WHAT IT TAKES TO RAISE THE MONEY YOU NEED
To me, fundraising is building relationships. Pure and simple. But oftentimes, people think of relationships in a kind of romantic way and/or feeling that to build a relationship you must meet up in person. Another word for relationships is connections. Fundraising CONNECTS the potential donor to the organization—and you can do this in so many ways, both at what I call arms’ length, as well as up close and personal. And one of the best ways to connect with someone is to share values.
Making connections is a lot more than simply telling someone about all your wonderful programs and how long you’ve been around, how many people you serve and all that stuff that makes the other person’s eyes glaze over. Values get you to understand what matters to your prospects, and helps you to speak with them in a way they will hear. And and always remember: donors are people and people want to be seen, appreciated, and have the opportunity to tell you what matters to them. Talk with them, not at them. Show them you see them and let them know how important they are to your organization and your mission.
My friend and colleague, Marilyn Neece, once asked me three important questions:
If you have limited time and staff, what is the highest and best use of that time and staff?
What resource or necessary tool do you recommend?
What does "next level" fundraising look like?
Let’s take a little time now to look at my answers to those questions.
The first question is what is the best use of your limited time and staff? I have three answers to that:
Build a robust annual giving - regular and unrestricted.
Stewardship component.
Build a major gifts program on top of that.
The second is about a necessary resource or tool:
A user-friendly CRM relational database that captures who your donors are and what they care about, so you know what they are giving to - and can focus your ask there.
Finally, what does next level fundraising look like? The answer to that is simple: More. Whatever you are doing, keep doing it and do more of it. Now, I think that you have to focus on individuals—grants are great but they are limiting—corporate relations takes a lot of time, often with limited results unless you have an in with the CEO.
All this is to say that you must first have a plan—how are you going to raise the funds you need (which implies that you first have a goal of how much money you need to raise)?
With limited resources, most of your fundraising will be arms’ length—direct mail (e and snail) appeals, social media, a monthly giving campaign, perhaps convincing some of your board and other volunteers to do some DIY Peer to Peer fundraising. Notice that I did not mention large special events, which take a huge amount of time for limited ROI. In fact—the lowest ROI of all types of fundraising (for every dollar you spend you may end up with $3 to spend, and that doesn’t take into account opportunity costs).
As you start building your annual giving plan, make sure you are thinking about your donors—and segmenting your lists so your appeals talk with your donors. What do I mean by that? Well, I am a volunteer docent at a museum where I have been a member for over 30 years. That CRM I mentioned? I know they have one and so it should be easy for them to know that I am a long time member and a volunteer. Do they approach me as an “insider?” No. They tell me how wonderful they are and then just ask me for money—which I don’t give. If, however, they sent me a letter or an email saying something like, “Janet, as a long-time member and volunteer, you know better than anyone the importance of what this museum offers……”. At the very least, approach your loyal donors differently than those who have yet to give; make a really big deal out of first time donors—more than 60% of them won’t become second time donors if you don’t take good care of them—and don’t ignore lapsed donors, either by not sending them the appeal or by not noting that you are hoping they will once again become part of your family.
As part of your annual fund, do think about your end of year fundraising—and how you can stand out from all the noise of everyone else. Why EOY? Most fundraising happens at the end of the year and people are in philanthropic mindsets. Take advantage of it. But in today’s world, think multi platform, many different approaches—in short a campaign that will only last 4 - 9 weeks.
Most importantly for all your fundraising, make sure you have a stewardship plan that goes beyond a thank you and then you forget about them until it is time to ask them for another gift. Stewardship, in fact, is just the other side of the coin we call cultivation—the ways you connect your prospects and turn them into donors. Think about a way that you can touch every donor at least quarterly. That could be a newsletter, or better still, a personal email. And simply tell them how much their support matters and how important they are to your organization. And this is such a great way to get your board engaged in fundraising. It is so much easier to say thank you than it is to actually ask for money. Have them write notes, make phone calls (and make sure they leave messages when the phone is not answered!), be present at any donor appreciation events you may have.
As you begin to see donors give and give again, it’s time to build a major gifts program. That is a whole separate workshop, but in short—major donors are those who give you larger gifts. Think about it as the number that would make it worthwhile for you to go out and meet with that donor—perhaps more than once. You probably wouldn’t do it for $100,—and definitely would for $100,000–so what is that number where it begins to be a benefit to you to get up close and personal?
Finally, next level fundraising. To me, this is when you have a real comprehensive development plan that is worked on daily and fundraising is considered as important as programs are. Which will mean that the board understands that it takes money to raise money, and that means hiring more staff to do this really important job.
Put together, these answers to those all-important questions will help to ensure that you can raise the money you need.