Rainbow after a storm

Do You, or People You Know, Hate Fundraising? Read This!

Rainbow after a storm

Focus on the Rainbow, Not the Storm

 

If you’re coming at fundraising from the perspective of “no pain, no gain,” I’d like to suggest you reframe your approach.

Especially when it comes to asking individuals, one-to-one, for passionate gifts.

As long as you hate it, you’re never going to be effective.

In fact, if anyone in your organization feels this way, you’re shooting yourself in the foot.

Why?

Because… (I really hate to break this to you)…

Donors can tell.

When donors can sense you’d rather be doing anything else than asking them for a gift, guess what happens?  They follow your lead!  In other words, they feel like they’d rather be doing anything else than making a gift.

Uh, oh.  How can you change this equation?

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Kids sharing a secret

So You Want More Major Gifts This Year? Here’s the Secret!

Kids sharing a secretAll you’ve got to do is ask!

Seriously. The number one reason people don’t make a major gift – or any gift for that matter – is no one asks them.

But I’m getting a bit ahead of myself.

Before you can ask, you have to know a few basics:

  • Who will you ask?
  • What will you ask for?
  • When will you know they’re ready to be asked?
  • Where should you ask?
  • How should you ask?
  • Why are you asking?

Let’s take these fundamentals one at a time.

Who will you ask?

Not everyone in your donor base is a major gift prospect.

Even if they were, you probably don’t have the bandwidth to cultivate and solicit all of them right now. It’s just common sense to prioritize those donors with whom you’re most likely to succeed. There’s no hard and fast rule as to how to pick this priority group.

I generally advise starting with

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Woman showing "help" written on hand

Do You Assume Donors Don’t Want to Be Asked?

Woman showing "help" written on handAssuming people don’t want to be asked to make a philanthropic gift is one of the biggest misconceptions of what constitutes being donor-centered.

Or even kind, thoughtful and respectful.

Alas, when you spend all your time on cultivation, assuming folks don’t need a direct ask and will simply give spontaneously as a result of being passively asked, or even outright wooed, everyone loses.

  • You short-change your organization.
  • You short-change your beneficiaries.
  • You, especially, short-change your would-be donors.

Why?

FIRST: Donors want to be asked because they’re starved for the love that comes from voluntary giving and receiving.

Donors have love to give, but don’t always have an object towards which to direct their affection.

SECOND: Donors need to be asked because when they’re not, they don’t know how much you need their help.

Consequently, giving feels a bit like a crap shoot.  Empty, not meaningful. Donors want you to honestly tell them when and how and how much to give, so investing their money fills them with confidence it will be appreciated and do the most good.

Don’t make donors guess whether you truly find them worthy of loving you.

Donors are Love-Starved

One of my favorite songs is from the Jefferson Airplane:

When the truth is found to be lies
And all the joy within you dies
Don’t you want somebody to love
Don’t you need somebody to love
Wouldn’t you love somebody to love
You better find somebody to love

What are you, and all these people, doing with the gift of life?

Sure, everyone is busy, busy, busy.

But is all that busy-ness making folks happy?

Are people stopping to really think about what makes their lives meaningful?

Sometimes, yes.

Often, not so much.

You can help would-be donors stop and smell (and enjoy) the roses, so to speak.

Philanthropy is Love

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Curious cat emerging from window

Curiosity Didn’t Kill These Fundraisers—It Made Them Unstoppable

Remember, behind all your work there are people. It’s your job to learn about them. One of your best tools is curiosity. One study published in Harvard Business Review, found curiosity builds trust and improves relationships in the workplace. It also builds trust between you and donors. Jon Simons, Executive V.P. of DBD Group, suggests curiosity is…

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Money on the table; Monopoly

If You’re Not Promoting Donor Advised Funds, You’re Leaving Major Gifts on the Table

Use of Donor Advised Funds (DAFs) as a way for individuals to make charitable contributions continues to rise and grants from DAFs are becoming a growing source of income for charities of all shapes and sizes. An ever-broader group of donors are embracing them to approach philanthropy in the thoughtful, strategic way once reserved only…

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Large piece of lemon meringue pie

Act Fast, Raise Big: The Skills You Need to Win Major Donors Today

Large piece of lemon meringue pieShifting politics are creating economic uncertainty for all, and it’s especially scary for U.S. nonprofits who, on average, receive about a third of their total funding from Federal grants. This means nonprofits today need to shift emphasis (and budget) toward individual donor engagement strategies. Giving USA reports 75% of all giving (lifetime + bequests) came from individuals last year.

