Cherian Koshy
+
Circle
Potential Partnership

Pioneering a new way to educate the fundraising industry, together.

A proposed partnership between Neurogiving and Circle Studios to design, launch, and grow a cohort-based training and certification business for fundraising professionals and the organizations they work for.

Prepared byCircle Studios
Target LaunchNovember 2026
ModelTBD
Discovery

What We Heard

Click a card to expand.

Audience & Reach ▾

  • Cherian has ~30 years in nonprofit fundraising, with a focus on behavioral science and neuroscience. His job now is to speak and teach as widely as possible
  • Wiley-published author of bestseller Neurogiving, which translates ~220 source citations of behavioral science into practical fundraising
  • Delivers 100+ keynotes and workshops a year across major fundraising associations, including AFP, the Association of Charitable Gift Planners, the Association for Healthcare Philanthropy, higher-ed networks, and state/regional conferences
  • Incoming chair-elect of the AFP Global Board, giving deep institutional credibility across the nonprofit sector (AFP has ~30K members, ~100K LinkedIn followers)
  • Adjunct at Indiana University's Lilly School of Philanthropy
  • Newsletter list is small but growing, with 50–60% open rates. International interest is emerging too — an Italy keynote invite where organizers are considering buying ~1,000 copies of the book plus an Italian translation
  • A social/paid-ads agency is coming online now and driving traffic — currently landing on the newsletter, though open to redirecting into the course funnel instead

Business Vision ▾

  • Core vision: replicate the "your book changed my life" moment for 1,000+ people at scale
  • Two levels of transformation to enable:
    • Individual (D2C): "I can change how I'm doing my job"
    • Institutional (B2B): "I can transform my entire organization"
  • Built-in flywheel: certified graduates return as part-time instructors/contributors, reducing reliance on Cherian personally as the program scales
  • Enterprise licensing path: large nonprofits and universities (University of Colorado, Blood Cancer United, American Cancer Society, Make-A-Wish, American Red Cross) license the methodology and certify internal trainers to run it themselves, year after year
  • Market validation: Advancement Resources (Iowa-based fundraiser-training company) sold for tens of millions a few years ago; Plus Delta (PE-backed) charges $15–25K/person for generic, non-science-backed training; Jen Shang's philanthropic psychology course is the one close comparable, but small
  • Doesn't want to step back from teaching — the speaking circuit is the primary customer discovery and acquisition channel

Past Attempts & Constraints ▾

  • Already started setting up initial courses in Circle himself before this conversation
  • Hard constraint: can't scale live, in-person delivery infinitely — one person can't be in Atlanta, Nashville, and New Hampshire at once, and demand already exceeds what he can personally deliver
  • Has a lot of existing curriculum material and learnings from workshops and speeches, just not packaged for scale
  • No existing ops team or large internal staff

What You're Looking For ▾

  • A partner to build the "experience" (product structure, backend ops, and marketing) around content and IP already iterated on 100+ times live this year
  • Wants to keep doing what he's good at: speaking, teaching, and customer discovery. Backend ops and funnel-building are what he wants off his plate
  • Open to testing both a high-end/enterprise offer and a mass-market/practitioner offer at the same time
The Opportunity

The Partnership

You've spent almost 30 years translating behavioral science into practical fundraising advice, and Neurogiving seems to have landed at exactly the right moment. Nonprofit fundraising is a market with real cracks showing: 20% first-time donor retention, 45% multi-year retention, and thirty years of "talk at you" education that hasn't fixed it.

You've already proven, in a hundred live rooms this year, that this material changes how people work. Together we can build a lasting business around (initially) two clear offers: a practitioner track for individual fundraisers who want to change how they work, and an organizational track for institutions who want to change how their whole team works. Your strongest graduates feed back in as certified trainers, and your speaking circuit and association network feed people into both tracks on a repeatable basis.

We'll help you frame the offer and test it directly with your actual audience (your speaking circuit, AFP and partner-association relationships, and incoming agency traffic) during a proof-of-concept window designed around your specific distribution mix, rather than the large-email-list assumption we usually start from. Once we see clear signal, we'll move into a full go-to-market build: backend funnels, launch campaigns, and the certification/licensing infrastructure to support enterprise buyers.

