Noah Maier is a professional fundraiser who has helped move approximately $450 million towards causes and projects across nonprofits, foundations, politics, and the private sector. He joins JD to explore why fundraising can be one of the most impactful careers, and how Christians can become better at asking for money, building relationships with donors, and inspiring generosity.
They discuss practical fundraising strategies, what Jesus' teaching about the widow's mite means for effective giving, and how nonprofits should think about raising more money when every dollar has an opportunity cost. Noah also shares his thoughts on the billions of dollars that could flow into effective altruism through Anthropic, why empathy matters more than a perfect pitch, and how young professionals can build successful careers in fundraising.
This episode was recorded on 25 February 2026.
Articles, Scripture, organisations, and other media discussed in this episode
Coefficient Giving (33:10) – Mentioned by JD as one of the major funders in the effective altruism ecosystem. Formerly Open Philanthropy.
Anthropic (33:10–36:57) – The AI company behind Claude, discussed in relation to the possibility of significant future philanthropic giving from employees and founders.
Renaissance Philanthropy (41:53) – Mentioned by JD in a discussion about newly wealthy technology founders and opportunities to advise major philanthropists.
Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy (38:14) – Referenced by Noah in connection with fundraising pioneer Hank Rosso, whose teachings influenced Noah's approach to donor stewardship and retention.
Hank Rosso and Achieving Excellence in Fundraising (38:14, 42:54) – Noah credits Rosso's approach with influencing his own fundraising education and recommends reading his work.
Penelope Burk, Donor-Centered Fundraising (42:54) – Noah recommends reading Burk's work to learn fundraising.
Mal Warwick's fundraising books (42:54) – Noah recommends Warwick alongside Rosso and Burk as one of the great fundraising writers.
Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People (42:54) – Noah recommends Carnegie's work and similar resources on building relationships.
The Lord of the Rings (08:50) – JD compares money's corrupting influence to the One Ring, which promises the power to do good while tempting its bearer.
The Joe Rogan Experience (37:24) – Noah refers to a conversation between Elon Musk and Joe Rogan about wealth and the distinction between publicly known fortunes and other forms of wealth.
Harry Potter (42:54) – Referenced in an anecdote Noah recounts about J. K. Rowling recognising her own wealth.
Mentioned Scripture:
Mark 12:41-44, The Widow’s Offering - The central biblical passage in the episode. Noah and JD discuss the widow's sacrificial giving, the importance of generosity, and the relationship between the personal significance of giving and its measurable impact.
“They all gave out of their wealth; but she, out of her poverty, put in everything - all she had to live on.” (Mark 12:44, NIV)
John 2:13–17, Jesus Clears the Temple - Noah references Jesus overturning the tables in the temple while discussing the radical nature of Jesus' teachings and actions concerning money.
“In the temple courts he found people selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money. So he made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple courts, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables.” (John 2:14-15)
Episode Highlights:
On Learning How to Ask
“If you're not asking from a place of love, I think the ask is usually bad. So if you take just two seconds to fall in love with your barista, in a very platonic way, of course, but take two seconds, fall in love with your barista, open your heart to them, and then ask from a very sincere place, you'll find more often than not that people will say yes to a question.”
When Effective Giving Becomes an Idol
“If you hyper focus on impact, you're making an idol of that impact in a way that will wreck your long-term ability to make a difference in the world.”
What the Widow's Mite Teaches Us About Generosity
“Those two pennies like dropped down a gutter somewhere and disappeared. It doesn't matter for the impact. The impact of whatever the temple was doing will still carry on and you probably won't even miss those two pennies. It matters a great deal to the widow giving that money. And I think that sometimes in EA world we lose sight of the fact that giving is for us.”
Why Empathy Matters More Than a Perfect Pitch
“You're not going to math your way into getting somebody to care. You're not going to research report your way into getting somebody to care.”
What Fundraisers Are Really Competing Against
“I'm not competing with other nonprofits. I'm competing with luxurious spend. I'm competing with the hundreds of millions of dollars just making money on an S & P 500 and going nowhere.”
Fundraising as an Invitation to Give
“It's our job to get the word out to as many people as possible, to give them this gift of an invitation to give. It's a privilege for them to give to your good work. Give them this gift.”
How to Become a Great Fundraiser
“Fundraising is really about being yourself, getting to know who you are authentically and connecting to who they are authentically and just making those connections match.”
Fundraising Is Teaching People to Be Generous
“Understand that just because somebody has incredible amounts of money doesn't mean that they're ready to give it away.”
“What you're doing as a fundraiser is just teaching them how to be generous.”
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JD (00:00)
Hey everyone, JD here, and I'm really excited to be talking today with Noah Maier. Noah is a fundraiser. He's worked for nonprofits, for family foundations, for AI companies, venture funds. You've been in this business a while.
How much money are we talking about? How much money have you raised?
Noah (00:22)
Thanks for having me JD. It depends on how you count. As every good fundraiser will tell you, there's a lot of hand wavy things you can do to make this total bigger than it is. But I think you can conservatively say that I've moved about $450 million.
JD (00:41)
conservatively moved $450 million. Okay, so
Noah (00:44)
That's a one, yeah.
JD (00:46)
let's unpack that number. So that's across like
Noah (00:47)
Yeah.
