Wildlife and nature

Animal shelters and rescues

Theater and dance

Rivers, parks and trails

Hunger and food

Schools and learning

Housing and homelessness

Community health

Mental health

Mentoring and foster care

Legal help and rights

Jobs and money help

Atlanta

The Triangle

Everywhere

The Collective Workshop

Royal Animal Refuge

Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Atlanta

Georgia Advancing Communities Together

Atlanta Writers Club

Cobb Collaborative

Bosleys Place

Jewish Fertility Foundation

Murphy Cline-Snider

About

Why we are building Collective, in many posts.

Perspectives

A donation interface is meant to start a relationship, not close a sale.

That should be obvious. Yet almost every donation online is built to do the opposite: take the money and end the interaction. We already know a better model works, because the creator economy spent the last decade proving it.

Patreon turned an audience of fans into real businesses with one move. Instead of asking people to buy something once, it asked them to join, to back a creator every month in exchange for access, community, and a seat close to the work. The tiers carried genuine value, so paying again wasn't a chore. It was the entire point. More than 10 million patrons now support creators this way, and they've sent over $10 billion through the platform, almost all of it recurring.

That is a genuinely new fact about how people behave. A decade ago, "subscribe every month to a person whose work you believe in" was not something most people did. Today it's the default economic relationship of the entire creator world, and north of 90% of the money flowing to creators arrives that way, month after month, on purpose.

We believe that this makes what occurs in the nonprofit sector hard to explain.

No one has a stronger claim to that kind of relationship than a mission-driven organization. A creator offers entertainment. A nonprofit offers a cause someone has built their values around: a food bank, a school, a cure. The bond runs deeper, the reason to stay is bigger, and the impact is unmistakably ongoing. If any relationship on earth should run on recurring support, it's this one.

And yet at the average nonprofit, recurring giving is around 13% of revenue. Fewer than one in five supporters ever joins in the way that, in the creator economy, nearly everyone does.

This isn't a donor problem. The sector is excellent at keeping the people it manages to set up as recurring: monthly donors are retained around 80% a year, give for close to eight years on average, and are worth roughly twice a one-time donor over a lifetime. The relationships work beautifully once they begin.

The problem is that they so rarely begin, and we believe that the status quo for interfaces available to organizations is a large reason why.

So we built Collective's giving experience around the move the creator economy got right: turning a one-time ask into an invitation to join.

On Collective, we have taken donor education seriously. We think organizations should have the option to communicate what giving at a particular level means to them, and could mean for the donor.



Tying each gift to a concrete outcome is the highest-leverage choice on the page. Across experiments with more than two million PayPal users, Stanford researchers found that showing a donor a concrete figure for what a gift does — "$1 provides two people clean water for a year" — nearly quadrupled the rate of giving versus showing nothing, and beat written descriptions of the same impact by close to 60%.

The same research found the part that matters most to us. A better first giving experience made donors come back and give again for as long as eighteen months afterward. Get the start right and the relationship does much of the rest on its own.

This is what makes recurring natural instead of forced. The work a gift pays for is almost never a one-time event. A garden gets watered every week. A student gets tutored all year. A shelter keeps the lights on in December and January both. When a giving level is tied to ongoing work, an ongoing gift is just the honest version of it, and recurring stops being something you have to talk a donor into. It becomes the obvious shape of a commitment they already want to make.

The most meaningful relationships in a person's life should work like the ones they already pay for every month. For nonprofits, they never have, because the software to run them didn't exist. That's what we set out to build.

Next in the series: what a supporter actually comes back to — the content and community that live inside a Collective space. After that, how to run the whole thing from your own site.

The giving experience on Collective (Part 1: Checkout)

The future of social impact is being written right now. Just not where most nonprofits are looking.

If you're watching your social media reach decline while donor acquisition costs climb, you're experiencing the same digital shift that hit content creators three years ago. The difference? Creators adapted. They found a better way forward.



What creators discovered (and why it matters for nonprofits)

Content creators and nonprofits have more in common than you might think. Both build communities around expertise and shared values. Both depend on relationships and spreading messages.

