APPLICATIONS OPEN FOR FALL 2025 COHORTS
FUNDRAISING INTENSIVE
Build Your Campaign. Grow Your Presence. Amplify Your Impact.
A 4-week immersive program for nonprofit and social impact leaders to start your end-of-year giving campaign with confidence, engage deeply, and raise more.
This virtual experience takes place weekly via Zoom on Wednesdays at 9 am Pacific for 90 minutes, and is designed for committed, action-oriented, community-building leaders ready to grow roots and harvest fruit with their fundraising and community impact.
Each participant will learn how to use a fundraising account with smart strategy, strong messaging, and aligned action taking.
ImaginePod’s Impact Incubator equips committed, action-oriented leaders with the skills, strategies, and support to scale their impact. Through weekly recorded trainings, live discussions, platform demos, and campaign-building tools, you’ll strengthen your fundraising capacity and finish the year with a powerful Season of Giving campaign.
What you get:
Recorded trainings 🎦 with proven frameworks and templates to grow your impact through fundraising, money mindset, asset mapping, storytelling, event design +
Live weekly discussion sessions 🙌🏽 to embed new concepts into your real work
1:1 mentoring session + ongoing office hours ⏱️ with facilitators to transform powerfully and move forward
Hands-on campaign support 🌱 to grow your Season of Giving fundraiser with confidence
Demos of top fundraising platforms 🍎 to choose what's best for your organization's ability to harvest the fruit of your efforts
Live podcast interviews 🎙️ with inspiring changemakers where you'll have a chance to talk about your organization too
Prizes 🏆 for those who start their fundraising campaign in the upcoming Season of Giving!
Join a global network of changemakers for this Season of Giving and gain the tools, templates, and momentum to close the year strong.
"Energizing & packed with valuable insights!"
"Thank you so much — it was incredibly energizing and packed with valuable insights! I really appreciated your thoughtful guidance and the hands-on approach to getting a campaign off the ground." — Joana
PLAYFUL FOCUSED SUPPORT
What Do You Accomplish?
Expand the questions below to find out!
What will I get done during the cohort?
If you're committed to taking action, you’ll walk away with the following:
STRATEGIC PLANNING
1. Your Donor Journey & Mission Sketched
2. Your Money Mindset Mapped
3. Your New Powerful Decision Made about Your Money Relationship
4. Your Blue Ocean Statement Written about Your Unique Mission, Vision, and Values
5. Your Ideal Donor Persona Defined
CAMPAIGN CREATION
6. Your Campaign Goal Defined
7. Your Story Told about Your Organization & Campaign
8. Your Donation Tiers Created to Define Your Impact
9. Your Short Custom URL for Ease of Sharing Your Published Campaign in Conversation
10. Your Campaign Ready to Start for End-of-Year Fundraising
OUTREACH
11. Your Resources & Assets Inventoried for Audience Engagement
12. Your Asking-for-Money Script Ready to Customize
13. Your Campaign Outreach Content in Email, Texting, Social Media, Conversations, Presentations, Online Groups & Networks, Podcast Interviews
14. Your New Social Impact Peers Connected Together and Ready to Share Your Campaign
15. A Prize to Boost Your Energy
What PRIZES can I win?
⭐️ A feature in our enewsletter — such as a video interview — with your fundraising campaign link to invite donations.
🎉 A donation put right into your new Givebutter or Donorbox campaign after it's published within this upcoming Season of Giving, shared with your audience of 100 or more people, and has donations starting to come in.
What do I have access to AFTER the experience?
🎥 The Funded Founder short-form video storytelling course to build a loyal supporter base
⏳ Weekly Friday Fun(draising) Office Hours through the end-of-year fundraising season
💰 A Potential Prize Donation to celebrate your courage and efforts once you launch your new campaign.
Apply Here:
After completing the simple form below, we'll review your application. In preparation for the cohort and your next steps, you'll receive a sign up link to get a free fundraising account, then an Ideal Donor Persona template & explainer video to get started, and Fundraising Playbooks with templates when we start the sessions.
I consent to receive messages related to my account, registrations, or resources to grow my impact. These messages may include appointment reminders, event confirmations, and account notifications. Reply HELP for help or STOP to opt-out.
SPONSORS & PARTNERS
"Received multiple donations"
"We've received multiple donations now! Thanks again for all your help."
— Meagan Jeanette, Society of Environmental Journalists
"So grateful"
"Thank you so much for this wonderful learning experience! You're a great coach & with so much knowledge to share. I'm so grateful. 🫶🏼👏"
— Monica Santoyo, Womxn for Change Coalition
"Such a difference"
"Givebutter is a nice, happy, easy platform. It makes such a difference. Applying for gov funding is so frustrating.”
— Stephanie Edwards, Jubilee Trading Company
INVEst In Your Income Stream
Turn Uncertainty Into Opportunity: Build Your Individual Donor Campaign & Confidence
The funding landscape has shifted dramatically in 2025. Traditional grants and institutional giving are harder to secure, making it more important than ever to establish a reliable stream of support from individual donors.
The Impact Incubator will help you create and launch a powerful donor campaign — collaboratively and in community with other changemakers — so you’re not navigating this shift alone.
Our participants have already raised more than $700,000 through individual giving and crowdfunding, in addition to grants. These campaigns have:
Refurbished a disaster relief warehouse in California
Empowered Black teenagers in Baltimore
Kept the lights on for vulnerable families
Changed outcomes of poverty in Chicago’s South Side
Kept the lights on for vulnerable families
Funded grassroots changemakers globally
Supported Peruvian craftswomen and children in underserved barrios
Raised funding to run a 10-week cohort of women entrepreneurs
Your Investment in Impact
Participation in this 4-week Impact Incubator cohort is an investment of $197.
