scanning. If your event date, location, or registration deadline appears only inside a graphic, readers could miss it. Include these details in the email text too.

Try this: Take your next email and check three things: Can readers understand the main message quickly? Can they find the primary button? Does the button explain what happens when they click?

Small changes here can make your emails much easier to use.

6. Use AI to help you write, then review every word

AI tools can help advancement teams write emails faster. They can suggest subject lines, create first drafts, and adapt messages for different audiences. During the webinar, we discussed several useful ways to bring AI into the writing process.

Where AI can help

• Drafting an email from your notes.
• Generating subject-line options.
• Adapting an email for different alumni groups.
• Summarizing a person's engagement history before writing a personal note.
• Checking for broken links, missing calls to action, and long paragraphs.

These tasks can save time, especially when your team has several campaigns running at once.

However, every draft still needs a human review.

AI can get names, dates, and facts wrong. It can also produce generic language that sounds nothing like your institution. In fundraising communications, these mistakes can affect the trust you've built with alumni and donors.

✨ A prompt to try

"Help me write an email for our alumni relations team.

Goal: [What do we want readers to do?]

Audience: [Who are we writing to? Include their graduation year, location, interests, or past engagement if relevant.]

Key details: [Add the verified information, dates, links, and other facts.]

Write a short email that:

• Opens with the information most relevant to the reader.
• Uses simple, conversational language.
• Explains why the reader should care.
• Includes one clear call to action.
• Has a subject line of six to nine words.
• Avoids generic openings and unnecessary background information.

Do not invent facts, names, statistics, or stories. Flag anything that needs checking. Give me three subject-line options and one email draft."

Once AI gives you a draft, read it carefully. Check the facts, add details from your own knowledge, and edit the language until it sounds like your team.

7. Give every email a quick check before sending

You don't need to spend hours reviewing every email. A short checklist can help you catch common problems before they reach your alumni.

Ashley reviewed several real advancement emails during the webinar, including a Homecoming invitation, an alumni networking invitation, and an alumni newsletter. Her feedback focused on making the message easier to follow, bringing key information forward, and helping readers find the next step.

Here's a checklist you can use with your team.

Your five-minute email checklist

• Is the sender name familiar to the audience?
• Does the subject line explain what's inside?
• Does the first sentence tell readers why the email matters?
• Can someone understand the main message in two seconds?
• Is the language simple and easy to scan?
• Is there one clear primary call to action?
• Does the button explain what happens next?
• Are the most important details near the top?
• Have you checked all names, dates, facts, and links?
• Does the email sound like your institution?
• Have you checked how it looks on a phone?

You can also ask a colleague to read the email for two seconds and explain what they understood. If they can't identify the main message, you have a clear place to start editing.

💡Put these lessons into practice

Writing better alumni emails starts with a few simple habits.

Make your subject lines clearer. Use the first sentence well. Send relevant messages to the right groups. Keep your language simple and make the next step obvious.

For your next campaign, choose one email and try three changes:

1. Rewrite the subject line so readers know what to expect.
2. Change the opening to focus on what matters to your audience.
3. Move the main call to action closer to the top.

Then look at how your alumni respond.

Over time, these small changes can help your team build emails that people find useful and want to engage with.

Want to learn more?

This article is based on our webinar with Ashley Budd, How to Write Emails Alumni Actually Want to Open (Even in the Age of AI).

Watch here:

You can find Ashley's newsletter and more of her work at ashleybudd.com.

For more on creating relevant alumni communications, explore Almabase's fundraising marketing platform.

Medical fundraising has an entirely different set of requirements than traditional nonprofit or association fundraising. This is because medical organizations have to navigate a heavily regulated landscape that includes privacy compliance laws and HIPAA standards, which sometimes limit traditional fundraising opportunities, all while maintaining a deeply empathetic approach to potential donors.

Robust software helps your healthcare organization build reliable fundraising pipelines while still prioritizing the patient experience. This article explores essential features that development teams should prioritize when evaluating healthcare-focused donor management platforms.