This partnership delivers:

01

A high-quality educational experience, differentiated from the standard lecture-style approach common in the industry

02

A repeatable engine turning your speaking circuit, association relationships, and agency traffic into paying customers and organizational clients

03

A flywheel where your strongest graduates become certified trainers, reducing your personal teaching load over time

04

(Eventually) An enterprise licensing pathway into large nonprofits and universities, layered on top of the core practitioner business

Proposed Offering

The Offering

Note: details will be refined as we understand the market better. Below is a rough shape of what this could look like.

Neurogiving already has 220+ citations of research behind it, a USA Today bestseller, and 100+ live sessions this year proving the material lands with a room. It's not lacking content or the demand signal. What's currently lacking is a repeatable engine to package, sell, and deliver it without requiring Cherian to be in every room personally. We see two clear front doors into the business: one for individual practitioners, one for organizations — and our suggestion is we test out both simultaneously to start.

Practitioner Track (D2C) Organizational Track (B2B)
Customer Individual fundraisers Teams at institutions (universities, large nonprofits, enterprise fundraising teams)
Pain point Ability to perform their best in their role (not getting the donor retention rates they want) — "I feel like I need new strategies and tactics to be effective in my work" Donor retention — "Something is broken, and we need a new approach"
Benefits
  • Evidence-based, neuroscience-backed fundraising techniques that go beyond what's already commoditized by ChatGPT and Google
  • A cohort and alumni community to keep coming back to, not a one-off session
  • Practitioner-led, action-oriented
  • Work on real, live contexts and examples
  • Develop your own in-house certified trainers who can run the program themselves, year after year
  • A clear path from individual practitioner capabilities to measurable organizational impact
Example format 1-day workshop; 4-week cohort 2 half-day workshops; 1-week sprint (2 hours/day)
What this looks like Do-it-yourself style. Real, anonymized donor scenarios worked through together, crowdsourced solutions. We teach you and you implement yourself. Done-with-you style. Managers and teams work through embedding the methodology across their team, with internal trainers certified to eventually run sessions without you in the room. We're there to help you implement this inside your org.
Notes Strongest graduates can apply into the Organizational Track as certified trainers Certification/Licensing: internal trainers certified to run the program inside their own org, on a recurring basis
Commercial Model

Revenue Share

Core Partnership (D2C)
70/30

70% to Neurogiving, 30% to Circle Studios, for the duration of the partnership, for direct-to-consumer products.

B2B add-on experiences (organizational track programs and products) follow a separate 60% / 40% split — 60% to Neurogiving, 40% to Circle Studios.
There's also a yearly platform fee, starting from $10K/year, paid each year of the partnership. This fee is deducted from the revenue share — revenue share doesn't start until the platform fee is fully recouped.
The Model

How a Partnership Works

Neurogiving

  • Subject-matter expertise & IP. The book, research, and existing speeches/workshops
  • Top-of-funnel & customer discovery. Speaking circuit, AFP/association relationships, and incoming agency traffic feed the funnel
  • Full approval & veto. Final say on creative direction, content accuracy, and external brand

Circle Studios

Turn-key delivery. Full design, execution and management of the educational business.

  • Experiences. We design and produce the cohort curriculum, session structure, and certification/licensing infrastructure.
  • Operations. We run enrollment, comms, payments, and backend systems, so growth doesn't add to your workload.
  • Growth. We own offer positioning, funnels, and launch campaigns. We'll turn your speaking and association reach into paying, retained practitioners and organizational clients.
Next Steps

Timeline

Step 1

One-Page Summary → Non-Binding Term Sheet

A short written summary of this proposal kicks off a non-binding term sheet while the long-form contract is drafted.

Step 2

Kickoff Call (~2 hours)

Align on ICP, persona, offer design, and go-to-market for both tracks — including designing the proof-of-concept approach around your specific distribution mix (speaking circuit, AFP/ACS/institutional relationships, agency traffic) instead of the standard large-email-list assumption.

Step 3

Written Proposal (within ~1 week)

Circle Studios returns with specific offers, pricing, and go-to-market detail for both tracks.

Step 4

Proof-of-Concept Window (~45 days)

Testing demand and offer positioning before full build.

  • Splash page + waitlist, adapted for association- and speaking-driven traffic rather than a large email blast
  • Focus group to pressure-test messaging and offer
  • Deposit gate: 25% of total seats as partial deposits = demand confirmed
Days 45+

Full Launch & Sales Sequence

Full launch and sales sequence.