Fall cohorts

Donor Growth Labs is a 10-week, application-based course and learning community for nonprofit leaders working to grow scaled giving. You'll bring a specific growth goal and use the lab to make meaningful progress on it—not by trying to tackle everything at once, but by choosing where to focus and learning through action.

The Lab follows a simple rhythm: Understand → Choose → Test → Learn → Refine.

We'll start with an in-person working session in New York City to clarify your goal, surface what you already know, and build the cohort. From there, you'll talk to donors and potential supporters, identify the people most likely to care about your work, choose a priority audience, and develop hypotheses about how to reach them or grow their giving. Then you'll design and run 1–2 small experiments, analyze what you learn, and use those insights to determine what to do next.

You'll leave with a clearer, evidence-informed strategy and a repeatable process for continuing to test, learn, and grow.

The Lab is designed for social impact leaders who have meaningful responsibility for growing individual giving or participation and need help identifying a new opportunity for growth.

This fall, we’re launching two versions of the program: One for director and manager level social impact leaders responsible for revenue or audience growth goals. The second for nonprofit founders early in their journey and working to develop a revenue model for their organization.

The founding cohorts of Donor Growth Labs will begin in October 2026 and are limited to 4–6 participants per cohort to keep the experience personal and highly interactive.

The program is $1,995 per participant for members of the founding cohorts. We'll kick off with an in-person working session and group dinner in New York City. Once the cohort is formed, we'll choose a kickoff date that works for everyone. Travel and lodging are not included in the program fee.

The remainder of the 10-week Lab combines virtual group sessions, independent fieldwork, peer sounding boards, and two 1:1 coaching sessions with Abby.

Absolutely. If you'd like to participate alongside a colleague or colleagues, send me a note. I'll offer a multi-person discount and work with you to determine whether it makes more sense for teammates to participate together or across cohorts.

For organizations that want to go through the process together, it's also possible to create a private Donor Growth Lab for your team of 3–5 people, tailored around your organization's unique donor growth goals.

By the end of the 10 weeks, you'll have:

• A clear donor growth goal and top priority metric

• A deeper understanding of the people most likely to care about your work

• Clarity on who you’re trying to reach

• Results and learnings from research and 1–2 real-world experiments

• A Learning Plan for what to test and do next after the course is complete

• A framework you can continue using with your team after the Lab ends

Just as importantly, you'll have moved from "Here are all the things we could do" to "Here's what we believe matters most, what we've learned, and what we're doing next."

A little bit of all three – but it's designed first and foremost as a working lab.

There are frameworks and examples to learn from, but this isn't a course where you spend 10 weeks consuming content.

There's individualized coaching and the course is designed so you’re placed alongside peers thinking about the same types of challenges you are.

A handful of beliefs show up again and again:

Donors are humans.

Before donors are segments, conversion rates, or names in a database, they are people. Understanding what they care about and why your work connects to who they are is the foundation of sustainable donor growth.

Make a decision so you can start learning.

You don't need perfect information to move forward. Develop an informed hypothesis, make a choice, test it, and learn.

Get out of the building. 

Learning starts with real conversations and observations, not sitting behind a desk. Word of mouth spreads mostly through in person conversations. Ideas are hypothetical until you make them real.

Generosity is contagious.

People influence other people. Your donors, advocates, members, and community can be powerful engines for helping more people discover your work.

One goal. One primary metric.

Discipline creates clarity. One goal. One primary metric at a time. Many possible ways to get there.