Major individual donors are, by far, the largest slice of today’s philanthropy pie.

If I had to tell you what you need to do to succeed with major gift fundraising in one sentence it would be this:

Identify major donor prospects… qualify them so you know they want to build a deeper relationship with you… cultivate them… visit with them… listen to them… reflect back to them what you heard… ask them for something specific that resonates with their passions… steward their gift and communicate in an ongoing way to make them feel like the hero they are!

Whew – that was a mouthful!

But don’t worry. It’s definitely not rocket science. A shorter way to say this is:

Meet with donors. Listen to donors. Ask donors. Thank donors.

See — it’s simple!

It’s just good old hard work. Satisfying and rewarding work. And it’s a type of work anyone can learn to do.

If you want to learn, please sign up for an upcoming cohort of the Certification Course for Major Gift Fundraisers. [NOTE: If you sign up within one month before it begins, you’ll get a nice discount.]  It may be the most important investment you make all year. Just one major gift will more than cover the cost].

Over my 40 years in fundraising, 30 of them working in the trenches as a director of development for organizations with budgets ranging from $1 – $40 million, I have asked for a lot of major gifts.  I know what works, and what doesn’t work. Today I want to give you:

(1) some of my best words of wisdom, and also

(2) answers to some of the questions folks frequently ask me .

I hope these tips will help you tweak your mindset and invigorate your systems so you can be more successful fundraising in the coming year!

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scrabble tiles: fake news

Totally FAKE Nonprofit News: 6 Fundraising Untruths

scrabble tiles: fake newsThere’s a lot about fundraising folks take for granted. And not in a good way. Because… much of it is untrue!

In fact, if you, your executive director, your board members or anyone else where you work subscribes to these fictions you’ll be in for a lot of pain and suffering. You won’t raise near the money you could otherwise raise. And you won’t enjoy your work.

But there’s a fix!

In the past I’ve written about certain self-evident fundraising truths. Truths you want to hold close to become a fruitful philanthropy facilitator.  The problem? These tenets I call truths are too often not apparent at all.

Why?

A disinformation campaign is unconsciously being waged by leaders who:

  • Don’t understand how fundraising works.
  • Don’t understand pre-conditions must be in place in order for fundraising to flourish.
  • Don’t want to understand because then they’d have to step up to the plate and do things that make them feel uncomfortable.

Oh, dear. Guess what?

Like anything else worth doing, fundraising must be done well to succeed.

You get out of it what you put into it. That’s the unvarnished truth —  the truth that shall set you free!

Sadly, if you believe any of the following untruths, your fundraising program is in jeopardy. And so is your mission. Let’s break these down.

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1 CommentStrategy & Management
Small pink pills forming a question mark.

Dramatic Shared Cure-Alls: Philanthropy and Placebo Effects

Small pink pills forming a question mark.Can the act of philanthropy make people feel better?

I say “Yes. Absolutely.” Much has been written about the warm glow that comes from giving.

So why not think about fundraising as a caring act, and fundraisers (aka ‘philanthropy facilitators’) as trusted helpers and healers?

Reframing fundraising in this way can be your key to:

(1) committing to major individual donor fundraising (helping people to be the people they’d like to see in the mirror), and

(2) engaging more staff, volunteers and board members in this noble endeavor (so they experience not just the joy of giving, but the joy of helping others give).

It helps to understand the similarities in findings from functional MRI research on both the placebo and philanthropy effects.

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