Using ABM to help nonprofits grow with corporate support

Anne Gynn, an ABM for Good volunteer, recently sat with Rob Leavitt, President and co-founder of ABM for Good, to get a primer on the organization and understand how this long-proven strategy can be applied successfully to the nonprofit world.

ANN: What is ABM for Good?

ROB: The short answer is that we’re an organization dedicated to bringing Account-Based Marketing (that’s the “ABM”) into the nonprofit world to help organizations build more sustainable sources of funding and partnerships. But to understand what we do, you first need to understand what ABM is and how it works in the business world.

ABM is a long-proven business strategy that helps companies increase revenue, improve reputation, and build more trusted, strategic relationships with their most important clients and prospects. It took off in the early 2000s with big tech and professional services firms and has become pervasive in recent years with large companies that sell to other large companies. 

For many companies, a relatively small number of clients or customers account for a large majority of revenue and profit. And these clients are often essential to the business even beyond the revenue: They provide your best references and referrals, they’re your best collaborators on new ideas and approaches, and they share the most helpful insight into their own plans and market dynamics the market.

You invest heavily in these accounts because they are a key driver for overall growth and innovation. You study them closely to make sure you know their specific wants and needs. And you operate with a bit of an all-hands-on-deck approach to craft the right value proposition for each account and approach in the right way, at the right time, and with the right offer.

ABM for Good is an effort to bring this approach to organizations working “for good.” We’re adapting ABM principles and practices and bringing our knowledge and experience to help nonprofits grow more effectively with their most important sponsors, funders, and partners.

ANN: Where did the ABM for Good idea come from?

ROB: Over the last 20+ years, I’ve worked as a consultant to help dozens of companies develop and improve ABM programs that have grown into key revenue producers for their organizations. I’ve trained hundreds of marketers to lead and support ABM programs, analyzed what does and doesn’t work, and spoken on more “expert” panels and webinars than I can remember.

A few years ago, as I started thinking about winding down my career and spending more time giving back to my community, I began talking with friends and colleagues about different ways to help. I had started my career in the nonprofit world and wanted to get back that kind of mission-driven work.

Helping organizations with their marketing certainly made sense; I could utilize my knowledge and experience and not just donate my time. But could ABM itself work in a nonprofit environment?

As I talked with more folks the idea seemed to resonate. With several interested colleagues, I began to think about organizing something more formal and structured. Could we bring together a group of like-minded, expert marketing leaders – especially ABMers – and apply our collective insight and experience to bring a little more scale and a little more sophistication into the nonprofit world?

ANN: As you say, ABM is well-proven in the corporate world. How can it work for nonprofits?

ROB: Most nonprofits rely primarily on one or two types of fundraising to support their work: The majority focus mainly on individual donations (large and small) while others focus more on charitable foundations, government agencies, or fees for service. Corporate support is another type but rarely provides a substantial share of nonprofit funding.

At the same time, many nonprofits tend rely on undifferentiated requests for support, especially when it comes to corporate sponsors. They emphasize the importance of the cause and the great work that they do. They offer corporate sponsorship packages, brand recognition, employee volunteer days. Less often do they dig into the research to identify the best-fit corporate supporters and craft customized, personalized pitches tuned to a specific funder’s business and funding priorities.

To complement and help focus existing efforts, Account-Based Marketing can take the same research-based, tailored, customized, and relationship-driven approach that has worked so well in business and apply it to nonprofit fundraising and development, especially for high-value, long-term supporters.

This type of approach sometimes happens with large individual donors, but ABM can provide a more structured process and set of tools to build out the approach to corporate supporters with more complex motives and decision making.

With research, which AI can now accelerate, we can identify the nonprofit’s most important highest potential donors and partners based on their specific interests, history, funding capacity, and decision makers. We can map out how best to connect and engage with the right people, see what works in terms of recruiting their support, and determine how we can best sustain that relationship for the longer term.

With this type of structured process in place, nonprofits can streamline their work and create more efficient and effective programs to develop larger, more strategic sponsorships and partnerships built on trust, collaboration, and clearly defined and measurable value for both parties.

ANN: Why now?

ROB: The timing of launching ABM for good has been particularly interesting. Since launching in 2025, nonprofits have faced a lot of turmoil and challenges. Many are losing government funding and seen other traditional funders take a step back and become more cautious in what they're supporting.

It's an especially unsettled time for nonprofit organizations, many of which find themselves working even harder to maintain existing levels of support while looking even more for new sources of support.

As nonprofit leaders look to refocus their limited time, energy and resources on the donors or sponsors that have the potential to become long-term partners, ABM can provide a well-developed and proven approach to strengthen those efforts.