From 50 Conversations to One Big Idea: Why I Created the BoardSpark No-Ask Fundraising Deck

Over the last few months, I’ve been quietly asking myself a loud question: How do I innovatively impact an entire sector, not just one organization at a time? The answer surprised me, not because it was complicated, but because it was simple: meet the single, stubborn problem I was hearing everywhere with a tangible, practical tool boards could actually use.

The problem that wouldn’t shut up

In 50 interviews with nonprofit leaders, about 95% told me the same story: “Our board cares about the mission, but they don’t help with fundraising.” Sometimes they were frustrated, sometimes resigned, but always stuck. I didn’t want to spend the rest of my career solving that problem one organization at a time. I wanted to create something that could sit in boardrooms I would never personally visit and still move boards into action. When the same problem shows up in almost every conversation, it stops being “a challenge” and starts looking like an invitation.

“Can you write grants for us?”

Whenever I share that I help nonprofit leaders inspire their boards for better engagement and increased access to resources, a lot of people immediately ask some version of, “So…do you do grant writing?” The honest answer is: I can support grants, but it’s not the heart of my work or my favorite lane, for a few reasons.

First, my deepest grant experience is actually on the review side, from my work as a program officer at a community foundation. If you need someone to read a grant, tell you whether it fits the guidelines, and help you see how a funder might experience your application, I am absolutely your gal. But sitting down to write full grant narratives from scratch is not my strongest skillset—and there are consultants who truly specialize in that craft.

Second, and more importantly, many nonprofits put a heavy amount of hope into grants in ways that don’t match the actual math of where most charitable dollars come from. Year after year, Giving USA data shows that individuals remain the largest source of charitable giving in the U.S., accounting for roughly two-thirds of all contributions, while foundations and corporations together make up well under half. That means the pool of potential individual support is several times larger than the pool of institutional grant dollars, even though competition for grants often feels more intense.

In my work, I’ve watched organizations pin a huge percentage of their operating budget on a single grant, not receive it, and then scramble mid-year to plug a giant financial hole. I’ve also seen nonprofits with a strong base of individual donors lose a few supporters and still have room to recover because no single donor made up such an outsized share of their revenue. In other words: a robust individual donor base is simply more resilient than a budget built on a few high-stakes grants.

And because so much giving still concentrates at the end of the calendar year, the work of engaging donors can’t wait until November. The boards that see the strongest year-end results are the ones building relationships, visibility, and trust all year long—not just when the appeal letter goes out.

This is why I get more excited about helping boards learn how to cultivate and engage individual donors than helping organizations chase one more grant cycle.

My “do everything the hard way” era

For years, I’ve been told I’m doing all the right things: webinars, social and nonprofit leader gatherings, hundreds of networking events—you name it. But I kept bumping into the same reality: I was pouring time and energy into complex offers that didn’t translate into simple, scalable sales or sector-wide impact. Recently, I kept hearing one word on repeat from mentors and peers: simplify. Apparently, one of my gifts is making things harder than they need to be, especially when it comes to how I package and deliver my work.

The Wednesday night conversation with Judy

On a Wednesday night, I went to yet another networking event with a good friend—another room, another nametag, another round of “So, what do you do?” That’s where I met Judy, an executive director of a nonprofit that supports foster youth, and our conversation changed everything.

It went something like this:

• Me: “What do you do with your days?”

• Judy: “I’m the ED at a nonprofit that helps foster youth.”

• Me: “That’s awesome, I have a heart for helping those in the foster care system.”

• Judy: “What do you do?”

• Me: “I help nonprofit leaders inspire their boards for better engagement and increased access to resources.”

• Judy: “How do you do that?”

• Me: “Most leaders struggle to get their boards involved in fundraising, so I focus on showing boards that fundraising isn’t just about asking for money. It’s all the steps before the ask—and that’s where board members can shine.”

• Judy: “Yes, but board members also need to be prepared to sometimes ask.”

• Me: “Maybe—but many people find that awkward. I’ve actually created a list of ways board members can support fundraising between meetings in an hour or less, without making a direct ask.

I got her email and sent her my YouTube “5-minute crash course” channel on board fundraising. I went to bed thinking it was just another good conversation, but my brain had already moved on to the next step.

The 48-hour sprint: birthing the deck

The next morning, I woke up and could not shake one idea: this shouldn’t just be a list or a webinar topic. It needed to be something tangible that leaders could put directly into their board members’ hands, a tool that turned “We should really do more fundraising” into “Here’s your card; here’s your next step.” Within 48 hours, the prototype of the BoardSpark No-Ask Fundraising Deck was drafted, the website updated, posts created, and the first version of this new product was real.

The BoardSpark No-Ask Fundraising Deck is a BoardSpark-branded, 52-card deck of concrete, one-hour-or-less actions board members can take to support fundraising, without making a direct ask. It’s the bridge between “I don’t want to ask for money” and “I still want to be part of resourcing this mission.”

Why a deck instead of one more training?

I didn’t set out to create “another product”; I set out to solve a very specific problem in a very practical way. A deck made sense for several reasons:

• It’s simple: Each card offers one practical action, explained in plain language, that most board members can do between meetings in about an hour or less.

• It’s non-threatening: For board members who dread “the ask,” these cards focus on connection, cultivation, and visibility—things many of them naturally enjoy.

• It’s plug-and-play: EDs and board chairs can use cards to shape meeting agendas, assign follow-up tasks, or give reluctant fundraisers a clear, doable way in.

• It’s scalable: I can’t personally coach every board in the world, but a deck in the hands of a leader I’ve never met still moves a board toward better fundraising.

Training is important, but sometimes our boards don’t need another 90-minute session, they need one clear next step they can actually take this week. That’s what each card in the BoardSpark No-Ask Fundraising Deck is designed to provide.

Now is the time for boards to be doing the everyday work that makes year-end giving stronger: thanking donors, opening doors, and staying visible in their communities. The BoardSpark No-Ask Fundraising Deck gives them clear, low-pressure ways to start that work now, so December isn’t a desperate scramble.

My first milestone: 100 decks by March 31, 2026

My first public milestone for this idea is clear: get 100 BoardSpark No-Ask Fundraising Decks into the hands of nonprofit leaders by March 31, 2026. That’s 100 boards with practical, low-pressure ways to move fundraising forward, and 100 leaders who don’t have to start from scratch every time they talk about development with their board.

If you’ve ever said, “My board is great…they just don’t fundraise,” the BoardSpark No-Ask Fundraising Deck was created with you in mind.

Here’s how you can be part of this first wave:

• Buy a deck for your own board and use it at your next meeting.

• Buy a second deck for a peer ED you know is struggling with board fundraising.

• Share this post with someone who has said, “I just can’t get my board to fundraise.”

Let’s see how many boards we can unstick by the end of March, and how far this simple deck can ripple out across the sector.

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Pre-Order the Deck for $39