Mission-driven. Business-built.
Your mission is a business.
Let's run it like one.
Tessera helps mission-driven organizations build fundraising systems as strong as their missions — starting where they're quietly losing donors.
Start here
The Retention Audit
A fixed-scope diagnostic of your donor retention. We dig into your gift data and show you, in plain English, where donors are leaking — and the highest-impact fixes. It's the segmentation most organizations genuinely can't do themselves.
What you walk away with
Your retention by segment, exactly where donors are leaking, and your top three fixes — in plain English, ready to act on.
- 1Send two exports from your CRM (we'll tell you exactly which — names can be stripped).
- 2We clean, code & analyze — retention by segment, lapsed value, the cuts most orgs can't produce.
- 3You get a clear readout and a prioritized action plan you can use right away.
How we work
The Mosaic Method
You hire a method, not a personality. Each engagement assembles exactly the expertise your mission needs — and nothing it doesn't.
The Outline
We map the full picture — your mission, your goals, where your fundraising stands today.
The Gaps
The Retention Audit reads your donor data and reveals what's missing from the picture.
The Tiles
We bring in the senior leader your gaps call for — someone who's run that function, not a junior hire.
The Mosaic
Those leaders work as one integrated program. You own a coherent whole.
What we do
The audit is the front door — not the whole house
Most organizations start with the audit, then go deeper. A real consultancy behind one easy first step.
◆ Diagnose
- The Retention Audit
- Fundraising Systems Check
◆ Build
- Monthly-giving & mid-level programs
- Lapsed-donor reactivation
- CRM cleanup, segmentation & dashboards
- Ongoing retention systems
◆ Message
- Appeal & solicitation messaging
- Campaign strategy & messaging
- Case for support
Why we exist
Your mission deserves a business as strong as its heart.
Fundraising has never been harder. Donor retention is falling across the sector, and the small organizations doing the most essential work have the least room for error — and the least access to senior expertise.
Tessera began with a simple conviction: mission-driven organizations shouldn't have to choose between their heart and their operations. Too often they're run as good people with good intentions, rather than the serious businesses they are.
We start by auditing your fundraising to find the foundational issues holding it back — then we build from there. The goal: help mission-driven organizations become solid, thriving businesses, run and respected as such.
The standard behind the work
Competence is the promise. Trust is earned through obvious skill.
The senior fundraising leadership most missions can't hire full-time — people who've run these departments in-house. Built inside a development operation that raised up to $93.5M in a single year, now working for you.
Questions
The short answers
What does Tessera do?
Tessera is a fundraising advisory collective that helps mission-driven organizations build stronger fundraising systems — starting with a donor Retention Audit that pinpoints where donors are lapsing and how to fix it.
Who is Tessera for?
Small to mid-sized mission-driven organizations — roughly $250K–$2M in budget — that want to run fundraising like a serious business.
How much does the Retention Audit cost?
Founding engagements start at $1,500, credited toward any implementation work that follows.
How long does it take?
You'll have your readout and action plan in 1–2 weeks from receiving clean data.
What else do you offer beyond the audit?
Monthly-giving and mid-level program builds, lapsed-donor reactivation, CRM cleanup and dashboards, donor and campaign messaging, and ongoing retention systems.
Let's turn your data's story into strategy.
Start with a Retention Audit, or book a call to talk it through.