01 — The summer problem

Your donors didn't disappear.
Your strategy did.

Summer doesn't kill donor intent.

It disrupts timing and attention,  and the teams that understand the difference walk into September with momentum already built.

Donor relationships don't pause – but most teams act like they do.

When inboxes fill with OOO replies, the instinct is to wait. Teams pull back, campaigns pause, outreach stops. Meanwhile, relationships cool and momentum quietly evaporates.

Silence gets misread as disengagement.

From a donor's perspective, going quiet signals the organization has moved on. By fall, you're not picking up a warm relationship — you're restarting a cold one.

The teams that stay present aren't working harder.

They're working differently — shifting from asks to touchpoints, from campaigns to connection. They walk into September with momentum already built.

Most teams know what to do. Execution is where it breaks down.

Summer is when capacity is thinnest and donor attention is most scattered. Even simple outreach falls through the cracks without the right system behind it.

73%

of nonprofits report significant drops in donor outreach during June–August — even as donor intent remains stable.

&

2.4×

higher fall conversion rates for teams that maintain consistent summer donor touchpoints vs. those who go quiet.

02 — What you'll take away

A summer strategy you can
actually execute.

Templates, stewardship frameworks, and year-end planning tools you can use the same day you register. No fluff — just tools built for small-to-mid-size teams.

01 – What donors actually want during the summer.

Stay visible without over-asking — stewardship that donors actually appreciate

02 – The 3-touch summer playbook.

Story. Gratitude. Soft engagement. A repeatable framework that keeps major gift relationships warm without asking anything of your donors — or overloading your team.

03 – How to turn OOO replies into opportunities.

Practical tactics for staying top-of-mind when donors are traveling, unplugged, or slow to respond — including mobile-first experiences that meet them anywhere.

04 – What high-performing teams do differently.

From the field — real examples, subject lines, and message types from development directors who've cracked the summer engagement challenge.

05 – Why now is the best time to launch monthly giving.

Counterintuitive but true: donors who start recurring gifts outside of peak season tend to sustain them longer — because they're motivated by your mission, not the calendar.

06 – How to make consistency sustainable.

Tools, systems, and habits that keep outreach moving without adding complexity — so staying present stops feeling like effort and becomes your advantage.

03 — Session agenda

45 minutes. Zero filler.

Opening

The summer myth – and what the data actually shows.

Why the instinct to go quiet is costing teams more than they realize, and what the donor research reveals about what's really happening in June–August.

Panel

Real reactions from the field.

Practitioners and our expert respond to the research in real time — what resonates, what surprises them, what it looks like in their actual work. Unscripted.

Playbook

The 3-touch summer framework – with real examples.

Story. Gratitude. Soft engagement. Actual subject lines, message types, timing, and tools that make it easy to execute when your team is stretched.

close + Q&A

Making it sustainable + your questions answered.

A brief look at systems that keep outreach moving without complexity, then 10 minutes of open Q&A. Submit questions at registration — best ones go live.

04 — Who's in the room

Three kinds of credibility.
One conversation.

Three practitioners — not consultants — sharing what's actually working right now. Every insight comes from people with skin in the game.

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  Host & Research Lead

Mark Bell

CMO — BetterWorld

No slides, no deck — a real conversation sparked by original research. Mark leads BetterWorld's mission to help development teams build more human, more effective donor relationships.

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  Practitioner

Christina Sanders

Fund Development Manager 
— Legal Aid Society

Brings the perspective of a development leader who's executed summer engagement strategies inside a working, resource-conscious team.

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  Practitioner

Patty Mitchell

Director — The Miles Hall Foundation

Leads a mission-driven foundation balancing major donor relationships with lean staffing — exactly the audience this session is built for.

05 — Right fit

Built for teams that are serious about the fall.

for

Development Directors & VPs

Straight from The Nonprofit Summer Playbook: what drives summer engagement, what kills it, and what keeps donors emotionally invested even when they're out of the office.

for

Executive Directors & CEOs

Responsible for organizational momentum. You want to understand why summer matters strategically — and what your team needs to execute well heading into Q3 & Q4.

for

Organizations raising $1M–$10M+

Large enough to have real major donor relationships, lean enough that summer capacity is genuinely tight. This session is designed for your reality — not a large team's.

NOT FOR YOU IF

You're looking for a product demo or an intro-level fundraising session. This is a peer conversation grounded in original research, designed for experienced development professionals who want to use summer strategically — not just survive it.