This covers weekly training modules, live discussions, platform demos, and personalized support to get your campaign off the ground.
We believe in accessibility: Scholarships are available to ensure committed leaders from all backgrounds and all locations around the world can participate. No one will be turned away for lack of funds.
👉 Apply today and take the first step toward building your campaign for lasting impact.
When you are in, you’ll gain the tools, training, and confidence to design a donor campaign that helps to sustain your mission — even in uncertain times.
🏆 Then when you launch your campaign, share it with at least 100 people in your audience, and start bringing in donations, you will win a prize donation dropped into your campaign.
30% of All Donations are Made in the End-of-Year Season of Giving
What You’ll Build Inside the Incubator
In this 4-week incubator, you’ll design a clear strategy for innovative impact through your campaign—tailored to today’s dramatically changed funding landscape. Step by step, we’ll guide you through:
💃🏻 Personas – Identify and create your Ideal Donor Persona using our proven template, so you know exactly who you’re reaching and how to build authentic relationships.
📝 Messaging – Craft your Transformation Statement, write a compelling campaign headline, develop your story, and set donation tiers that inspire generosity.
🚦 Engagement – Learn how to plan, channel, and sustain donor and community engagement that flows directly into your campaign.
🎯 Goals & Tools – Set a realistic fundraising goal and create a custom campaign URL —ready to share in conversations, emails, or even from the stage.
And you won’t be doing it alone. You’ll have the support of experienced mentors and a community of peers who understand the challenges and possibilities of this moment. Together, you’ll gain the confidence and clarity to launch your campaign with momentum.
Your Facilitators
"If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together." — African proverb
Adriana Dakin (at left) co-facilitates this ImaginePod Impact Incubator workshop on individual donor fundraising. She is co-leader of ImaginePod and Strategy & Partnership Specialist with the Community Foundation of Mendocino County. With a Masters in Public Policy from the Harvard Kennedy School, she has helped organizations raise millions and mobilize advocacy.
Imène Ghernati, PhD (at right) co-facilitates this workshop, and is a member of The Bloom and the Center for Excellence in Nonprofits. The founder of the STEAM Learning Institute, a nonprofit collaborative research initiative dedicated to fostering equitable education in the sciences and arts, she helps organization leaders think deeply and focus.
PHILANTHROPIC PARTNERS & CLIENTS
TESTIMONIALS
What Others Are Saying
"So much more confident"
“After just one, brief, introductory meeting with Adriana, I feel so much more confident in our organization’s fundraising abilities. Her calm, kind and confident demeanor was a balm to the worried mindset that led us to seek fundraising training. She guided us through a simple but powerful decision matrix and even included a mini action plan with next steps! We are grateful to be welcomed into this community of support and are excited to start the training!”
— Hilary White, Treasurer, Art Explorers
"This is really specific & helpful"
“This is so helpful. With the incubator I don’t have a lot of people I can talk to who are pursuing similar things. I just read about stuff. There are a few people out there but this is really helpful and encouraging and specific. I’m finding great value in this. If you ever need a testimonial let me know. I’ll implement and show what happened in my campaigns. I am excited to talk about donor personas. I’ll refocus what I have written down so far.”
— Jon Tulio of Nothing to Lose Foundation
"I am ready"
"This fundraising mentoring session and incubator are great. It’s helpful because for a lot of this work developing resources I do my own thinking. Talking it out and putting it together with planning is really helpful. I am ready to bring funding into the organization and make it powerful. I’m so glad that I’m part of this right now.”
— Lizz De La Mora, Domestic Violence Services
Together, We Have Achieved:
$8M
RAISED FOR SOCIAL & ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT
$700K
RAISED BY PARTICIPANTS IN 6 MONTHS IN 2024
19,300
IMPACT LEADERS SURVEYED FOR TOP ISSUES
2,500
ORGS SUPPORTED WITH FREE RESOURCES
350
COURSE PARTICIPANTS IN GROUP PROGRAMS
90
ORGANIZATIONS IN LEARNING COHORTS
36
COUNTRIES PARTICIPATING IN PROGRAMS
11
COLLABORATIVE LEARNING COHORTS RUN
Building Your Pilot Campaign Early in the Year Gets You Ready for Abundance in End-of-Year Donor Relationships
Danilla Sands, Founder & Executive Director of the United Disaster Relief of Northern California, was a participant in our 2024 cohort, and created a successful year-end campaign to have funding to refurbish their new warehouse space. They brought on a matching donor, which typically increases giving 3x to 5x. As Danilla said:
"We’re an all-volunteer nonprofit disaster resource center and would like to create a hired position eventually. We just moved into a new building and are raising money in an end-of-year campaign using the Givebutter platform. This whole concept has been huge — it's so instrumental for people to see how much they’ve helped raise, and making edits is easy.
People can share their name or give anonymously, they can watch our video story, and their donation is matched by a generous community member. I love the goal meter, and if I get a check in hand I can go to my dashboard and manually put it in, then see the goal rise. I also like having immediate payouts to our bank account with a click."
ImaginePod is a global community of high impact organizations, tech platforms, and philanthropists dedicated to creating a thriving and equitable world. ImaginePod's mission is to amplify the world’s highest impact, yet under-resourced, organizations.
Copyright 2025 | ImaginePod
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