JD (00:48)
15 years in this career or how did you get into all of this
Noah (00:53)
Well, first, let's talk about the number itself because I think it's important for people to understand that the higher up you get in a fundraising career, the more people you meet and the easier it is to raise bigger and bigger amounts of money. So it's actually not something I'm terribly proud of, that number. I'm much more proud of like when I was in my early days working for a state Senate candidate who had a $500 limit and I was calling 300 people a day. that's the fundraising work that I think.
kind of prove my metal in this space. And then I just had the good fortune of, you know, getting to know some really interesting people and having a career and that it got easier and easier to make that number bigger and bigger. But for people who are newer in their careers, I think they should know that it's a made up number that doesn't actually mean that somebody is a good fundraiser at all.
JD (01:44)
At Christians for Impact, we talk all about the world's most pressing problems and how Christians can make the biggest possible impact. But you're really convinced that philanthropy and fundraising is a huge part of that. walk me through, like, why does philanthropy matter? Why do you do what you do?
Noah (02:01)
Yeah, the, I would, you know, even a step further and say like, knowing how to ask for things is a hack that unlocks anything that you want in this world. So maybe you want to be a fundraiser and that's awesome. We can talk about that, but also maybe you just want like a raise at your job so you can give more money away or you want to ask for more time off so you can spend with your family or whatever the, knowing how to ask us. mean, we don't teach people.
And fundraising is one way to get really, really good at that, but it's a larger question of knowing how to ask. And then understanding also, people want to be generous. People want to be generous with their time and their money. And a lot of people just have a lot more money than they have time. And so knowing how to ask people for money is useful. But if you're talking to mostly people who have more time,
and less money and knowing how to ask them to volunteer for something is super useful too. So I think there's, yeah, that's where I'd probably start the conversation is just knowing how to ask.
JD (03:00)
One thing my pastor says that I love is don't give people their no for them. Like don't say no before they've said no, right? Give them the chance to say yes.
Noah (03:06)
Yes.
JD (03:09)
So how do you ask? What does that mean for you?
Noah (03:13)
Yeah, so I think...
Knowing how to ask probably happens in seven steps for most fundraisers. Everybody has a different version of this, but mine is prospecting, qualifying, actually asking, chasing down the commitments, saying thank you, following up and upgrading. And even if you're really bad at the actual moment of ask, if you're good at those other things, you can still be a really great fundraiser. But when it comes time to ask,
There's all sorts of things that you can do to make the ask feel personal and significant, but one of the easiest things that I would recommend people start trying, maybe at your local coffee shop, ask for a discount on the coffee. There's no reason not to. And the way that I usually introduce the idea is I say, would you consider insert ask here by, and often it's a time commitment attached to it by such and such a time. And if they say no,
you can follow up and say, well, what would you consider? It's not an original idea. Some other fundraisers can, but I don't remember who it was now, but you don't ever have to worry about somebody saying no, if you can follow up with, well, what would you consider? Hey, can I have a 15 % discount on my coffee? Why? I don't know. I'm a nice guy. No. Then you're left with nothing. But if you say, would you consider giving me a 15 % discount on my coffee? No.
Why? I'm a nice guy. No, I'm not gonna do that. Well, what would you consider? I don't know, want a cookie? Like, I mean, like you have something that you can bounce back on and the answer to that second thing often surprises people. So yeah, if you're gonna condense like how to ask into a single mechanistic sense, that's probably what I would offer. The second thing that I would offer is equally as important though. And that's if you're not asking,
from a place of love, I think the ask is usually bad. So if you take just two seconds to fall in love with your barista, in a very platonic way, of course, but take two seconds, fall in love with your barista, open your heart to them, and then ask
JD (05:29)
Mm.
Noah (05:29)
from a very sincere place, you'll find more often than not that people will say yes to a question.
JD (05:35)
Hmm, hmm. You're a Christian. The teachings of Jesus motivate you, ground you. And there's so much about generosity in Jesus's teachings
and so much love, right? How
Noah (05:45)
Yeah. Yes.
JD (05:48)
does being a Christian fundraiser make you better at being a Christian and a fundraiser?
Noah (05:54)
Yeah, yeah, I think there's probably two ways to answer that question. So one is to point to generosity itself. It's not just Christianity. Generosity is the foundation of every major religion. And it's there for a reason, I think. It's because we're not good at it by default. And it actually does make us better people.
I think we're Christian employees, so you can come from any religious background, and if you're not religious, just talk to your therapist if you're having a bad day, and the first thing they're going to tell you is like, get outside of yourself, help somebody, right? I mean, this is very like, it's a thing that we need to be reminded to do, but generosity is yes, yes, yes, yes, yeah. But coming
JD (06:33)
Part of the grain of our existence really. Yeah, yeah. That's how we were made to be.
Noah (06:37)
from a Christian background in particular, I think the things that probably excite me the most about Christianity and fundraising have to do with Jesus's relationship with money, and I
you know, flipping tables at the temple and, you know, we've talked about the widow's might and Mark 12. know, like there are, Jesus has many, teachings around money. And I think, frankly, most of them are incredibly, deeply radical. money is something that we make idols of in this society. And I think Jesus provides a really
Sharp spear to cut through a lot of the nonsense around money that we grow up with in the context around money that we're in all the time. yeah
JD (07:25)
What kind of nonsense are you talking about? There's no nonsense. What are you talking about? Yeah.
Noah (07:30)
Yeah, I mean so okay, so let me let me let me turn the tables on you for a second here When you think about money when you think about your relationship with money Like did you learn and you don't have to be specific if you don't want to be but like did you learn things?
weird things from your context when you grew up? Guilt and shame around not having enough, guilt and shame around having too much. Did you like, what were some of the weird things that you had in your life around?
