Atlanta In Person JB Nov 2025 | Alexander Haas

November 25, 2025

from the desk of
Jane M. Barghothi
Associate Partner

The Power of In-Person Meetings

In the world of fundraising, relationships are everything. While emails, phone calls, and virtual meetings have their place, nothing replaces the impact of face-to-face interaction. A personal meeting allows donors to see the passion behind the mission, read body language, and connect on a deeper emotional level—elements crucial for fostering trust and long-term support.

I experienced this firsthand during one of the most pivotal donor meetings of my career. It started unexpectedly—a Friday afternoon phone call to our office. With many staff unavailable, I took the call and was asked to meet a donor at the site of a new building she was funding. I quickly reviewed some contact reports, but I did not have the full context of the situation.

When I arrived at the site, I could sense her frustration and disappointment that progress had been slow. Instead of rushing into a dialogue, I took a moment to listen. We walked the site together, and in a surprising moment of connection, we discovered we both wore opal rings and that our birthdays were only a day apart. That simple shared detail helped break the ice and opened a window for genuine dialogue.

By listening intently and connecting on a personal level, I was able to understand her concerns better and demonstrate my commitment to the project. That day marked the beginning of a turnaround in the donor’s relationship with the organization. Her trust deepened, and ultimately, she made an even larger gift—one that significantly advanced the mission.

This experience underscored an essential truth: in-person meetings are among the most effective tools in fundraising, especially when dealing with large gifts, strategic partnerships, or long-term commitments. They cultivate trust—an intangible yet vital element in donor relations. When face-to-face, donors can see the passion, sincerity, and credibility of the people behind the mission. They can also pick up on emotional cues, body language, and nuances that are often lost in emails or virtual calls.

In-person interactions also create space for richer conversations. Donors tend to open up more about their motivations, values, and their personal experiences with your organization. These insights foster deeper understanding and help tailor stewardship efforts to align with their long-term interests.

Fundraising is inherently relational, not transactional. An in-person meeting might include a site tour, introductions to staff or recipients, or in-the-moment recognition of impact—all of which are difficult to replicate virtually. These experiences allow donors to see and feel the tangible results of their support, inspiring greater investment and commitment.

Of course, in-person meetings are not always feasible for every interaction. But when it comes to cultivating meaningful, lasting relationships—where trust is built and the magic of generosity happens—they remain a key ingredient in any successful fundraising strategy.

In-person meetings matter. They turn transactional exchanges into transformative relationships that sustain and grow your mission over time.

How to Talk About Tax Law Changes

David King cautions about messaging when talking about tax laws.

While it’s true that you often don’t know your donor’s tax bracket, it’s probably safe to assume that your larger donors, say $5,000 and up, are itemizing their tax returns. In any case, it might be helpful to inform donors about this, as I’m sure most don’t know. So, include a message on the appeal that says, ‘Do you know that tax law changes impact charitable deductions?’ and then indicate, ‘If you don’t itemize, you will likely be better off waiting until January 1, 2026, to make your gift. But if you do itemize, your better tax treatment will come from giving before year-end.’

“However, there are some risks here, since a great deal of giving happens at the end of the calendar year. What if you advise all your smaller donors to wait until 2026 to fulfill their 2025 commitments, and they decide to really wait, like until December 2026? If that happens, you will have missed a year of giving from those donors.”

Fundraisers might need to adjust how they discuss year-end giving with donors due to tax law changes that take effect on January 1.

Key Points

Big donors may be better off making a gift in 2025, while everyday donors could get a tax break if they wait until January to give.
It’s important for fundraisers to get information about the tax changes out to donors.
But they shouldn’t make assumptions about which donors itemize and which donors take the standard deduction.

Starting in 2026, the new tax law gives people who don’t itemize a charitable deduction for donations up to $2,000 for married couples and $1,000 for single people. At the same time, however, people who itemize—and tend to give bigger gifts—will have to contribute 0.5% of their adjusted gross income before getting any tax break. And itemizers’ tax breaks stop at 35% of their taxable income, even though their top tax rate is 37%.

The most important information to convey is that donors who itemize deductions will get the best tax benefits if they give before the end of the year, while standard filers will get the best tax advantages by giving after January 1.

Because everyday donors tend to take the standard deduction and would likely benefit from waiting until early next year to make a gift. Perhaps scrap December 31 as the deadline for getting gifts in and push it to January 15 instead. That way, everyday donors will have a chance to make their gift in the new year when the tax law will benefit them.”

The gift deadline can be extended for all, but it’s important to offer tips for both itemizers and people who take the standard deduction.

