Fundraise Up · Agency Partner Program

Core module · what the readiness check covers

The Trigger Card

For client-facing advisors Keep this open during client calls
Three signals · three questions · one sentence

You are not a salesperson and this is not a sales script. You talk to your nonprofit clients more often than anyone at Fundraise Up ever will. All you have to do is notice three sentences and ask three questions. If the conversation goes anywhere, we handle the technical side from there, you stay in the relationship, and the work that comes out of it is yours.

Listen

Three things you are listening for

Each one is a problem with how the organisation collects donations online, described as something else. You will hear at least one of them this month.

Signal 1 · the quiet one

Our email list keeps growing but online giving is flat.

What it actually is

More people are showing up and fewer of them are finishing. Something on the donation page is losing them between deciding to give and actually giving, and usually nobody inside the organisation is responsible for that page.

Signal 2 · the urgent one

We just lost a big chunk of government or grant funding.

What it actually is

Money that used to arrive in a few large, predictable payments now has to come from ordinary donors, a little at a time. Every person who gives up halfway through the donation form now costs them real money, and the board is already asking about it.

Signal 3 · the seasonal one

Giving Tuesday nearly broke us. We're dreading year-end.

What it actually is

Most of their year's donations arrive in a few frantic weeks, almost all as one-off gifts, on a setup held together by a handful of exhausted people. They will tell you they need more staff. Usually they need better software.

Ask

Three questions you can ask without selling anything

None of them mention Fundraise Up. You are not pitching; you are helping a client see a gap nobody has measured. That is the job you already do.

“Out of every hundred people who start a donation on your website, how many finish?”

This is the one that opens the door. Most nonprofits genuinely do not know, and the moment they say so, it is their gap, not something you invented. You did not create a problem; you asked a question they would want the answer to.

“How much of your online giving comes from people who give every month, rather than once?”

Monthly donors are the difference between a calm year and an anxious one, and whether people sign up for monthly giving depends almost entirely on how the donation page asks them. If that number is low and they are blaming donor loyalty, it is worth a second look.

“When someone gives, what happens in the next five minutes?”

The receipt, the thank-you, the record of who gave, the invitation to give again. If the honest answer is that somebody does it by hand later in the week, donors are being lost in the gap between the gift and the relationship, and that is where most of a nonprofit's long-term money comes from.

Introduce

The introduction: one sentence, three endings

When they cannot answer question one, you have your opening. And if they can answer it, but the number is low, that is a better opening still, they already know it is a problem. Whichever of the three questions landed, the sentence is the same shape: you only change the middle to match what you just asked about. Either way: do not explain the product, and do not offer to look into it yourself. Offer the introduction.

You are not selling anything and you are not committing your client to anything. You are doing the thing a trusted advisor does: putting them in touch with someone who can answer the question you just raised. Say it plainly, and say it in the moment, not in a follow-up email three days later.
After Q1 I know a team that can measure exactly that, usually inside a week. Want me to introduce you?
After Q2 I know a team that could show you what other organisations do differently there. Want me to introduce you?
After Q3 I know a team that could make most of that happen on its own. Want me to introduce you?

Five words at the front, five at the back, and they never change. Only the middle moves.

After yes

What happens after they say yes

Four steps, and you stay in every one of them. You are never handing your client over to us, and you never have to wait on us to get started.

  1. You2 minutes

    A three-sentence introduction

    Send the template from your portal and copy your partner manager. That is the whole of what we ask you to do.

  2. UsSame week

    We put your name on it

    It goes on file under you personally, not just your agency, as soon as the first meeting is booked. That is what makes sure you get the credit for it.

  3. UsOnce you have one moving

    A regular fifteen minutes

    Your Fundraise Up partner manager, who you already have, starts a short check-in with you: which clients are interested, and what to do next.

  4. YouIf it goes ahead

    The work is yours

    Moving their donations across, connecting it to the systems they already use, improving it afterwards, running campaigns on it. Changing platform is a project, and it belongs to the agency that spotted it first.

Green is you. One of these four takes two minutes of your time, and the last one is the project.

Fundraise Up Agency Partner Program · Core module · Certification Illustrative partner-facing artifact prepared by Anton Silaev for interview purposes