JD (07:58)
We definitely didn't have any shame about having too little with missionary parents. I
Noah (08:02)
Sure, sure.
JD (08:04)
think there was a probably a very unusual shame about having too much. in the sense of dying with too much. I think that is shameful to like die a billionaire. Not that we were ever on track for billions, but in the sense of like unwillingness to work with money to generate more.
money or good for the kingdom. Does that make sense?
Noah (08:30)
Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. And that shapes now,
of course, yeah, and that shapes now what you do. Because in a sense that unwillingness to work with money is itself an idol that we create for ourselves that's totally unnecessary. It's a story,
JD (08:45)
Mmm, that's a hot take. Okay.
Noah (08:47)
it's an attachment. like it, yeah, please, yeah, play it out, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah.
JD (08:50)
Well, to play, I don't want to say devil's advocate, but to play a different position. Money
is treated in scripture at times like this kind of corrupting force, right? Like it's almost like the ring in Lord of the Rings. It's this precious thing that like draws our heart to it. With it, you could do so much power and good, but it's corrupting you as you hold onto it. It seems like how
Noah (09:10)
Yes.
JD (09:10)
a lot of the New Testament authors treat money, but that seems to cut against...
a lot of what you do, which is working with millionaires, perhaps billionaires at times to raise tens, hundreds of millions of dollars for causes. how do you wrestle with that? would you critique that idea of money being like the ring?
EA for Christians (09:33)
Sorry to interrupt the show, but I wanted to take five seconds to invite you to join me and 200 other impact-focused Christians tackling the world's biggest problems with God's help in DC and in London this November. So we're gonna meet for our 2026 conference. We're gonna have speakers like the one you're listening to in this podcast, maybe more, even better ones. And I hope to see you there. You can sign up today. Tickets started just 50 pounds, sign up before prices rise. That's November 13th to 15th.
in Washington DC and november twenty seventh to twenty ninth in London. Hope to see you there.
Noah (10:07)
Ha. So several, there's a nuanced thing you can have here. Money is a corrupting force. I've had the good fortune to talk with many friends who are billionaires, some of whom inherited their money, some of whom created it. I think, I mean, 99 % of them would say money is a corrupting force unless you're very careful and you're doing your work.
From my place as a fundraiser, and I think this speaks to the larger EA movement too a little bit, but from my place as a fundraiser, I think it's very important to come from a place of impartiality. I don't try very hard to put my morality on somebody else. I want to be vulnerable with you, to understand your perspective, to have my cool projects and ideas, to connect the pieces of those cool projects and ideas, to come from a place of wonder.
to try to understand what you're about. And that ends up moving the money in a way that I don't think it would if I was, I literally had somebody at the conference that you and I were both at. There's the one-on-one meetings that you can participate in. And somebody came to me and said, basically like laid out a case, a rigorous philosophical case for why his way of giving was the best way. And then ended by saying, so will you give $30,000 to my cause? I was like, you didn't even.
get to know me. You don't understand what I care about, why I give the way I give. And the answer is no, no, I'm not going to do that. And so he was like, why not? Because he just laid out this rigorous, perfect, logical case for why I should give the money to his particular thing. And the answer is like, that's not how I do my giving. Sometimes that's how I do my advising. But it's so much more important as a fundraiser to
connect with the person who's on the other side of this. And so I live a very simple bare bones life in the middle of rural Colorado. I don't expect a New York hedge fund manager with 55 bedrooms in the Hamptons, literally, to think the same way that I think. I don't need that. I don't need to convince him that I write. I need to do is convince him to shift some of his money
to priorities that I care about. And I can do that usually just by connecting on what his values are and what makes sense.
JD (12:39)
All right, I have a serious question, but for this one I'm gonna have to dim the lights a little bit, so give me a second.
Noah (12:44)
There's special effects.
JD (12:47)
All right, that's a little bit, a little bit dimmer.
we were talking earlier and you told me if you're an EA Christian and haven't reckoned with the widow's might, you were doing something deeply wrong in your giving.
Noah (13:01)
Yeah, no, I fundamentally believe this.
JD (13:02)
What did you mean by that?
Noah (13:07)
If you hyper focus on impact, you're making an idol of that impact in a way that will wreck your long-term ability to make a difference in the world. I think it's Mark 12 is the story of the widow's might, but we can edit that out if I'm wrong. Yeah.
JD (13:28)
What does that mean to hyper focus on it?
I think I hyper focus on impact. Am I in the target here? What does that mean for you?
Noah (13:35)
Yeah,
yeah, sure. Yeah, think if you're hyper focusing on, if you've made an idol of your impact at the expense of the spirit of generosity that is very, very biblical, then I do think, yeah, there's something wrong. I don't know what your personal giving is. And from my experience of you, I think that you balance well this love and this generosity with your impact focus.
But yeah, if you were totally indexed on impact at the expense of what it feels like to give, I would be critical of it.
JD (14:08)
So is that
like giving in a way that has absolutely no joy or cheer, giving in a way that has no sense of love for others effectually? like, give me some examples of a kind of idolatrous effect of giving.
Noah (14:24)
Yeah, so okay, giving period is good. So I hope that people understand when I'm saying this, that even if you're giving to things that I don't think, yeah, yeah, no, no, it's fine. Yeah, yeah, good. Even if you're giving
JD (14:33)
You're on a Christian Impact EA-ish podcast.
Noah (14:38)
to things that I don't think are effective, or if you're giving to things in a way that's like, I'm doing this totally for impact and not at all about myself, awesome, great, keep doing it. I'm not trying to change your mind. I'll tell you my perspective.
