The Donor Organizing Design Institute
Move from transactional fundraising toward volunteer-driven and relationship-centered resourcing for your real mission
Transform How Your Organization Resources Its Mission
Are you…
- Stressing about your individual giving strategy?
- Wishing fundraising didn’t feel so awful?
- Ready to build something that engages and expands your community while raising money?
Donor Organizing offers a pathway to resourcing your organization while expanding real relationships, shared values, and collective power.
The Donor Organizing Design Institute is an expert-guided cohort experience designed for progressive non-profit leaders who are ready to build a generative donor organizing pilot campaign for 2027.
We’ll move from theory to practice, equipping you with the frameworks and tools to build an individual giving strategy that activates your community to organize donors.
You’ll leave with a thoughtfully designed campaign and the confidence you need to launch a dynamic donor organizing campaign in 2027—plus you’ll stay connected to peer experimenters throughout your pilot implementation, offering you continued space to learn and grow in community.
Attend an Info Session
What is a Donor Organizing Campaign?
Donor organizing is an individual giving strategy that organizations can adopt to train and support community members who fundraise from their networks on behalf of an organization they want to see thrive. A campaign will include recruiting volunteer fundraisers (yes, they’re out there!), providing training on racial capitalism and funding for movement work, supporting fundraisers as they build up their skills and bring in new donors, and providing opportunities for celebration and reflection along the way. The results are:
- Increased unrestricted revenue you can allocate where it matters most
- Deepened connections within your base of supporters
- Increased community awareness of your organization’s critical role in facilitating social change
- Broadened political analysis and practical skills to resource liberation work
- New donors who understand your mission and are more likely to stay connected
What You Will Gain
Cohorts graduates will:
- Get Real about Fundraising within Racial Capitalism: Deconstruct classism and build your confidence in your capacity to do true relational fundraising.
- Design a 2027 Pilot Donor Organizing Campaign: Walk away with a concrete, realistic campaign design and action plan that fits your current staff capacity.
- Receive Dedicated Coaching: Get personalized guidance through 1:1 organizational coaching sessions to address your needs and opportunities.
- Join a Powerful Peer Network: Connect, collaborate, and learn alongside other leaders.
- Benefit from Ongoing Support: Quarterly group coaching sessions throughout 2027 to keep your momentum going as you implement.
“As a result of partnering with Ray, LRC deepened relationships with some of our strongest supporters, expanded our organization’s capacity to steward future donor organizing projects, and moved significant general operating resources to our mission – all through a process that was joyful each step of the way. Ray is a deeply attuned facilitator who brought effective care, an intrinsic sense of curiosity, and deep content expertise in donor organizing.”
– James Miller, Development & Communications Director @ The Legal Rights Center
Who Is This For?
This program is tailored for small to medium-sized non-profits with missions focused on cultural, social, or political change.
To get the most out of this design process, participating organizations come as a 2-person team ready to champion a new initiative.
- Who will be in the room? Executive Directors, development professionals, board members, and enthusiastic volunteers looking to expand their skills and gain the clarity and connections needed to experiment with confidence.
- Commitment Required: Active participation in four 90-minute cohort sessions, four organizational coaching calls, and some light homework in between is needed to move your campaign design process forward.
- Implementation Capacity: Organizations should plan to dedicate at least 10-20% of 1-2 people’s time to launch their pilot donor organizing program in the coming year. With this as a starting range, DODI facilitators will guide you through designing a rightsized program.
Program Structure & Curriculum
The Institute balances cohort learning with tailored organizational support. Our journey starts with 4 months of guided learning and design, followed by periodic touchpoints as you launch your newly developed donor organizing program in 2027.
4 x 90-Minute Cohort Sessions
- Acquiring the Audacity to Innovate: Foundational principles of donor organizing and activating the power of collective action in fundraising.
- Adopting the Donor Organizer Mindset: Unpacking class dynamics & racial capitalism, and what they mean for fundraising with purpose.
- Pragmatic Campaign Design: Grounding your program in your strategic opportunities and unique context.
- Charting Your Path: Action planning and preparing for practice.
4 x Dedicated Team Coaching Sessions
After each cohort session, you’ll access individualized support to guide your team towards a truly values-aligned program that brings in new enthusiastic donors.
2027 Sustained Support
Quarterly group coaching calls will support you through emergence in your pilot year.
The Details
Imagine a future where you’re less reliant on unpredictable funding and more deeply rooted in the support of your community.
Each participating organization brings two team members to maximize learning and investment in implementing a 2027 donor organizing campaign.
Investment: $3,500 per organization (includes 2 participants per organization)
Professional development or board-allocated training funds may be utilized for this institute. You’ll easily raise the cost of tuition within your first campaign year!
Program Schedule
- Applications Open: August 3
- Info Sessions: August 18th & September 3rd (Attendance at one session is strongly encouraged)
- Application Deadline: September 11th (Early application recommended)
- Cohort Sessions Run: October through December
- Coaching Wrap-Up: January
- Quarterly Check-Ins: Throughout 2027
“The Donor Organizing Program gave us the courage to jumpstart and be bold in our individual giving strategy.”
