Seventeen creative stewardship ideas

Building reassurance, value and joy

Jun 17, 2025

∙ Paid

This week…

Caroline visited her Dad and attended a family Christening. Meanwhile, Tony was ‘treated’ to brunch to celebrate Father’s Day.

Here’s a pic of Tony, kids and dog (of course) as they await their breakfast muffins / Full Englishes…

We hope that you’re all doing ok.

We worry sometimes that this newsletter comes across only as a highlight reel and that we don’t focus enough on the things that aren’t going well (for us personally or for humanity in general).

It’s hard to know how to strike a balance sometimes,

Trust us, not everything in our lives is perfect.

Sometimes our kids behave with inexplicable stupidity, board members ignore our LinkedIn requests, the slugs eat the dahlias and clients receive rejection letters from trusts following applications that frankly, we thought were bloody brilliant.

The trick for us, is always trying to see the good things, even if they’re small (in the grand scheme of life).

And not overscheduling ourselves.

Today’s article

There are SO many ways to build, develop and maintain a relationship with a donor (or prospective donor).

This is arguably the most FUN bit of fundraising:

Getting to know people
Understanding their motivations
Connecting over common ground
Cultivating curiosity to explore differences

I’ve gathered all the suggestions from the previous two articles plus a whole host of other ideas (plus genuine case studies for those of you who are properly nosy!) so they’re here in one place, for you to access when you’re feeling a bit stuck / unsure about what to do next.

Please feel free to allow your creative juices to flow and to come up with your own ideas which you work for you, your donors and your cause.

If you focus on building authentic relationships (which extend way beyond the transactional) with your donors, knowing the next steps should (mostly) feel easy and natural to you.

Thanks again for being part of our community. We hope you have a great week!

Tony and Caroline

p.s. Today’s post is for paying subscribers. You can upgrade today if your stewardship needs an inspiration injection.

Not a paying subscriber yet? No worries, we’ve got you - check out our archive today!

There’s plenty of content which is free to read and which will make a great accompaniment to your morning coffee.