Our February newsletter is here to help your organization navigate this moment of uncertainty
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With so much uncertainty surrounding nonprofit fundraising, FreeWill is here to support your organization. Our February newsletter contains updates on the unfolding federal funding situation, our Partner Support team, and more.
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4 steps your organization can take following the federal funding freeze (and unfreeze)
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After the whiplash of an abrupt federal funding freeze—and an equally sudden reversal—nonprofits across the country are facing uncertainty. While domestic funding appears to be flowing for now, global foreign aid remains paused. As executive orders continue to shape federal priorities, some programs and funding streams remain in flux.
So, what does this all mean for nonprofits? And how can organizations stay ahead of rapid policy shifts? We’ve put together this blog post to guide you, but here are four key steps:
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Expand your foundation strategy. Now is the time to build new relationships with private funders and research grant opportunities. Exploring FreeWill’s Grant Assistant is one way to start.
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Review and reframe federal and state funding. This free Executive Order Analyzer is designed to identify which executive orders are most likely to affect an organization and provide actionable insights.
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Check in on corporate grants to ask about changes to funding priorities and application criteria.
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Advocate and stay engaged with local lawmakers. Sharing real-world impact stories and joining nonprofit coalitions will be essential to preventing similar disruptions in the future.
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Webinar: 5 steps to diversify your funding in uncertain times
Wednesday, Feb. 19th at 12:00 PM ET
Join Patrick Schmitt to learn steps your organization can take to confidently navigate the changes to federal funding policies, tax laws, and more.
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💡 Have a problem? Contact Partner Support!
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Need some support? We’ve got you covered. We recently launched our Partner Success Support team and have already heard incredible feedback from our partners, like:
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“Answer was exactly what I was looking for.”
"Prompt help with exactly what I needed. Thank you!”
“Thank you so much for your quick reply to my question.”
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The Partner Support team is here so your Strategist can focus on building and executing amazing FreeWill strategy with you.
If you have any non-strategy related questions about Partner Portal, FreeWill, or your tools, you can reach out to partnersupport@freewill.com for a timely, comprehensive answer in an average of one hour.
These questions can range from “Why is this stock gift not appearing in my dashboard?” to “Can you help me understand the donor insights on a particular user?” and so much more.
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👀 Smart Giving Widgets
We want to hear from you!
We’ve heard from partners that embeddable smart-giving widgets for non-cash gifts (stock, QCDs, crypto, and DAF grants) would be a huge value add for your organization and donors. We've developed an early prototype and would love to hear your feedback.
This research initiative—and your thoughtful feedback—will be pivotal to understanding the use case and value in this product feature. It only takes approximately 5-10 minutes, and you can share your thoughts through our research platform, Lyssna, here.
Please note that as this is a prototype, some buttons or links may not be fully functional. Your insights on the overall design, concept, and applicability of the widget are most valuable!
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Smart Giving Suite Donor User Experience Upgrades
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Over the last few months, we’ve made a number of improvements to the donor user experience across our Smart Giving Suite tools—all focused on enhancing the user experience to build trust with your donors and provide clear next steps. Highlights include:
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🎨 All tools now have a consistent look and feel that match the branding of your Smart Giving Landing page, so your donors have a seamless experience when toggling between giving types.
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🔑 No FreeWill logins needed when starting a gift! There's no longer any friction or need to remember account information in order to make any Smart gift.
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💰 Financial Advisors can now give on behalf of their clients for all types of gifts.
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📈 Stock Giving: More guidance for e-signatures and online completion to make gifting faster and easier.
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📌 Donor-Advised Funds (DAFs): Better data sharing for designation details as they are are not passed onto the DAF providers for seamless tracking
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💸 Crypto Gifts: The crypto gift experience now lives on FreeWill.com for consistency. (But don’t worry, the former landing pages now redirect to the latest experience, so no need to update any of your links!)
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🎁 QCD Giving: A modernized, single donation flow—no need to choose between "manual" and "online."
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Crypto Designations are Now Available for Your Supporters!
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As part of our improvements to the crypto-giving experience, designation options will now be available for your donors to select how their gift will support your mission! For all partners with custom designation options displayed on the FreeWill Stock tool, we recommend adding the same designation options to your Crypto tool. Our team will apply this update on March 14th and no action is needed from you! If you would like to provide new, custom designations specifically for your crypto tool, please fill out this form by February 28th.
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LOOKING FOR ADDITIONAL RESOURCES?
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