Here's what creators figured out: Purpose-built platforms consistently outperform general social media for community building.

The data tells a clear story. Facebook's organic reach for pages dropped to 2.6%, while Instagram hovers around 4%. Meanwhile, creators who moved to specialized platforms built sustainable, growing communities that general platforms never delivered.

Take Bari Weiss, who transformed her newsletter concept into The Free Press—now a 50-person operation with over 1 million subscribers generating millions annually. Or Edwin Dorsey, who earned over $300,000 in his first year on Substack without a pre-existing audience.

These aren't outlier success stories. They represent systematic results from choosing infrastructure designed for their specific needs.

Smart creators didn't just improve their content strategy. They changed their infrastructure entirely. They moved to platforms built specifically for direct audience relationships, predictable revenue models, and community engagement tools designed for their needs.



Nonprofits have distinct needs that general platforms aren't designed to serve:





Deep donor relationships beyond surface-level engagement



Volunteer coordination and management systems



Impact storytelling that drives meaningful action



Sustainable funding models independent of platform changes

The future of nonprofit digital strategy isn't better social media optimization. It's platform independence.

Building the nonprofit platform future

This gap in purpose-built infrastructure for nonprofits is exactly why we're building Collective.

We watched the creator economy prove that specialized platforms create exponentially better outcomes for mission-driven communities. Yet no equivalent exists for nonprofits—organizations with equally specific needs and missions many times more important.

Just as Substack gave creators newsletter infrastructure and Patreon enabled subscription communities, nonprofits need digital infrastructure designed specifically for social impact organizations. This isn't about incremental improvements to existing tools. It's about fundamentally different infrastructure built for mission-driven work.

The choice facing nonprofit leaders today mirrors what creators faced three years ago: optimize for a system working against your goals, or build infrastructure aligned with your mission.

We believe that the organizations that choose platform independence will define the next decade of digital social impact.

Nonprofits should care about the creator economy

You’ve probably noticed the rise of run clubs, those groups of people weaving through city streets in matching shirts, logging miles together after work or on weekend mornings. At first, I couldn’t understand why anyone would pay to join one. Running doesn’t require much planning beyond lacing up your shoes and finding a route, and it’s one of the few sports you can do almost anywhere, alone or with friends, at no cost at all.But the more I learned, the more it made sense. People aren’t joining run clubs because they need help learning how to run. They’re joining because running with others changes the entire experience.There’s energy in a crowd moving in the same direction, accountability when someone expects you to show up, and most importantly, a connection when you celebrate milestones together. That run could be the first 5k, a personal best, or just showing up on a rainy Tuesday because you know someone else will be there too. The miles matter, but the real draw is the community built around them.This is where nonprofits can take a page from the run club playbook.A one-time donation is a bit like showing up for a single run. It’s meaningful, but it ends there. The real opportunity lies in building a sense of belonging where donors feel like part of the journey, see the people behind the mission, and connect with others who care about the same cause.When that sense of community exists, giving becomes more than a transaction. It turns into a relationship, something people want to return to because they feel like they’re moving forward together. The mission becomes the route everyone follows, the staff are the pacers setting the rhythm, and the donors are the runners who keep showing up because they feel part of something bigger than themselves.So as you think about how to engage supporters, remember this: people don’t just want to give; they want to belong. Give them a reason to show up, not just to give once, but to be part of the story you’re building together. At the end of the day, it’s not just about the finish line, it’s about who you’re running with.

