This moment requires a lot from all of us. Leadership. Courage. Time. Connection. Shared risk. It also requires money — directed to the people and work that need it most.
One of the things I think about a lot, as a professional fundraiser, is how to get more of what fundraisers actually know into the hands of people engaged in this fight.
Fundraising is not bake sales and pledge drives. At its best, it is about creating the conditions for people to connect more deeply to each other, to the work, and to their own capacity to help move resources.
Most consequential fundraising happens around dinner tables. Not because dinner is cute or intimate, but because a well-structured evening can turn a room full of people into a group with shared commitment — and make generosity feel natural rather than forced.
I put together hostadinner.org. It’s a streamlined, operational guide to running an intentional dinner in your own community. It takes a real fundraising method — the kind of structure used to move very large gifts in high-stakes settings — and translates it into something usable by anyone with a table, a few friends, and a reason to act.
The goal is simple: help you flow more money, more meaningfully, to the activists, teachers, faith leaders, social workers, coaches, and local organizations doing the work on the ground in your community.
I’d love for you to use it, share it, and tell me how it worked.
Geoffrey MacDougall 