We sit down with Derric Bakker, MBA, founder and CEO of Dickerson Bakker and writer of A Higher Option to Fundraise: Deal with Each Donor Like a Main Donor, to debate why fashionable fundraising feels more and more transactional, exhausting, and disconnected from its true function.

Derric shares the airport story that impressed his philosophy and descriptions why each supporter—no matter present measurement—deserves to really feel seen, valued, stewarded, and invited into significant partnership. The dialog breaks down the seven behaviors of relationship-based fundraising, explains how AI might be leveraged to hearken to donors at scale with out dropping genuine human-to-human connection, and gives a compelling path ahead to remedy fundraiser burnout.