How do you move an organisation from understanding donor love to truly feeling it? In this second blog, Sam Jacklin and Tassy Serradura share how donor research, emotional insight, and patient internal change helped Animal Welfare League South Australia build a whole-organisation approach to loving donors back.

Legacy fundraisers work with one of the most powerful yet least understood income streams. Their impact is long term, hard to attribute, and often dependent on colleagues’ goodwill and Board belief. This blog explores why legacy fundraising deserves greater strategic investment, active Board participation, and everyday appreciation – and how doing so can strengthen your charity’s future.

Philanthropic psychology turns fundraising from moving money to connecting hearts. Drawing on rigorous donor research, Kathryn shares how small identity-based shifts – such as thanking supporters for their kindness, not just their donation – can lift giving dramatically. In this blog, Kathryn shares her PhilPsych journey, and explains how PhilPsych helps fundraisers design evidence-led communications that honour who donors are and how they love.

Fundraising is often framed as solving problems: X amount buys X hours of care, tents or books. Philanthropic psychology invites a different why. Instead of only asking, “What problem does this gift solve?”, we ask, “What love is expressed in this gift?” When we design fundraising to grow love, we grow donor wellbeing, generosity and impact.

As we step into a new year, we invite you to celebrate not resolutions, but who you are and how you love. From your reflections, we see a community defined by service, authenticity, joy and thoughtful rest. This year, we invite you to gift yourself three quiet minutes each month to celebrate your own strength and tenderness, nurturing your wellbeing and the bonds that hold our community together.

In this blog post by June Steward, Valerie Mullen Pletcher reflects on her 25-year fundraising career, emphasizing that at its core, fundraising is about love. Based south of Washington D.C., Valerie's work has been shaped by her strong conviction that philanthropy and love are inseparable. Through her time with the Institute of Sustainable Philanthropy (IfSP), she gained the tools and language to solidify this belief, not only in her own practice but also in her approach to training and transforming her team.

Companionate love is the love that we experience for family, friends or those who are otherwise close to us. It has deep links to wellbeing, and donors also experience a sense of temperature with it, specifically a feeling of warmth. There are many uses for companionate love in fundraising and it is important, but how do we use Companionate Love in fundraising?

We can probably all agree that some additional love is due. After all, without their kindness and generosity we’d have no way to pursue our missions and drive societal change.