– Malaika Eban, Executive Director @ The Legal Rights Center
Donor Organizing Design Institute FAQs
You’ll gain:
- Confidence in talking about racial capitalism and fundraising for movement work
- A framework for building processes around your current strengths and top-priority goals
- Access to insights around structure, volunteer engagement, and gift infrastructure choice points
You’ll leave with a program outline that includes:
- Who you’ll target in recruitment and how to get started
- Roles and responsibilities for program management and implementation
- Priority training topics and action steps for curriculum development
- A clear container and timeline that invites volunteer donor organizers into your pilot program
Graduates will have a campaign design you can implement with your team. If you are interested in further support, RM Methods can guide you through custom curriculum development, facilitator training and coaching, evaluation and ongoing strategy consultation.
Your team of two will attend participatory workshops on these days:
- October 8th
- October 29th
- November 19th
- December 10th
These 90 minute sessions start at 9am PT/ 10am MT/ 11am CT/ 12pm ET
Applicants should commit to attending all sessions with few exceptions to fully engage in the learning and design process.
If this round doesn’t work for your schedule, but you’d like to be notified of future offerings, let me know here.
Upon being accepted into the cohort, you’ll receive a link to schedule each of your organizational coaching sessions. You should plan for both participants from your team to be there and be prepared to do approximately 30 minutes of prep work before each so that we can maximize our time together.
The coaching calls follow each cohort session and will fall within these windows of time:
- October 12-20
- November 9-13
- December 1-7
- January 11-22, 2027
Quarterly Group Coaching calls in 2027 will begin in early 2027 (exact dates TBD).
You’ll hear from us no later than September 16th. Early application is encouraged.
It can be a broad term, but here we use this term to describe an approach to fundraising from all kinds of donors based on real relationships. That means prospecting based on who you know today, learning how to have generative conversations about access and agency, and taking collective action to further your mission while you raise dollars through one on one conversations. As an organization you’ll recruit and train volunteers (could be willing staff members, board members, coalition allies, or community members) to raise general operating dollars for your social change mission.
DODI supports organizations in the crucial first step of designing a pilot campaign that activates your strengths and speaks directly to your needs.
In a donor organizing campaign, you’ll recruit volunteers, train them on relational fundraising, and provide support as they build up their skills soliciting gifts for your organization. The primary strategy is one-on-one conversations with people your volunteers are already in relationship with, though some campaigns may include some other approaches. This is a time-bound opportunity for volunteers to fundraise on behalf of your organization, in community with each other.
Participating in DODI will help you sketch out a campaign you can say “yes” to within your current capacity. At least one staff member or committed volunteer should plan to dedicate at least 10-20% of their time in the pilot year to recruitment and implementation. Most organizations will also want to include some space in their budget for food, child care, or space rental for volunteer trainings.
All workshop sessions and coaching calls will be virtual. If you are based in the Twin Cities Metro, I’d love to connect once in person if our schedules allow.
This program is tailored for small to medium-sized non-profits with missions focused on social change. If this isn’t you, and you’re interested in learning more about donor organizing I encourage you to connect with me here.
Participants will be Executive Directors, Development Professionals, Board members, and enthusiastic volunteers with the capacity and interest to design and implement an innovative program. You’ll be supported in identifying right sized opportunities to bring in enthusiastic donors using a relational fundraising approach. No two programs look alike!
Attend an info session on August 18th or September 3rd.
Contact me with any additional questions.
Why work with us?
Ray brings more than 8 years of practice designing, facilitating and coaching donor organizing programs that have inspired over 1 million dollars of wholehearted giving. They specialize in guiding cohort-style programs, providing individual coaching, and integrating political education to empower volunteers, staff, and leaders to comfortably navigate cross-class conversations. Providing tools and guidance to transform fundraising into liberation building work, their approach helps organizations dismantle harmful cultural and fundraising norms, mobilize networks through one-on-one relational asks, and build sustainable bases of supporters committed to long-term systems change. Based in Minneapolis, Ray has seen donor organizing be an effective strategy to connect with donors even through challenging times such as the 2020 Uprisings and Operation Metro Surge.
Ready to Build Your 2027 Strategy?
We’re building a cohort of 5-8 organizations ready to align their fundraising with their mission. Applicants are highly encouraged to attend an info session on August 18th or September 3rd. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis, you’re encouraged to apply early!
Not ready for this cohort, but curious about Donor Organizing?
We’d love to connect with you! Let us know where you are in your journey and what resources you need to get started.
“Working with Ray was truly a gift. They were the warm fuzzy light in a typically crunchy space. Their ano aloha, empathy, and willingness to learn as we went put the team at ease, and helped us develop a reasonable and comprehensive work plan.”
- Micky Huihui, Executive Director @ Hawai'i People's Fund
“I was amazed at how Ray approached “hard” topics, such as race and class, in a multiracial and cross-class space, with such grace, lightheartedness, and integrity. Ray is a skilled facilitator, strategic planner, evaluator, and project manager. They are fun, curious, creative, and highly adaptable. They bring a high level of integrity and humility to everything that they do.”
-Molly O’Connor, Coco Canary Consulting