Donors Want to Join Your Mission, Not Just Fund It

There’s an odd but powerful parallel between being a fan of a sports team and supporting a nonprofit. I’ve been a lifelong San Antonio Spurs fan. If you follow the NBA, you know the last few years have been rough for us, but like many fans, I’ve stayed loyal.When I think back to what got me hooked, the championships or the winning streaks drew me in, but the people and the culture kept me hooked. The Spurs are known not just for basketball excellence, but for professionalism, character, and a team-first mentality. None of that success would’ve been possible without the right people in the right roles. Even as stars retired and our winning faded, I trust they’ll get back to the top; not because of hype, but because of the organization behind the scenes. The people who built something worth rooting for.The same idea applies to nonprofits.Donors give when they believe, and they believe when they know who’s doing the work. Staff are your equivalent of the players and coaches. They’re the ones who execute the mission, carry the culture, and build relationships that last. Just like a fan who sticks around in the rebuilding years, donors stay loyal not only because of your outcomes, but because of the people they believe in. Your staff are the heartbeat of your mission and deserve to be seen.When it comes to giving, trust isn’t built on outcomes alone. Research shows that donor satisfaction rises significantly when staff are seen as informed, responsive, and effective. That sense of competence and care builds long-term loyalty. But there’s a problem: staff turnover in nonprofits is high, with average tenure under 4 years. When someone leaves, relationships often leave with them.I’ve worked in, donated to, and volunteered for enough nonprofits to know that donors notice when there’s a revolving door. It disrupts continuity, making the work feel fragile. But when I know the team, when I’ve heard from the program director or seen a staff member in the field, it feels like something built to last.Instead of a single voice carrying the donor relationship, imagine an entire team helping tell the story like a program coordinator sharing a quick update, a volunteer manager showing behind-the-scenes moments, or a field worker highlighting the day’s impact. When staff are part of the narrative, trust becomes institutional. Donors feel anchored not just to a person, but to a purpose and the team driving it forward.At Collective, we believe the people behind the mission deserve to be part of the story. Not to replace your comms strategy or turn staff into marketers, but to make it effortless for the humans behind your mission to be seen. Donors want to see more than outcomes; they want to see who’s making it happen. That visibility builds trust. That trust builds recurring support. And recurring support? That’s what sustains the work.

Fans Cheer for Teams. Donors Do Too.

Like many nonprofit professionals, I did not necessarily expect to be here. With that said, it’s not really a shock, either.

Growing up, I participated in many volunteer opportunities, some episodic and some more long-term. These experiences were first made compulsory by my parents, then by school, then finally in college, me. After a short-lived career in teaching, I turned towards one of the only things I had consistently known: nonprofit programmatic management. This story is not unique for those working in public service— many find their way here either through a community that matters to them, or a cause that they felt so passionate about, they could only dedicate their career to pursuing it.

I started out my nonprofit career managing an AmeriCorps program within a small organization. So small, in fact, that we could walk 10 steps from our desks and see everyone in the office, and be back at our work station. I managed 120+ volunteers, worked with 35 volunteer sites, and created different engagement opportunities. Starting out, I truly felt like I was really doing the work— I came home every day feeling fulfilled by making a new volunteer placement, checking in on programs, and speeding towards meeting the goals outlined in our government grant. There were things though, such as volunteer stipends or monthly rewards for hours of service, that I wanted to do but just didn’t have the funds to support. I kept these in the back of my mind, a wishlist of sorts, to which I know many other bright-eyed public service professionals can relate.

While holding this position, I also held the role of Development Coordinator. I unsuccessfully applied to multiple grants, ranging from large to micro, and felt discouraged in hearing, “capacity building is great, but we are looking for tangible outcomes.” How could I let them see that the hours put in by our volunteers were improving the lives of not only those that they worked with, but our volunteers, too? How could I illuminate that intergenerational volunteering had many positive socio-emotional outcomes, many of which would show up for high school students much later in life? I continued to struggle with a lack of resources and support that could have helped my program, one that I knew was benefitting so many, flourish. I also grappled with the knowledge that most of the grant we were awarded supported my salary— which felt limiting in that, if I wanted to make different programatic decisions for my volunteers, I would lose quality of life for myself.



The lack of mobility to make creative decisions and constant quest to make my role feel legitimate weighed on me. I knew I would miss my people and the amazing community we were building, but I felt that perhaps being on a more resourced, grant-making side of the coin would be rewarding. I shifted to work at a community affairs office of a university, and what I learned within this role is what ultimately led me to Collective.

My experience as a grant administrator for small, project-based grants of up to $5,000 was a different challenge from what I experienced working at a nonprofit, but it was made of the same stuff:

Personnel and overhead costs are real, and they are essential behind-the-scenes funds that make the mission possible.

