Newsletter: Selfish Giving + You: 2025 is Our Year! 🍾 ; Retail Winners and Losers of 2024 👎 ; How Jimmy Carter Made Habitat a Nonprofit Giant 🥜
Let’s address an important housekeeping matter in this first issue of 2025: How we can work together in the coming year.
Below is a pie chart highlighting how I collaborated with clients last year and provided value through my work. The percentages are derived from revenue.
Let's go through each one.
🎤 Speaking: This was my largest area of work last year, including in-person and online presentations. If you’re looking for a dynamic, engaging speaker (who doesn't pronounce his R's) for your annual conference or partnership summit, I’d love to join you—whether live or via Zoom.
I tailor my presentations to inspire and provide practical, actionable insights for your audience. Online keynotes are more affordable than live presentations. Let’s make your next event unforgettable!
You can learn more about my speaking here.
✍️ Case Studies: My case study service was my fastest-growing offering last year—for good reason. Social proof is a powerful tool for winning over prospective partners.
In the past year, I’ve worked with organizations such as Wounded Warrior Project, American Lung Association, Hire Heroes USA, and Boys & Girls Clubs of America, to name just a few. My clients and I firmly believe that case studies are a must-have for partnership teams.
Think of them as the "angels on your shoulders" during prospect conversations. Case studies allow your existing partners to become your best advocates, showing prospects precisely what you can do for them—because you’ve already done it for others.
The investment for case studies is $1250 each. If you'd like to see some examples, reply, and I'll email you several to review.
🤝 Partnerships. Over the past few years, my partnership work with agencies has been pretty steady. It takes two forms: First, I can refer you to a trusted agency that meets your needs. Second, I occasionally collaborate with agencies as their tactical consultant, helping to bring their strategies to life.
Here’s how you can leverage my network: After drafting your RFP, send it to me. If I can help directly, I’ll let you know. If not, I’ll connect you with the exact agency (or agencies) best suited for your goals—no fluff, just honest advice and introductions to people I trust to deliver results—pinky swear.
🧠 Consulting: Although my advisory and coaching work with partnership teams is a smaller part of my business, I’m excited to grow it this year. I want to help more small and mid-size nonprofits excel in their corporate outreach and execution.
At $250 per hour, Coaching is an effective, easy, and affordable way to start working with me. We can customize the frequency to fit your weekly, monthly, or quarterly needs.
Here’s my goal for 2025: If just 10% of you—300 readers—made a valuable investment in coaching, consulting, or a case study, we’d create an even stronger community of impactful partnership work.
Some of you have been loyal readers for years, and I’m so grateful! If you’ve never worked with me, let’s change that in 2025. We can make a difference together, whether it’s one case study, one hour of consulting, or something else. And I promise you will profit from it as much as I will.
Win-win is the Selfish Giving way!
✍️ Partnership Notes
1. There are two fewer retailers to partner with: Party City and Big Lots close 1,600 stores and declare bankruptcy.
Read more on the retail winners and losers of 2024.
The Nonprofits That Will Lose Out, According to ChatGPT
Party City
Party City sells co-branded pink accessories and decorations during Halloween, donating 10% of the retail sales price to Susan G. Komen. Additionally, they run a round-up customer donation program at store registers, with 100% of the proceeds benefiting the organization.
Since 2012, Party City has partnered with Make-A-Wish, granting nearly 450 wishes through nationwide donations exceeding $4.5 million. Customers are encouraged to donate at the register and through annual fundraiser programs.
Party City sells reusable bags in all stores, with a portion of proceeds going to Wounded Nature-Working Veterans, which assembles volunteers to remove debris from coastal areas, aiding environmental cleanup efforts.
Big Lots
Big Lots conducts annual in-store fundraising campaigns to support On Our Sleeves, a movement focused on children's mental health. Customers can donate at checkout, with 100% of the funds going toward providing free mental health educational resources. Since 2015, Big Lots has raised over $28 million for this cause.
In addition to customer donations, Big Lots and the Big Lots Foundation made a multi-year commitment of $50 million to support Nationwide Children's Hospital.
In July 2023, Big Lots launched its first joint point-of-sale campaign with Make-A-Wish America. Customers could donate at checkout, with each donation rewarded with a coupon for future purchases. This initiative aimed to grant life-changing wishes for children with critical illnesses.
2. Fifty bar owners in the northeast are partnering with the "Angel Shot" app to keep women safe from sexual harassment and abuse.
3. Healthy Family Project’s new Carry the Cause initiative is anchored in selling eco-friendly tote bags that tout the simple message: “This Bag Fights Hunger.”
Bags are being sold online and in Harps Food Stores through the end of February.
The program helps stock the Feeding America network of food banks and food pantries at a time when donations typically slow but demand remains high.
4. Since 2001, the Hershey Bears hockey club has partnered with charities for their annual teddy bear toss. While I have mixed feelings about this partnership, there's no denying—it’s an incredible spectacle to witness!
🤑 Marketing Your Cause
1. A heartfelt plea from copywriters Julie & Brett Cooper in their excellent Fundraising Writing Newsletter: Please keep your fundraising story notes human and specific—don’t AI-ify them!
2. Meet the newest generation: Generation Beta.
3. How Gillette Children's Hospital in St. Paul, Minnesota, uses images as a communication tool.
😎 Cool Jobs in Cause
1. Director of Corporate Partnerships, Scratch Foundation, NYC ($110k - $120k)
2. Licensing & Strategic Partnerships Coordinator, New York Road Runners, NYC
3. Manager, Fundraising and Partnerships, Burger King Foundation, Miami
🧠🍌 Brain Food
1. How Jimmy Carter turned Habitat for Humanity into a nonprofit juggernaut.🎁 (🎁 = I subscribe to this publication and am 'gifting' you this article). Also, Coca-Cola honors Carter's legacy with nonprofit donations.
2. What brands can learn from Costco’s no-nonsense defense of DEI.
"But what’s really notable isn’t just Costco’s stance, but how calmly and firmly grounded it is in characterizing DEI as a useful and effective strategy—which is good for customers, employees, the brand, and the bottom line. In a cultural back-and-forth that’s been defined largely by posturing, pandering, and threats, Costco is trying to stick to business."
3. I've gone all in on winter sowing native seeds for the spring. Many native seeds require a moist, cold stratification period—a natural process mimicking winter conditions that breaks seed dormancy and enables germination.
Planting these seeds in pots during December and January exposes them to winter's freeze-thaw cycles.
I seeded nearly 100 pots this winter, each containing a different native species. Come spring, I'll be awash in seedlings, and by fall, some may even grow large enough to transplant into the garden as full-size plants.
Are you interested in starting your own journey with winter-sown plants? There's still time! The Wild Seed Project in Maine is a fantastic resource. It offers practical advice for gardeners of all levels.
But this endeavor is about more than filling my garden—and surely other people's gardens—with beautiful, native plants.
It’s about reclaiming autonomy, fostering empowerment, and defying the status quo. Gardening is a radical form of activism in its ability to reconnect us with the earth, challenge unsustainable systems, and inspire a better world.✊🌱
Thanks for reading this week! As always, let me know if I can be helpful in any way.
