Purpose & Profit Club® – The Nonprofit Fundraising & Marketing Podcast · Christina Tzavaras Edwards

190: The $20K Pivot: Canceling a Gala and Raising More with Sharing Hope Africa

·39 min·2 clips

A preschool in Mozambique needed about $8,500 for repairs, and they raised it in a weekend.

Christina welcomes Jamie Porzel and Sophia Caputo, the co-founders of Sharing Hope Africa. They talk through how the organization has grown while both women kept full-time jobs, family life, and personal lives in motion. The conversation stays practical from the start. Jamie and Sophia describe how fundraising confidence has changed as they have gotten more reps and better language. They also talk about the part that still feels uncomfortable: asking for money. One of them says the ask still feels gross, even with experience. The show leans into that honesty instead of sanding it down. A big turning point comes from using scripts from The Sprint Method. Those scripts help them break a donor conversation into something they can actually say out loud. They also use the same approach to bring in other people around the work. A volunteer intern named Logan is a clear example. After about six months with the organization, he steps into fundraising and raises $500 in about half the time expected. That win matters because it shows confidence can spread across a team. The founders are not just trying to make their own asks better. They are trying to build a culture where others can ask too. The episode then moves to a new program that will cost about $3,000 a month to run. Their plan is to cover half of that with monthly recurring gifts from individuals. The other half depends on twelve one-time gifts of $1,500 each from groups like businesses, influencers, and micro-influencers. That breakdown turns the goal into something concrete. The whole conversation keeps coming back to the same idea: clear asks, practiced language, and repeated action can change what a small team can raise.

As heard by us

Small-team fundraising gets clearer when the ask becomes a script, a plan, and a little nerve.

This episode follows a small nonprofit team trying to raise money for growth without dressing it up. Sharing Hope Africa's co-founders talk through the unease behind fundraising, the value of scripts, and the move from awkward asks to a repeatable system.

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Why you'd press play

You need a fundraising reset that feels practical, not polished.

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