In two full grant cycles, I had to tell over 40 nonprofits that I was unable to award them a grant of $2,000-$5,000 because I was under strict orders to not give funding to a request that contained a budget of over 10% indirect costs. Many had spent days working on these grant applications, only to hear that they wouldn’t receive $5,000?!

Their reactions were varied— some had heard this before, and had learned that it “wasn’t personal.” Others were confused and perplexed, as they didn’t think that they had included over 10% of indirect costs, if any at all.

Here were a few of the budgetary items counted as indirect:





De-escalation training for personnel working with youth in health crises



Accessible space to host free community dinners



Dance instructors trained in mobility-specific physical therapy

The list went on, but in every case, the “indirect costs” were essential to each program.

Some didn’t receive funding because, to the application review committee, their outcomes were less measurable.

Here was the question, once again:

How do you measure outcomes when a mission is to make an inclusive space?

How do you quantify community building, when metrics beyond stories don’t exist?



A meeting with an incredible person to discuss why his organization, Reality Ministries, didn’t receive a grant showed me a very real side of grant applications and sponsorships for those that rely on showing, not telling.

Quinn Holmquist, Coordinator of Community Engagement and Giving at Reality, smiled when I relayed the feedback from the Review Committee. He knew where this was going, as he had heard it in grant feedback before.

“If they could come to the Reality Cafe and see what’s happening here, or even just watch one of our testimonial videos, they would get it. I think they would see why Reality is so special.”

For organizations like Reality, stories that can move donors outside of the confines of grant applications are currency, and they have so many of them. For other organizations, the inner-workings of their mission, the “indirect costs,” can’t be overlooked or undervalued. Without their staff, they could not accomplish what they do every day.

When I think about why we are building Collective, and what makes a storytelling platform driven by community such a great idea, it’s these stories I continue to come back to. Most nonprofit professionals would be able to rattle off moments when their work felt undervalued and overlooked, but it doesn’t have to be that way.

Our goal is to build a free, easy to use platform that allows the narratives we want to tell shine and strike a cord with donors who are supportive of the myriad of people and ways a mission is accomplished. Thank you for trusting us— we are excited to show you what’s in store.