And my perspective is when Jesus talks about the widow's might, and for those who don't know the story, it's a widow giving to a temple and she gives a little tiny bit of money, but it's basically all she has. And Jesus holds her up as this great example compared to people who may be giving more money, but it's a tiny percentage of how they are and how they live. If the widow's, like let's say she give two pennies.
those two pennies like dropped down a gutter somewhere and disappeared. It doesn't matter for the impact. The impact of whatever the temple was doing will still carry on and you probably won't even miss those two pennies. It matters a great deal to the widow giving that money. And I think that sometimes in EA world we lose sight of the fact that giving is for us. Giving is a really beautiful selfless act.
that gets us out of our ego, that stops us thinking about ourselves all the time. And I know many, many people who are giving to the most efficient, giving millions to the most efficient causes in the world, and they're thinking about themselves in a way that they've convinced themselves that they're not. Where it's like, no, if I help blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, unstated thing is like, then I will be a good person, then I will be worthy, then I will be whatever.
JD (16:20)
that hurts, that cuts
deep. Yeah, yeah.
Noah (16:22)
Yeah, you you're worthy now. You're worthy now.
And you're giving, even if it's to stupid things, is valuable just because it's giving. And so
JD (16:32)
Okay.
Noah (16:32)
this is the drum that I'm beating in that particular story. Yeah.
JD (16:35)
Let's unearth this, because there's good stuff here, and I think
we agree on some stuff, disagree on other stuff. The widow, right?
Noah (16:41)
Sure. Yeah.
JD (16:42)
She does not have external impact on the temple, right? But her giving changes. It's a kind of worship, right? She shows
Noah (16:50)
Yes.
JD (16:50)
through her giving where her heart really is, in that she's willing to trust God, that she trusts God
Noah (16:54)
Yep.
JD (16:56)
with her little instead of with her plenty.
But if she had more money, like she could give in a way that would have a huge impact. We wouldn't still want
Noah (17:07)
Yes, yeah.
JD (17:08)
to say her giving is just about her, right? Like take a different situation. Take someone who isn't a widow or with a might. Take somebody who is giving away millions of dollars, right? Their giving is not just about them. Like they can save hundreds, perhaps thousands of lives with millions of dollars, right?
Noah (17:23)
Sure,
yeah, yeah, yeah, no, this is good. But I would take that back. Let's say you and I each had $100 million. What an amazing thing that would be. And we wanted to give it away, which is even more amazing. I don't think either one of us would say, I want to give to the least impactful things I can possibly find. We would want to save lives with our money. This is a beautiful thing. So I'm not saying get rid of the impact. No, I I think that this is
And in fact, the beautiful thing about effective altruism is that it has created now over many years systems for understanding how your giving can be the most impactful. But we see it among our friends. People can take the same math and draw radically different conclusions, most famously about shrimp. Like the... So that's fine. I mean, my message here is like, do your math.
Figure out your impact. Try to be as impactful as you can. These are worthy exercises. But also understand that if you hyper-focus on that without remembering that your giving is also about you, you're going to get to a very dark place where you're spiraling out of control, where you're not, every time you sip your coffee, you're thinking about, was it a fair trade coffee?
JD (18:44)
Mmm.
Noah (18:46)
Did I hurt?
people in Colombia by accidentally buying this coffee that I shouldn't have bought from a corporation that didn't whatever. You can go down these rabbit holes so easily if
JD (18:53)
Sure. Okay, okay, okay.
Noah (18:55)
it's not also about you. And yeah.
JD (18:58)
So I think there's something, like what
I want to affirm here is you should treat yourself like someone you're, that you're a friend in charge of taking care of, right? And you shouldn't beat yourself up and you shouldn't neglect the way that God can show his love and provision for you even as you're giving, right?
Noah (19:21)
Yes.
JD (19:22)
And your trust in God even as you're giving. But...
I guess where I get worked up is where so few people in the world are thinking about optimizing for impact and giving in a way that doesn't involve them. And so many people are trying to reinvent the wheel with their philanthropy and give in a way that makes themself feel good. Like isn't the overwhelming message we should be saying here that people should give less about themselves. People should focus on themselves less than they're giving. Like, like I understand the kind of person that gives millions and has like no heart in it. Right. And like
Noah (19:53)
Yes.
JD (19:53)
there's something incomplete there. I just feel like
Noah (19:55)
Yeah.
JD (19:56)
most people are not there at all. Most people are on the complete other end of the spectrum where they are only giving to the programs that make them feel good and have like,
Noah (20:05)
Yes.
JD (20:05)
like trivial, almost insignificant impacts in in the world.
Noah (20:08)
Well, let's forget about
feel good for a second. And that's also, but I also want to figure out about like the shoulds and shouldn'ts. I'm coming from a place of people do what they want to do. And I give,
JD (20:19)
I can also imagine
a situation, if I was advising millionaires on giving, I probably would need to talk like you're talking in order, it's a wind dress and yeah, yeah, yeah.
Noah (20:25)
Yeah, sure, sure, sure, sure. Yeah, that's
right. But I also think that it's important to say that you're giving in an effective way because that's what you want to do. And I agree with you or I wouldn't be on this podcast. But I also think that if, so let's take like a stupid example that I hate, like giving to a university or giving to an art museum or giving to something. Why would somebody give to an art museum? It's probably because they're like, I love art.
