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Hey Fundraiser!: Daily Summaries Delivered
by Mary Hackett
Welcome to Hey Fundraiser, the podcast for nonprofit Executive Directors and major gift officers who are done guessing. Each week, host Mary Petersen pulls back the curtain on what actually works in major gifts. Not theory. Not whiteboard frameworks. Real scripts, real strategy, and the exact moves you can use in your next donor meeting. Mary spent 25+ years as a working major gift officer and built a methodology that closes 5 and 6-figure gifts in months, not years, by going deep with a focused portfolio instead of chasing volume. If you've ever frozen up before an ask, stared at a "wish list" of donors with no idea who to call first, or wondered why the industry keeps telling you a major gift takes 18 months to close, this is your show. You'll leave every episode with one clear thing to do on Monday morning.
Latest Episodes
The most recent episodes — sign up to get AI-powered summaries of each one.
- 1 weeks ago20 min
The 2027 Major Gift Plan: What I’d Have in Place Before January 1
Want a stronger major gift year in 2027? Don’t wait until January to build the plan. In this episode of Hey Fundraiser!, Mary shares the 11 things she wants fundraisers to put in place before the year begins. You’ll learn how to map your revenue goal to real prospects, identify your top 50 and top 20 donors, build stronger Offers & Outcomes, decide who needs to be seen in Q1, and determine who could realistically be asked in the first six months. Mary also covers cultivation, stewardship,...
- 2 weeks ago17 min
I Looked at Your Major Gift Program. Here Are the 7 Places It’s Leaking Money.
Where is your major gift program quietly leaking money? In this episode of Hey Fundraiser!, Mary walks through seven of the most common places she sees organizations leaving major gift revenue on the table, and most of them have nothing to do with needing more donors. You’ll learn why oversized portfolios dilute your best work, how to make sure your strongest prospects are getting your strongest attention, why wealth screening means very little if you can’t actually get in the door, and how t...
- 3 weeks ago19 min
Your Donor Isn’t Stuck. Your Cultivation Strategy Is.
Is your donor really stuck, or is your cultivation strategy stuck? In this episode of Hey Fundraiser!, Mary explains the difference between a touch and a move, and why activity alone does not create major gifts. You’ll learn how to give every donor interaction a purpose, the five things Mary wants to understand before moving toward a solicitation, and how to introduce money into the relationship long before the ask. She also shares why permission-based fundraising can dramatically accelerate ...
- 4 weeks ago39 min
Stop Selling Programs: How to Position Offers and Outcomes So Donors Understand Them
If your major gift opportunities sound like a menu of programs, you may be unintentionally teaching donors to restrict their giving. In this episode of Hey Fundraiser!, Mary goes deeper on Offers & Outcomes and shows how to position your work around the change a donor can make instead of your internal program structure. You’ll learn the difference between a program and an offer, why specificity does not have to mean restriction, how to package cross-program work into a compelling major gi...
- Sep 25, 202621 min
You Found a Great Major Gift Prospect. Now How the Heck Do You Get in the Door?
You found the perfect major gift prospect. Great capacity, strong giving history, real connection to your mission...and they will not respond. In this episode of Hey Fundraiser!, Mary tackles one of the hardest parts of major gift fundraising: getting in the door. You’ll learn why generic “would you like to grab coffee?” emails fall flat, how to make your invitation genuinely worth saying yes to, and why access often matters more than capacity. Mary shares practical ways to use your board, do...
- Sep 18, 202631 min
If I Had to Build a Major Gift Program From Scratch, Here’s Exactly What I’d Do
If Mary walked into a nonprofit tomorrow and had one year to build a major gift program from scratch, what would she do first, what would she ignore, and where would she spend her time? In this episode of Hey Fundraiser!, Mary breaks down the seven things she would prioritize to build a focused, effective major gift program without getting buried in software, policies, giant portfolios, or endless database cleanup. She walks through how to build a Money Map of the donors who can actually move...
- Sep 11, 202636 min
How to Inspire Unrestricted Major Gifts and Build Donor Trust
Why do donors happily fund programs but hesitate to fund the people, systems, and infrastructure that make those programs possible? In this episode of Hey Fundraiser!, Mary breaks down how to inspire more unrestricted major gifts by building deeper donor trust. You’ll learn why restrictions often reveal where trust stops, how phrases like “we do so much with so little” can reinforce harmful scarcity thinking, and how to reframe overhead as the investment required to produce strong outcomes. M...
- Sep 4, 202633 min
5 Questions I Get As a Major Gift Coach
How many times can you follow up with a donor before you become annoying? How do you actually know when it’s time to ask? What happens if you ask for too much? Do you need a polished proposal before you ever talk about money? And where do you even begin when your major gift portfolio is completely overwhelming? In this episode of Hey Fundraiser!, Mary tackles five of the questions she hears most often in her major gift coaching conversations and digs into the strategy behind each one. She sha...
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About Hey Fundraiser!
Welcome to Hey Fundraiser, the podcast for nonprofit Executive Directors and major gift officers who are done guessing. Each week, host Mary Petersen pulls back the curtain on what actually works in major gifts. Not theory. Not whiteboard frameworks. Real scripts, real strategy, and the exact moves you can use in your next donor meeting. Mary spent 25+ years as a working major gift officer and built a methodology that closes 5 and 6-figure gifts in months, not years, by going deep with a focused portfolio instead of chasing volume. If you've ever frozen up before an ask, stared at a "wish list" of donors with no idea who to call first, or wondered why the industry keeps telling you a major gift takes 18 months to close, this is your show. You'll leave every episode with one clear thing to do on Monday morning.
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Frequently Asked Questions
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It's a free AI-powered email that summarizes new episodes of Hey Fundraiser! as soon as they're published. You get the key takeaways, notable quotes, and links & mentions — all in a quick read.
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When a new episode drops, our AI transcribes and analyzes it, then generates a personalized summary tailored to your interests and profession. It's delivered to your inbox every morning.
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How often does Hey Fundraiser! release new episodes?
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