1. Integration with existing software

Medical facilities typically rely on a complex ecosystem of patient management, billing, and communication tools. Your donor management platform should be an extension of your existing healthcare constituent relationship management (CRM) system to reduce the cognitive load of switching between platforms and increase the visibility of potential donors' data.

Your donor management system should:

• Sync with existing patient data storage systems: Your organization likely already has a patient management system tracking each patient’s contact, scheduling, and billing data. Sync your donor management platform with your existing system so your administrative team can easily analyze your data to identify prospective donors.
• Automatically log and clean data: Standardized data entry processes, removal of duplicate files, and automatic logging of donor profile information all reduce the administrative load of analyzing your donor database.
• Support specialized healthcare fundraising channels: Medical philanthropy often relies on unique campaigns like grateful patient programs, memorial gifts, and restricted donations for specific hospital wings or research initiatives. Your donor management system should include built-in tools to manage tribute giving and track complex fund designations, ensuring that contributions are accurately routed to the specific departments or equipment upgrades your donors intended to support.

Make sure your donor management database is completely separate from your electronic health records (EHR). To maintain HIPAA compliance, your team cannot include any protected health information (PHI) in their donation requests or solicitation efforts. The easiest method to maintain regulatory compliance while navigating a donation is to isolate your donor system from sensitive information.

Wondering what HIPAA compliance looks like for you? Check out our HIPAA Compliance Checklist for Healthcare Organizations.

2. Grateful patient databases

Frontline clinicians naturally build deep, trusting relationships with patients and their families. They can also become a primary source of referrals, connecting patients with your fundraising and development team.

Grateful patient programs are unique to the healthcare sector and one of your most valuable fundraising opportunities. BWF defines grateful patient programs as a healthcare fundraising and engagement system that allows past patients and their families to financially support or honor the medical staff and facilities that provided their care.

If a patient or family initiates a conversation about giving back, train your physicians to provide the contact details of your institution’s development and fundraising office. Physicians can also directly refer a patient’s name and contact information to your development office, but they should not participate in solicitation conversations or log donation data themselves in order to maintain ethical guidelines set by the American Medical Association.

You can also use patient follow-up procedures and patient satisfaction surveys to identify individuals who might be interested in contributing financially to your organization. Track the responses and feedback you receive in your CRM. Ensure that any surveys used for this purpose include the legally required HIPAA opt-out language for fundraising communications.

Track your positive survey responses and grateful patient referrals in your donor database to maintain a record of patients and families who have had positive experiences with your care. Your grateful patient database provides a ready list of individuals who may be interested in contributing to your organization through fundraising campaigns.

Segment your grateful patients based on the programs they’ve vocally expressed interest in supporting, and send event invitations and funding appeals on a semi-regular basis. When constructing your grateful patient appeals, it’s important to remove any sensitive health information from your requests and to cease contact if the patient requests. Individuals who have had their lives impacted by your care should be able to give on their own terms.  

3. Campaigns and community initiative hosting

Healthcare practices often run diverse fundraising initiatives simultaneously, from cause-specific initiatives, such as cancer awareness fundraisers, to giving days to community-driven health awareness events. Your fundraising efforts should reflect opportunities to support this array of causes. Likewise, your software system should be able to manage a wide variety of campaigns and donors simultaneously.

Make sure your system can:

• Automatically log new donors: Create donor profiles that automatically collect necessary contact information, financial data, and past donations and causes for each new supporter. These profiles help your team better understand your donor base and plan new initiatives that reflect your donors’ interests.
• Send stewardship letters: Every donor wants to be thanked. Make sure your CMS can automatically send a donation receipt and a warm thank-you letter every time you log a new contribution, so your donors know you received their gift.
• Manage multiple campaigns simultaneously: Sync your donation platform to your backend data logging so that your contribution data can easily be transferred from your payment portal to your donor profiles. This reduces the need for manual data entry and the risk of human error when running simultaneous, large-scale campaigns.
• Host flexible giving options: Healthcare organizations host a wide variety of fundraising types, ranging from events such as days of giving to long-term capital campaigns for research causes and building expansions. Your donation platform should be able to handle recurring and one-time donations, as well as large influxes of new donors.