Or I knew a very wealthy couple one time who gave to forests. And they were like, because we met in a forest. Me and my wife, we met in a forest, so we give to forest things. OK. I, as an advisor, would encourage you to think differently about that, for sure. I don't think you had a lot of rigor in your analysis of the way forests work and how that's going to reduce suffering in the world. And yeah, this is a real problem.
But then I take it a step further and say, like, so if I'm actually talking to you, how do I, this is the eternal EA question, it's like, how do I get you to care about the thing that I care about? Right.
JD (21:32)
Yeah, it's sort of like the,
we're not talking about what's possible in some theoretical world. We're talking about what's actual in this world and how do you move people over. okay.
Noah (21:38)
Yes. Yes. Yes.
Yeah, exactly right. And if you're, if you were in a position right now where you're kind of shaking your fist at the sky and saying, why doesn't philanthropy do blah, blah? Yes, that's right. But you're not going to math your way into getting somebody to care. You're not going to research report your way into getting somebody to care. The
JD (21:58)
Yeah. Yeah, definitely.
Noah (22:02)
way you get somebody to care, like the forest people, the way you get somebody to care is you sit down with them and you say, okay, forest.
I love this. The story of how you met, so beautiful. You were working on Forrest together. Tell me what else has been important to you in your life. Da da da da da, da da da da da. We adopted a kid. Okay, let's talk. Where did you adopt the kid from? Oh, from India. Okay, cool. Let's talk about what's happening in India right now. You can connect the dots with people.
Not always, not every time, but you have a lot easier time if you come from this place of understanding and empathy from where they're coming from,
and take your rigorous lens and attach it so you can bring people where you need them to go. Carefully, slowly, not all at once. But like another thing I did, worked in politics for a long time. Not once did I knock on a door and let's say, let's pretend I was working for a Democrat and they were Republican. Not once did I knock on the door and they're like, I'm a Republican. And I'm like, well, let me convince you why you're wrong. It doesn't work.
But what does work is me saying, oh, you're a Republican. Awesome. What are some of the things you care about as a Republican? Oh, I care about, you know, freedom of speech. Let me tell you why John Smith is a champion of freedom of speech. And this might be the one time in your life you vote for a Democrat, but our opponent, hates freedom of speech, blah, blah, blah. Like that works. And so I think my my pitch here is accept people.
where they are, from their level, talk to them about the stuff that you care about, and you can bring people and connect people in a way that maybe they're not exactly where you are, but they're three steps forward in that direction.
JD (23:50)
Yeah. Nice. we have about 20, 25 minutes left. Uh, so there's, there's a couple of things I'd like to do. First thing I would like to do is talk about how organizations should be thinking about fundraising. So I run a nonprofit Christians for impact. We have our
Noah (24:03)
Yes.
JD (24:06)
advising project. We have this podcast, we have our EA Christian arm and we do conferences. Um, we're about $300,000 a year and I,
I'm wondering sometimes how should I think about raising more funds? Should I be thinking about raising more funds as an effective altruist? I'm very conscious of where the money's coming from. I talked to other EA founders. They wrestle with this too, they could, I'm not quite snap their fingers, but they could easily raise an extra hundred grand a year from known funders. But they know that money's coming from really good sources and will go to really good projects, if not to them. So there's a certain conscientiousness.
that kind of blocks them from being more ambitious in the fundraising aspect. There's also sometimes like a hesitancy to like ask communities for money because you all get those emails where it's like every second email is asking for money, especially if you're in those like underfunded spaces like politics or animal welfare or whatnot. At a high level, how do you think organizations like mine should think about fundraising, fundraising strategy?
Take that where you will. Happy to give more details if you're wondering.
Noah (25:16)
Yeah, Yeah, well, let me
ask you some questions. Like, do you want to raise more money?
JD (25:21)
Like, do I have a personal desire to like raise lots of money? And I mean,
Noah (25:24)
Yeah, you personally
do you want, well not lots, do you want to raise more than you have right
JD (25:28)
I think it would be nice to have more money. I think there'd be things.
Noah (25:31)
Okay, what would you do with it?
JD (25:33)
Yeah, so if we had more funds, we would hire more staff to build cooler resources that we're doing right now to scale our advising, to make this podcast better than it is, to make our conferences bigger.
Noah (25:45)
So I'll ask the question again. You
didn't actually answer it. Do you want to raise more?
JD (25:51)
So like, do I want to do the work to do the fundraising? I don't think that sounds fun. No.
Noah (25:54)
No. Do
you want to raise more money?
JD (25:58)
I personally do not look forward to that task. no, no, no. Don't raise it.
Noah (26:00)
Okay, great. There's an answer. You don't want to raise more money. Raise more money. Yeah.
Yeah, that truly that is the answer. And this is something I think that's deeply important is understanding what do people actually want? And if you're good, just be good. But if you're in a situation where you feel like this is kind of like this weird external pressure where maybe we should be growing more than we are and whatever, then we can talk about that and interrogate that. But if it doesn't come from you,
Like you don't want to raise more money. You be literally JD, you. Yeah,
JD (26:32)
you being the executive or director. Okay, yeah.
Noah (26:36)
yeah. I have been on projects where I have not wanted to raise more money. I'm like, I think we're good. It's rare that that happens. But when it does happen, yes, beautiful. Help other people learn how to get where you got. Like you raised $300,000. This is amazing. There are people on $30,000 budgets trying to get where you are. Help them.
Yeah, so that's thing number one. But we can also enter a world where we're pretending that you do want to raise more money and have that discussion. But I think that's important.
JD (27:09)
So do you say you shouldn't raise more money just because if you don't want to raise more money, then that's a sign that you don't believe in the scaling up enough? Or you're not motivated enough to do it, to be effective? Why not back? Like why, like should I? Yeah.
