Nonprofit leaders from the Fishers area gathered at Ball State University’s facility in downtown Fishers to hear a message that ran counter to how many small organizations chase money: stop treating grant applications as a fundraising plan.
The session, sponsored by Citizens State Bank, was led by Michelle Leonard McConnell, a nonprofit consultant who spent years with two Indiana community foundations before joining IU Health Foundation, where she worked as a fundraiser and later director of campaigns during the system’s first combined statewide philanthropic campaign. She left to start her own practice after realizing she missed small nonprofits.
“I don’t have a crystal ball, and I do not have a money tree,” McConnell told the room. “But there is a structure that we can go off of.”
Much of that structure, she said, starts with understanding where charitable dollars actually come from. Citing Giving USA — the annual report researched by the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy — McConnell said Americans gave $607.2 billion to nonprofits in 2025. Individuals accounted for $394.2 billion of that, with an additional $62.19 billion coming through bequests. Foundations, the source of most grant dollars, contributed $117.15 billion. Corporations gave $43.67 billion.
“How many times do you hear somebody say, ‘Well, let’s just write a grant?'” she asked. “That’s not sustainability. That’s not even the biggest funder in town.”
Bequest giving rose nearly 20% last year, a jump McConnell and attendees attributed to an aging donor population. Education, public-society benefit organizations, and environment and animal groups saw the largest increases by sector.
Several attendees said the numbers matched what they are seeing locally, with corporate support tightening and individual donors stepping up. Others described a challenge specific to a fast-growing county: too many organizations approaching the same donors.
“We have a great culture of not competing with one another, but we end up going to the same wells,” one participant said.
McConnell urged the group to build relationships with their community foundation, arguing that as Hamilton County grows, community foundation staff often know newcomers before individual nonprofits do. She also cautioned that generational habits differ sharply — older donors tend to give and step back, while millennial and Generation Z donors want to participate.
Board engagement drew the most discussion, and several attendees admitted their boards do little fundraising. McConnell offered two changes she said any organization can make immediately: build an educational moment into every board meeting so members can speak fluently about the work, and put three to five named prospects in front of the board each time, asking who knows them.
“Never, ever let your board get off the hook by not helping with your fundraising,” she said. “It is all hands on deck.”
She also pushed organizations to examine the return on investment of special events, which many in the room identified as their default fundraiser, and to build stewardship plans that treat a longtime monthly donor differently than a one-time $25 memorial gift. Recurring donors, she said, are the most likely source of future planned gifts.
For organizations with little or no paid staff, McConnell said she writes “good, better, best” plans rather than ambitious ones no one can execute. She pointed to the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy’s webinars, priced at $19.74, as an inexpensive training resource.
Addressing a newly formed nonprofit whose founders called their operation a mess, she offered a correction: “You’re not a mess. You’re just new.”