So many people think foundation fundraising is all about writing grants, and that renewing a foundation grant is all about writing a really good report. It's not. I'm here to tell you that if you are not treating Program Officers like major donors - if the only time you reach out to them is when
Read More

The word “strategic” is a fraught term. You can put it in front of any noun and it makes it sound more important. Sometimes people use the word “strategic” when, in reality, they are just talking about being proactive: anticipating future events and planning ahead. That is fine, but it is not quite the same as
Read More

I’ve been thinking a lot about how change happens in organizations. Sure, there are entire books and studies on change management processes, and consulting firms devoted to guiding you every step of the way. Often, these processes speak to executives who already want change and have the authority to impose it across the company. But my
Read More

In the realm of ethical storytelling, resistance to policies and procedures is inevitable. Sometimes, the pushback comes from within, staff who don’t understand why extra care and caution are necessary when telling stories or why consent matters so much. But sometimes, the resistance comes from donors. Lately, I’ve had no fewer than five people ask me
Read More

If you’ve ever spent hours crafting a development plan, only to watch it gather dust, you’re not alone. Many nonprofits fall into the same traps, leading to ineffective strategies, frustrated teams, and unmet goals. The good news? These pitfalls are avoidable with a little awareness and a few strategic adjustments. Let’s explore the most common pitfalls
Read More

When done well, a development plan can serve as a powerful roadmap—aligning your team, clarifying priorities, and putting an end to the chaos of feeling like you’re constantly winging it. And yet, so many nonprofits have operated for years without one. Why? Because the true purpose of a development plan is often misunderstood. Many Development Directors
Read More

If you’ve worked in the nonprofit sector long enough, you’ve likely encountered these stories—and they may have even happened to you: The Board increase the revenue goals for next year but provide no additional investment in fundraising staffing or infrastructure to support those lofty targets. Or how about when you're halfway through the year
Read More

When I work with teams facing challenges—strained relationships between departments, communication breakdowns, or persistent organizational hurdles—I often see the same pattern: people feel stuck. Frustration builds, blame starts to circulate, and progress grinds to a halt. Here’s the truth: most complaints are about things we can’t control—other people’s behavior, their feelings, their wants and needs. And
Read More

I’ve come to believe that strategic planning isn’t about following a step-by-step process; it’s about asking the right questions. If you don’t ask the best questions, the answers, ideas, and plans that emerge won’t address what’s truly needed to propel your organization forward. Unfortunately, many strategic planning processes at nonprofits focus more on checking boxes
Read More

Many of my readers who grew up in U.S. classrooms might remember teachers saying, “There are no silly questions.” Actually, the original phrase was “There are no stupid questions,” but we’ve wisely moved away from using such language. While these statements were intended to encourage curiosity and inquisitiveness in children, they don’t hold up as
Read More

As an intercultural trainer, consultant, and anthropologist, I have spent my career helping people navigate human differences, particularly in multicultural teams and global organizations. Over the years, I’ve become increasingly skeptical of books and speakers who promise quick and easy methods for adapting to any culture. The idea of a one-size-fits-all solution is seductive, but
Read More

In a recent meeting with an organization planning donor trips, someone asked me a fascinating question: “Is it unethical to do home visits? Should we even offer them?” It’s a great question, and one that deserves thoughtful consideration. Home visits—where a group of travelers visits the home of a private individual or family—are a common feature
Read More

Strategic planning is one of the most overused (and misunderstood) terms in the nonprofit world. Over the years, I’ve noticed that when nonprofits ask for “strategic planning” services, they often aren’t clear on what they actually need—or even what the term really means. Rather than getting stuck in debates over definitions, I’ve found that starting
Read More

As a consultant and social researcher deeply immersed in the world of fundraising, one might expect me to champion research dictating which stories drive charitable giving from donors. However, my knowledge of both qualitative and quantitative methods, combined with my frontline fundraising experience, has instilled a healthy dose of skepticism in me. In this article,
Read More

As a nonprofit consultant, I am frequently asked whether or not nonprofits should compensate program participants for sharing their stories (to be used on the website, in fundraising appeals, in grant reports, etc). I have encountered people who feel very strongly either way, and those who are totally on the fence. Let's take a step
Read More

For organizations operating in tourist-friendly destinations, accommodating donors who want to drop by while on vacation can present unique challenges. At first glance, accommodating such visits to program sites may seem like a simple task. After all, the donors are already covering their travel expenses and literally meeting us where we are, so what could possibly
Read More

