EPISODE 129
Episode 129 of Tales From the Trenches Tuesdays is the last of the series featuring James Misner, the founder of the Kipos Group. James has spent over two decades in the fundraising trenches — leading programs, building teams, and now, through The Kipos Group, helping small and mid-sized organizations grow revenue in ways that actually last. He’s the kind of practitioner who learns as much from his failures as his wins, and he’s generous enough to share both.
We spent a good chunk of our conversation on solicitations — the ones that soared, and the ones that crashed. James told me about a campaign he ran years ago at World Relief during the first Trump administration. Refugees were being cut off. The organization was scrambling. He raised money, but looking back, he says the messaging was all wrong — it was about saving the organization, not about the people it served. Then he told me about watching a team he’d trained run almost the exact same situation in early 2025. They needed to raise three to four million dollars in sixty days. They connected the cuts directly to human lives — specific families, specific costs. No politics. No organizational navel-gazing. Just people. They crushed it. James was beaming telling me this story, and I understood why.
He also told me about losing a major donor — a banker who had traveled with him to the Democratic Republic of Congo, who believed in the work, who told James point-blank that his program was better than the competition’s. And still chose the other organization.
Simplicity scales and complexity fails. If you can mire things down with complexity, it’s going to prevent people from taking the action you want them to take.
The donor needed to convince thousands of people in his congregation to give. The simpler story won. Not the better program. The simpler story. James carried that lesson with him, and it’s shaped everything about how he coaches clients today.
We talked about boards, too — what they should actually be doing versus what fundraisers often wish they’d do. James made a point I think a lot of people need to hear: boards don’t need to be fundraisers. They need to be storytellers. They need to open doors, not twist arms. And they need to listen to the people who’ve actually sat across from donors — because when they don’t, the consequences can be costly. He walked me through losing a trucking company owner who gave a quarter million a year — not just losing him, but watching that donor pull back from seven or eight other organizations too, all because someone decided to explain the methodology instead of just letting him know his money was feeding kids.
James runs The Kipos Group out of a genuine belief that good organizations deserve to grow. And after spending time with him, I believe he’s the right person to help them do it.
Just click on the picture of James below to hear our conversation.
L’chaim,
jack
