Show Me the Receipts

Field Notes

Dispatches from the work

What the sessions teach, what the research confirms, and where the work is going. Each entry is a record from inside the project — honest about what we found and what we still don’t know.

A Jay in My Yard
On love for one person, the gift you never reclaim, and keeping the ground open

A backyard jay buries acorns to survive one winter and, without meaning to, plants the forest that outlives her.

Read the field note →
Planting on Purpose
A major gifts program that starts at the first gift, not the wealth screen

The napkin asked what’s being planted now. This is the answer: a major gifts program that begins at the first gift.

Read the field note →
What’s Being Planted Now?
Giving USA announced a record year. I drew a pyramid on a napkin.

A record fundraising year is a harvest planted a decade ago. The question the napkin asks is what’s being planted now.

Read the field note →
They Know the River
What salmon can teach us about the loop fundraising runs

Marcus fixed the late card. He never fixed the system that produced it. A field note on single-loop learning, told through the salmon run.

Read the field note →
What a Room Can’t Trace
A story about the question fundraising never learned to ask

Every experienced fundraiser can name a failed receipt in sixty seconds. Ask them to trace it to its cause, and the room goes quiet.

Read the field note →