Undervalued

Last year, a total stranger answered my Instagram DM asking if she would be willing to sit down with me. At the time, I was trying to speed-learn as much as I could about the various problems facing the nonprofit sector, studying the relationship between digital marketing efforts and fundraising. Looking back, I'm embarrassed at how nervous I was to send this message. For those who haven't met her, Maggie Kane is incredible. She followed her passion and tackled food insecurity in her twenties and opened A Place at the Table Cafe—a pay-what-you-can restaurant that's now a community staple. Anyone who knows Maggie understands why being nervous around her is absurd—she's a joy to be around and makes everyone feel like they belong in every room. Still, back then I was in the dark, feeling like an eighth grader asking LeBron to teach me how to dribble. I wanted to learn one thing from Maggie: how do you do it? From the outside looking in, it seems like A Place at the Table had it all figured out — people love them and their digital presence is top notch. She answered my questions honestly, but it was when I asked “How do you all grow?” the conversation shifted. I expected secret tactics, but instead she told me why the traditional channels only kind of work, but they have to rely on them. Their most effective strategy has always been getting people together, having them feel the impact live, and spreading the word.At the end of our conversation Maggie mentioned that she had helped organize a screening of the hit documentary Uncharitable in Raleigh for the following week. So I went.---The theater was packed. Hundreds of nonprofit leaders from across the Triangle filled every seat. As the film played, I found myself watching the audience as much as the screen. Heads nodded in unison during every painful truth. A collective exhale when the Wounded Warrior Project story unfolded. Agreeing snaps as the film dissected the “overhead” myth.The real impact came after. No one was debating about whether the bold claims that film makes are right— they knew they are spot on because they live it every day. The conversation was rawer than that. Everyone agreed the system was broken. Everyone wanted change.Yet, the energy and animation present when discussing problems noticeably faded when conversation turned to solutions. The good ideas seem daunting: How do you persuade funders to shift their decades-old belief that people shouldn't earn competitive salaries for social impact work? How do you invest in growth when every expense is scrutinized? How can you innovate when there's no margin for failure?I left that screening with unexpected clarity. The real problem isn’t that nonprofits do not know how to grow— they know exactly what to do and what their strengths are. The problem is that they are not free to do it. The sector has become entangled in a web of rules, hacks, and best practices—all born from necessity—that obstruct the social impact sector's greatest strengths: authentic connection, stories, and spaces.That day, it was evident that the impact sector's path to becoming truly unrestricted can't rely solely on advocacy and gentle unlearning decades of precedent—it must be rebuilt. I believe that the strongest future for the nonprofit sector is one where the professional change-makers are able to all make comfortable salaries, retain talent, and grow however they see fit.This all starts with influence, and I think nonprofits need more of it.First PrinciplesAround that time, I started building Collective. My strongest belief is that a less-restricted mission-driven sector is one where each nonprofit has more influence. Let me be clear: I mean influence in all forms — influence with their existing donor base, influence in their local communities, influence among the populations they serve through action.Influence is harder than ever to come by these days. We are living through one of the most serious threats to the public perception of nonprofit work that many of us have seen in our lifetimes. Congressional and federal probes are increasingly targeting nonprofits, especially those that are working to improve our society’s acceptance of diversity programs. Reputational risks are ever-present and forcing nonprofits to sanitize their messages in order to stay alive, otherwise real threats to tax-exempt status are looming. Social media platforms are actively suppressing content from nonprofit organizations, decreasing their reach to their existing followers and making any organic traffic next to impossible.Collective is being built as a direct response to the era that we are living in. Nonprofits cannot build sustainable followings and grow their influence if their connection to their audience depends on unreliable platforms that frequently change their algorithms to decide who sees what based on what is best for their business.We believe that nonprofits need more thriving spaces that they own. The most compelling path forward is for actual humans, loving the work of one organization, to share it with other humans—by email, word of mouth, sharing links, telling your story for you. That is the foundation that the entire sector is built on, but genuine human-to-human spaces are becoming increasingly crowded out.It doesn’t have to be that way. The blueprint is sitting right in front of us.For the past year, we have been building free tools for mission-driven organizations to grow their audience and influence by repurposing their existing content that they have already worked hard to create into digital spaces that they own and can use to grow sustainably, unrestricted by the opaque laws of social media. We believe that nonprofits should be able to control their destiny and own their influence, but those pathways must be built. We think that what you already have is enough to build your influence: you have incredibly passionate people, stories to tell, and audiences to better engage. It is our job to get you there, quickly.Thank you for your trust and continued support as we continue to build towards our mission of returning power to the nonprofit sector.

Unrestricted

Let's talk about the elephant in the nonprofit room: the gap between social media buzz and actual donations. We've all been there— celebrating a post that goes viral, only to find the donation pages as quiet as a library on a Friday night.The Engagement IllusionDid you know that while 55% of people who engage with nonprofits on social media end up taking some sort of action, only 25% of those actions are donations? That's right— likes, shares, and comments don't always equal dollars in the bank.Here's the hard truth:98% of nonprofit Facebook posts don't get shared at allThe average engagement rate for nonprofit Instagram posts is just 1.41%Only 1 in 12 people who say they'll donate after seeing a social media post actually follow throughSo why the disconnect?The Path from Post to DonationSocial media platforms are great for awareness, but they're not built for fundraising. Think about it:A supporter sees your inspiring postThey want to help, but...They have to leave the appNavigate to your websiteFind the donation pageFill out a formEnter payment infoThat's a lot of steps— and a lot of chances to get distracted by cat videos along the way. And if they want to personalize a message to go with the donation or make it recurring? Getting to that golden green finishline can start to feel a little like this:Bridging the GapAt Collective, we're reimagining how nonprofits connect with supporters online. Our platform is designed to shorten that journey from inspiration to action:Recurring donation buttons directly with your collections of postsCustomizable monthly tiered donor optionsSimplified, mobile-friendly giving processesCurated collections of posts allowing you to tell the story you wantWith this model, we remove barriers to recurring donations. You know the story you want to tell; let Collective add momentum so that your path to support looks like this:We're not just about likes– we're about impact.Engagement is great, but it's just the first step. Let's focus on creating clear pathways that transform that initial spark of interest into meaningful support for your mission.Ready to bridge the engagement gap? Learn how Collective can help you turn social media interest into tangible results.