Your chosen platform should prioritize your donors’ user experience and easy data management for your team. Walk through the donation process yourself to ensure your donors can give to your cause conveniently. If you experience slow load times or a confusing experience, your donors likely do, too.

4. Advanced technology for intelligent prospect research

AI and automated technologies can help your team analyze donor data efficiently and identify the strongest prospective supporters within your existing network. You can use AI to:

• Track donation frequency. In particular, assess donor giving patterns. Do you have a wide array of contributors who give once a month, or a few supporters who contribute major gifts at certain times of the year? Having this information can help your team anticipate revenue flow and plan major initiatives.
• Identify prospective donors. AI tools can track when patients or supporters mention a donation in conversations with their clinicians or enter conversations about supporting specific programs and treatments. These may indicate a desire to provide financial support for your practice.
• Send targeted outreach based on demographics. Certain supporters have things in common: treatment histories, interests in specific areas of your organization’s services or research, or amounts donated. AI can identify these common interests, group those supporters, and create newsletters, impact reports, and donation requests tailored specifically to each segment.
• Identify supporters for increased gifts. Some long-term donors may be interested in contributing a larger sum to your healthcare organization, but may not know how to begin the process. Use AI to screen mid-level and long-term donors for indicators that they might be willing to make a major gift, such as an affinity for a specific research topic or an increase in their financial capacity.

While AI can be a useful tool in healthcare fundraising, it’s best to use it with caution. Promptly’s guide to AI in healthcare explores how to use AI effectively while creating a strong AI data governance policy.

Always make sure that the AI cannot share any of your data with outside servers, and double-check its outputs to reduce your chance of hallucinations. 

Avoid including PHI in your AI data inputs to maintain compliance with HIPAA standards.

Wrapping Up

Acquiring the right technology is only the first step in establishing a strong donor base for your healthcare organization. Consistent stewardship, driven by accurate data and respectful communication, ensures that one-time grateful patients evolve into dedicated, lifelong champions of your mission.

After acquiring new donors, use your donor management system to create an outreach cadence that keeps your supporters up-to-date on new research initiatives, treatment options, programs, and the impact of their donations. This way, they know their contributions are seen and felt by everyone in your organization.

Hosting is often the most exciting part of a fundraising event like a gala. A room full of people, high energy, and months of work that finally comes together over a few hours. What guests see that evening is only a small part of everything that went into making it happen.

Nonprofits and foundations have been hosting galas for years, and they remain a popular choice because they bring people together, get them invested in a cause, and create a wonderful opportunity to raise funds. The format has changed over time, but the gala has hardly gone out of style.

Bringing hundreds of details together in one evening takes more than a few good ideas working well together. It takes planning, the kind that gives you the room to create an experience that feels true to your organization and leaves guests with something to remember. In this article, we’ll look at the different pieces that go into planning a fundraising gala and how thoughtful execution can turn a well-planned evening into lasting impressions and meaningful fundraising outcomes.

Planning your next fundraising gala? Check out our blog with 10+ Fundraising Gala Ideas for Nonprofits.

A step-by-step look at  planning a fundraising gala

A fundraising gala calls for more preparation than other types of fundraisers. Its success depends on careful preparation, thinking ahead, and having the right people involved from the start. Put together a planning committee, assign clear responsibilities, and agree on what you want the gala to accomplish before getting into the finer details. With that foundation in place, you can work through the event's practicalities one area at a time.

1. Setting your fundraising goal and budget

Before you start planning the evening, decide what you want the gala to accomplish. For a healthcare organization, that usually starts with the need behind the fundraiser. Is it new equipment, patient care, research, or a capital project? Once you know what you’re raising money for, put a number to it. This number becomes the target everything else works toward.

Now that you have the fundraising target, work backwards to decide how you’ll get there. Build the event budget around the net amount you want to raise. Factor in the cost of the venue, food, production, entertainment, and other expenses, and leave room for unexpected costs.