Navigating through the sea of books on nonprofit strategic planning, one thing becomes clear—they all seem to echo similar strategies: first, secure buy-in from the board; then, conduct a thorough stakeholder assessment and environmental analysis; finally, gather for a series of meetings to chart out the roadmap for the next 3-5 years. While I respect the
Read More

I am privileged to be part of a journey supporting a client in their ambitious multi-million dollar campaign, and the success they are achieving is nothing short of remarkable. Such a campaign is usually a challenging feat for any organization, let alone a new organization that started the campaign with just a few donors in
Read More

I have had the privilege of actively contributing to the strategic planning initiatives of several remarkable organizations. Throughout this journey, I've identified five common challenges within nonprofit strategic planning and have crafted effective solutions to guide my clients in steering clear of these potential pitfalls: Problem: Strategic Plan as a Marketing Tool The strategic plan often transforms
Read More

In my quest to make donor trips and site visits more equitable, effective, and empathy-enabling, I have poured over research. Every once in a while, I find a great piece of academic research that has immediate and practical application in our daily work. In this article, I share some of the best research on experience
Read More

As a principle ethical storytelling, I often stress the importance of honoring our contributors’ terminology, and using they words they use to describe themselves and their experiences. Sometimes we use words are not widely used in the English language, and a common thing to do is italicize them so the reader doesn’t confuse them for
Read More

A lot has been written about travel marketing – including what images or words help people begin imagining themselves in a place, and then instill such a desire to go there that those people book the trip on the spot. This is not that article. Rather than focus on glossy brochures or vivid language, this article focuses
Read More

After two years of a pause in travel for most organizations, it is clear by now that the industry has rebounded, with demand returning before supply can even catch up. This past year I’ve seen donor trips fill faster than ever, with little signs of that trend slowing down in 2023. With such overwhelming demand, it
Read More

The cornerstone of my life’s work has been to understand what helps people communicate and collaborate more effectively across human differences. When I first started Philanthropy without Borders, my intention was to was to dismantle the exploitative elements often inherent in donor-client interactions by making the very best research in the social sciences readily applicable
Read More

"Caliopy Glaros has a unique, proven, and well curated approach to setting meeting goals, facilitating discussions skillfully and delivering an experience that engages not only participants’ minds but also their hearts and passion for the meeting agenda at hand.  She has an expert skill – albeit innate! - in tailoring her work for each client
Read More

Campaign messages like “we are the voice for the children” and “we are the voice for the poor” are all too common. Those people already have their own voices (however they express themselves, be it though auditory speech or another means)…. Whether they are “heard” is another matter. My point is, being the metaphorical voice for
Read More

I’ve written a lot about how utilizing empathy requires that we not project our own perceptions, assumptions, and desires on to others. While the general public seems to think “empathy” means feeling exactly what another person feels; we often don’t know how another person feels because we are actually  just projecting what we would feel in another person’s situation. This problem
Read More

I‘ve been consulting on donor trips for a while now, and have come across a fair share of assumptions and ill-informed beliefs. In this article, I spell out the most common myths and misconceptions I have encountered…and saved the very best for last. 1. Donor trips have low retention. Like any event, donor trips attract both those
Read More

As fundraising and marketing staff, you understand the why of donor trips, but a challenge you may still face is convincing your colleagues in the program department why they should take time to participate in a donor trip. (If you are wondering how program staff should and shouldn’t be involved in donor trips, see articles
Read More

If you have read my last article on “Consent is a Process, Not (Just) a Form,” you’ll know that obtaining informed consent from our clients is an important part of nonprofit storytelling. But if informed consent is just not possible, what do you do? I'm not talking about those circumstances when a client clearly declines
Read More

When it comes to ethical storytelling for nonprofits, “consent” has become a buzzword. Nearly every article on the topic of ethical storytelling mentions the need for “informed consent,” yet few go to the trouble of defining what exactly that means, why we need it, or how it can get operationalized. In this article, I’m going
Read More

This is one of those stories we tell ourselves: That fundraising staff and program staff are not aligned in storytelling. There is a perception that the fundraising staff prioritize the needs of donors, wanting to overly focus on the negative aspects of clients’ lives and commodify their stories into “assets” for the annual appeal. And
Read More

