Development 101
A core belief of Ask the Turtle is that anyone can be an effective fundraiser. Development 101 is built for the leader, board member, or program staffer who knows they need a real development function but isn't sure where to begin.
When you finish, you'll stop raising money reactively when something goes wrong, and start proactively inviting donors into your vision.
Most training starts with tactics. We start with your mission.
Before your team ever practices an ask, they will write a case for support in plain language, name the values your organization will not compromise, and learn to treat every donor conversation as an invitation into the work. This training honors the institutional knowledge you already hold, and teaches you to use that strength to fund your mission.
Built for the people already doing the work.
New development leads
Stepping into a first development role without a roadmap.
Board members
Ready to support fundraising but unsure where they fit.
Accidental fundraisers
Program and ED staff who raise money on top of everything else.
Growing teams
Small shops building their first repeatable development engine.
Every lesson follows the same rhythm.
A private portal holds it all together. Everything participants write is saved automatically and waits for them when they return.
Arrive warmed up
Each lesson opens with 20 to 30 minutes of pre-work in the portal, so the live session starts with thinking already on the page.
Do the work live, together
A facilitated working session of 75 to 90 minutes. Your team drafts, practices, and gets feedback on their actual materials. No lecture marathons.
Build the habit
One small, reviewable commitment each week, captured in the portal and revisited next session. That's where the change sticks.
Every engagement includes facilitated live sessions, participant workbooks, ready-to-use gift forms and templates, and a private training portal for your team.
The first eight sessions are our Nonprofit Fundraising Fundamentals course, and it can cost you nothing.
Development 101 - Nonprofit Fundraising Fundamentals is an approved course in the Massachusetts Workforce Training Fund Express Program (course C-16203). If your nonprofit has 100 or fewer employees and pays into the fund (most do, automatically), the Commonwealth reimburses up to 100% of tuition after your team completes the course.
This standardized cohort runs alongside our tailored engagements, it does not replace them. Same curriculum, same instructor. Want the version shaped around your organization instead? That is the engagement above, and we would love to talk about it.
A minimum eight-session arc, drawn from fifteen lessons.
Fifteen lessons take a team from first principles to a finished plan. The first eight are our Nonprofit Fundraising Fundamentals course, the arc covered by the grant. Lessons 09 and up are deeper learning we mix into tailored engagements.
Your team walks away able to do the work.
Not a binder of theory. A set of finished tools and the confidence to use them.
The demo opens Lesson 1, end to end.
The pre-work, the live-session activities, and the follow-through. Click around. Type in it. It's the same portal your team would use.