How to Raise Money: A Classic Guide for the Modern Fundraiser
A fundraising manual written in 1932 has been restored, modernised and given a century of data-driven hindsight. The result is one of the most useful books the sector has produced in years.
Lyman Pierce was one of the founding figures of organised fundraising. Between 1905 and the 1920s, he and his colleague Charles Sumner Ward developed the intensive, time-limited fundraising campaign.
They applied what Pierce called the “laboratory method” to every stage of the process, testing and measuring with a rigour that any modern data analyst would recognise. In doing so, he effectively invented the capital campaign, the gift table, the organised volunteer team structure, and the daily progress report. He helped raise the equivalent of $5 billion for nonprofit organisations across four continents.
He died in relative obscurity, leaving behind a fundraising manual that went out of print and was forgotten for nearly eighty years.
Steve MacLaughlin, bestselling author of Data Driven Nonprofits and a highly experienced nonprofit sector analyst, rediscovered Pierce’s 1932 book How to Raise Money and recognised that its core ideas had never been superseded.
With added century-long hindsight
This new edition has been completely reimagined: disassembled, rewritten, reorganised, restored and reassembled, with Pierce’s original text updated into language a working fundraiser in 2026 can easily read.
It has been further enriched throughout with MacLaughlin’s commentary drawing on nearly a century of accumulated evidence about what works and why.
What Pierce got right and what he got wrong
What makes the book distinctive is MacLaughlin’s refusal to be reverential. He examines Pierce’s predictions as a data analyst. He identifies where Pierce was right, and shows the modern evidence that confirms it. For example, about the dominance of lead gifts, the superiority of volunteer peer solicitation, the irreplaceable importance of constituency building.
He also highlights where Pierce got it wrong — about charitable gift annuities, insurance-based giving, investment trusts. So this book is not a historical curiosity but a working tool, grounded in principles that have been tested across ten decades. Can you name a fundraising book that has that sense of perspective?
Data-driven fundraising practices ahead of their time
MacLaughlin argues persuasively that many of Pierce’s methodologies would now qualify as data-driven fundraising practices. These include his daily telegraphed campaign reports, his prospect rating and classification system. His tools were different of course, since he had to rely on card files and telegrams rather than CRM systems and dashboards.
The barriers to evidence-based fundraising, the book concludes, are not primarily technological. They are cultural. That is not a comfortable observation, and it is not meant to be.
The book covers fundraising fundamentals, campaign structure, portfolio management, development operations, donor stewardship and planned giving. These are the full range of what Pierce called “variations in money-raising”.
The planned giving chapters are particularly illuminating. Pierce documented in the 1930s that roughly half of all endowment came from bequests, and argued that the vehicle was dramatically underutilised. That message can still be applied today, even taking into account the changes in legal and regulatory landscape governing planned giving that have been developed in the past century.
The Janus-like understanding and insight that MacLaughlin applies to this document from the past are powerful. Are there other long-unavailable books from successful fundraisers that would give value if they received the MacLaughlin treatment? Books from a more diverse range of fundraisers?
And which fundraising books will be being unearthed and rediscovered in 100 years?
About the Lyman L Pierce and Steve MacLaughlin
Lyman L. Pierce (1869–1940) was one of the pioneers of modern organised fundraising in the United States. Together with Charles Sumner Ward he developed the intensive, time-limited fundraising campaign in the early twentieth century, bringing a systematic, testable approach to what had previously been an informal and inconsistent practice. His original fundraising manual, first published in 1932, went largely unread for nearly ninety years.
Steve MacLaughlin is Senior Vice President of Product at GOBEL and the bestselling author of Data Driven Nonprofits. He has spent more than two decades working at the intersection of fundraising and data analytics, previously serving as Vice President of Data & Analytics at Blackbaud. He is an adjunct faculty member at Columbia University’s nonprofit management programme and a frequent speaker at sector events internationally.
WATCH: Steve MacLaughlin on his new book
Reviews
“How to Raise Money is the book your organisation needed in 1932. It still is.”
Roger Craver, Editor-in-Chief, The Agitator; author, Retention Fundraising
Read Roger Craver’s review in The Agitator.
“A timeless and essential volume that reminds us that fundraising is not about tactics alone, but about human connection. How to Raise Money reminds us that while tools and technologies evolve, lasting success still comes from something far more human: our ability to connect deeply, authentically, and person-to-person.”
Allison Fine, President, Every.org
“Steve MacLaughlin shines a light on wisdom that will help fundraisers at all levels, while also giving much deserved attention to an early 20th Century industry pioneer.”
Rachel Hutchisson, CEO, Common Impact
