This is not a newsletter
Nest Egg FAQ's for your budget holder
Happy Thursday folks!
Some of you have told us that you would love to be paid subscribers to The Nest Egg but can’t get budget sign off.
There are many reasons as to why organisations don’t invest in training for their fundraisers and why they may want you to do a certain type of training over another.
Today’s article is for those of you who are hoping that membership of The Nest Egg will be a part of your training mix for the year, but who need more information to make the case.
Because on the face of it - this looks a lot like a newsletter.
And for most people, paying for a newsletter is just plain weird.
Here are the answers to your questions – we really hope they help!
For those of your already subscribed – scroll down to check out our (pretty much finalised) content plan for 2025.
1. What do I get if I’m a free subscriber?
You’ll get a minimum of one email each month – usually on the first Tuesday.
We send emails across 10 months of the year, taking holiday in August and December.
2. What do I get if I’m a paid subscriber?
Weekly emails as a minimum, sent every single Tuesday (though not in December or August).
Focused content each month, following a different theme each month
Deep dives into data, case studies and funding models (check out our Comic Relief and Donkey Sanctuary pieces from 2024)
Bonus content from our 2025 Fundraising ROI’s benchmarking study
Access to our archive of over 50 articles
Access to comments / chats with us and other readers
A bit of news, what we'‘re up to, honest updates from LarkOwl Towers, biscuit discoveries (but remember, this is not a newsletter)
3. Exactly what topics will you be covering?
An excellent and very timely question.
The results of our reader survey are in (THANK YOU to the 100 people who took a moment to fill it in!), the votes have been tabulated and we’ve pretty much decided on the content plan for the entire year!
Now, we do reserve the right to change things up a bit (The Nest Egg is also in part a personal creative endeavour)– so don’t hold us to exact article titles, but for now, the plan is as follows:
Strategy 101
What are my options and how do I know which one to pick?
Common charity business models (will this work for my charity?)
Your 12 month trusts and foundations plan
What is the right number of trusts to have in my allocation?
Commercial income - inspiration vs realities (and the myth of the goose that lays the golden egg)
Research beyond the basics
10 places to find new supporters
How to spot a major donor in disguise
Is it ever ok to spray and pray?
Cultivation and stewardship for the long term
The building blocks of great stewardship
Three great reasons to pick up the phone
Fifteen magical ideas to deepen your relationships
Building intimacy (in a non creepy way)
Strategic questions to ask during donor meetings
Asking for big gifts
When is it right to ask?
Distinct types of gifts and how asking for each is different (scripts included)
Target setting in an ever-changing landscape
Two ways to figure out a target you can be confident in
Target setting and time management – how not to overcommit
WTF is a gift table and why do I need one?
How to explain your target
The state of the sector
Fundraising ROI’s benchmarking report, analysis and breakdown by sector and size
Analysis of multiple sector reports and reflections on what this means for us as practitioners
Deep dives into charity accounts - what can we learn from their unique business models?
We want to be generous in sharing our experiences, along with things you can try to uplevel your own work.
4. Who the hell are you and why should we trust you?
Haha – great question!
In summary, we are partners in life and work and have around 50 years of collective experience working in the non profit sector – Tony in commercial income, Caroline in high value fundraising.
LarkOwl is our company, formed in 2019 providing practical and strategic consultancy services to charities looking to grow and / or diversify their income. Alongside consultancy, we write articles here in The Nest Egg to share our ideas and our experiences.
Since LarkOwl took flight, we’ve:
Undertaken 15 strategic development projects to help charities understand their current income generation situation and create clear, well-resourced plans to them move to where they want to be
Delivered practical help to grow major gift programmes in 8 charities, briefing directors on ask meetings, mapping out the stages of priority relationships, identifying prospects, case testing with supporters, coaching in-house fundraisers
Provided interim trust fundraising for 8 charities of varying sizes and across diverse sectors (gender justice, healthcare, armed forces, children and young people, arts, heritage and environment) and raised over £3m in total.
We live in Plymouth with our two teenage kids and our dog and are passionate about great coffee, completing all the secret levels in Super Mario Wonder and spending as much time outdoors are possible.
You can read more about us here.
Here’s a picture of Caroline and Scout on their chilly new year walk at Burrator Reservoir.
5. How much does a Nest Egg subscription cost?
It costs £7 a month or £70 a year to be a paid subscriber (which is a LOT cheaper and more fun than most training courses).
6. How do I pay?
You can upgrade your manage your subscription directly in Substack (the software which hosts The Nest Egg) but not on the Substack app. Payments are managed by Stripe (more software…).
This button will take you where you need to go:
If your antiquated finance systems require an invoice, we’re happy to do this for annual subscriptions, just send an email to caroline@larkowl.uk
7. WTF is Substack?
The Nest Egg, our reader supported publication is hosted on Substack.
We’re aware that this statement means very little to the vast majority of you. But if you’re at all curious about email marketing then read on…
Substack is a slightly different type of email marketing software.
It’s similar to platforms like Mailchimp in that it allows you to bulk send emails to people who have signed up to receive them.
But it also allows you to charge a small subscription fee for your newsletter, so that instead of emailing people with the aim of selling products, the email becomes the product.
We love it because it’s simple and it plays to our particular strengths (writing).
What Substack doesn’t allow you to do is segment your list very much and target sections of your customer base with bespoke comms. We can tailor our emails according to whether people are paid or free subscribers but that’s about it.
Substack also has its own app. As a user, you can curate your own group of publications so there’s always something awesome to read.
It’s also really easy to go back through the archives (not possible with traditional email marketing software) so in that way, Substack is more like a blog / resource hub.
Substack also has its own social features – notes and chats. You can also use it to create and share audio and video content - this is not for us, we’re trying to keep it simple (though we do occasionally flirt with the idea of a podcast).
Alongside our consultancy work, The Nest Egg will be the place where all our best ideas are shared - ideas which can help you to do your work, but better.
Phew - the end
We hope that this foray into the technicalities of The Nest Egg has helped with your decision making.
We’d love you to sign up to be a paid subscriber today – but please know that we value every single one of you who interacts with our stuff.
Whether we get to show up for you weekly or monthly, we couldn’t do what we do without your support.
Thank you for reading this - we’ll be back very soon to talk more about our 2025 reader survey results AND the imminent launch of our Fundraising ROI’s benchmarking work (please save a bit of time in February – we need your data!)
Here’s the button:
With gratitude,
Caroline and Tony