A series on caregiving, fundraising and the future of nonprofit sustainability
If you work in a lead fundraising role at a nonprofit or social impact organization, you’re no stranger to feeling squished. You likely serve multiple stakeholders and juggle many balls, much like the “sandwich generation” – the roughly 54% of Americans in their 40s with both a dependent child and a parent over 65 (Pew Research Center).
As a long-time sandwich club member, I know what it’s like to balance a to-do list that spans my child, mother, work and personal life. And while it’s overwhelming at times, I’ve learned to appreciate the hidden benefits. Being the lunch meat in the bread has spiked my emotional intelligence and nuanced my communication style. It’s made me a more supportive family member and effective partner to clients raising awareness and funds for their missions.
In the Sandwich Generation series, I share insights from the squish to help you be more effective in your mission work, too.
The Top Slice
Years ago, my time was pretty much my own. Things that I did to engage or help my parents amounted to occasional visits, emails and phone calls. But after my father passed away in 2024, my relationship with my mother changed overnight, and I’ve been in close contact with her ever since. Helping my mother with her financial, tax and legal work didn’t just expand my to-do list during the flurry of my son’s early college applications; it helped me acknowledge our interdependence as people. As I became more present for my mother, our relationship evolved through trust and mutual care, which we both now appreciate and enjoy in ways that we didn’t before.
As odd as it is to compare a parent-child relationship to that between a donor and a non-profit, I’m going to do it right now. Because just as trust is earned over time with a family member, partner or friend, a true benefactor requires – and deserves – your long-term commitment and stewardship. Despite the harried campaigns and rampant practice of transactional fundraising that I still see at all levels of the donor pyramid, we all know in our guts there’s no shortcut to financial sustainability.
Like we demonstrate care, empathy and integrity with our highest-value family relationships, we must steward every donor (large or small, lapsed, new or retained) into what I’m now calling “radical interdependence,” the shared understanding and belief that missions need partners, not passengers, to thrive and survive. Undeniably, this will take strategy, time, discipline and action, but more than anything else, it will take unprecedented honesty and transparency on the part of non-profits.
In my consulting work, I recommend personal outreach over e-blasting major donors. I increase projections for annual giving when the organization has engaged its community with compelling content year-round. I develop win-win-win partnership pitches for potential corporate supporters. And I encourage an organization with avid volunteers or advocates to engage them in peer-to-peer fundraising. Because asks for money without the proper groundwork laid is truly a waste of our precious time and rarely successful.
To sustain and expand non-profit impact in today’s turbulent environment, which is increasingly plagued by downward economic, social and political pressures, we must come clean on our challenges and opportunities to those who support us. We must lift the veil, give as much as we take, ask questions, actively listen, show flexibility, report metrics accurately, insist on operational funding, and own our important place in the ecosystem of our country. It won’t be an easy lift or shift, because it requires vulnerability, but it’s the right one to undertake at the start of 2026. For the sake of our millions of missions and countless constituents, let’s make a resolution to ensure that our sandwiches don’t fall apart.
Emily Moyer is the Principal of Impact Ilk Brands, a consultancy designing architecture for growth and sustainability at mission-driven businesses and non-profits. To schedule a complimentary 30-minute consultation with Emily, please visit this page.
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