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Do you have a nagging concern about your team’s effectiveness?

Maybe meetings feel flat, with little engagement or shared purpose. Maybe your team generates plenty of ideas, but struggles to decide what to do next. Or perhaps new initiatives get launched, only to lose momentum because no one can sustain them.

Something just isn’t clicking… and you can’t quite figure out why.

If that sounds familiar, you’re not alone.

And here’s the surprising truth: Most team challenges aren’t caused by a lack of talent, commitment, or effort. They’re caused by misalignment.

In many teams, people are consistently asked to do work that drains them instead of work that energizes them. Over time, that leads to disengagement, frustration, and underperformance, even among highly capable individuals.

That’s exactly the problem Patrick Lencioni and The Table Group set out to solve with the Six Types of Working Genius.

In last week’s blog by my colleague, Gary Laermer, he explored why it’s so powerful to present donors with a blended ask that connects immediate impact with long-term change. When donors can see both the urgency of today and the legacy of tomorrow, something shifts in the conversation. It becomes less about a single gift and more about the donor’s lifetime impact.

But many of you may still have questions.

Over the years I’ve lost count as to how many times a nonprofit colleague has asked “do we have a donor for this program?” My response is almost always the same: “Please send me 3 sentences on the societal problem you’re proposing to solve and 3 sentences on how your program or project solves the problem, and I’ll get back to you.”

The last quarter of the year always feels different. The calendar is heavier, expectations loom larger, and every ask seems more urgent than the one before. But here’s what I’ve learned: leadership in Q4 isn’t about pushing harder. It's about how you show up.

When you walk into a room at year-end, donors and staff alike are watching. They notice your tone, your posture, your clarity — or lack thereof. That’s where leadership lives.

Imagine this: It's mid-November, your inbox is overflowing, your year-end campaign is ramping up, and somewhere in the back of your mind, you know you should be thinking more intentionally about thanking your donors. But between grant deadlines, board meetings, and program demands, "meaningful donor stewardship" feels like another item on an already long to-do list.

I get it. And here's what I've learned from working with nonprofit leaders who've cracked this code: the organizations that make their donors feel genuinely appreciated aren't necessarily the ones with the biggest development teams or the fanciest CRM systems. They're the ones who've figured out how to scale gratitude and authenticity and they're doing it in ways that might surprise you.

Have you ever experienced the excitement of securing that first donation from a supporter, only to feel the connection slowly fade away? It’s a common frustration among nonprofit leaders—like trying to hold water in your hands; no matter how tightly you grasp, it slips through your fingers.

This isn’t just a feeling. It’s backed by data. The 2025 Virtuous Benchmark Report reveals that the average gross donor retention rate across nonprofits sits at just 50.4%. That means nearly half of donors disappear each year. First-time donors? The numbers are even bleaker—up to 70% never give again.

The pool of donor-advised fund (DAF) assets is projected to exceed $2 trillion by 2026. It often flows through channels that can conceal the actual donors behind the gifts. While this can be a challenge, it also represents an enormous opportunity for leaders who know how to make the invisible visible.

In many fundraising teams, donor stewardship follows a predictable script: a $250 donor gets a thank-you note and an annual report, a $500 donor also receives a quarterly newsletter and so on. While this approach acknowledges generosity, it also keeps donors in a holding pattern—focused on their last contribution rather than future possibilities.

What if stewardship wasn’t just about recognition and acknowledgement? By aligning stewardship with moves management, we can create a dynamic, forward-facing strategy that deepens engagement and drives transformational giving.

My next-door neighbor volunteers as a board member for a local nonprofit organization. She and I were talking while working in our backyards. She asked my thoughts on how to make routine and often boring meetings worth her time and energy.

Her thoughts expressed a frustration that I know too well: board meetings that often feel, well, less than inspiring. As she described the predictable flow and the sense that they weren't truly digging into the meaty issues, a question popped into my head, one that I think holds the key to unlocking more engaging and impactful board sessions.

Maybe you've felt it before. That moment when you're face-to-face with a potential major donor, or standing before your board, or speaking to a community group, and despite your preparation, passion and expertise, you can see their attention drifting. You know your organization's work is transformative. You can recite the statistics. You understand the impact. But somehow, in that moment, the magic of your mission isn't communicated as vividly as you hoped it would be.

I've been there and that is why I’m excited to share some reflections from a book I have read that has helped shape my approach to storytelling. Karen Eber's book, The Perfect Story: How to Tell Stories That Inspire Action and Get Results offers science-based frameworks that are easy to apply to how you tell stories about your organization’s impact and mission in action.