The Nonprofit Science Podcast · Sheela N. Mahajan

Beyond the Dollar: What Research Tells Us About Multi-Capital Fundraising

November 5, 2025·44 min·4 clips

What if a donor's $500 gift actually generated $125,000 in impact through her network and advocacy?

Fundraising starts with a narrow measurement problem. Sheila Mahajan looks at year-end fundraising and asks what gets missed when donor success is reduced to dollars raised. Revenue matters, of course. But donors can also bring social capital, relational capital, and network capital, the stuff that is harder to count and often easier to overlook. Her five-tier framework gives the conversation some shape. The best relationships are rare, and the episode is clear that not every donor needs that level of attention. That restraint helps. Social capital is not treated as a fuzzy replacement for fundraising discipline. It is something leaders can decide to build, manage, and use well. The practical turn is where the episode gets useful: social capital can include money, but also credibility, access, advocacy, expertise, time, passion, and connections that help the mission reach further. The digital piece gets its own attention. Research by Elvira Luria and colleagues, published in 2023, is used to connect social media engagement with fundraising success. Follower counts are not the prize. The study of Spanish nonprofits points more to the quality and diversity of engagement than to posting frequency alone. LinkedIn gets framed as a professional networking hub where nonprofits can build credibility and reach potential board members, major donors, and corporate partners. When influential professionals share an organization's content, some of their credibility travels with it. The closing challenge is calm but pointed: during the fundraising sprint, look past the dollar and invest in relationships that may not pay off this quarter, but could change the organization in coming years.

As heard by us

A careful argument that fundraising value lives in relationships as much as revenue.

Sheila Mahajan makes a steady case that year-end fundraising should be measured by more than dollars alone. Social, relational, and network capital all matter, and the five-tier framework gives that view some structure.

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Why you'd press play

You need a smarter way to value donors than the next gift amount, and this episode gives you one.

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