More than 900 attendees gathered at the Hilton San Diego Bayfront on Thursday and Friday for the third annual San Diego Fundraising Conference.

The attendees represented more than 450 nonprofit organizations, just a slice of the county’s 13,172 total nonprofits.

The conference, organized by the community nonprofit San Diego Foundation, also welcomed 56 guest speakers from across the nation and hosted dozens of individualized sessions and discussions.

This year, the conference focused on navigating a so-called “triple whammy” of challenges that San Diego County’s nonprofit sector is experiencing. Service needs are increasing while resources shrink due to funding cuts by the new federal administration. And those cuts have come along with varying levels of criticism, too, particularly for groups that serve immigrant or LGBTQ communities.

President and CEO of the San Diego Foundation, Mark Stuart, hopes that the conference will provide nonprofit leaders with the tools to strengthen their repeat donor relationships.

“My hope is, that a lot of what we’re doing with our nonprofit organizations here is helping them [to] get a focus on what does it cost them to bring in a new donor, but then how do they provide that care, that engagement and opportunities to bring them deeper into the organization, so they become a multi-year donor and get much more involved in the organization,” Stuart said.

According to Stuart, while philanthropy only accounts for about a quarter of a nonprofit’s revenue, it has remained a reliable source that continues to grow.

“If you get really, really good at philanthropy as a revenue stream, it’s one you can depend on year after year after year, and the more you get someone involved, the more they feel like giving,” Stuart said. “And it’s not only their annual gifts, but how they volunteer, how they advocate for an organization … And so, you can have donors with you for a lifetime, whereas other revenue streams can wax and wane depending upon federal or state administrations.”

Read the full article about the San Diego Fundraising Conference by Calista Stocker at Times of San Diego.