Sharpe Blog

By Teri Sullivan The new 2026 DAF Fundraising Report, funded by the for-profit companies Chariot and K2D Strategies, confirms what many nonprofit fundraisers have suspected for years: donor advised funds (DAFs) are no longer a niche giving vehicle. They’re becoming a central part of how donors manage their philanthropy. DAF donors are among your best….

Generation X, Latchkey Kids, Star Wars Generation, MTV Generation: they were born between 1965 and 1980. Saturday morning cartoons were “must-see TV,” music videos were born and personal computers were becoming household necessities. Everybody Wants to Rule the World Sometimes called the “Baby Bust” Generation, Generation X is smaller than their predecessors, Baby Boomers. Millennials…

New research by the Generosity Commission confirms something important about donors: most people already see themselves as generous. In fact, nearly three out of four say they aspire to live that way. However, donors don’t always define generosity the same way nonprofits do. You can read the full report “How and Why We Give” here….

There has been a lot of buzz in the fundraising world about qualified charitable contributions from IRAs. Many donors of a certain age are now aware that they can give directly from their IRAs without paying taxes on the withdrawal. Donors can also designate a charity as the beneficiary of their retirement plan. The process…

I recently read an article in Wealth Management newspaper, by Clay Stevens with the wealth management firm Aspiriant, on how the current estate tax exemption affects charitable giving. While the article was written for financial advisors, the analysis and advice apply to gift planners as well, and it mirrors what Sharpe Group has been saying…

Part 1 of this blog series covered: Myth #1: Planned giving hurts annual giving. Myth #2: All planned gifts are deferred gifts. Myth #3: Planned giving is only for older, wealthier donors. Read it here. Part 2 covered: Myth #4: Planned giving is not appropriate for a new organization. Myth #5: I have to know…

By Grant Miller I fell in love with language as a teenager—somewhere between Kurt Vonnegut’s “The Sirens of Titan” and Flannery O’Connor’s “Wise Blood.” I knew I wanted to be a writer before I even grasped the fundamentals of how sentences worked (I had probably learned them at some point, but I wasn’t always the…

Read Part 1, “Mining Donor Data for Dollars,” here. Many organizations rely on wealth screening as a primary data strategy. While useful, wealth screening has limitations. Wealth screening typically assigns donors a “score” based on factors like income, net worth and giving history. This can be helpful for identifying prospects during capital campaigns, but it…

In charitable organizations, few assets are as valuable—and as underutilized—as the organization’s donor data. Many nonprofits focus primarily on campaigns, messaging and outreach strategies, and the data used to inform those efforts is often limited to insights on high-capacity donors, rather than a comprehensive view of the full donor base. Campaigns, messaging and outreach strategies…

Part one of this blog series covered: Myth #1: Planned giving hurts annual giving. Myth #2: All planned gifts are deferred gifts. Myth #3: Planned giving is only for older, wealthier donors. Read it here. Here, we will look at three additional myths that some organizations cite as reasons they cannot (or should not) start…