4 Types of ‘PERSONAL’ Your Nonprofit Must Adopt Today
Early in my career I received a piece of fundraising advice that has stuck with me to this day:
People are all people.
And what do you do with people if you want to build a relationship?
You get PERSONAL!
In fact, if I had to tell you how to win over donors with just one word, “personal” is the word I’d choose.
This One Word, ‘Personal,’ Should Become Your Mantra
Let it underscore everything you think about and do.
Your annual appeal writing. Your special events. Your newsletters. Your blog posts. Your proposals. Your reports. Your social media. Your donor cultivation.
If you take just this one word to heart — PERSONAL — you’ll be leaps and bounds ahead of the competition.
- This one word that can set you apart.
- This one word can help you build relationships like nothing else.
- This one word can sustain you, through thick and thin.
Also Make ‘Personal’ Your Spiritual Discipline
Though we we give lip service to the importance of practicing empathy and donor-centricity, truly valuable tools in building donor relationships, these terms are subsumed by the umbrella of the ‘person’ to whom they apply. Start there.
Visualize your person, and before engaging in any strategy or tactic, ask yourself:
Is there a more personal way to deliver this message?
Begin to build a PERSONAL PERSPECTIVE into your planning.
- DON’Tjust look at the masses (see left heart, above).
- DON’Tt just look at your environment, (see center heart, above).
- DO look at one person, embrace them, hug them and take them by the hand on a joyful philanthropic journey (see right heart, above).
Make sense?
GETTING PERSONAL has always mattered.
Today, in a still-disrupted, socially distanced, increasingly virtual environment, with striving for greater diversity, equity and inclusion at the forefront, how you get personal and how you define people are more important than ever.
Today I’d like to flesh out the multiple meanings of this word, and discuss how getting personal can help you achieve your nonprofit fundraising and marketing goals.
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