I have been hearing from current and former clients about fundraising concerns amid dire economic forecasts and the potential negative consequences for charitable giving.
Given the weight of the pressures right now, I thought I would share some of my thoughts on surviving the current crisis.
This is not about the latest in social media or online fundraising – there is already plenty of information circulating about those things from people far savvier than I (I just stumbled on the super helpful www.vocus.com, for instance, a tool for creating your social media strategy).
Instead, I wanted to make the point that one of the most important things all of us can do right now is to remain calm and rely on common sense. What I mean by this is not losing sight of the basics in fundraising and not turning our backs on some essential truths because we feel pressure to bring money in quickly.
These five principles are evergreen, but never more important than right now.
- Focus on your program’s impact. Raising money depends on the quality of your organization’s work. If you know your mission is vital and your program is making a difference in people’s lives, you are in a strong position to ask for financial support. Not everyone, even people leading organizations, are always confident about their organizations’ effectiveness. One way to find out is to track your results. Do they match up with your stated mission and intentions? Have you looked at your programs to see if they need to evolve with changing times? Have you done an environmental scan to confirm that your programs are not duplicative, or being done more effectively by others? Have you solicited the views of other informed people? Above all, don’t be afraid to discover that your programs need strengthening, or need to adapt to today’s realities – if, in fact, they do!
- Show it. A surprising number of people leading nonprofits or fundraising for them have a hard time explaining, simply and clearly, why their organization’s work is valuable and necessary. A common failure is spending too much time in the weeds explaining methods and processes, when what most donors want to know is: Who are you trying to help? What are your specific goals and milestones? And what kind of results are you getting? Remembering the journalist’s mantra of who, what, when, where, how (and I would add, to what end) will keep you focused on what your donors need to know.
- Feed the bottom line. If you’re like me and virtually every group I’ve worked with, at one time or another you’ve sought and accepted a gift or grant that came at a high cost: restrictions that did not advance your priorities (and that added to your expense budget). This kind of fundraising – what I think of as “extra-budgetary fundraising” – can become a dangerous habit; it is one that exacerbates deficits and, over time, can sink an organization. Our job as nonprofit representatives is to persuade prospective funders of the value of our mission and demonstrate how it aligns with their interests. It is not to promise anything in order to get a chunk of money. “Feeding the bottom line” is just short-hand for remembering that you have a board-approved budget that expresses the organization’s priorities for that year, and your task is to raise money for that body of work – not something else.
- Eliminate the guessing. No one goes into battle without having gathered intelligence. And yet, I see people spending time cultivating what they think are high-dollar donor prospects without ascertaining whether the prospects do indeed have substantial resources, care about the issues, and/or contribute to similar causes. People will leave a funder meeting without asking the funder, directly, ”What level of support are you willing to consider at this point?” Fundraisers, executive directors, board members and others will guess about these things, or make unfounded assumptions about them, when the answers are there to be had – either from a web search or straight from the horse’s mouth. Find out, or ask, but don’t guess, and your odds of success will be much greater.
- Avoid short-cuts. Efficiency is one thing. Short-cuts are another. Successful fundraising is not rocket science, but it is labor and time intensive. The most talented fundraisers are prepared to put in the time. Failing to convene the fundraising team and strategize before a meeting with a foundation program officer is guaranteed to have you walk out of the meeting with less than you might have gotten. Failing to educate and prepare a board of directors for a greater fundraising role will result in little change on their end. Not preparing, not allowing human relations to develop over time, not giving people time to buy in or come up to speed –– all of this will stymie an organization’s long term fundraising ambitions. Give yourself enough time to cultivate, and anything is possible.
