She Paid $2,000 to Get Lost in a Room of 200

The Year-End Appeal Kickstart Caps at 12

Claire paid $2,000 for a fundraising cohort program last year.

Two hundred people. A polished curriculum. Weekly modules she watched alone at 11pm, then a live Q&A where forty hands went up and hers never got called on.

She finished the program with a folder of templates and still no plan. Not because the content was bad — because nobody ever looked at her actual appeal and told her what was wrong with it.

That's the problem with most fundraising programs. They're built to scale. Not to work.

The Year-End Appeal Kickstart is built differently. I cap it at 12 people on purpose — not as a marketing number, but because 12 is the most people I can actually coach.

Twelve is small enough that I read every appeal draft. Twelve is small enough that when someone's timeline is off, I catch it before it costs them December. Twelve is small enough that by day 10, the group knows each other's organizations by name.

If I let this grow past 12, I'd be running the same kind of program Claire was in. I'm not willing to do that.

Over the 30 days, that cap is the difference between generic advice and real coaching: direct feedback on your actual draft, live troubleshooting when your timeline breaks, and a small enough room that your questions don't get lost in the queue.

Here's the part that doesn't bend, regardless of how many seats are filled on any given day: enrollment closes September 1, 2026. Not to manufacture pressure — because the cohort starts together on September 8th, and a rolling start would break the same coaching model the cap protects.

If you've been meaning to get your year-end plan built with someone who's actually reading your work — not handing you a folder of templates — this is the stretch before the door closes.