The Engagement Mirage: When Likes Don’t Transfer to Donations

Our team has been obsessed with building for the social impact sector for a while. Over the past two years, we have spoken with nonprofit leaders across the country, learned how they work, and looked for ways technology could lighten the load and help their work grow more naturally.

We learned that every nonprofit is quietly forced to treat relationship-building and retention as separate from storytelling and marketing. We think this is an existential threat to mission-driven work everywhere. The audience an organization has earned—donors, volunteers, board members—largely lives in some database built to log a gift and little else. Meanwhile, the media and stories they produce mainly live on platforms they cannot control.

Neither space was designed to reflect what nonprofits are best at offline: moving the right supporters through storytelling and helping them find each other.

Collective puts the two in the same room. It is one space, owned by your organization, where the people you already know meet the stories you are already telling. The result is a simpler, more active representation of the organization as a whole that grows.

Because the goal is to save effort rather than create it, Collective stays current by syncing with the channels you already use, so nobody has to maintain it by hand. We start by bringing in your existing work — your mission from your website, your content from Instagram, your staff — so you begin with something real rather than a blank page.



A line of your own

Reaching your own supporters today feels like placing a phone call a hundred years ago: a small miracle at first, and never quite in your hands.

Back then, you couldn’t place a call directly. You gave an operator a name and waited while they found the right cord and plugged it into the board. It went through only if they actually put it through.

Social media works the same way. Posting is free, and the whole audience seems to be right there, which feels like magic. But every message still runs through an operator of sorts — an algorithm that decides which of your own followers it bothers to reach. The result is that 96% of a nonprofit’s followers never see the average post because every post has to compete with the rest of the world for that person’s attention, and are buried by companies who can buy that same person’s attention.

We believe that most nonprofits have started to do the work of small media companies and large influencers, while the part that matters most — reaching its people — runs through a switchboard it doesn't own. We kept asking what it would take to reach the people who already raised their hand, on its own terms.

That's why Collective exists. It's the dial, not the operator.

Built around the people you already have

Until now, keeping a supporter has mostly meant asking them to give again. With Collective, keeping a supporter means giving them a place to belong.

The reason is plain. Roughly eight in ten first-time donors never give a second time — not because they stopped caring, but because nothing kept them close. After the first gift, the only word most of them hear is the next ask.

So Collective begins with the people a nonprofit has already earned, not the strangers it hasn't met. They are the likeliest to stay, and the easiest to reach once there's a direct line.

What they find when they arrive is a place that feels alive: the work carrying on between campaigns, the faces behind it familiar, and other supporters plainly there alongside them. That is what turns a list of donors into something closer to a community.

Belonging does what reminder emails never could. People who feel part of something tend to stay part of it, and giving again becomes something natural rather than a favor someone asks of them.



Your tools shape your mission

Every tool a nonprofit uses carries a quiet idea about what supporters are for. A database built to log gifts treats people as transactions. A platform built to sell attention treats them as an audience to rent. Use those tools long enough, and relationships can start to look that way too — a pipeline to fill, not people to know.

It shows up in small ways. A supporter hears nothing for months, then opens an email that begins "We miss you," three days before the year-end deadline. The tool noticed a lapsed gift, not a person — and the supporter can tell.

We built Collective on the opposite belief: people who give to a cause are part of it, and they deserve a tool designed to keep them close, not to chase them down. Our hope is that supporting a cause comes to feel less like writing a check and more like belonging to something that lasts.

This launch is our first step toward that, with many more to come.

Introducing Collective: the new home for mission-driven work

Get the most out of Collective by seeing what's new and noteworthy as we are building it!

Product Updates

Meet the people bringing Collective to life

Team

Start here! 🏁 These posts are written to demystify what it takes to successfully build, refine, and hit the ground running on Collective.

Launching on Collective

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