Look at what each part of the event will cost and what each revenue stream will contribute. That means considering ticket pricing alongside the cost per guest, and sponsorship income and auction revenue alongside the time and resources it takes to secure and manage them. Consider what you’re promising in return and what it will cost to deliver those benefits.

By the end, you should have a clear picture of what you want to raise, where it will come from, what the gala can afford to spend, and what should ultimately go to the cause.

2. Choosing the right date, format, and venue

These three decisions are easier when made together. The date affects who can attend, the format shapes how the evening will run, and the venue needs to support both.

Start with the people you most want in the room. Look at your key donors, sponsors, board members, and prospects, along with other events or busy periods that could compete for their attention. Once you have a few workable dates, think about what kind of evening makes sense for that audience and for the fundraising goal.

Then decide what you want guests to do during the evening. That will help you choose the format.

• Seated dinner: Works well when you want a more structured evening with speeches, patient stories, entertainment, and a focused giving moment.
• Cocktail reception: Gives guests more freedom to move around and network, and can work well for a shorter program.
• Dinner + reception: Lets you use the reception for networking and the dinner for the main program and fundraising.
• Hybrid or online elements: Can bring in people who cannot attend in person and give you more room for online bidding or giving.

You don't have to choose one format from start to finish, either. A reception can lead into dinner, a silent auction can open before the main program, or an online auction can run for several days around the event. The best combination depends on how much time you want to give to networking, entertainment, storytelling, and fundraising.

Choose a venue around this plan: think about how guests will move through the evening, where the fundraising moment will happen, and how easily the space can accommodate catering, AV, auctions, sponsors, and accessibility needs.

3. How to build your gala guest list

Once you have a fundraising target in mind,  think about who can help you get there. You need to bring together people who can support the cause, give, introduce others, or build a relationship with your organization.

Your list could include:

• Existing donors and major-gift prospects
• Corporate sponsors and their guests
• First-time attendees with giving potential
• Community and business leaders
• Patients, families, and others connected to your mission
• Board members and key supporters

This is also where your past events and donor data can help. As you build the list, look at who attended, who gave, who brought guests, and who has stayed engaged since the last event. You may find people worth inviting who aren't obvious from your current donor list.

The seating plan can make a lot of difference as well. Think about who could make useful introductions, who should sit near a hospital leader or board member, and who can make a first-time guest feel welcome. Table hosts can take responsibility for some of these conversations rather than leaving them to chance.

Finally, give your most important guests some attention before they arrive. Know who invited them, who will greet them, and who should make the introductions. The right person at the right table can do more for a relationship than a perfectly planned seating chart.

4. Develop a fundraising plan for your gala

 At this point, you should have a clear idea of the net amount you want to raise and the total revenue you can expect. Decide what you expect from tickets, sponsorships, auctions, direct giving, and any matching gifts, then look at what each one will cost you to run. Ask yourself these questions:

• Sponsorships: Who are the right partners to approach, what can you offer them, and how many sponsors can you realistically support?
• Ticket sales: Will tickets cover the cost of the evening, contribute to the fundraising goal, or mainly get people through the door?
• Auctions: Is your audience likely to bid, and can your team source and manage items that will generate enough revenue to justify the work?
• Direct giving: How much of the target should come from the main ask, and what will you do before the gala to prepare guests for it?
• Matching gifts: Can you secure a match, and where would it have the most impact during the evening?

Then look at the economics of each expense. What does it actually cost to put one guest in a seat? Add up the venue, food, rentals, production, and other per-guest expenses, then decide how much of that cost the ticket should cover. You may want tickets to cover the event itself while sponsorships and donations drive the actual fundraising, or you may choose a different mix based on your audience.

The same thinking applies to fundraising activities. An auction that brings in $30,000 still takes time and money to source items, manage bids, and run on the night. Factor in those costs, along with payment processing, event technology, marketing, and other fundraising expenses.

 It’s also prudent to pay attention to when the money comes in. Sponsorships may be committed months before the gala, while ticket revenue comes in gradually and some donations may arrive after the event. Keep a running view of what has been promised, invoiced, paid, and still outstanding.

