SWAN (Strategic Workforce & Arts Network) Blog

This week’s Monday Matters arrived later than planned because of technical difficulties. That explanation is familiar to almost anyone who has worked for or volunteered with a small nonprofit. A website stops cooperating, a document will not open, an account becomes inaccessible, or a system that worked perfectly yesterday suddenly decides it has other plans. The work still needs to be completed because someone else will need it tomorrow morning. In a well-resourced organization, an information technology department, an administrative team, or a paid vendor may be available to solve the problem. In many small nonprofits, the solution is a volunteer sitting at a computer late at night, searching for instructions, testing possible fixes, resetting passwords, reconstructing lost work, and trying to make certain everything is ready for the next day. This is part of nonprofit work that rarely appears in an annual report. We celebrate the programs, performances, services, grants, and communi...

The check arrived, someone celebrates, the treasurer records it, and a receipt goes out. It is tempting to consider the fundraising process complete at that point, particularly after a busy year-end campaign, but receiving the gift isn't the end of the donor relationship. In many ways, it is the beginning. A donor has just told you something important. They believe enough in what you're doing to invest some of their own money in it. What happens next can determine whether that person stays connected to the organization or becomes another name on a spreadsheet nobody looks at again until next November. Of course, donors should be thanked promptly, but donor stewardship is bigger than a tax receipt and a form letter. Tell them what happened. If they helped pay for a program, show them the program. If they helped provide scholarships, tell them how many students participated. If they helped keep an organization operating, don't be afraid to explain why unrestricted support mat...

A peculiar phenomenon exists in some small nonprofits. Everyone agrees the organization needs money, everyone agrees fundraising is important, and then everyone turns toward the person who writes the grants, chairs the development committee, or somehow became "the fundraising person" and wishes them good luck. Fundraising doesn't work particularly well that way. That doesn't mean every board member has to become a professional fundraiser, nor does it mean everyone needs to be comfortable sitting across from someone and asking for a significant gift. People bring different skills, personalities, relationships, and comfort levels to nonprofit leadership, and a good fundraising strategy should leverage those differences rather than pretend they don't exist. One board member might be terrific at introducing people. Another might write personal notes on fundraising letters. Someone else might consistently share campaign posts with their network, while another person ma...

"Please support our mission" is a perfectly reasonable thing for a nonprofit to say. The problem is that it doesn't tell a prospective donor much about what their contribution will actually accomplish, which makes it hard for someone outside the organization to understand why giving now matters. One fundraising challenge is remembering that people inside an organization know far more about its work than people outside it. You know what your programs do, why the electric bill matters, why another staff member would make an enormous difference, and what happens when the copier breaks, the van needs repairs, or twenty more people need services than you expected. Your prospective donor probably doesn't know any of those things unless you tell them. That is why a year-end appeal needs to answer a very basic question: What will my gift do? Maybe $25 buys supplies. Maybe $100 provides a particular service. Maybe $500 supports a program. Maybe your organization needs $10,000 ...

One of the first questions in any fundraising campaign sounds ridiculously simple: Who are you going to ask? For a small nonprofit, the immediate answer is sometimes "everybody," but everybody isn't much of a fundraising strategy. Before searching for wealthy strangers, corporate executives, or some mythical philanthropist who is going to discover your organization and write a huge check, take a good look at the people who already know you. Who donated last year? Who bought tickets to your events? Who volunteered? Who participated in your programs? Who sponsored something? Who regularly shares your social media posts? Who gave three years ago and hasn't given since? Then there is your board. Ask each board member to think about people in their own circles who might care about the mission. This isn't necessarily a demand that they immediately call their friends and ask for money. An introduction can be valuable. So can an invitation to an event, a personal note, or...

It's still August. The kids are barely back in school, temperatures are still high, and most of us aren't thinking about December. If you work with a nonprofit, however, now is exactly when you should be thinking about your year-end fundraising. Every November and December, mailboxes, inboxes, and social media feeds begin filling with appeals from nonprofit organizations. Giving Tuesday arrives, year-end tax deadlines approach, and organizations that may not have communicated much with supporters during the year suddenly begin asking for donations. At the same time, the people receiving those requests have their own year-end realities. Heating bills, holiday gifts, travel, groceries, and all the ordinary expenses of life. In an uncertain economy, many households are already making careful decisions about where their money goes. That does not mean nonprofits should stop asking. It means we should start sooner and ask better. If you wait until December, you are not only competing...

