A financial story is not (typically) as exciting, stirring, or inspirational as one directly related to your programming. But, knowing your nonprofit’s financial story and conveying it effectively to your supporters is critical to sustainability. In this episode, Katie talks to Sherry Quam Taylor, an expert in raising funds for overhead. Sherry will share practical logic around fund development and insight on how to get your donors, team, and board on the same path to be fully funded. 

Do your donors understand your financial need? 

A donor’s investment is viewed from many different angles…

• How does it compare to the other gifts they give?
• Is it a stretch gift for them, or is it given out of a surplus of wealth?
• Was it intended to satisfy one particular element of your nonprofit’s operation?

Each of these angles is one-dimensional and doesn’t consider the fundamental matter of the health of the nonprofit. Helping donors understand your organization’s size, budget, and growth trajectory helps them make more informed gifts. 

Are you investing enough to yield what is in your strategic plan?

Sherry shares challenging insights related to nonprofits making radical leaps in growth. One of our favorites is her practical advice to be ready to invest as necessary to reach your strategic goals. You can’t project a 100% increase in revenue if you’re not willing to invest in additional marketing, fundraising, and expert support to make it happen. Helping your board understand the relationship between investment and revenue is a great start. 

Meet Sherry Quam Taylor

Sherry Quam Taylor works with growth-minded Nonprofit CEOs who are scaling their organizations but still need more general operating support to grow. She breaks their teams free from the limitations of transactional fundraising and helps them reimagine their approach to revenue generation. 

The high-performing leaders Sherry works with want to find and secure more unrestricted revenue from investment-level donors. They need more funding to do what’s in their Strategic Plan. To achieve this, she transforms their teams and boards into high-ROI revenue generators – revealing how they can align every hour they spend fundraising with new principles that double and triple donation sizes. 

As a result of her methodology, Sherry’s clients regularly add 7-figures of gen-ops revenue to their bottom line by learning how to attract investment-level donors who WANT to fund their work. 

Sherry attributes the success of her business to her passion for modeling radical confidence to the future CEOs in her house – her two teenage daughters.