When the gala is over, close the loop. Compare the original budget with what you actually spent and collected, reconcile tickets, sponsorships, auctions, and donations, and work out the final net amount raised.

5. Secure your sponsors, tickets, and auction items

Sponsorships

Build your sponsorship menu around the gala itself. Alongside the main sponsorship levels, look at the parts of the evening that have their own value, such as the Fund-A-Need, patient story, reception, dinner, live auction, or guest experience. Keep a few opportunities open so you can shape an offer around a strong prospect rather than forcing everyone into the same package.

This gives you more ways to match a prospect with something they genuinely want to support:

• Large sponsors: Offer a substantial part of the evening, such as the Fund-A-Need or a major program segment, with prominent recognition and premium seating.
• Mid-level sponsors: Package specific experiences such as the reception, dinner, entertainment, or auction.
• Smaller sponsors: Create accessible options around a table, dessert station, photo experience, or guest amenity for local businesses and newer supporters.

Tickets

Ticket sales can help shape the room you want. Look at your previous gala data for where guests came from, which ticket types sold, how many seats sponsors filled, and how many first-time attendees you brought in. Use that to decide what you offer this year.

• Offer individual tickets, two-person options, and table packages where they fit your audience. A small number of premium tables can work if there is preferred seating or another benefit worth paying for.
• Board members, sponsors, and loyal donors can host tables and invite people from their networks. This can be a useful way to bring prospective donors into the room for the first time.
• Give past attendees, donors, and sponsors an early registration window before opening tickets more widely. It gives you an early read on demand and gets some of the room filled early.
• If most of the early registrations are coming from existing donors, for example, shift the next round of promotion toward corporate contacts, patient families, alumni, or another audience you want at the gala.
• Keep some capacity available for major donors, sponsors, speakers, and other priority guests so you are not trying to find seats for them at the last minute.

Auction items

Use last year's bidding results to decide what you need this time. Look for categories that attracted strong bids and gaps in the catalog, then give your team specific categories to source.

• Ask past donors to contribute again when their previous items performed well.
• Make the request specific. A hotel is more likely to respond to “Would you donate a two-night stay with breakfast?” than a general request for an auction item.
• Combine smaller contributions into stronger packages when they work better together.
• Keep a few standout items for the live auction rather than spreading all your strongest lots across the catalog.

Keep a sourcing tracker

The tracker should tell the team what has been asked for, who owns the relationship, and what happens next. Keep fields for:

• Prospect and opportunity
• Specific ask and expected value
• Relationship owner
• Response or status
• Confirmed value
• Next action and owner
• Follow-up date

Update the tracker as people respond, and record both the commitment and the next step. It should leave you with a quick view of what is locked in, what is still up for grabs, and who needs to hear from you next.

6. Plan the  program

Build the evening around the moments that need to happen in a particular order. A healthcare gala might move from a welcome and patient story to dinner, auction, case for support, Fund-a-need, and closing, with the exact sequence shaped by the kind of response you want from guests.

Then work through the most important details: who speaks, how long each segment runs, when guests eat or move around, when the auction opens and closes, when the giving appeal happens, and how each transition is handled. Keep speeches short and put the strongest story close to the fundraising moment it supports.

The program also needs a production plan. Confirm scripts and talking points with speakers, give the AV team the final videos and presentations, prepare the auction and giving teams for their cues, and build a run-of-show that includes timings, transitions, responsibilities, and technical cues. Run through the program with the people involved before the event and have a backup for anything that could hold up the evening. The final plan should make it clear what happens, who owns it, what guests are doing at that point, and what needs to be ready before the next segment begins.

7. Managing gala registrations and promotions

Make registration easy for everyone. Keep the form short, make ticket and table options clear, support mobile registration and multiple payment methods, and collect the guest details you actually need.

Start promotion early across email, social media, your website, posters, partner networks, and direct outreach. Tailor the message to each audience and give board members, sponsors, and table hosts ready-to-share emails, graphics, and videos.

Build momentum with an event announcement, speaker or patient-story videos, sponsor spotlights, countdown posts, and timely registration reminders. Use a simple event hashtag consistently across social posts and event-day content.

