The Nonprofit Fundraising & Development System™ — Founding Edition

Fundraising should not feel like a collection of disconnected spreadsheets, donor lists, emails, events, and good intentions.

The Nonprofit Fundraising & Development System™ is a practical, action-oriented system designed to help nonprofit founders, executive directors, development teams, and boards turn fundraising goals into an organized strategy they can actually execute.

Created by Michelle Short, Founder of Riley’s Residence, the system brings together fundraising strategy, planning tools, donor and sponsor management, outreach language, calculators, accountability tools, and a complete 90-day implementation plan. Instead of simply telling you that you need to raise more money, it helps you determine who to contact, what to say, what to track, when to follow up, and what to do next.

Turn Your Fundraising Goal Into a Working Plan

The system follows a clear fundraising roadmap:

PLAN → PROSPECT → ASK → STEWARD → MEASURE

You will move from annual goals and gift planning into major donors, sponsorships, grants, outreach, donor stewardship, performance tracking, and monthly review.

Rather than treating your annual fundraising target as one intimidating number, the included tools help you work backward from the goal and translate it into the number of gifts, qualified asks, meetings, contacts, and follow-ups your organization may need. The system is designed to be customized using your organization's own fundraising history and conversion rates.

What’s Included

Interactive Fundraising & Development System

A comprehensive Excel workbook that becomes the operational center of your fundraising program. Use it to organize and measure annual goals, monthly development activity, major donors, corporate sponsorships, grants, board fundraising, GivingTuesday and year-end campaigns, marketing, donor retention, event ROI, and weekly performance.

The workbook also includes planning calculators, a donor gift pyramid, an opportunity bank, outreach targets, fundraising scorecards, and structured reviews so you can move from simply tracking activity to understanding what is actually working.

Fundraising & Development Companion Guide

The Companion Guide gives you the strategy and language behind the system, including:

• Fundraising strategy and revenue-channel planning
• Donor contact cadence
• Appeal and follow-up sequences
• New donor, major donor, sponsor, lapsed donor, GivingTuesday, year-end, and monthly giving letters
• Phone and donor meeting scripts
• Major-gift conversation frameworks
• Board fundraising strategies
• Grant-readiness checklist
• GivingTuesday and year-end planning
• Event ROI guidance
• Monthly and annual development reviews

The language is designed to be customized rather than forcing your organization to start every donor letter, sponsorship request, phone call, or fundraising conversation from a blank page.

90-Day Nonprofit Fundraising Launch Plan

Knowing what to do is different from consistently doing it.

The included 13-week, 90-day roadmap turns the larger system into a sequence of specific actions for building relationships, creating fundraising opportunities, making appropriate asks, following up, and establishing sustainable fundraising habits.

Over the 90 days, you will work through three practical phases:

Days 1–30: Build the Foundation

Clarify your fundraising goal, strengthen your story, build a prioritized prospect pipeline, and prepare your outreach.

Days 31–60: Create Conversations

Establish your outreach rhythm, conduct discovery meetings, develop tailored opportunities, engage sponsors and grants, and strengthen donor stewardship.

Days 61–90: Ask, Follow Up & Build the Next 90 Days

Make qualified asks, follow up with discipline, activate your board and community, close outstanding loops, measure results, and prepare your next fundraising cycle.

You also receive a 90-Day Launch Dashboard, Weekly Fundraising Scorecard, Donor/Prospect Meeting Prep worksheet, Day 90 Review, editable action-plan version, and print-ready PDF version.

Built for Nonprofits That Need Structure Without Adding Complexity

This system is particularly useful for:

• Nonprofit founders building a fundraising program for the first time.
• Executive directors who are carrying fundraising alongside dozens of other responsibilities.
• Development professionals who need one organized framework for managing goals, prospects, asks, stewardship, and results.
• Boards that need clearer expectations and practical ways to participate in fundraising.
• Small and growing nonprofits that need stronger fundraising systems but are not ready to invest in complicated enterprise software or build every process from scratch.

The objective is not simply to give you more templates. It is to help your organization create a repeatable development rhythm built around relationships, clear next actions, thoughtful follow-up, and measurable progress.

The system is licensed for use by one nonprofit organization and its internal staff, board members, and volunteers, with working copies that can be customized for that organization's fundraising and planning activities.

Founding Edition — $79

This is the first release of The Nonprofit Fundraising & Development System™, and I’m inviting the first 20 nonprofit organizations to become Founding Edition users.

Future Standard Price: $129

As a Founding Edition buyer, I would love your feedback as you put the system to work.

Tell me what saved you time.

Tell me what helped you have a conversation you had been avoiding.

Tell me where you got stuck.

And tell me what you wish existed.

Your feedback will help shape future editions of this system.