The conversation around ethical storytelling has evolved a lot over the years. We used to think of ethical storytelling as a practice of “doing no harm” to our contributors and those featured in the stories. For this, we owe a lot to journalism’s best practices, like getting informed consent, not traumatizing the contributors with insensitive questions, not
Read More

I was recently featured in an article for Travel Age West. "Whether it’s climbing Mount Kilimanjaro, participating in a charity walk or dumping a bucket of ice over your friend’s head, what makes these activities so successful in sparking charitable giving? Caliopy Glaros, founder and principal consultant of Philanthropy Without Borders, believes it comes down to
Read More

Most people think alumni travel is only one thing: big group trips, the kind we see in glossy catalog photos. But my experience working with universities and colleges large and small has revealed at least three models of alumni travel. One school could find a match with one model, or all three. You just should
Read More

One of our biggest challenges when writing about culture is avoiding stereotyping that culture. Sometimes our stories sound like stereotypes because we have failed to ask one important question of what we have written: “How do I know what I just wrote is true?” Dani Robbins, a nonprofit strategist, provided a great example of this failure in
Read More

I get asked a lot about how to address culture—a group’s shared values and beliefs—through ethical storytelling. Nonprofit staff who are not members of the communities they serve sometimes struggle with authentically describing the role culture plays in their organizations’ work. This apprehension makes sense; there are a lot of good questions around this topic. What
Read More

I’ve written quite a bit about how to prepare donors for their client experiences and what should be included in their guidebooks, but there’s one very important thing we need to address: assumptions and expectations. Although these words are often used interchangeably, in my work, I draw some critical distinctions between the two: Assumptions are our
Read More

As a fundraiser and intercultural communications consultant, I’m often asked to help prepare donors and staff for the cultural differences they will encounter when interacting with populations both within the United States and around the world. For example, if a group of donors from the United States is traveling to Ethiopia to tour projects they
Read More

In my last article I cautioned you against overextending, burdening, and miscasting your Program Staff and Local Partners (the people who work for you on-site where your organization’s work is happening). Now let’s dive in to discussing the three most meaningful ways to make use of their skills and knowledge. 1. For direct client engagement “Client,” in this
Read More

For all those folks in fundraising who are planning your next donor trip with the help from locals on site: this article is for you. Your on-site Program Staff and Local Partners have important roles to play—just not necessarily the ones you think. Support them by allowing them to do their actual jobs. Don’t overburden
Read More

I recently wrote about how a donor trip can be used effectively with donors at any stage of the donor cycle. But let’s get real: while some organizations have large enough travel programs to offer different trips for different donors at each stage, many organizations only do one trip (or a handful of trips) a
Read More

I’ve written a lot about having one clear goal for your donor trip.But what should that goal be?Are donor trips about acquiring new donors, cultivating existing donors, or recognizing recent donors?The answer is…all of the above.But it is helpful to distinguish your approach based on where a donor sits in the donor cycle. In fundraising, there
Read More

So much of the social impact sector relies on the support of volunteers. This is true both domestically and internationally. Volunteers play a vital role in our operations and our ability to effect change. With so much good being done by volunteers, it seems ungrateful to complain about harm that can be perpetuated by them.
Read More

In 2019 at the Global PDX Conference, I moderated a panel called “Voluntourism: Power, Privilege, and New Possibilities.” We didn’t shy away from the controversies of sending people overseas for short-term assignments, some of which I’ve documented in the article “5 Pitfalls of Voluntourism.” While the challenges and disappointments of voluntourism have been well-documented in the
Read More

With the vaccine looming and pent-up demand for human interaction nearing its bursting point, it’s no wonder we’re all thinking about hybrid events experiences, which occur both in person and in the virtual realm. But hybrid events can be more than twice the work of in-person and virtual events. This article explores common pitfalls to
Read More

Ethical storytelling is not just about good stewardship in acquisition (interviewing)—often the biggest blunders occur behind the scenes: in the editorial process. Of all the steps, this stage of the process can truly be ridden with disasters, where a story can be appropriated into something the contributor never intended. Take a look at some examples: “A friend
Read More

I’ve written a lot about the principles behind ethical storytelling, how empathy differs from sympathy in storytelling, why exploitative storytelling persists, and how the evolving landscape of lexicon and language influence meaning and marginalization. These topics are great for reflection, but in this article I roll up my sleeves to give you some tangible tips
Read More