Watch registration as it builds. See which audiences and channels are responding, follow up with people who have shown interest but haven't registered, and help sponsors or table hosts fill their seats. If you have an online auction, livestream, or digital giving option, promote those alongside the gala so people who cannot attend can still participate.

8. Prepare your team for event day

By event day, every part of the gala should have a clear plan. Run through the guest journey, logistics, program, fundraising, and technology with the team so everyone knows what happens at every stage.

Assign people to registration, seating, sponsors, auction and giving, speakers and emcees, food and beverages, entertainment, AV, and guest support. Keep a run-of-show with timings, contacts, vendor details, speaker cues, and backup plans. Your emcee should have the latest script, including sponsor acknowledgments, auction instructions, giving cues, and what to do if a segment runs over time. Entertainment should have a defined setup and teardown window so it does not interfere with the program.

Walk through the venue once more to check signage, check-in, seating, stage access, parking, food service, auction displays, payment points, restrooms, and accessibility. Make sure dietary requirements, step-free routes, accessible seating, and other guest needs are covered.

If the gala has a virtual audience, test the stream, audio, captions, slides, giving and auction links, and assign someone to manage online interaction. Finally, give the team a clear escalation plan. If the auction system stops working, a speaker is late, a guest needs assistance, or the program falls behind, people should know who makes the call and what the backup is. That keeps small problems from becoming visible to the whole room.

9. Follow up with guests and close the loop

Start with a timely thank-you. Send guests, donors, sponsors, volunteers, speakers, and partners a message that reflects their role in the evening rather than sending everyone the same note. Follow up separately on outstanding pledges, auction payments, sponsorship commitments, and promised introductions or next steps.

Keep the conversation going after the gala. Share event photos and videos, highlights from the evening, and early fundraising results through email and social media. For donors and sponsors, follow up with something more personal and show what their support will help fund. When you have a concrete update, share that to show what their contribution is making possible.

Then close the loop internally. Compare attendance, revenue, expenses, fundraising by source, auction performance, sponsor participation, and donor response against your original targets. Gather feedback from the team while the event is still fresh. Note what worked, what caused problems, which vendors or processes need changing, and what you would repeat next time. Keep those records with the event data so the next gala starts with a clear picture of what you already learned.

Common mistakes to avoid when hosting a fundraising gala

Keep these in mind as you work through the details:

• Relying on one big fundraising moment: Give guests several opportunities to give throughout the evening.
• One-size-fits-all sponsorships: Tailor packages to each sponsor and the relationship.
• Last-minute sourcing: Secure sponsors, auction items, speakers, and suppliers early on.
• Poor supplier communication: Use clear briefs, regular check-ins, and written confirmations.
• Complicated participation: Make registration, bidding, donations, and virtual access easy.
• Forgetting remote guests: Include online giving, auction access, and virtual participation where relevant.
• Unclear ownership: Assign a clear owner to every part of the event.
• Weak post-event follow-up: Thank supporters, follow up on commitments, and share results.
• Losing the lessons: Capture numbers, feedback, problems, and decisions while they’re fresh.

Fundraising gala checklist

There’s a lot to juggle as the gala gets closer, so we’ve put together a simple fundraising gala checklist to help your team keep track of it all. Add your own deadlines and owners, and use it as a shared document to keep everyone on the same page.

How Almabase can help you run a successful fundraising gala event

A gala has a lot of moving parts. Tickets, sponsors, auction items, guest information, communications, payments, and event-day check-in can quickly end up spread across different tools and make it harder to see what is happening across the event. Almabase brings these workflows together while keeping event and donor data connected to your CRM.

You can set up your event page, ticket tiers, registration forms, sponsorship packages, and fundraising asks in one place. Sponsors can have their own registration flow, select their package, submit guest details and collateral, and manage their payment separately from individual attendees.

For the auction, you can run silent, live, or hybrid auctions through Almabase. Set starting bids and increments, assign items to specific funds, send bid updates, and automate payments after the auction. That also means less cleanup afterward, with auction data syncing back to your CRM.

