Fundraising Is Organizing

The best fundraisers are not “money people.” They are organizers.

Abundance Catalyst's Founder Robin Engle at a client event - raising money and organizing!

If you are leading a small or midsize organization working to advocate, organize and create systemic change, you already know this, even if no one has ever named it for you.

Fundraising is organizing.

A one-to-one donor meeting is an organizing conversation. You are listening for values, understanding motivation, and inviting someone into shared responsibility.

Telling a story that moves someone to give is movement narrative work. Stakes. Vision. What happens if we win. What happens if we do not.

Mapping relationships and influence is power-building. Same skill set. Different arena.

Many of the strongest fundraisers in progressive spaces learned their craft running field offices, planning actions, managing press at rallies, or organizing advocacy days. That background shows up in how they fundraise. They approach donors the way they approach volunteers. With curiosity. With clarity. With an invitation to step in, not just write a check.

This is where a lot of traditional fundraising advice quietly breaks down.

Much of it treats money as a transaction problem. Improve the pitch. Host a better event. Clean up your segmentation. Those tools are important, but they are incomplete. Especially for organizations doing advocacy, organizing, and systems change.

Movement fundraising is inherently political. It is about power. Who has it. Who does not. And what it will take to shift that balance. When fundraising avoids that truth, it feels hollow. Leaders avoid it. Boards disengage. Donors stay shallow.

Here is one of the clearest contrasts we see.

Transactional fundraising asks, “How do we get this donor to give again?”. Organizing-based fundraising asks, “How do we move this person into deeper alignment, ownership, and action over time?”

That shift changes everything.

A donor meeting stops being an update plus an ask and becomes a conversation about values and agency. A board member stops being a passive approver and becomes a connector and advocate. A major donor path includes non-monetary asks like hosting, introducing, and showing up, not just escalating dollar amounts.

This is not about working harder. It is about working differently. And it is often a relief. At Abundance Catalyst, this is the lens we bring to every engagement.

We are a fundraising consultancy focused on building resources for social justice and movement-based organizations. We are a small team of development professionals with decades of experience inside organizing and advocacy groups. We have built programs with tiny staffs, political pressure, and real urgency. We are still in the work.

Our clients usually come to us stuck between ambition and capacity.

They have big goals and real momentum. They are politically clear and values-driven. They are also exhausted. Fundraising feels fragmented, overly dependent on one or two people, or disconnected from the rest of the organization. Major donors feel intimidating. Boards are underutilized. Systems are duct-taped together.

We specialize in helping movement-based organizations fund their movements without burning out or selling out.

That includes ongoing fundraising support contracts, development assessments, classroom-style trainings, and targeted project-based support. Always right-sized. Always grounded in reality. Always built to reduce strain, not add to it.

Our work is guided by clear values.

We are movement rooted. Our strategies come from lived experience, not charity mindsets or boardroom theory. We choose abundance over scarcity. We reject the nonprofit starvation cycle and help organizations move from survival mode to sustainable, unapologetic growth. We provide right-sized support. No bloated strategies or one-size-fits-all playbooks. Practical support that fits your team, your budget, and your moment. We practice realness. We name the hard stuff, whether that is staff capacity, board avoidance, or funding misalignment. We bring joyful rigor. Sharp strategy and smart systems, paired with warmth and humor. Because this work should feel powerful, not punishing.

Our clients are working across some of the most urgent fights of our time. Building BIPOC and youth electoral power. Advancing a multiracial democracy. Passing universal, high quality childcare. Reducing gun violence. Reforming the prison industrial complex. Promoting environmental justice. Fighting for working people.

All of it requires resources. And all of it requires fundraising that understands power.

If you want to explore what movement-rooted fundraising could look like for your organization, reach out to start with a conversation.

Funding your movement is possible. It just requires treating fundraising like what it is.

Organizing.