I’ve written a lot about the role cultural differences play in travel, particularly, donor trips. But in this article, I want to bring the message of intercultural awareness home to a more familiar territory: staff interactions with donors. Specifically, I’m talking about those the one-on-one meetings that development officers, board members, and executive directors have
Read More

As a follow up to my foundational article, “What You Thought Was Empathy Was Actually Sympathy,” in this article I dispel some misconceptions about empathy and provide tactical pointers to help nonprofit professionals better embody empathy in their work and avoid the pitfalls of sympathy. Empathy is not about emotion...it’s about understanding Rather than try to pull
Read More

Empathy has come to have a bad rep lately. After enjoying years in the spotlight as the antidote to just about everything from prejudice to poverty, empathy is now being rebranded as the cause—not the solution—to those problems. The arguments are not insignificant. Psychologist Paul Bloom has been a long-time critic of empathy in the charitable sector,
Read More

While virtual experiences continue to be the only way we can connect with our supporters during this pandemic, many organizations are wondering what more they can do to incorporate equity into their events. Don’t let this powerful principle live in the HR manual—in this article, I provide five ways to incorporate equity in your virtual
Read More

Originally published in "Impact Tourism Handbook: Best Practices in Giving Time, Talent, & Treasure" by the Center for Responsible Travel. What is donor travel? Donor travel is a thriving and important subset of impact tourism. While it can be argued that all donor trips are considered impact trips, not all impact trips are considered donor trips. The
Read More

In the fall of 2019, I was speaking with a client about creating a process for vetting prospective tour operators around equity. Her organization has a strong social justice component in their mission and wanted to ensure they were partnering with tour operators who shared their commitment. This proved challenging, as some tour operators only
Read More

While many inspiring leaders and activists have stepped up to create and share resources on how to respond to the current movement, my colleagues in the fundraising space have lamented the lack specific ideas and tools for having critical conversations with donors. These conversations can feel daunting for organizations whose missions don’t explicitly include the dismantling
Read More

We live in a time when remaining silent on critical issues is no longer possible. Even if we have been living lives of relative comfort—the lives of our friends, families, and neighbors are at stake. You know that you need to have more honest, transparent, and authentic conversations with donors, volunteers, and colleagues on race, bias,
Read More

The COVID-19 outbreak has created challenges for the way nonprofits engage their supporters. While we remain apart from each other at physical distances, unable to travel or even convene in large groups, the question on everyone's mind is: how do we continue to steward and engage our donors while they can’t meet us in person,
Read More

The outbreak of COVID-19 has presented a new urgency for nonprofits to engage donors virtually. After training over 5,000 people on virtual engagement and helping a dozen of my current clients come up with creative ideas, I put together this list of 10 tips to help fundraising and event staff focus their efforts on those
Read More

I've received a lot of questions about the future of donor travel post-COVID-19 and want to offer my perspective. To see my forecasts on the travel industry with some specific predictions for donor travel, check out the bottom of my FAQs article here. So how will your travel program change after the crisis is over? In a
Read More

Last month COVID-19 cases hit the United States with full force and I pivoted my content strategy. I took a break from providing new tools and content on my newsletter and instead sent out an offer to have a free 30-minute strategy call with anyone who felt they needed one. Many of folks took me up
Read More

Since the term “poverty porn” first appeared in 1981, much has been said about the exploitation of human suffering to inspire charitable giving. Yet for all that we’ve learned over the last four decades, many organizations still struggle to communicate their impact in a way that authentically represents the issue and preserves the dignity of
Read More

In this article, I highlight the main critiques of exploitation in fundraising communications. Over the years many organizations, including nonprofits, media publications, and corporate entities, have been criticized for using exploitative language and imagery to inspire action. These communications are seen as taking advantage of the differences (access to resources, lived experience, race, geographic location, etc.)
Read More

Staff members are selected to participate in donor trips for a variety of reasons. In an earlier article I published on roles and responsibilities, I argued that the staff members physically attending the trip should be those folks who hold the relationships with the key travelers and who are comfortable with the fundraising element. While
Read More

Selecting the right staff member(s) to attend your donor trips is a special challenge for many organizations. No matter how small the shop, these decisions can be very political and sometimes determined by arbitrary or irrelevant factors. Rather than dwell on what those may be, I’ve provided an article on factors you do need to
Read More

Planning tours for philanthropists, volunteers, or others looking to invest time, talent, or treasure? Avoid these five common mistakes when planning their next travel adventure. Impact tours are one of the fastest growing arms of the travel industry. The Center for Responsible Travel (CREST) defines impact tourism as “making strategic contributions of time, talent, and treasure
Read More