With Emily AI, you can use segmented email and SMS campaigns for invitations, reminders, and follow-ups. It also helps you draft event emails and subject lines based on the context of your event.

On the day, your team can manage QR check-in, payments, seating, guest tracking, and real-time event data from the same platform. After the gala, registrations, attendance, gifts, and engagement can flow into constituent records through Almabase’s CRM integrations, including bi-directional TrueSync with Raiser’s Edge NXT.

That gives your team one connected view of the gala, from the first invitation to the final follow-up, without rebuilding the same data in multiple places.

Wrapping Up

Organising a fundraising gala is a big undertaking, but when the event is well thought through, and nothing is left to chance, magical things can happen. It is an opportunity to connect with your support base, generate excitement, and offer multiple ways for supporters to donate money.

While the upfront cost can be higher than other fundraising events, the many payoffs make it well worth the extra effort. From registration and sponsorships to auctions, event-day management, and donor follow-up, the right technology can help your team manage the gala from start to finish.

Want to see how Almabase can support your next gala? Book a personalized demo and explore how the platform can help you plan, manage, and make the most of your event.

FAQs

1. What are some fun fundraising gala ideas?

Try ideas that give guests something to take part in, such as a themed experience, live auction, interactive entertainment, or a mission-focused giving moment. For healthcare organizations, patient stories and hands-on experiences can also make the cause feel more personal.

2. What are the best things to auction at a fundraising gala?

Experiences, travel packages, dining, and items that have a strong connection to your audience tend to work well. Look for prizes people actually want rather than simply collecting a long list of donations.

4. Can a fundraising gala be held without a live auction?

Yes. You can build the evening around direct giving, sponsorships, a silent auction, or a Fund-a-need instead. The right mix depends on your audience and fundraising target.

5. What should guests wear to a fundraising gala?

The dress code usually depends on the venue and tone of the event. Black tie, formal, cocktail, and themed attire are all common options, so make the expectation clear on the invitation.

6. How long should a fundraising gala last?

Most galas work best when the evening has a clear rhythm and doesn’t let the program drag. Keep speeches and transitions tight, and leave enough time for guests to eat, socialize, and participate in fundraising.

7. What entertainment works well at a fundraising gala?

Live music, performances, comedy, interactive experiences, and guest speakers can all work. Choose entertainment that fits the audience and leaves enough room for the fundraising program.

8. Should you invite patients to a healthcare fundraising gala?

Patients and families can bring a personal connection to the mission, but their participation should always be voluntary and handled with appropriate care and consent.

Before making a gift, many donors will do their homework by visiting your website, scrolling through your social media, and searching your organization’s name to see what comes up. Along the way, they’re watching for red flags like slow-loading pages, a cluttered or spammy layout, or an events page that hasn’t changed in three years.

And they’re doing this with good reason. Online scams are more convincing than ever, and AI-generated content has made it harder to tell what’s real. As a result, users are increasingly approaching unfamiliar websites with a dose of skepticism. This means that non-profits and higher ed institutions cannot assume trust and credibility, and it has to be built with donors.

Building donor trust online comes down to a handful of practical habits that can also support strong donor relationships in the long term. In this article, we will walk you through three ways to show donors your organization is secure, active, and credible.

1. Prioritize Ironclad Website Security and Data Privacy.

Even if donors connect with your mission, they need to know their credit card and personal information are safe. If your site feels risky, even the most moving story won’t get them to click “Donate.”

Start with these basics:

• Keep an active SSL certificate. Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) is technology that encrypts the data moving between your site and your visitors. This puts the “HTTPS” and the padlock icon in the browser bar. Without it, many browsers label your site “Not Secure,” which can quickly dissuade donors.
• Choose secure, dedicated hosting. Inadequate hosting can leave your site open to slowdowns and attacks. A reputable host with strong security features protects your site and your supporters.
• Keep your platform updated. If your site runs on WordPress, update the core software, themes, and plugins regularly. As Cornershop Creative’s guide to WordPress for nonprofits explains, developers release regular updates to fix bugs and maintain security. A plugin that is no longer supported or has an unpatched security hole can quickly become a risk.
• Use a trusted, PCI-compliant payment processor. Your donation form should embed securely on your site rather than bouncing donors to an unfamiliar third-party page. A sudden redirect to a page with different branding can make donors wonder if they’ve landed somewhere they shouldn’t.
• Post a clear, current privacy policy. Link to it in your website footer so donors can easily see how their data will (and won’t) be used.