Data, Risk Aversion, and Social Investing Dominate Donors’ Concerns

Jaci Thiede advises to stay on course.

“This research doesn’t surprise me very much. But I encourage everyone raising money for the “intangibles” (like education and mental health) not to get frustrated. Keep making your case to donors. Intangibles like education help develop leaders who go on to make the world a better place by discovering a cure for a disease or starting a new nonprofit that delivers tangible results donors might be looking for. It’s a balancing act, but nurturing the root or foundation is more of a long-term investment.”

Donors often fail to research who else is financing a cause before they dive into it. That was one of many takeaways from the recent Global Philanthropy Forum, an annual gathering of wealthy individuals, top foundation officials, and nonprofit leaders. The gathering also focused on trade-offs required when investing in social businesses and on data that can constrain as well as embolden philanthropy.

Hot Topics

Courage and Risk
Data can also be “liberating and give people courage.”
It can help donors recognize who else is supporting causes that interest them and give them ideas for shaping their grants to make a difference.
Many donors are too focused on trying to be unique, and are too eager to set up their own approaches to solving problems, their own systems for managing grants, and their own policies, with little input from outside.

Data and Donors

The quest for timely information on charity performance and how it could change philanthropy is important.
Donors who have an appetite for lots of data on charities are a minority. As more information becomes available on charities’ work and effectiveness, the field of philanthropy needs to ensure that it pushes that information to people on Web sites they already visit rather than trying to draw people to all sorts of new sites.

Making Trade Offs

Impact investing, deploying money in ways that can produce both social and financial returns, is a very top topic.
Many donors and investors are risk-averse, willing to finance only social businesses and nonprofits with a track record of repaying their investments.
Measuring an investment’s influence on people’s health or access to education is more difficult than measuring financial returns, but it’s ultimately far more important.

AI Search Can Help You Find Donors

David King on new AI strategies.

“This is really nothing new. Google, Bing, and other search engines have been constantly changing, revising, and editing their search algorithms regularly since they started. It has always been a bit of a game trying to figure out what they are favoring ‘now’ and adjusting website content, meta tags, and more to try to appease the algorithm monster and boost your search ranking. But it feels like we are living in a time where everything that happens—whether good or bad—is attributed to AI.”

Today, 40% of searches are being done through generative platforms, like ChatGPT, or by people reading AI overviews on traditional search engines. But the problem is that many nonprofits aren’t showing up in AI searches. Showing up in searches conducted by large language model AIs means organizing your site data in ways that appeal to them. SEO and AI search are different: what AI search is looking for and the opportunities it offers nonprofits.

Here are strategies to rectify that.

How AI and SEO Searches Differ

SEO was more about keywords and tagging.
Generative search aims to answer people’s questions in ways they prefer. It searches websites the way people do, looking for things like bullet points and plain-language explanations that are easy to read — not long blocks of text. AI searches can also analyze video and audio files, which SEO searches typically couldn’t do.

Beginner Tips

Don’t abandon SEO. While AI search is growing in popularity, traditional search is still big.
Do use analytics tools like the Google Analytics and Search Consoles to find out more about the traffic LLMs are sending to their sites.
Start optimizing pages that are already getting attention and ensuring there’s a path from those pages to do the thing you want website visitors to do,
Ask AI for help.

AI Loves Clarity and Emotion

AI wants to quickly review your content and summarize it to answer the user’s question.
Make the information that people most often come to your site for easily accessible so AI can clearly match it to what the person wants.
AI wants things to be structured consistent with the rest of the web, so it’s important to follow norms. That means organizations should have a “home” page, an “about us” page, a “donate” page, and a “contact us” page, rather than a “Get to Know Us” page.

Advanced Tips

Build a schema. A schema is essentially a sitemap designed specifically to help LLMs better understand and negotiate your website.
Create unique experiences. Creating things like interactive calculators, quizzes, tools, and multimedia experiences that AI can’t easily scrape can keep people going to your website.

We Know Atlanta Nonprofits

For more than 35 years, Alexander Haas has been a fixture in the Atlanta nonprofit community. We are honored to have worked with some of the largest, and some of the smallest, organizations that help make Atlanta a better place to live.

A Fresh Approach to Fundraising
Our services aren’t cookie cutter. We don’t operate with a boilerplate, merely changing names and locations. We craft each and every service we provide to match your organization’s unique needs, wants and abilities. We work hard and expect you to do the same. Together we can help you transform your institution, your fundraising, and the community you serve.

Whether your need is in Capital Campaign, Annual Fund Campaign, Major Gifts, Leadership Annual Giving, Planned Giving or all of the above, we take a fresh approach to nonprofit fundraising.