Nonprofit Leaders: Are You Leaving Money on the Table?

Nonprofit GrowthDevelopment
Written By Sherry Quam Taylor
Image of cash money on a table showing that nonprofit teams that stop short of what major donors need to hear, are leaving money on the table because donors rarely give their best gift. 

My colleague, Rudy Flesher, shared this post from Candid earlier this week & the stat DID NOT surprise me one bit. That stat?

“Less than one third of the public knew that nonprofits lost government grant funding, and 36% of them said if they'd known they would have donated more.”

You know why this did not surprise me? 

I RARELY speak to a development team who regularly leads donors through investment-level conversations. Yes, like, real relational fundraising.

[ED: Here’s the moment you check to see if your team is actually having 1:1 meetings with donors and leading sophisticated growth and financial conversations? This is where they'd explain how you’re funded. These are not just impact numbers and storytelling meetings.]

What do I find? Teams stopping short of what major donors need to hear. And without this, donors rarely give their best gift. 

This is where my clients find 6- and 7-figures of money sitting on the table.

To have proper investment-level conversations with donors your team needs the SKIILLS (training) and the TOOLS (a few support pieces to help them comfortably guide the conversation).

Securing a donor’s best gift isn’t just about site visits and stories of changed lives. That’s only half the story a major donor needs. It’s about telling your organization’s full story (mission + financial) and knowing how to invite donors to give their best gift toward your true need.

That’s when things really start to change.

If you’re a nonprofit Executive Director who knows your team doesn't know how to lead investment-level donor conversations and is tired of leaving money on the table, you can apply here to work with me in 2026.

Whenever you’re ready, here are THREE things you can do next:

👣 Follow me on LinkedIn where I share insider info daily — the same lessons I teach my clients about attracting larger gen-ops dollars and diversifying revenue.

🍎 Grab FREE Guides + White Papers — download robust resources you can use to push against the sector’s misconceptions, equip your board, and shift your team into High-ROI fundraising.

📈 Work with me to diversify revenue & secure the gen-ops gifts you need to grow. If you’re a business-minded nonprofit CEO with big growth plans but need to make charitable revenue from investment-level donors a bigger part of your budget, you can apply to work with me here.

Sherry Quam Taylor

Sherry Quam Taylor works with business-minded Nonprofit CEOs whose Strategic Plans require expansive budgets and larger amounts of general-operating revenue for growth. To become investment-level ready, Sherry helps leaders see their revenue potential and helps them see what may be blocking donors from giving in this way. Sherry’s clients know how to attract larger donors by solving the funding challenges at the root of the issue.

As a result of learning her methodology, Sherry’s clients become sustainable, diversify revenue, and know how to add significant amounts gen-ops revenue to their budgets. But mostly, their development departments and board have transformed into high-ROI revenue generators – aligning their hours with relational dollars and set free from the limitations of transactional fundraising.

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

https://www.QuamTaylor.com
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