Privacy expectations are shifting as technology changes, too. Many donors now want to know how organizations handle their information, including whether AI tools are involved. It’s worth reading up on how advancement teams are approaching AI and donor trust so your data practices keep pace.

2. Keep Content and Impact Metrics Fresh.

Picture this: a prospective donor lands on your homepage and sees “meals served in 2021” as your highlighted metric. Then they go to your Facebook page and see that your most recent post is from last year. This could send confusing messages about if your organization is still active or not.  

Fresh content signals that your organization is still at work pursuing its mission. Here are some tips to help keep your content fresh and engaging:

1. Update your numbers. Review the stats on your homepage and “About Us” page regularly. A stat that mentions the current year is much more compelling than work that was achieved in the past.
2. Share recent stories. Stories from people you serve prove that donations are making an impact right now. A quote from this year’s scholarship recipient or a short update from a program participant goes a long way.
3. Publish regular impact reports. An impact report connects donor contributions to real outcomes. Posting one on your site each year shows supporters you’re open about where their money goes and how it supports your organization’s mission.
4. Swap out generic stock photos. Replace them with real, recent, high-quality images of your team, volunteers, students, and community or campus. Authentic photos feel more trustworthy than polished images donors might’ve seen on a dozen other websites.

The same principle applies to your outreach. Short, timely donation messages that mention current campaigns and recent wins show donors their support is part of something happening now.

Regular nonprofit website maintenance makes all of this easier. When you set a schedule for reviewing content, checking links, and refreshing stats, your site will never have the chance to look abandoned.

3. Fight Misinformation with Search Authority.

When prospective donors want to learn more about your school or the issues your nonprofit tackles, they search. If they can’t find you, or worse, if they find inaccurate information about you, they won’t see you as an authority on the subject.

Search is also changing fast. Tools like Google’s AI Overviews and Perplexity now summarize answers right in search results, and many people ask their questions directly to large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini. That means organizations need to optimize for traditional search engines to make sure AI tools cite them as the trusted source.  

Luckily, many best practices support both traditional search engines and AI tools. To help your content show up where your donors and advocates are looking, try the following:

• Answer real questions. Think about what prospective supporters are typing into search bars and AI tools, like “How does [your school] use scholarship donations?” or “What does [your nonprofit] do?” Then answer those questions clearly on your site.  
• Publish clear, factual, and skimmable content. Use descriptive headings, short paragraphs, and lists. Content that’s easy for people to scan is also easier for AI tools to understand and reference.
• Create an FAQ page. A well-organized FAQ page gives search engines and AI models structured information to learn from and cite.
• Keep key facts consistent. Make sure your mission, programs, and contact details match across your website, social profiles, and directory listings. Consistency makes it easier for search engines and AI tools to trust (and repeat) the right information.  

While AI search is growing, traditional search still drives a significant portion of website traffic. Strong search engine optimization remains the foundation of both. It works best when it’s tied to your overall fundraising strategy, ensuring every optimized page leads visitors to clear calls to action and a straightforward path to donate..

Wrapping Up

Building donor trust online isn’t a one-time project. It’s an ongoing commitment to keeping your website secure, current, and easy to find. When donors feel confident in your organization, they’re more likely to give and keep giving. That confidence is at the heart of any long-term donor retention strategy.

Small updates add up, and donors notice. Start off by opening your website in an incognito window and look at it the way a potential first-time donor would. Is the copyright in your footer from 2022? Does the browser bar say “Not Secure?” Pick one or two quick fixes and tackle them this week. Donor trust grows through these small moments. Keep your website secure, current, and easy to navigate, and you give donors more reasons to feel confident supporting your organization.