Noah (27:24)
Yeah, well I never say you should or shouldn't
do anything. So I'm not saying you should go to the gym. I will say the gym will make you healthier. If you want to be healthy, that could be a good idea. I'm not gonna say you shouldn't eat ice cream. If you want to eat ice cream, eat ice cream. But you will then have the consequences of that. If you don't want to raise money, don't. You will have a $300,000 a year organization.
the bleed on that might be something like 20%. So over time 300 becomes a little bit less, becomes a little bit less, becomes a little bit less. Well, then maybe you're like, well, I don't want to raise more money, but I do want to keep my existing donors. Okay, then we're talking about a stewardship program. How can you keep them more engaged and more excited to build a stronger community? These are all things we can talk about. But yeah, I think it's truly important. And to be honest about...
almost all of us start from a place of what we want. Even in EA circles where we say, it's not about me, it's about the impact. Yeah, yeah, it's about you wanting to have that impact, right? Like,
JD (28:35)
Sure, sure.
Noah (28:36)
desire is a deeply important part of this.
JD (28:39)
Okay, so let's take more confident, more ambitious JD who wants to fundraise and he really wants to, right? And he wants to go from
Noah (28:48)
Yeah. Yeah.
JD (28:49)
a $300,000 org to a $3 million org in the course of a few years. Now, if you asked me how to do that, my guess would be like pitch the big philanthropies that are in the space. Pitch.
external philanthropies or foundations that have like tens of millions of dollars, like create really good stories to raise lots of money, maybe hire a fundraising person whose full-time job it is to like raise more money. Now I haven't thought about this tremendously because I don't think
Noah (29:26)
Yeah.
JD (29:27)
we're gonna be a $3 million organization in a couple of years.
comment on some of these thoughts, like,
Noah (29:31)
Well, yeah, think you said the most important thing
in the premise of the question. So my question to you would be, how is your confidence holding you back? You said, what if I was more confident? Which implies that there is a confidence holding you back here.
JD (29:44)
So I think for, in my case, in turn, because I know my givers right now are otherwise funding malaria nets to save kids lives at four grand a life, right? And so when I think
Noah (29:53)
Yeah, yeah.
JD (29:55)
about going from $300,000 a year to 600,000, our existing funding source, could maybe do this. I don't quite know, but it's pushing the limits. That would be 300 grand a year. That would be what, like, what's that, like 70 kids lives every single year?
So I
Noah (30:14)
Sure.
JD (30:15)
do feel the weight of that burden as I do currently on 300 grand a year. And I feel pretty
Noah (30:19)
Yes.
JD (30:22)
confident I can make that bet now and honor the responsibility of having impact and doing good with that money now. I'm substantially less confident at 600,000. Should I even be worrying about that as a funder? Is that just something I should like? Well, because I've some people say,
Noah (30:37)
Yes, of course you should. Of course you should. Yeah, why not? Because I'll
give you a real life example. Yeah,
JD (30:42)
Let other people make that bet. Yeah.
Noah (30:45)
well, I think that's true too, but I think it's disingenuous. That's a move that like tries to shift the responsibility. All of us have fundraisers wrestle with this question. I have two organizations right now that I work with. One, I have several, but like two in particular that I'll talk about. One is in AI alignment foundation.
that is doing, think, the most important safety work in the world on artificial intelligence, but very theoretical, very abstract, very scientific. I have another one that I work with. For $320, I can get somebody out of slavery in India. And so if I'm raising, call it $10 million for option A, in the back of my mind, I should be, I think this is fine.
doing the math to say how many Indian people could I have gotten out of slavery? Yes,
JD (31:34)
think it's like 30,000. Yeah, yeah.
Noah (31:37)
but most people don't stop there. Most people, or most people stop there, I mean. Most people shouldn't stop there, and they should also think about their donors and how many vacation homes do they have? How many nice cars are they driving? How many whatever? And I always
JD (31:52)
Mm.
Noah (31:53)
say this, I'm not competing with other nonprofits. I'm competing with
luxurious spend. I'm competing with
JD (32:01)
Mm.
Noah (32:01)
the hundreds of millions of dollars just making money on an S &P 500 and going nowhere.
JD (32:07)
Mm-hmm.
Noah (32:08)
I'm competing with all of this and I think it's important to do the trade-off math always as a fundraiser, especially when you're taking a job. I don't want to take a job where I'm like this is just a waste of somebody's money. I won't be able to raise the money well if I don't fully believe in it. I think it's a
maybe an apocryphal, zig-ziggler quote where he's like, I can't sell ice to Eskimos, but I can sell them a really good heater because I know they need the heater, right? The same thing is happening here. If I don't fully believe in it from day one, I can't sell it. And we should always be doing the math in the back of our heads. Do we fully believe in the thing?
But once we fully
JD (32:48)
Mm. Mm.
Noah (32:49)
believe in it,
It's our job to get the word out to as many people as possible, to give them this gift of an invitation to give. It's a privilege for them to give to your good work. Give them this gift. And if they say, hey, it's not for me right now, that's no big deal because there's 20 other
JD (33:08)
Hmm.
Noah (33:08)
people I can ask.
JD (33:10)
Hmm. Hmm. That's good. Okay.
