Ops Insights #093 - That is Not Going to Raise You More Money
July 8, 2026 | Read Time: 3 minutes | Written by Jenny Kleintop
That is not going to raise you more money. We can fix your posting processes to finance and your cash and revenue reports format, but that is not going to raise you more money.
Those are the exact words I said to the Chief Philanthropy Officer as we were talking about how I could help her and the team. We’ve worked together before when she was at her prior place, and now she was bringing me into her new place to help add structure to her fundraising ops. She had big visions and lots of work to do, but that is what she was good at. Adding structure, building programs, and drastically increasing results.
Part of what made her good at this is that she knew where she needed help and who to get it from. That’s where I came in. We talked through how to get her to where she needed to go. Yes, the finance and revenue reporting were important and necessary. We’d start there but at the same time we would start to build the foundational work that would bring in the results - a major gifts program from the ground up.
I got to work with her team the next month and we moved quickly. When we had the finance and revenue reports in place, we launched directly into the phase II work to get the major gifts program up and running. Since we already laid the foundational work in the database during phase I, we could quickly data mine, wealth screen, and populate her portfolio, the MGOs portfolio, and the mid-level portfolio. After that, we created the corporate/foundations portfolio.
Getting the major gifts program up and running included:
Cleaning the database.
Setting up the database to support moves management.
Updating coding and building workflows.
Training fundraisers on the new setup.
Moving into regular portfolio review and strategy sessions.
It’s one thing to build the program. It’s another thing to support it for ongoing success. This is key, as it takes time to build those relationships and close those gifts.
Take care of the must-haves, but also figure out what will have the highest ROI on bringing in more dollars, and ensure you are building for that as well.
Take Action
To see if what you are doing is helping to raise more money, follow these 3 steps:
1 ➡ Write out all the routine processes you are doing. If you’ve tracked this electronically or in your calendar, drop it into an AI chat and ask it to summarize all your routine processes for you.
2 ➡ Add three columns next to each process. One for “this directly helps raise more money”, a second for “this indirectly helps raise more money”, and a third for “this does not help raise more money.”
3 ➡ Then figure out how you can focus more on the first column and less on the third column. Bring it up with your leader and have an honest conversation.
You’ve got this!
👋 See you next time,
Jenny
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