All week, we've been talking about grants. For SWAN PA's Commonwealth Funding Week, we've examined Pennsylvania's changing creative-sector funding landscape, looked at which Pennsylvania Creative Industries opportunities are designed for different organizations, unpacked reimbursement funding, and discussed why being eligible for a grant doesn't necessarily mean an organization should apply. For Funding Friday, we're bringing  those conversations together because there is a larger point behind everything we've discussed this week:  finding grants isn't the same  as having a funding strategy. A grant is a tool. It can help an organization launch a program, strengthen existing work, build capacity, reach new people, purchase equipment, employ staff, or accomplish something that might otherwise be impossible. Grants can be enormously valuable, but an organization that moves from application deadline to application deadline without a larger plan can easily e...

One sentence can make almost any nonprofit fundraiser's heartbeat a little faster: "Our organization is eligible to apply." Eligibility is good news, but it is only the beginning of the conversation. One of the most important lessons in grant seeking is also one of the easiest to overlook: being eligible for a grant does not necessarily mean your organization is competitive for that grant, and being competitive does not necessarily mean applying is the best use of your organization's time. On Day Four of SWAN PA's Commonwealth Funding Week, we're moving beyond what funding is available and asking something more strategic: Should you actually apply? Eligibility Gets You Through the Door Grant guidelines usually provide relatively straightforward eligibility requirements. A funder may specify geography, nonprofit status, organizational revenue, years in operation, population served, program type, or other basic qualifications. If your organization meets those re...

Congratulations! Your organization just received a $10,000 grant. That's great news, but there's an important question that needs to be answered before anyone starts spending the money: When do you actually receive the $10,000? For Day Three of SWAN PA's Commonwealth Funding Week, we're looking at something that can easily get overshadowed by an exciting grant announcement: how and when grant money actually reaches your organization. Yesterday, we examined several funding opportunities available through Pennsylvania Creative Industries, and one phrase appears repeatedly in the current funding landscape: reimbursement based . The new Spotlight Program is reimbursement based. Creative Asset is reimbursement based. Creative Catalyst is reimbursement based, and reimbursement structures are certainly not unique to Pennsylvania Creative Industries. Government grants and other funding programs frequently use some form of reimbursement, which makes understanding how these arran...

If your organization has applied for arts funding from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania before, you may have noticed something important: The landscape has changed. A lot. As of July 1, 2026, the Creative Sector Flex Fund, better known as CSFF, was discontinued statewide. Pennsylvania Creative Industries, powered by the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, has been reshaping its funding portfolio around a new strategic framework and a different collection of funding opportunities. That means organizations shouldn't simply look for the grant they applied for last year. They need to look at the new landscape and ask:  Where do we fit now? That's our question for Day Two of SWAN PA's Commonwealth Funding Week. Spotlight: The New Opportunity for Pennsylvania's Smallest Arts Organizations If your organization has average annual arts revenue between $10,000 and less than $100,000 , Spotlight should be one of the first programs you investigate. This is particularly important for ...

Today, August 17, is National Nonprofit Day , which makes it an especially appropriate Monday to talk about the organizations that keep our communities moving and the resources they need to do that work. Sherita J. Herring founded National Nonprofit Day, and we've observed it annually since 2017 to recognize nonprofit organizations and the people behind them. But the date goes back much further. August 17 marks the anniversary of the Tariff Act of 1894 , which exempted charitable organizations from federal taxation. More than a century later, the basic idea behind that distinction remains important: nonprofit organizations exist to serve purposes that benefit the public and our communities. National Nonprofit Day is a good opportunity to recognize that work. It is also a good opportunity to talk about what nonprofits need to keep doing it. That is particularly important for Pennsylvania's small and mid-sized organizations right now. Over the past year, the Commonwealth's ap...

  When we talk about fundraising, we tend to talk about the people whose names appear next to words like development, advancement, grants, or donor relations. They write proposals, prepare sponsorship packages, research prospects, send appeals, meet with donors, and eventually make the ask. But they aren't fundraising alone. In fact, some of the most important things that determine whether a nonprofit can successfully raise money happen long before anyone asks for a dollar. Fundraising isn't something an organization does. It's something an organization makes possible through everything it does. Everyone Doesn't Have to Ask You've probably heard some version of the phrase "everyone is a fundraiser." I understand the sentiment, but I don't agree. Not everyone is comfortable asking for money. Not everyone has the skills or experience to cultivate a donor relationship. And putting someone in that position simply because they're a board member, employe...