So in the EA space, there's a couple, and by EA I mean effective altruism space, there's a couple of big funders, there's Coefficient Giving, which I think has a few billion dollars. There's one or two others of similar size. I think all of it adds up to like between 10-ish, around 10-ish billion dollars, right? Maybe a bit more, maybe a bit less. So there's talk about Anthropic, right? Anthropic, this AI company founded Claude.
a lot of Anthropic, the early team, were motivated by EA reasons that have taken pledges to give. And if you take the recent evaluation of Anthropic at around $400 billion, seriously, this is going to result in valuations of, I don't know, $50, $60, $70 billion for the EA Anthropic founders. So do you think that's going to materialize? Sorry, long question. But basically, is that going to materialize? if not, is there any way we can support
Noah (34:02)
The bullet point answer is yes.
JD (34:04)
that? Yeah.
Noah (34:06)
Yeah, yes, it will materialize.
JD (34:08)
And why do
you think this? Because some people are like, that's a lot of money. People's values change.
Noah (34:13)
I think it's going to be much higher than the numbers you said. I
JD (34:16)
wow, okay.
Noah (34:17)
think there's a non-zero chance Anthropic is a trillion dollar company.
JD (34:20)
Well, that
would be double what it is right now. It seems very reasonable and I would expect it to go there.
What kind of money do you think is going to materialize for altruistic projects through Anthropic?
Noah (34:31)
My understanding of the situation at Anthropic is that they have a very generous corporate match. That if they have a funding event, like an IPO as an example, that there will be many people at Anthropic who are very incentivized to give money away to cause of the care of a 501c3 money causes that they care about because I think most money is in donor advised fund. And
So I think we will see significant increases to effective altruism causes. I'm very excited about that.
JD (35:03)
Like 50 billion,
100 billion, 200 billion.
Noah (35:07)
depends on the IPO, depends on the event. Yeah.
JD (35:10)
Yeah,
Like, case scenario, what do think will happen?
Noah (35:16)
I think what's most,
JD (35:16)
in five years from now, five or 10.
Noah (35:17)
I'm giving you strategic non-answers to questions for obvious reasons.
JD (35:20)
Okay. Okay, okay.
Noah (35:22)
But I also think that like, I'll tell you my experience of what happened to several of my friends who are anthropic employees at some recent conferences that were either EA or EA adjacent, where they show up and their badge says anthropic and they get bombarded by people who are pitching their thing.
to the anthropic employee. I've been on the giving away money side of things too. And I know what it's like to have seven meetings a day with people who are trying to get money from me. And the most important thing I can tell those people is, do you care about the person you're talking to or do you care about their money? And if you're approaching a situation where you want to just make friends with somebody, get to know them,
understand what they love, what they care about, what their values are. And if you happen to have, I'll give you a real life example, one of my dear friends, I probably text him once or twice a week, has an incredibly famous last name and oodles of money. Like you definitely have heard of him. Or at least heard of his family. I don't think I've, one time in my years of knowing him, have I pitched him on a project. And it's because most of the stuff he cares about, I don't work on.
And that's fine. So like, can you have that relationship with your anthropic friends where you care about them and you're not being super transactional? If you can do that, you will be an excellent fundraiser.
JD (36:57)
I love it, Noah. You're preaching to the space of those trying to get money from Anthrophic. That's very good.
Noah (37:02)
Yes, very deeply. Yes. Yeah.
JD (37:06)
Yeah, I think you know people that are a little more opportunist than folks in my network, where it's like, a lot of us are just clueless about how much money is or isn't out there. But anyways, so.
Noah (37:18)
Assume,
I think for anybody in your network, assume the money is infinite. there's,
JD (37:22)
Hmm.
Noah (37:24)
like Elon Musk went on Joe Rogan a couple years ago and said something, Joe Rogan said something about you're richest man in the world. He said, well, the richest public, because there's sovereign wealth funds and there's this and there's that, there's always
JD (37:36)
Yeah.
Noah (37:36)
somebody who has more money than you. There's infinite money out there. Money is not the constraint. You can go get that
JD (37:41)
Mm.
Noah (37:42)
money. You can keep building that money. That's not the constraint. Almost always the constraints are psychological.
JD (37:47)
Hmm. Hmm. Wow. Okay. I want to talk about people pursuing careers like yours. So how old are you? You're in your mid thirties, late thirties, 35. Okay, cool.
Noah (37:54)
35.
JD (37:58)
And you did this from college, right? You were 22, 23.
Noah (38:01)
Yes,
started while I was in college actually working for a political camp.
JD (38:08)
Okay. And is that where you learned the skills of your trade? How did you learn this stuff?
Noah (38:14)
I had a really good fundraising education. I worked in politics for a long time, which teaches you how to be an efficient fundraiser, but not a fundraiser who builds empathy or cares. You know, like you just trying to get elected, right? You're not trying to like retain. And then there's a really famous fundraiser named Hank Rosso, who like the Indiana School of Fundraising is named the Hank Rosso School of Fundraising.
and I had the opportunity just by fluke to work for somebody who learned from him. And so I learned the exact opposite when I was working in nonprofits, how to do like the most possible on the stewardship and retention side. And then I worked for an innovation consulting firm in Silicon Valley for a little while where I learned like some of the creative stuff. And then probably the combination of those three things is what got me here.
JD (39:08)
Should people
reverse engineer your path or what would you recommend to 22 year old Noah graduating right now?
Noah (39:11)
jeez. Hell no.
There's so many easier ways to do it than the way that I did it. No,
JD (39:19)
What are they?
Noah (39:19)
but people should reverse engineer the lessons that I've learned and start where you are and start by just asking for things. And the number one thing you can do is like if you're a regular at a place like a coffee shop, ask for discounts.