The balance between fundraising and education in nonprofit travel programs is not easy to achieve. It takes thorough planning and a little trial and error to get the mix right. In a previous article, I examined the role of ten factors and helped you place your organization on a continuum of fundraising and education. In this article,
Read More

Many nonprofits wonder what the right balance is between fundraising and education in their travel programs. While every trip aims to be educational, at the very least informing the travelers about the organization and its work, but the extent to which we use these experiences as opportunities for fundraising differs drastically by program and organization. In the
Read More

Many organizations believe that donor trips are a waste of resources - that donors should give money directly to the organization instead of spending it on plane tickets to travel to the site. In this short video, Caliopy Glaros debunks this myth and explains why we shouldn't be comparing the intrinsic value of travel to that
Read More

What kind of cultural preparation do staff, volunteers, and donors really need before embarking on a short assignment overseas? Here, I argue that it is more critical to provide cultural preparation for short-term assignments than it is for long-term ones. While much attention has been paid to the role of intercultural competence in long-term international placements,
Read More

Assessing someone’s intercultural competence is one of the most difficult things to do in an interview process, so let's drill down into one question you can start using right away. Some years ago, an organization hiring a staff position that required 25% international travel asked me to come up with one question to assess a candidate's
Read More

Site visits play an important role in helping funders determine which organizations and causes to allocate resources to, but unfortunately these engagements are also ripe for exploitation. Staff in nonprofits often spend undue time preparing for and facilitating site visits from funders, much of it to the detriment of their programs. Nonprofit clients are sometimes
Read More

Lack of clarity around the role of the volunteer causes many organizations to struggle in matching offers of help with their critical needs. This article aims to help organizations and individuals identify the right volunteer model for their engagement.  While almost every nonprofit relies on the support of volunteers, not all of them are using those
Read More

Nonprofits have come a long way in our understanding of the potential harm that can be done by exploitative fundraising campaigns.  However, we still struggle with certain storytelling practices.   I’ve curated a list of the three hottest topics in ethical storytelling right now and presented both sides of each argument. How you should proceed with each issue
Read More

The language we use matters. When is donor-centric language an effective way of garnering support, and when do fundraisers cross the line in communicating real issues with transparency and authenticity? A long time ago (and yes, sometimes still today), nonprofits centered themselves in their communications to donors. Fundraising appeals were very - to put it bluntly - 
Read More

Few organizations anticipate cross-cultural challenges on their donor trips, but almost all are likely to encounter them. Here I explain the most common cross-cultural challenges involved in donor trips and what to do to avoid them. In Part 1 of this article, I focused on the cultural challenges our visitors (donors, board members, volunteers) experience on
Read More

Few organizations anticipate cross-cultural challenges on their donor trips, but almost all are likely to encounter them. Here I explain the most common cross-cultural challenges involved in donor trips and what to do to avoid them. Even the smoothest of donor and volunteer trips are not without their share of challenges. There are a number of
Read More

As someone who has spent the last decade helping people work effectively across cultures, I often get asked, “How much do we really have to adapt to other peoples’ cultural differences?” Do we really need to ask about the weather before we can talk business? Do we really have to refrain from showing strong emotions in professional
Read More

If your Ethical Fundraising Guidelines rely on words like “Dignity” and “Respect” to inform behavior and practice, chances are you’re not accomplishing very much. When I read through guidelines for ethical storytelling or ethical photography and come across the phrases like “we believe in treating everyone with respect,” I’m inclined to ask three questions: What is considered "respectful" treatment? Who
Read More

When portraying people who have benefitted from the work of our organizations, it’s important that they have a meaningful voice in their portrayal. Collecting their feedback is one of the only ways we can be sure to treat others the way they want to be treated. But we don’t know how they want to be treated
Read More

Before our donors and volunteers depart on trips with our organization, it is important to adequately prepare them. Doing so mitigates potential risks and increases the likelihood of a positive experience. I used to think that handing out lengthy guidebooks was essential to preparing our visitors. Many of them will also do their own research, read
Read More

I’ve spent years sending donors, volunteers, students, and staff on overseas assignments and I’m keenly interested in what makes people successful in foreign environments. Many of us know someone who didn’t cope well on an international trip, while others surprised us with the ease at which they seemed to adapt just about anywhere. Why is
Read More