Just practice. Get the muscle of asking. You know, talk to your Uber driver and learn to build empathy with people who are really grouchy, right? Like there's, you can do all of these little things in your life. Practice rejection. You know, think deeply about what it means to be an empathetic person. Not everybody's going to get there in the same way. There are so many styles of fundraisers. One of my favorites is a woman who's
just like will cuss out billionaires in board meetings if they don't agree with what you and she's in tremendous fundraiser it's not my thing it's not how i do it but she's so good you fundraising is really about being yourself getting to know who you are authentically and connecting to who they are authentically and just making those connections match
JD (40:29)
Yeah.
What do so what do fundraisers earn?
Noah (40:32)
I think, average salary for major gifts officer right now in a major metro is somewhere in like 160, 170 probably.
JD (40:41)
Okay, so these people are helping raise how much a year?
Noah (40:45)
If I was going to hire a fundraiser at that level, I would expect them to raise at least 10 times what I'm paying them, usually a lot more, but at least 10 times what I'm paying them to justify.
JD (40:55)
They're earning like at least 1.5, 2 million from new sources every year.
Noah (40:59)
Yeah, that's about right. You could
JD (41:01)
and news.
Noah (41:01)
also be stewarding existing sources, you could also be doing annual giving, there's a lot of different nuances to that.
JD (41:03)
Okay. Right. Depends on the portfolio and them. Yeah. Do you guys get together and talk
about fundraising? Like how you do it? Well, I feel like events for this. Yeah.
Noah (41:12)
for sure. Yeah. Yeah.
Events and conferences and email lists.
JD (41:17)
Any of your favorites?
Noah (41:19)
I think if you're, if you're actually interested in this, the best thing I could ask you to do is just to email me. and,
JD (41:25)
Yeah, what's your email?
Noah (41:28)
my last name, MAIER first name, Noah at gmail.com. super easy.
JD (41:32)
There it is.
Noah (41:33)
Yeah. And like the, because different people are going to different things. If you're an effective altruist.
You're going to want EA type things. If you're super into criminal justice reform, you're going to want that type of thing. There's lot of different nuances to where I would send you.
JD (41:53)
So yeah, three more questions. So one, I talked to this fellow named Parth, is, he's with Renaissance Philanthropy and was talking about all
Noah (42:01)
Okay.
JD (42:02)
of these new overnight, like mega millionaires, billionaires who before had no liquid wealth and like overnight are billionaires, right? And they wanna give a lot of it away and they have no team around them, right? Is this a common and new form of huge wealth? And is that a career path that people should consider?
helping form those teams, helping join those teams and advise those givers.
Noah (42:27)
Yeah, it's very, very hard to get that job, but if you can get it for sure. Usually you get it by just being smart and having to be lucky and stand next to the guy who, you know, founded Uber or whatever. Yeah, yeah.
JD (42:36)
or go to college with them, right, yeah.
Noah (42:38)
You went to college with them or yeah. So yes, if you stumble upon that, there's beautiful ways to make a difference.
JD (42:46)
Yeah, yeah. Any high level advice for People considering entering this career path, any high level advice for them?
Noah (42:54)
Read everything that Hank Rosso wrote, read everything that Penelope Burke wrote, Mal Warwick, like the legends of fundraising. There's so many books, there's so much, you know, Dale Carnegie, you know, any of the usual like, you know, getting to know people type resources. And understand that just because somebody has incredible amounts of money doesn't mean that they're ready to give it away.
I heard Oprah and Joe rolling, give an interview, they were back and forth with each other. Oprah asked Joe, when did you first know you were rich? And she said, was something to the effect of like, it was after the fourth Harry Potter book, when I held up two dresses in a store and I realized I could buy both of them. Well into the billions at that point. People don't actually know how rich they are. They don't know how to be generous.
JD (43:42)
Yeah, but she hadn't caught up with it. Yeah. Wow. That's crazy.
Noah (43:46)
What you're doing as a fundraiser is just teaching them how to be generous.
JD (43:49)
Mm.
No, it's been great having you. Any other career advice or advice for Christians interested in making the greatest possible difference in the world?
Noah (44:01)
Don't be afraid. I think a lot of people think, I'm not a fundraiser. I couldn't ask for money. It's you learn how to do it really easily. If you have the skills of a teacher, you can do this.
JD (44:14)
Awesome. Everyone who's watched, thank you so much for watching. We welcome you if you're interested in fundraising to apply for our one-on-one career advising, particularly if you're interested in fundraising for our top problem areas on the Christians for Impact website. We'd be happy to connect with you, pray with you over your career steps. Noah, if you say no, I'll just cut this out of the podcast, but would you be open in principle to connecting with folks who apply for one-on-one advising?
And so if you want to connect to folks like Noah, we'd be happy to facilitate an intro. So thank you so much, Noah, for coming on. And thank you, everyone, for watching.
Noah (44:52)
Thanks, appreciate you having
EA for Christians (44:53)
Again, hate to be interrupting your podcast, but it's JD, and I want to invite you to join me and 200 other impact-focused Christians at the 2026 Christians for Impact Conference. This is a great event with hundreds of Christians tackling the world's biggest problems with God's help. Tickets are at just 50 pounds. Hear from expert speakers like the ones on this podcast, and join us. Meet other Christians that share your values. Tickets started just 50 pounds. Did I already say that?
And prices are gonna rise, so sign up right away. There's a link in the description. You can do that. Join us in DC november thirteenth to fifteenth and in London November twenty-seventh to twenty-ninth.
